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New Study Suggests Police Shoot Whites More Frequently Than Blacks

by Elyse Corder Posted on July 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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In a new paper using an interesting approach, Roland Fryer finds that police officers treat blacks and Hispanics more roughly than whites, but they don’t shoot them any more frequently:

The results obtained using these data are informative and, in some cases, startling. Using data on NYC’s Stop and Frisk program, we demonstrate that on non-lethal uses of force — putting hands on civilians (which includes slapping or grabbing) or pushing individuals into a wall or onto the ground, there are large racial differences. In the raw data, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to have an interaction with police which involves any use of force.

In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, we find no racial differences in officer-involved shootings on either the extensive or intensive margins. Using data from Houston, Texas — where we have both officer-involved shootings and a randomly chosen set of potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified — we find, in the raw data, that blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites. Hispanics are 8.5 percent less likely.

Analyzing data from cities in California, Texas, and Florida, Fryer found that lethal force was used more often against whites than blacks.1This is from the New York Times:

In officer-involved shootings in these cities, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both of these results undercut the idea that the police wield lethal force with racial bias.

….A more fundamental question still remained: In the tense moments when a shooting may occur, are police officers more likely to fire if the suspect is black?

To answer this question, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The Police Department there allowed the researchers to look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include suspects the police charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.

And in the arena of “shoot” or “don’t shoot,” Mr. Fryer found that, in tense situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot a suspect if the suspect was black. This estimate was not very precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But, in a variety of models that controlled for different factors and used different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites.

Fryer calls this “the most surprising result of my career.” Needless to say, it’s based on limited data and a new way of looking at police shootings, so Fryer’s results should be considered tentative. And it’s worth keeping in mind that lesser uses of force are far more common in encounters with blacks than whites:

“Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It’s an awful experience,” he said. “I’ve had it multiple, multiple times. Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them. It is hard to believe that the world is your oyster if the police can rough you up without punishment. And when I talked to minority youth, almost every single one of them mentions lower level uses of force as the reason why they believe the world is corrupt.”

Food for thought. Fryer is a careful and high respected researcher, and he was motivated to conduct this study by the events in Ferguson a couple of years ago. Both of his conclusions are worth taking seriously.

1The results weren’t statistically significant, so technically Fryer’s conclusion is that there’s no difference between the shooting rate of whites and blacks.

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New Study Suggests Police Shoot Whites More Frequently Than Blacks

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Before Trump University, There Was the Trump Institute. Here’s How Donald Trump Learned the Hustle.

by Marquis52T Posted on June 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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A couple of months ago Ars Technica ran a story about one of Donald Trump’s penny-ante moneymakers from the aughts: the Trump Institute. It all started when a pair of journalism grad students, Joe Mullin and Jonathan Kaminsky, became fixated on a late-night infomercial for the National Grant Conferences:

Why did the NGC infomercial captivate us?…It wasn’t the enthusiastic couple who founded NGC, Mike and Irene Milin, proclaiming that numerous government grants were there for the taking. No, we couldn’t stop watching because NGC just felt so sleazy.

….Intrigued, we spent the better part of a year researching NGC, its claims, and its founders’ pasts. We ultimately found that NGC—with several seminar teams circling the country and clearing tens of millions of dollars each year in sales—and its memberships produced no money for any of the customers we interviewed.

….Trump wanted a piece of the action, so he struck a licensing deal with the Milins in 2006. The couple created the “Trump Institute,” using much of the same pitch material and some of the same pitchmen.

Today the New York Times picks up on the story:

As with Trump University, the Trump Institute promised falsely that its teachers would be handpicked by Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump did little, interviews show, besides appear in an infomercial — one that promised customers access to his vast accumulated knowledge. “I put all of my concepts that have worked so well for me, new and old, into our seminar,” he said in the 2005 video, adding, “I’m teaching what I’ve learned.”

Reality fell far short. In fact…extensive portions of the materials that students received after forking over their seminar fees, supposedly containing Mr. Trump’s special wisdom, had been plagiarized from an obscure real estate manual published a decade earlier.

Together, the exaggerated claims about his own role, the checkered pasts of the people with whom he went into business and the theft of intellectual property at the venture’s heart all illustrate the fiction underpinning so many of Mr. Trump’s licensing businesses: Putting his name on products and services — and collecting fees — was often where his actual involvement began and ended.

….Asked about the plagiarism, which was discovered by the Democratic “super PAC” American Bridge, the editor of the Trump Institute publication, Susan G. Parker, denied responsibility….Ms. Parker, a lawyer and legal writer in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., said that far from being handpicked by Mr. Trump, she had been hired to write the book after responding to a Craigslist ad. She said she never spoke to Mr. Trump, let alone received guidance from him on what to write. She said she drew on her own knowledge of real estate and a speed-reading of Mr. Trump’s books.

In a nutshell, Trump sought out a couple of late-night hustlers who had already been in trouble with the law, taped an infomercial for them, and then pocketed the licensing fee. (They were the “best in the business,” said the Trump executive who brokered the deal.) Later, having learned the hustle, Trump ended his contract with the Milins and opened up Trump University. He had learned all he needed and was ready to start pushing the hard-sell conference business on his own. Seven years later, he’s perfected the hustle even further, so now he’s running for president. You’re welcome.

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Before Trump University, There Was the Trump Institute. Here’s How Donald Trump Learned the Hustle.

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Here’s the Best News We’ve Gotten All Year

by AlfonzoIRKZ Posted on June 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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No joke. This may be boring as hell, but it really and truly is great news:

Federal Reserve officials strongly signaled they will toughen big-bank capital requirements even more than they have since the 2008 crisis, a move that will add to the pressure on the largest U.S. banks to consider shrinking. Fed governors Daniel Tarullo and Jerome Powell, in separate public comments on Thursday, said the Fed would require eight of the largest U.S. banks to maintain more equity to pass the central bank’s annual “stress tests.”

“Effectively, this will be a significant increase in capital,” Mr. Tarullo said on Bloomberg television….Mr. Powell said at a banking conference that the Fed’s move would make big banks “fully internalize the risk” they pose to the economy.

“I have not reached any conclusion that a particular bank needs to be broken up or anything like that,” he said. The point is to “raise capital requirements to the point at which it becomes a question that banks have to ask themselves.”

Bernie Sanders has campaigned heavily on the idea of breaking up big banks. But that shouldn’t be our goal. Our goal should be to make banks safer and to reduce the likelihood that they need to be bailed out in the future. That’s what higher capital requirements do: they force banks to carry a bigger buffer against losses, which makes them less likely to fail in any future downturn.

As it happens, new regulations put in place since the financial meltdown of 2008 have already increased capital requirements, but big banks still have an unfair advantage in the market: their funding costs are lower because investors figure they’ll be bailed out if they ever implode in the future. To make up for this, big banks should, as Tarullo said, “fully internalize the risk” they pose to the economy. In other words, if big banks have an automatic advantage simply because taxpayers have little choice but to rescue them in case they fail, they should be required to pay higher insurance premiums against failure. That’s essentially what higher capital requirements do.

This is fair. However, higher capital requirements also make big banks less profitable, which in turn gives them a strong incentive to downsize all on their own. And that’s how it should be. There’s no reason for the Fed or anyone else to pick and choose banks to break up. We just need to make sure they’re reasonably safe and are operating on a level playing field. If we do this, we’re providing an organic incentive to downsize. The banks themselves get to decide whether and how to do it.

The only bad news here is that the Fed is unlikely to raise capital requirements enough to suit me. Nonetheless, this is very much another step in the right direction.

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Here’s the Best News We’ve Gotten All Year

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Trumpapalooza for May 23, 2016

by StevieF65vjg Posted on May 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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A while back I asked how to handle the fire hose of Donald Trump news, and one suggestion was to ignore it during the day and then put all of it into a single end-of-the-day roundup. I’m not sure this is a viable long-term solution, but let’s give it a try. Here’s the Trumpapalooza for May 23, 2016:

Global Warming

Publicly, Trump has made it clear that he thinks global warming is a hoax. But when it comes to building a sea wall to protect one of his golf courses, it turns out he’s a true believer: “If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct,” his company says in a letter, “it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring….As a result, we would expect the rate of dune recession to increase.”

Wall Street

Trump apparently isn’t quite as plugged into the world of the rich and powerful as he thinks:

If there were any prevailing doubts of his stature on Wall Street, Mr. Trump said the chief executive at Deutsche Bank could easily allay it. “Why don’t you call the head of Deutsche Bank? Her name is Rosemary Vrablic,” he said in the recent interview. “She is the boss.”

Ms. Vrablic is a private wealth manager at Deutsche Bank in New York. She is not the company’s chief executive; John Cryan holds that role. Both declined to comment on Mr. Trump.

Energy Policy

Trump recently met with Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, and had a question for him:

During the meeting, Murray said Trump had asked him about numerous facets of U.S. energy policy. At one point, Murray said he would suggest lifting obstacles to opening liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export facilities to reduce the supply glut of natural gas in the country.

He said that Trump was agreeable with the idea, but then had a question. “What’s LNG?” Murray said Trump asked.

Rape

Josh Marshall says that if Trump is going to dredge up groundless old rape accusations against Bill Clinton, it’s time to ask him some questions about his own past sexual conduct:

Trump’s former wife Ivana said Trump raped her in a sworn deposition. Given how central a role rape accusations have played in Trump’s campaign — against Mexicans, political opponents, etc. it is clearly a highly germane question, as frankly it would be for any presidential candidate.

The details surrounding the alleged rape are bizarrely novelistic even by Trumpian standards. According to Ivana, Trump was driven to freakish rage by a failed anti-baldness surgery — a so-called ‘scalp reduction’. But the actions are very clear cut. According to her deposition, Trump flew into a rage, attacked her, held her down and began pulling hair out of her head to mimic his pain and then forcibly penetrated her….This was a pretty concrete and specific accusation. And the author of the book that first surfaced the deposition said he’d found numerous friends of Ivana’s who she had confided the incident to at the time.

Vince Foster

The right-wing fever swamp has long believed that Vince Foster, a deputy White House counsel in the Clinton administration, didn’t commit suicide on July 20, 1993. Rather, Hillary Clinton had him murdered and then ordered his body dragged to Fort Marcy Park, where he was found the next day. Even by conservative standards this is both fantastical and repulsive (Foster was a good friend of Hillary’s). Naturally, that didn’t stop Trump:

When asked in an interview last week about the Foster case, Trump dealt with it as he has with many edgy topics — raising doubts about the official version of events even as he says he does not plan to talk about it on the campaign trail. He called theories of possible foul play “very serious” and the circumstances of Foster’s death “very fishy.”

“He had intimate knowledge of what was going on,” Trump said, speaking of Foster’s relationship with the Clintons at the time. “He knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide.” He added, “I don’t bring Foster’s death up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.”

There was also some polling news, but who cares about polls in May?

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Trumpapalooza for May 23, 2016

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He Killed Two FBI Agents. Or He Was Framed. After 40 Years, Will Obama Free Leonard Peltier?

by OlaOng861826061 Posted on May 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Leonard Peltier, a member of the Lakota tribe who was convicted of murdering two FBI agents in 1977, has spent 40 of his 71 years in federal prison. During that time, some have come to view him as an international symbol of the mistreatment of Native Americans by the US criminal justice system; others see him as the murderer of two FBI agents who should continue to pay his debt to society. Recently a group of prominent lawyers—backed by world leaders, civil rights activists, and several members of the US Congress—have renewed efforts to win his freedom by filing a formal appeal for clemency to the Department of Justice and requesting that President Barack Obama intervene on Peltier’s behalf.

In February, Martin Garbus, a well-known New York City trial lawyer and the lead attorney of the group, joined by former US Attorney Cynthia Dunne and attorney Carl S. Nadler, wrote a five-page letter to Obama urging him to grant Peltier clemency. “The time has come for the interests of the law enforcement community to be balanced against principles of fundamental fairness, reconciliation, and healing,” they contended.

They also submitted a 44-page petition for clemency to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney on behalf of Peltier, who suffers from various medical conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart condition. All of this, the petition notes, impairs “his ability to walk, to see, and to conduct normal life activities…He is ill-equipped to cope with life in the maximum security prisons in which he has been jailed for many years.” The petition includes more than two dozen letters from supporters including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Coretta Scott King, several Native American tribes, and Amnesty International.

“Mr. Peltier has exhausted all appeals and is next eligible to apply for parole in 2024, in the unlikely event that he lives that long,” the letter to Obama states. “The Parole Commission has yielded to the objections of the FBI and DOJ in denying Mr. Peltier’s applications for parole at every turn. Effectively, this Petition represents the last chance in Mr. Peltier’s lifetime for the Government to take curative and/or reconciliatory action.”

Peltier’s case has long been a flash point in the strained relations between federal law enforcement and Native Americans. The killings occurred on the the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, about 18 miles from Wounded Knee, where 300 Sioux were massacred by the US military in 1890.

In 1973, about 200 Sioux, led by members of the American Indian Movement, occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days to protest injustices against Native Americans and what they perceived as the corrupt leadership of the reservation’s president. By the end of the standoff, two Native Americans had been killed, 12 were wounded, and 12 were “missing” but suspected of having been killed by tribal leadership, according to Peltier’s petition.

The three years after the Wounded Knee occupation became known within Native American circles as the “Reign of Terror,” a period during which dozens of Native Americans were murdered and hundreds were assaulted by a private militia that was aligned with Oglala Lakota Souix chairman Dick Wilson and known as the “GOON squad.” Two years after that, with the Reign of Terror fresh on the minds of everyone in the area, the deadly shootout with the FBI agents occurred.

Many of the facts about the deaths of FBI agents Jack Williams and Robert Coler are disputed. The FBI says the agents were on the reservation to arrest a different man wanted for robbery and that they were not looking for Peltier, who was wanted on a separate warrant related to an alleged attempted murder of an off-duty police officer in Milwaukee. When the agents came to the reservation that day, according to the FBI, they encountered a vehicle carrying Peltier and found themselves under fire. Williams and Coler each died as a result of point-blank shots to the head.

Peltier’s version of the story is presented in detail in his petition. He maintains that after the FBI agents came on to the private property, “I heard shooting, grabbed my rifle, and ran towards a residence where there were women and children, but quickly ran in another direction because my presence had attracted additional gunfire to the area.” He says the area was surrounded by more than 100 FBI agents, SWAT team members, Bureau of Indian Affairs police, and members of the GOON squad.

“Along with many other American Indians who were present that day, I fired shots in the direction of men whom I later learned were federal agents,” Peltier notes in the petition. “At the end of extended gunfire, three men lay dead: Special Agents Jack R. Williams and Robert A. Coler, and American Indian Joe Stuntz.”

Peltier says he fled the area, eventually ending up in Canada because he thought he wouldn’t get a fair trial in the United States. Using affidavits from a woman later determined to have been either coerced or incompetent, the US government had Peltier sent back to the United States in February 1976 to stand trial. Two other Native Americans, Robert Robideau and Darrelle Dean Butler, were arrested for the deaths of the two FBI agents, but only Peltier was convicted in a trial that contained a number of irregularities, including sworn affidavits from witnesses who said they’d been coerced by the FBI. While Robideau and Butler were acquitted in 1976, Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in June 1977.

Peltier and his supporters have pointed out the many problems with his trial, highlighting the fact that the government eventually admitted it did not know with certainty who had fired the point-blank shots that killed the FBI agents. Nevertheless, the latest petition for clemency flatly states that Peltier is not trying to re-litigate the case: “The finality of my conviction should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the means that were employed by the government to achieve the result” (emphasis in original).

Over the years, prominent figures such as Nelson Mandela, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, and Robert Redford have called for Peltier’s release.

Garbus tells Mother Jones that this is Peltier’s second formal petition for clemency. The first, submitted in 2000 during the Clinton administration, was likely undermined by a protest of 500 active and retired FBI agents who marched in front of the White House after the petition was delivered. Garbus has now reached out to several members of Congress, including Reps. John Lewis and Barbara Lee and Sen. Patrick Leahy, to advance Peltier’s cause.

“This is a different application than the one before Clinton,” says Garbus. “We hope that we will not see the same kind of opposition at this point from these FBI families, given the passage of years, given his sickness, and given his very clear expression of remorse.”

Garbus says he has not heard from any White House officials. A White House spokesperson and the FBI both declined to comment on the petition. The Office of the Pardon Attorney—the office within the Justice Department that handles requests for pardons and clemency—also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Garbus says he’s trying to help Peltier for one simple reason: “Forty years is enough for a wrongful conviction.”

Read the letter to Obama and Peltier’s latest petition below:

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He Killed Two FBI Agents. Or He Was Framed. After 40 Years, Will Obama Free Leonard Peltier?

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Paul Ryan Does Not Want to Be Your Next President

by SarahBaskervill Posted on April 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Paul Ryan will apparently be making a Shermanesque statement about an hour from now:

Ryan…has arranged a hastily called 3:15 p.m. press conference inside the Republican National Committee. Advisers say he will insist — in his clearest terms yet — to the GOP’s big donor and lobbyist class that he will not attempt to claim the nomination at the July convention in Cleveland.

“He’s going to rule himself out and put this to rest once and for all,” a Ryan aide said, requesting anonymity to discuss the planned speech.

Stay tuned. Presumably this is good news for Ted Cruz.

UPDATE: And the press conference is now over:

“Let me be clear,” Mr. Ryan said. “I do not want nor will I accept the nomination of our party.” He added that he had a message for convention delegates: “If no candidate has the majority on the first ballot, I believe you should only turn to a person who has participated in the primary. Count me out.”

That seems suitably blunt.

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Paul Ryan Does Not Want to Be Your Next President

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The NFL Really Doesn’t Like Being Compared to Big Tobacco

by Maryann3677 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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For more than a decade, the National Football League supported a series of peer-reviewed studies that concluded that brain injuries sustained during football players’ careers did not lead to long-term consequences. But a new investigation by the New York Times reports that the research omitted data from more than 100 documented concussions—and, perhaps more troubling, that the NFL had a closer connection to the tobacco industry than previously known.

While the Times found “no direct evidence that the league took its strategy from Big Tobacco,” its story lays out a series of overlapping ties between the league and tobacco giants, from hires to requests for advice. A league attorney challenged the assertion in a letter to the Times that was included in the story, writing, “The N.F.L. is not the tobacco industry; it had no connection to the tobacco industry.”

But the league didn’t stop there. On Thursday morning, the league released a statement pushing back against the Times report. The newspaper then followed up with a series of tweets refuting the NFL’s statement—after which the league responded with another statement.

Here’s a point-by-point breakdown of what the Times reported and how both sides responded to each other’s claims on Thursday:

Times on NFL’s use of flawed data: “For the last 13 years, the N.F.L. has stood by the research, which, the papers stated, was based on a full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. But confidential data obtained by The Times shows that more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from the studies—including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, the MTBI studies published by the MTBI Committee are clear that the data set had limitations…The studies never claimed to be based on every concussion that was reported or that occurred. Moreover, the fact that not all concussions were reported is consistent with the fact that reporting was strongly encouraged by the League but not mandated, as documents provided to the Times showed.”

Times‘ responses:

NFL’s follow-up statement: “The studies themselves expressly noted the limitations in their work and never claimed to be based on every concussion that was reported or that occurred. The fact that not all concussions were reported is consistent with the fact that reporting was strongly encouraged by the League but not mandated, as the documents we provided to the Times showed. We nevertheless agree that these limitations could have been more clearly stated.”

Times on Dorothy Mitchell, a former legal liaison who oversaw the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, and her ties to the tobacco industry: “Before joining the N.F.L., Ms. Mitchell, a young Harvard Law School graduate, had been one of five lawyers at Covington & Burling who had provided either lobbying help or legal representation to both the N.F.L. and the tobacco industry, sometimes in the same year.”

NFL’s initial statement: “Her experience as a young lawyer working on a tobacco case (among many other cases) was entirely unknown to the NFL personnel who hired and supervised her, as well as to members of the MTBI Committee, until they learned of this proposed story.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “At her law firm, Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., Dorothy Mitchell worked on a wide variety of matters, including employment matters for the League and a matter for the Tobacco Institute as a young associate. The NFL did not seek out Ms. Mitchell for employment or know that she had worked on any tobacco matter.”

Times on contact between Lorillard general counsel Arthur Stevens and former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue in 1992: “In 1992, amid rising concerns about concussions, Mr. Tisch—the Giants and Lorillard part owner—asked the cigarette company’s general counsel, Arthur J. Stevens, to contact the N.F.L. commissioner at the time, Mr. Tagliabue, about certain legal issues…In a letter obtained by The Times, Mr. Stevens referred Mr. Tagliabue to two court cases alleging that the tobacco and asbestos industries had covered up the health risks of their products.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, neither then-NFL Commissioner, Mr. Tagliabue, the League nor its counsel ever solicited, reviewed, or relied on any advice from anyone at Lorillard or the Tobacco Institute regarding health issues.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “Commissioner Tagliabue did not know Mr. Stevens and does not recall communicating with him prior to or after the October 20 letter. There is no evidence in an extensive review of files that Mr. Tagliabue solicited the advice, reviewed the advice or acted upon the advice. Nor did anyone else at the League ever take any action regarding health issues based on advice from Lorillard or the Tobacco Institute.”

Times on the league and tobacco industry sharing lobbyists: “Still, the records show that the two businesses shared lobbyists, lawyers and consultants. Personal correspondence underscored their friendships, including dinner invitations and a request for lobbying advice.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, the League has never participated—either through its counsel of over 50 years, Covington & Burling, or otherwise—in any joint lobbying efforts with the Tobacco Institute.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “The NFL has worked with Covington & Burling for more than 50 years, and both the NFL and the Tobacco Institute have retained Covington & Burling at various times for lobbying services—as have any number of other companies and individuals in Washington and elsewhere. But the NFL never participated in any joint lobbying efforts with the Tobacco Institute. Regarding health and safety, the NFL retained assistance from Covington & Burling from 2009-2014 for its lobbying efforts in state legislatures to pass youth concussion laws, the ‘Lystedt Law,’ in all 50 states.”

Times on NFL’s use of the same research firm as the Tobacco Institute: “On at least two occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, the N.F.L. hired a company whose client list included the Tobacco Institute to study player injuries. The league also hired a company — for a matter unrelated to player safety—that had performed a study for the tobacco industry that played down the danger of secondhand smoke.”

NFL’s response: “The Times asserts a connection between the League and the Tobacco Institute because both hired the Stanford Research Institute (SRI)…In fact, one of the research studies the Times alludes to was jointly commissioned by the NFL and the NFL Players Association. There is no evidence that SRI engaged in misleading or inappropriate research.”

Times on former NFL president Neil Austrian: “Neil Austrian, a former N.F.L. president, had previously run an advertising agency that under his leadership reversed its ban on taking tobacco clients. He called Philip Morris ‘an honorable company that sets high standards.’ It was during his tenure at the N.F.L. that the concussion committee was created.”

NFL’s response: “Mr. Austrian had no involvement with the MTBI Committee during his tenure at the NFL. Mr. Austrian was responsible for the business entities of the league.”

Times on Joe Browne, the NFL’s former senior vice president of communications: “When Congress was considering legislation that dealt with when a team owner could relocate a franchise, Joe Browne, a league official sought lobbying advice from a representative of the Tobacco Institute. ‘I would like to take the opportunity to sit down and discuss this bill with you further,’ Mr. Browne said in a 1982 letter to the institute’s president, Sam Chilcote.”

NFL’s response: “The Times implies that there was a nefarious relationship between Joe Browne and Sam Chilcote. In fact, Joe Browne (then NFL SVP of Communications) built a personal relationship with Sam Chilcote while Mr. Chilcote was at the Distilled Spirits Council in the 1970s…Mr. Browne contacted Mr. Chilcote in 1982 for some advice as someone he knew in Washington, DC about a subject completely unrelated to tobacco, concussions, or any player-related or medical issue. We have seen no evidence—from the Times or otherwise—that demonstrated their relationship had anything to do with tobacco or NFL health and safety.”

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The NFL Really Doesn’t Like Being Compared to Big Tobacco

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Donald Trump Pulls Out of Conservative Conference

by CarenDiaz8529 Posted on March 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, canceled his scheduled appearance at one of the largest annual gatherings of conservatives on Friday. Trump was scheduled to speak early Saturday morning at the Conservative Political Action Conference, hosted this year at a hotel conference center outside Washington, DC, but CPAC announced on Twitter that he’d bailed:

CPAC wasn’t exactly prime Trump territory—but nor was it entirely hostile. There was a lonely protester lamenting that Trump would rip apart the party on Thursday. But most CPAC attendees said that they weren’t all that concerned by his reluctance to distance himself from a white supremacist, and that they’d still support him in the general election even if their preferred nominee at the moment might be Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Over the course of the first day of the conference, the schism in the Republican Party was largely left unmentioned, with speakers shying away from mentioning Trump by name.

But at a watch party for Thursday night’s GOP debate, the crowd titled heavily toward Cruz and Rubio, jeering each time Rubio attacked Trump. Perhaps Trump’s fans relayed the message and warned him against speaking to a potentially hostile crowd on Saturday.

Update: Trump issued a press release on Friday announcing a rally in Wichita on Kansas and citing it as his reason for withdrawing from CPAC:

The Donald J. Trump for President Campaign has just announced it will be in Wichita, Kansas for a major rally on Saturday, prior to the Caucus. Mr. Trump will also be speaking at the Kansas Caucus and then departing for Orlando, Florida to speak to a crowd of approximately 20,000 people or more. Because of this, he will not be able to speak at CPAC, as he has done for many consecutive years. Mr. Trump would like to thank Matt Schlapp and all of the executives at CPAC and looks forward to returning to next year, hopefully as President of the United States.

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Donald Trump Pulls Out of Conservative Conference

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Donald Trump Is Afraid to Denounce the Ku Klux Klan

by NorbertMccloskey Posted on February 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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February 14, 2000: Donald Trump ends his “brief and flamboyant” bid to be the presidential nominee of Ross Perot’s Reform Party:

The new interim head of the Reform Party, Pat Choate, described Mr. Trump as a “hustler” last night, and said he had never believed that Mr. Trump had any interest beyond promoting himself and a new book that happened to be published at exactly the time he started his light schedule of campaign travel.

….Mr. Trump painted a fairly dark picture of the Reform Party in his statement, noting the role of Mr. Buchanan, along with the roles of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Lenora Fulani, the former standard-bearer of the New Alliance Party and an advocate of Marxist-Leninist politics. “The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani,” he said in his statement. “This is not company I wish to keep.”

February 28, 2016: CNN’s Jake Tapper asks Trump about David Duke’s recent endorsement, one of many from ultra-right and white nationalist leaders:

TAPPER: Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don’t want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election?

DONALD TRUMP: Well just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK?….I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists….

TAPPER: Would you just say unequivocally you condemn them and you don’t want their support?

TRUMP: Well I have to look at the group. I don’t know what group you are talking about, you wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about….

TAPPER: The Ku Klux Klan?….I mean I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here.

TRUMP: I don’t know any — honestly I don’t know David Duke. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet him, and I just don’t know anything about him.

This is from the man who bragged a couple of months ago that “I have the world’s greatest memory. It’s one thing everyone agrees on.” Obviously, then, the only conclusion we can draw is that Trump doesn’t want to denounce the KKK. After all, I’m sure he knows perfectly well where his core base of support lies. Why take the chance of pissing off the xenophobe vote?

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Donald Trump Is Afraid to Denounce the Ku Klux Klan

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Donald Trump is a Mediocre Businessman

by Dewey2569v Posted on January 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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I know I’ve beaten this dead horse before, but I continue to be a little surprised that no one has seriously attacked Donald Trump on his business acumen. After all, it’s his big calling card: he knows how to negotiate great deals and he’s made a ton of money from them.

But this doesn’t seem to be true.1 In fact, he seems to be a pretty mediocre businessman. Today, for example, the New York Times tells the story of Trump’s 1988 purchase of the Plaza Hotel. As even Trump admits, he was so enamored of owning it that he overpaid significantly and managed it poorly, something which contributed to his eventual financial downfall:

Once he owned the hotel, Mr. Trump put his wife, Ivana, in charge of renovating it….By 1990, the Plaza needed an operating profit of $40 million a year to break even, according to financial records that Mr. Trump disclosed at the time. The hotel had fallen well short of that goal, and with renovating expenses, in one year it burned through $74 million more than it brought in.

But Mr. Trump didn’t spend a lot of time sweating over the Plaza’s finances. He was too busy with new challenges. A few months after the Plaza deal closed, he purchased the Eastern Air Shuttle for $365 million, and in 1990, he opened the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, which cost $1 billion to build. Some of the loans he took out to pay for deals were personally guaranteed.

….Mr. Trump’s brief ownership of the Plaza…marked the beginning of his transition from an owner of major assets to a manager of major assets. An increasing share of his wealth would come in the future from licensing his name, not just to builders but sellers of suits, cologne, chandeliers, mattresses and more. In professional parlance, he went from “asset heavy” to “asset light.”

The Plaza was a huge money loser. The shuttle was a disaster. Trump never understood the casino business, and his Atlantic City properties started hemorrhaging cash almost as soon as they were completed. All of this pushed him to the edge of personal bankruptcy, which he avoided solely because his banks decided Trump’s holdings could be liquidated at a higher price if they allowed him to stay solvent. In the aftermath of this bloodbath, he raised money by taking the remains of his casino and resort properties public. And since this was a public company, we know exactly how well it did: it lost money every single year and went into bankruptcy proceedings in 2004 (and again in 2009 for good measure). Since then, he’s mostly bought and managed golf resorts, which has been a good but not great business for him.

Bottom line: When it comes to building and managing tangible assets, there’s really not much evidence that Trump has much talent. He inherited a huge amount of money and nearly lost it all during his first couple of decades in the development business. However, before the money ran out he was able to use it to create the “Trump show” (his words), and in the couple of decades since then his income has come not from building things, but primarily from licensing and entertainment.

Trump seems to have two genuine talents. The first is that he’s apparently a masterful reader of people. The second is that he’s a hypnotic blowhard, which accounts for his success at both branding and TV, as well as his success at scams like Trump University.

Needless to say, we’ve seen both of these talents at work on the campaign trail. The first allows him to zero in unerringly on his opponents’ most sensitive spots—weaknesses that others frequently don’t even see, let alone exploit. The second allows him to mesmerize the media and the public while pulling off the greatest scam of his life.

But as a businessman, he’s so-so. He lets his decisions be guided by his gut, and his gut isn’t really very good. That’s where Trump Plaza, Trump Air, Trump football, Trump City, the Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Steaks, and Trump University come from. That’s not much of a recommendation for the presidency.

1Needless to say, he can prove his business mettle anytime he wants to. He just has to open up his books. Show us revenues and GAAP earnings over the past 20 years. Show us return on equity and return on assets. Break it all down by business line so we can see how much is from TV and branding vs. tangible projects. There’s nothing hard about it.

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Donald Trump is a Mediocre Businessman

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