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Tales From City of Hope #5: My Stem Cells Have Come Home to Papa

by BrianneJessep Posted on April 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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It is 9:49 am PDT on April 23, and my stem cell transfusion is complete. It took less than 20 minutes. Now the stem cells just have to graft and start multiplying, each of them eventually maturing into some kind of blood product (red blood cell, white blood cell, platelet, etc.). This will take about a month, but I’m not home free even then. It turns out that these will initially be “baby” cells, and it takes them about a year to fully learn how to do their jobs. Who knew that itty bitty cells had to attend cell training school?

The entire remainder of my visit at City of Hope is just waiting for my immune system to recover and to keep an eye out for severe side effects in case they happen. In a few days I’ll be losing my appetite, but apparently this is because I’ll be losing my sense of taste. In the past, I’ve lost my appetite due to IV painkillers in the hospital or extreme fatigue at home. In both cases food tasted normal, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of eating anything.

So will this be better or worse? Presumably, food will be tasteless but not repulsive. That strikes me as no fun, but actually more tolerable than being actively repulsed by food. We’ll see.

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Tales From City of Hope #5: My Stem Cells Have Come Home to Papa

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The American Teen Whose Death-by-Drone Obama Won’t Explain

by GenieMcGuigan Posted on April 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, President Barack Obama appeared in the White House press room to reveal that a US strike in January on an Al Qaeda compound had killed two hostages held by the terrorist group, Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian, and Warren Weinstein, an American. He offered his condolences to their families for the mistake that led to their deaths.

It’s remarkable that Obama spoke of this at all. The US targeted killing program is shrouded in secrecy, and the president had never before issued a statement like this about people accidentally killed by US drone strikes. (He did not use the word “drone.”) One such death that stands out is that of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen who was killed in a US drone strike.

Abdulrahman was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric turned Al Qaeda propagandist. The father was killed in a drone strike that targeted him in Yemen in September 2011. The son was killed weeks later in a separate strike in Yemen. According to his family, the attack was on a restaurant. Attorney General Eric Holder later said that this strike did not “specifically” target the young man.

The US government has never said that Abdulrahman was involved in terrorist activities. In 2012, I asked Obama during a Reddit AMA what he thought about the teen’s death, and the question received hundreds of votes from Redditors, meaning the president and/or his social-media team almost certainly noticed it. Yet Obama didn’t respond.

Now that he’s established the precedent of explaining the killings of US citizens in targeted strikes, Obama and the administration might see fit to say what happened in the case of Abdulrahman. Was his death accidental or is there evidence he was involved with terrorists?

For more on Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, read Tom Junod’s 2012 piece on his killing.

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The American Teen Whose Death-by-Drone Obama Won’t Explain

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It’s Not the 1 Percent Controlling Politics. It’s the 0.01 Percent.

by Jamie Cox Posted on April 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Even before presidential candidates started lining up billionaires to kick-start their campaigns, it was clear that the 2016 election could be the biggest big-money election yet. This chart from the political data shop Crowdpac illustrates where we may be headed: Between 1980 and 2012, the share of federal campaign contributions coming from the very, very biggest political spenders—the top 0.01 percent of donors—nearly tripled:

In other words, a small handful of Americans* control more than 40 percent of election contributions. Notably, between 2010 and 2012, the total share of giving by these donors jumped more than 10 percentage points. That shift is likely the direct result of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which struck down decades of fundraising limits and kicked off the super-PAC era. And this data only includes publicly disclosed donations, not dark money, which almost certainly means that the megadonors’ actual share of total political spending is even higher.

It’s pretty fair to assume that most of these top donors are also sitting at the top of the income pyramid. Out of curiosity, I compared the share of campaign cash given by elite donors alongside the increasing share of income controlled by the people who make up the top 0.01 percent—the 1 percent of the 1 percent. The trend lines aren’t an exact match, but they’re close enough to show how top donors’ political clout has increased along with top earners’ growing slice of the national income. Again, note the bump around 2010 and 2011, when the Citizens United era opened just as the superwealthy were starting to recover from the recession—a rebound that has left out most Americans.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that a few hundred people control 40 percent of election contributions, based on my own calculations. According to Crowdpac, the number is around 25,000.

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It’s Not the 1 Percent Controlling Politics. It’s the 0.01 Percent.

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By Immense Coincidence, GOP Benghazi Probe Scheduled to Finish Up During Height of 2016 Hillary Campaign

by LatiaChumleigh Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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From Bloomberg News:

The findings of a Republican-led committee investigating Hillary Clinton’s response to the deadly 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, likely will not be released until next year, just months before the 2016 presidential election.

I am shocked, shocked to hear this news.

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By Immense Coincidence, GOP Benghazi Probe Scheduled to Finish Up During Height of 2016 Hillary Campaign

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Obama Has a Plan to Expand Medicaid in Red States—by Weakening It

by HattieEdmiston Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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One of the Affordable Care Act’s major provisions sought to expand the number of people covered by Medicaid by allowing people earning up to 138 percent of the poverty line to enroll.

But in many parts of the country, it hasn’t worked out that way. Individual states are largely responsible for running Medicaid, and despite the act’s generous terms—the federal government promised to initially cover 100 percent of the cost, then 90 percent after 2016—only 29 states have taken the deal. Of the holdouts, most are conservative states with Republican governors where Obama is unpopular.

Some red states have been coming around, lured by of the enormous infusion of federal funds they’ll receive by expanding Medicaid. And without participating, states soon stand to lose billions in other payments designed to compensate hospitals for care for the uninsured. (Florida could lose more than $2 billion on account of leaving 800,000 residents uninsured who could otherwise be covered under Medicaid.)

Despite that carrot and stick, Republican-controlled states have demanded additional concessions from the Obama administration before taking part in the expansion—and in many cases, as a new paper from the National Health Law Program suggests, the administration has agreed to changes that undermine its own goal of expanding coverage.

These changes have made some states’ Medicaid programs more, well, Republican—not to mention punitive. Take Arkansas, which in 2013 was allowed to use its Medicaid funds to let poor residents buy private insurance on the state health exchange—policies that may not have the same protections or coverage as traditional Medicaid. Iowa and New Hampshire have followed suit. According to the NHLP, these initial waivers emboldened states to seek even greater concessions. An example is Indiana, where, in exchange for agreeing to expand Medicaid, officials not only won the right to charge poor people premiums and co-payments, but also to lock people out of the program for at least six months if they fail to pay those premiums.

The administration has granted such waivers through its authority to authorize so-called demonstration projects to encourage policy innovation in the states. But NHLP contends that waivers like Indiana’s violate the law, which “requires demonstrations to actually demonstrate something.” As NHLP points out, reams of research have long showed that such premiums dramatically reduce health coverage for low-income people. After the Obama administration granted Indiana’s request, Arkansas went back to ask for permission to charge premiums, too. And it prevailed.

And yet some states still want more. Florida, for instance, is considering a bill that would use billions of dollars of Medicaid money to provide vouchers to poor people to buy private insurance. But anyone getting a voucher would have to pay mandatory premiums, and also either have a job or be in school. Childless adults need not apply. (The administration hasn’t signed off on this one—yet.)

NHLP suggests that the Obama administration is undercutting its very strong bargaining position by allowing states to dismantle Medicaid through waivers, at the expense of the very poor and sick. Its white paper notes that Medicaid’s history proves even the most ardent opponents of government health care eventually come around: In 1965, when the program was first created, only 26 states joined in. Five years later, though, almost all had.

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Obama Has a Plan to Expand Medicaid in Red States—by Weakening It

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Does Walmart Have Plumbing Problems?

by NapoleoGoold Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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No, really. Did five Walmart stores have to shut down and abruptly lay off all their workers within hours because they suddenly discovered massive plumbing problems? Michael Hiltzik is skeptical.

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Does Walmart Have Plumbing Problems?

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New Document Cache Shows the Real Roots of ISIS Are as Much Secular as Religious

by DollyMoris Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Spiegel has quite a fascinating report this week about the origins and growth of ISIS. It’s a great counterpoint to Graeme Wood’s Atlantic piece from February that focused on the Islamic and theological roots of ISIS and the territorial ambitions of its self-appointed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

But it turns out that this is far from the whole story. According to Christopher Reuter, a recently discovered cache of documents shows that the founding architect of ISIS was actually Haji Bakr, the pseudonym of Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defense force. Bakr, who lost his job and his power in 2003 when Paul Bremer made the decision to disband the Iraqi army, was the real mastermind behind ISIS. In dozens of detailed pages written in 2012, he laid out an organizational plan for the kind of pervasive, brutally efficient spy state he knew best:

It seemed as if George Orwell had been the model for this spawn of paranoid surveillance. But it was much simpler than that. Bakr was merely modifying what he had learned in the past: Saddam Hussein’s omnipresent security apparatus, in which no one, not even generals in the intelligence service, could be certain they weren’t being spied on.

….There is a simple reason why there is no mention in Bakr’s writings of prophecies relating to the establishment of an Islamic State allegedly ordained by God: He believed that fanatical religious convictions alone were not enough to achieve victory. But he did believe that the faith of others could be exploited. In 2010, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir and later “caliph,” the official leader of the Islamic State. They reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face.

So the roots of ISIS are purely pragmatic: Bakr wanted to build an organization that could retake Iraq, and he calculated that this could best be done by combining the secular mechanisms of Saddam Hussein with the religious fanaticism of an Al Qaeda. The whole piece is well worth a read.

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New Document Cache Shows the Real Roots of ISIS Are as Much Secular as Religious

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Scott Walker May Have Just Scored 2016’s Biggest Sugar Daddies

by SarahTKTmunrv Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Charles and David Koch have already made it clear that they plan to do everything in their power to prevent Hillary Clinton (or, in case she stumbles, any other Democrat) from winning the presidency. The moguls hope to garner $889 million for the 2016 election from their networks, much of it bound to be channeled through their favorite Dark Money organizations. At one single summit in late January they managed to raise $249 million from friends and allies.

And now, it looks like the Koch brothers may have landed on their standardbearer for all that spending. As the New York Times reported:

On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee.

“When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination,” Mr. Koch told the crowd, the billionaire brothers would support him, according to a spokeswoman. The remark drew laughter and applause from the audience of fellow donors and Republican activists, who had come to hear Mr. Walker speak earlier at the event, held at the Union League Club.

If the Kochs do decide to back Scott Walker, according to the Times, the money would come from them personally, rather than their network of affiliated groups. But with a combined net worth of over $85 billion, Charles and David could set up a vehicle that would outspend nearly anyone while barely tapping into their bank accounts. Seeing the brothers get behind Walker isn’t terribly surprising. The pair invested heavily in his initial gubernatorial campaign and have aided him in his subsequent elections.

Not so fast, though, Politico‘s Mike Allen cautioned this morning. Despite David Koch’s remarks, he provided Politico a statement disavowing any endorsement. As Allen wrote, the brothers say they are undecided and still plan to hold “auditions” at their summer donor conference. In addition to Walker, the lineup of people under consideration reportedly includes Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and, most surprisingly, Jeb Bush.

Whoever ends up gaining the Kochs’ support would have unparalleled fundraising might, and would have to be considered a favorite for the Republican nomination. And their ascent would be the latest example of the power of the ultrarich in the age of the super PAC: Winning broad support from small donors doesn’t matter when the affections of two individuals willing to spend astronomically could upend the entire campaign.

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Scott Walker May Have Just Scored 2016’s Biggest Sugar Daddies

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Tales From City of Hope #2: Chemo Has Started

by ErnestiZff Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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It is 10:43 am PDT on April 21, 2015. It is Day -2 (Day 0 is Thursday, when the actual stem cell transfusion takes place) and my final round of chemotherapy has officially started. Oddly enough, it only lasts about half an hour. The rest of my 8-hour stay in the hospital today is taken up with prep and about 4-6 hours of IV fluids.

Right now I am manically chewing on ice chips. Apparently they have discovered that this constricts the blood flow to the mouth and therefore reduces the amount of Melphalan that makes it into your mouth and gums. This is pretty effective at minimizing mouth sores, so I’m sucking on ice chips for all I’m worth. The photographic evidence, along with all the usual machines that go ping, is on the right.

UPDATE: Keeping up the ice chip routine gets old pretty quick. But worth it if it keeps the mouth sores at bay.

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Tales From City of Hope #2: Chemo Has Started

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In "Pen and Ink," People Tell the Fascinating Stories Behind Their Tattoos

by Kristof0239 Posted on September 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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Illustrator Wendy MacNaughton has no shame in asking our server about the tattoo peeking out from under her right armpit. We’re at Magnolia Brewery, a pub in San Francisco with a soft glow and a hint of an edgy past. The petite, bespectacled waitress explains that the hen and chicks inked on her inner bicep come from a kid’s book her grandma used to read to her at the childhood farm. After the server disappears to retrieve our fries, MacNaughton says: “If someone is choosing to permanently mark their body, there is a story behind it.”

She should know. MacNaughton has spent much of the last two years on a new oral-history book, Pen and Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them, out October 7. The testimonies accompanying her expressive drawings serve as glimpses into the subjects’ earlier selves—”my sister and I would race after bees in the lavender bushes and try to pet them without getting stung”—or mantras to live by—”a gray-blue stripe down my spine…symbolizes ‘balance.'” Some insignias represent disturbing moments: incarceration or chemo or lost family members. Others are just goofy: A male comedian sports a cursive “Whoops” on his arm, and one woman inked a T. rex on her ribcage as a reminder “not to take myself too seriously.”

The project was the brainchild of Isaac Fitzgerald, co-owner of literary website The Rumpus and the books editor at BuzzFeed. Past bartending gigs had taught Fitzgerald that quizzing fellow mixologists about their tattoos was an easy ice-breaker. As his interest in publishing took hold, he noticed that most books about tattoos merely relied on photographs, which, in terms of capturing the essence of a great tattoo, “leave a lot to be desired.”

One day, Fitzgerald was having a drink with MacNaughton, whose playful renderings have adorned the pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, PRINT, and several books. “I said, ‘Here’s this really dumb idea!'” Fitzgerald recalls. “And I think she was like, ‘That’s not that dumb.'” So, in 2012, they launched a Tumblr called Pen and Ink, which pairs MacNaughton’s tattoo portraits with the subjects’ personal stories. Before long, their project had attracted 80,000 followers, including rock star fans such as Neko Case and Colin Meloy.

“Andrea de Francisco, Cafe Owner”

Drawing hadn’t always come so easy for MacNaughton. After graduating from Pasadena’s City Art Center College of Design in 1999, and making, in her words, “the worst conceptual art ever,” she abandoned her pen in exasperation. Instead, she went to grad school for international social work, and spent several years working on political campaigns in East Africa.

The drawing bug bit again after she moved to the Bay Area and began sketching fellow commuters on the train to work. Something had shifted: “In art school it was all about expressing my analysis of the world, and my ideas.” But now she wanted to use her talents to tell other people’s stories. Her sketches of life in the city—street characters, found objects, or moments on a bus—became an online series for The Rumpus, culminating in a 2014 book, Meanwhile in San Francisco: The City in its Own Words.

“Anna Schoenberger, Manager at Thrift Store”

Interviewing diverse tribes for Meanwhile was a great warmup for Pen and Ink, MacNaughton tells me. Nowadays, it’s impossible to predict who might have a tattoo: anyone from “people who work downtown in an office on a top floor in a suit to somebody who doesn’t work who has tattoos all over his face,” she says. She shoots me a sly look. “I get a possible tattoo vibe from you.”

When I break the news that I’m actually not among the 23 percent of Americans who are inked, she counters, “You just don’t have one yet.” (I’ve recently become obsessed with FlashTats, those sparkly temporary tattoos designed to look like jewelry. Gateway drug?)

MacNaughton, who has wavy rust-colored hair and sparkly eyes, sports two tattoos herself—both equally embarrassing, she admits. She points to one on her forearm: a triangle connecting three circles meant to represent a philosophical “mirror theory.” “There was a point when I would have removed this. But I’m really glad now that I didn’t.” Doing Pen and Ink, she says, “helped me embrace that attitude that this represents a time in my life when I was more sincere. That was a great time. And I am so glad it is not that time anymore.”

MacNaughton and Fitzgerald are already busy with a sequel, Knives and Ink, an illustrated series of tattooed chefs and their tales. MacNaughton’s not done inking herself, either. “My next tattoo,” she confides, “is Grandma-related.”

“MJ Craig, Assistant Lab Manager”

“Mac McClelland, Journalist”

“Cassy Fritzen, Bartender”

“Chris Colin, Writer”

“Ryan M. Beshel, Public Relations Coordinator”

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In "Pen and Ink," People Tell the Fascinating Stories Behind Their Tattoos

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