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Will Saletan tweets unhappily that his son was “marked down 5 percent on a high school health test because he chose this ‘incorrect’ definition of family.” David French is unhappy too:
How reassuring that our educators — in their infinite wisdom — have expanded the definition of “family” to “a collection of individuals who care for and about each other.” But to paraphrase The Incredibles — If everyone is family, then no one is. I’ve “cared for and about” my classmates in high school, college, and law school. I’ve “cared for and about” my colleagues at every job I’ve held. I guess we’re all family now.
Look, this is probably just a lousy question. Even Saletan and French, I assume, would agree that answer C is obviously incorrect. Adopted children are family. In-laws are family. Stepfathers are family. “Related by blood” just flatly doesn’t work.
On the other hand, yes, answer E seems mighty broad—though I’m not sure if there’s any decent way to succinctly define family at all. I’ll note that my dictionary needs four separate definitions just to encompass the usage we’re talking about here (i.e., not including crime syndicates, taxonomic classifications, etc.).
But there’s no need to get too outraged about this. There’s certainly value in teaching our kids that sharing DNA isn’t the exclusive definition of family. And while we should probably be able to do better than answer E, the more I think about it, the harder it gets. Anyone want to take a stab? We all promise not to laugh.
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Today’s Assignment: A Definition of Family That Everyone Can Love
Mother Jones
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Greg Sargent draws our attention today to a new report from the left-leaning Center for American Progress on, among other things, ballot access in all 50 states plus DC. They grade each state based on things like availability of preregistration, availability of in-person early voting, voter ID laws, voting wait times, and so forth.
You will be unsurprised by the results. The top map shows ballot access, with the darker colors indicating poor access. The bottom map shows the percentage of the African-American population in each state. Dark colors indicate a higher black population. Kinda funny how similar they look, isn’t it?
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A study released on Tuesday reveals a glaring lack of diversity among America’s elected prosecutors. The data, gathered by the Center for Technology and Civil Life and published by the Women’s Donors Network, examines the racial and gender makeup of the more than 2,400 elected city, county and district prosecutors, as well as state attorneys general, serving in office during the summer of 2014. Here are the key findings:
95 percent of all elected prosecutors were white.
79 percent of all elected prosecutors were white men.
In 14 states, all elected prosecutors were white.
Just 1 percent of the 2,437 elected prosecutors serving were women of color.
The study comes amid stark questions about race and the American criminal justice system, an issue thrust into the spotlight after a string of high-profile police killings of black Americans. Most of the nation’s police forces are disproportionately white. And while a high-profile prosecution in Baltimore is being led by a black woman, other controversial cases in Cleveland, Ohio, and most famously in Ferguson, Missouri, have been in the hands of white men.
See the full dataset on elected prosecutors here.
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The Vast Majority of America’s Elected Prosecutors Are White Men
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Ed Kilgore surveys the Republican primary landscape and throws out a few thoughts about the upcoming first debate on Fox:
Fox will allow only ten participants, chosen by the results of five national polls taken in the week or so before August 4.
Right now, Donald Trump is sucking up all the media oxygen, making it hard for marginal candidates to move up in the polls and avoid being forced into the kiddie debate.
This makes the end of July a critical period for all the C-list candidates.
It’s increasingly clear the polling spike marginal candidates need to make the cut needs to happen in late July—not earlier, not later….John Kasich’s scheduled July 21st campaign launch probably couldn’t be timed much better; if he gets a post-announcement bounce, it could bounce him right up into the top ten. For those in the danger zone who have already announced—Perry, Jindal, Santorum, Graham, Fiorina, Pataki and maybe even Christie—the only way to get this sort of bounce is to force one’s way into the news.
So for these candidates, the big strategic question is whether throwing a bomb or three in late July to make the Fox debate cut is worth the long-term risk of self-marginalization. The alternative is to accept a place at the kiddie table “forum” earlier on August 6 and hope media, activists, donors and party elites don’t mentally strike one’s name from the insanely long list of contenders. I’m guessing most of these birds will not want to take that chance. Get ready for some serious gyring and gimbling in late July.
Sounds like fun! I hope they all take Kilgore’s advice. But what kind of bombshell could they drop that would make social media go wild? Discuss in comments, please.
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Last week Wisconsin Republicans tried to sneak language into a budget bill that would have gutted the state’s open records law. Sadly for them, they got caught and had to withdraw the proposal—which, Gov. Scott Walker hastily assured us, “was never intended to inhibit transparent government in any way.” Uh huh.
This kind of sleazy behavior is hardly uncommon, but there’s one bit of it that’s equally common and even sleazier:
State Republicans have refused to disclose who inserted the language into the budget legislation, which was approved late Thursday evening. Before dropping the provisions entirely, the governor’s office said Friday it was considering changes to the proposals concerning public records law, but would not comment as to whether Walker was involved in the proposals in the first place.
Here’s my proposal for transparency in legislating: every change in every law has to be attributed to someone. There’s no virgin birth here. Someone wrote this language. Someone asked that it be inserted. Someone agreed to insert it. You have to be pretty contemptuous of your constituents to clam up and pretend that no one knows where it came from.
This kind of puerile buck-passing is way too common, and it needs to stop. Maybe if they knew their name was going to be attached, legislators would think twice before inserting egregiously self-serving crap like this.
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Today’s Proposal In Legislative Transparency: You Amend It, You Own It
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On Thursday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a very important message for anyone planning to swim this summer: Don’t poop in the pool. Also, try not to be in a pool where someone else has pooped. At least, if you can avoid it, don’t swim with your mouth open in a pool if you, or someone else, has pooped nearby.
These are just a few of the ways you can try to avoid getting norovirus—a nasty and highly contagious stomach virus that sometimes makes its way onto cruise ships—as you enjoy all sorts of aquatic activities that are not limited to pools. Lakes have high levels of poop-related-risks it seems, as the CDC announcement describes how some people in Oregon swam in a lake last year and ended up getting the virus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea. The outbreak ended up sickening 70 people, some of whom didn’t even swim in the lake (state health officials found, however, that swimmers were over twice as likely to get sick).
Other important tips include not peeing in the water, not vomiting in the water, and maybe skipping swimming that day if there’s a chance you might do any of those things.
This important message comes in honor of Healthy and Safe Swimming week and is mostly geared toward children (or parents of children) who are not only more at risk for norovirus but are also prime suspects of doing things in water that one shouldn’t do. They also, apparently, are bad at swimming with their mouths closed. Per the CDC’s press release:
“Children are prime targets for norovirus and other germs that can live in lakes and swimming pools because they’re so much more likely to get the water in their mouths,” said Michael Beach, Ph.D, the CDC’s associate director for healthy water. “Keeping germs out of the water in the first place is key to keeping everyone healthy and helping to keep the places we swim open all summer.”
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By John Lighton 31 Mar 2015commentsShare
The Obama administration today unveiled its proposal for how it intends to reduce climate-changing pollutants under a U.N. agreement. Its contents are not particularly bold or surprising, but at least it’s on time! The U.N. had asked countries for their proposals by today and the vast majority haven’t met the deadline.
The proposal reaffirms that, by 2025, the U.S. will cut greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels. That’s pretty much just what was expected — the same commitment the U.S. made in its bilateral deal with China last fall.
A number of green groups praised the Obama administration for staying on track and playing a leading role in putting together a U.N. climate deal, which is supposed to be finalized this December in Paris. In a statement, the Sierra Club’s Michael Brune lauded the administration “for following through on the ambitious commitment made last November with China by pledging clear, significant action to tackle the climate crisis.” Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute called the proposal a “serious and achievable commitment” that shows the U.S. is “ready to lead by example.”
But most groups’ enthusiasm was lukewarm, and some were underwhelmed. Greenpeace said that the plan “begins to treat the wound, but does not stop the bleeding. As the world’s second largest emitter, the US must strengthen its commitment to climate solutions before Paris to ensure an agreement that immediately spurs the necessary transition away from fossil fuels and towards 100 percent renewable energy.”
Though major players like the U.S., the E.U., and Russia did submit their plans for cutting emissions by the U.N.’s soft deadline of March 31, most of the world’s nations are dragging their feet. The U.N. hopes that by December 2015, 190 governments will have outlined their proposals to curb emissions, and will be ready to sign an agreement pledging to put their plans into action. China and India, the largest and third-largest climate polluters, may not unveil their commitments before this summer, though we likely already know what will be in China’s — the same commitments it made in its pact with the U.S. last year.
The U.S. actually meeting its commitments is, of course, dependent on the president’s climate initiatives surviving this Congress’s attempts to gut them, and, possibly, the efforts of future presidents who have different feelings about the need to tackle climate change. Already, Republicans are gearing up to attack the U.N. process. “Considering that two-thirds of the U.S. federal government hasn’t even signed off on the Clean Power Plan and 13 states have already pledged to fight it, our international partners should proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned in a statement.
It would be quite a feather in McConnell’s cap if his Senate derailed 190 countries’ attempt to avert a global catastrophe. If he’s beginning to think about his legacy, he might not have a bigger chance to shape the future than this.
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Obama makes climate pledge to world, Republicans snipe in background
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A worker watches an almond harvesting machine dump nuts near the town of Kerman, California.
Photographer Matt Black remembers the moment in December 2013 when he realized the drought in California had begun. The brown-hills in the horizon stretched into a cloudless blue winter sky. It was quiet. Too quiet.
“It was just this, yawning kind of silence,” Black says. “And that’s when I started working. It was just clear that this was going to be really bad.”
More stories about the almond boom and what it means for California.
Invasion of the Hedge Fund Almonds
Charts: Almonds Suck as Much Water Annually as LA Uses in 3 Years
Photos: The Story Behind California’s Nut Boom
It Takes How Much Water to Grow an Almond?!
Lay Off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters
Black has spent the better part of the last year documenting the drought. “For most of it I felt like I was coated in dust—in my eyes, my ears, my cameras—everywhere.” In the summer, the temperature rose well above 100 degrees. “One day I was taking pictures of abandoned fields near I-5. It was a 114 degrees and the dust was blowing and there was not a single bit of green in sight,” he says. “At that moment, it felt like the entire Valley was about to catch fire.”
His photos, which have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, and National Geographic, among other publications, offer a glimpse into the lives and livelihoods of the Central Valley. In black and white, Black, who was recently named Time‘s Instagram Photographer of the Year, aims to capture “the flatness, uniformity and to a certain extent monotony of this way of farming. He adds, “It’s not a land of quaint little farms and pastoral scenes. These are factories, and that’s why they are important—because they feed millions.”
But it is the people who reside in the communities hit hardest that Black hopes to highlight with his work—those who are forced to drink water from bottles, who cannot flush a toilet, or take a shower without the use of a bucket. “Yes, the drought is huge and catastrophic and all those things that everyone by this point is pretty much aware of,” he says. “But what people aren’t aware of is how that filters down to some of these towns. What photos are really best suited for is to try to put a face on the problem—to make it concrete and real.”
All photos by Matt Black.
Near the town of Ducor, California, a newly planted pistachio orchard.
A worker loads crates of almonds at a processing plant near Los Banos, California.
A worker sorts almonds at the processing plant near Los Banos.
A worker drives an almond-harvesting machine in an orchard near the town of Kerman, California.
A pistachio tree in a newly planted orchard near the town of Alpaugh, California.
A worker checks pistachio trees in a newly planted orchard near the town of Alpaugh, California.
Workers repair a well near Alpaugh, California.
Water pumped from wells fills a storage canal in a newly planted orchard near Alpaugh, California.
A home in the town of Alpaugh. Overpumping in nearby orchards has forced the closure of one of the town’s wells, and Alpaugh’s water supply now has high levels of arsenic contamination.
Jorge Cruz collects water from his kitchen sink at his home in Alpaugh.
Jorge Cruz stores drinking water at his home in Alpaugh.
An almond shaker knocks nuts from a tree in an orchard near Firebaugh, California.
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