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From: Gregory Brown
To: undisclosed-recipients:; 
Bee: [email protected] 
Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 02/26/2017 
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2017 08:56:26 +0000 
DEAR FRIEND 
The Truth Be Dammed 
Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying 
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As someone who avidly follows politics in America, I too was blindsided by November's election result, 
but unlike many of my liberal/progressive friends, I immediately accepted that Donald J. Trump was 
going to be our 45th President and he be given a chance to heal the country as he promised. In fact in 
my January 22nd Weekend Readings it opened with a piece on President Trump, as well as attaching 
his inaugural address in its entirety and end the editorial with — Mr. President you promised a lot and 
no one expects you to deliver all of them, but if you follow your predecessor's credo, to not do stupid 
shit, and make every decision with thought and compassion you might deliver more than your 37% 
approval number today would suggest.... 
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So why has he and his administration done so much lying? I am a pragmatic person who understands 
that most politicians stretch the truth or as my father use to say, "Thy make it sound good" but on his 
first full day in office Mr. Trump insisted that his inaugural crowd was the largest ever, a baseless boast 
that will likely set a pattern for his relationship both to the media and to the truth. 
Then at an event marking Black History Month a month ago, the president took a detour from a 
discussion of Frederick Douglass — he described the abolitionist as "an example of somebody who's 
done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more" — to talk about the press. "A lot of the 
media is actually the opposition party — they're so biased," he said. "So much of the media is the 
opposition party and knowingly saying incorrect things." 
As Charles J. Sykes wrote last month in the New York Times — Mr. Trump understands that attacking 
the media is the reddest of meat for his base, which has been conditioned to reject reporting from news 
sites outside of the conservative media ecosystem. 
For years, as a conservative radio talk show host, I played a role in that conditioning by hammering the 
mainstream media for its bias and double standards. But the price turned out to be far higher than I 
imagined. The cumulative effect of the attacks was to delegitimize those outlets and essentially destroy 
much of the right's immunity to false information. We thought we were creating a savvier, more 
skeptical audience. Instead, we opened the door for President Trump, who found an audience that 
could be easily misled. 
The news media's spectacular failure to get the election right has made it only easier for many 
conservatives to ignore anything that happens outside the right's bubble and for the Trump White 
House to fabricate facts with little fear of alienating its base. Unfortunately, that also means that the 
more the fact-based media tries to debunk the president's falsehoods, the further it will entrench the 
battle lines. 
During his first week in office, Mr. Trump reiterated the unfounded charge that millions of people had 
voted illegally. When challenged on the evident falsehood, Sean Spicer, the White House press 
secretary, seemed to argue that Mr. Trump's belief that something was true qualified as evidence. The 
press secretary also declined to answer a straightforward question about the unemployment rate, 
suggesting that the number will henceforth be whatever the Trump administration wants it to be. 
He can do this because members of the Trump administration feel confident that the alternative-
reality media will provide air cover, even if they are caught fabricating facts or twisting words (like 
claiming that the "ban" on Muslim immigrants wasn't really a "ban"). Indeed, they believe they have 
shifted the paradigm of media coverage, replacing the traditional media with their own. 
In a stunning demonstration of the power and resiliency of our new post-factual political culture, Mr. 
Trump and his allies in the right media have already turned the term "fake news" against its critics, 
essentially draining it of any meaning. During the campaign, actual "fake news" - deliberate hoaxes 
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— polluted political discourse and clogged social media timelines. Some outlets opened the door, by 
helping spread conspiracy theories and indulging the paranoia of the fever swamps. For years, the 
widely read Drudge Report has linked to the bizarre conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who believes that 
both the attacks of Sept. ii and the Sandy Hook shootings were government-inspired "false flag" 
operations. 
For conservatives, this should have made it clear that something was badly amiss in their media 
ecosystem. But now any news deemed to be biased, annoying or negative can be labeled "fake news." 
Erroneous reports that the bust of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the 
Oval Office or misleading reports that sanctions against Russia had been lifted will be seized on by Mr. 
Trump's White House to reinforce his indictment. 
Even as he continues to attack the "dishonest media," Mr. Trump and his allies are empowering this 
alt-reality media, providing White House access to Breitbart and other post-factual outlets that are 
already morphing into fierce defenders of the administration. The relationship appears to be 
symbiotic, as Mr. Trump often seems to pick up on talking points from Fox News and has tweeted out 
links from websites notorious for their casual relationship to the truth, including sites like Gateway 
Pundit, a hoax-peddling site that announced, shortly after the inauguration, that it would have a White 
House correspondent. 
By now, it ought to be evident that enemies are important to this administration, whether they are 
foreigners, refugees, international bankers or the press. But discrediting independent sources of 
information also has two major advantages for Mr. Trump: It helps insulate him from criticism and it 
allows him to create his own narratives, metrics and "alternative facts." 
All administrations lie, but what we are seeing here is an attack on credibility itself. 
The Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov drew upon long familiarity with that 
process when he tweeted: "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or 
push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth." Mr. 
Kasparov grasps that the real threat is not merely that a large number of Americans have become 
accustomed to rejecting factual information, or even that they have become habituated to believing 
hoaxes. The real danger is that, inundated with "alternative facts," many voters will simply shrug, 
asking, "What is truth?" — and not wait for an answer. 
In that world, the leader becomes the only reliable source of truth; a familiar phenomenon in an 
authoritarian state, but a radical departure from the norms of a democratic society. The battle over 
truth is now central to our politics. This may explain one of the more revealing moments from after 
the election, when one of Mr. Trump's campaign surrogates, Scottie Nell Hughes, was asked to defend 
the clearly false statement by Mr. Trump that millions of votes had been cast illegally. She answered 
by explaining that everybody now had their own way of interpreting whether a fact was true or not. 
"There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts," she declared. Among "a large part of the 
population" what Mr. Trump said was the truth. "When he says that millions of people illegally voted," 
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she said, his supporters believe him — and "people believe they have facts to back that up." 
Or as George Orwell said: "The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass 
into history." But Ms. Hughes's comment was perhaps unintentionally insightful. Mr. Trump and 
company seem to be betting that much of the electorate will not care if the president tells 
demonstrable lies, and will pick and choose whatever "alternative facts" confirm their views. 
In the meantime, we must recognize the magnitude of the challenge. If we want to restore respect for 
facts and break through the intellectual ghettos on both the right and left, the mainstream media will 
have to be aggressive without being hysterical and adversarial without being unduly oppositional. 
Perhaps just as important, it will be incumbent on conservative media outlets to push back as well. 
Conservatism should be a reality-based philosophy, and the movement will be better off if it recognizes 
that facts really do matter. There may be short-term advantages to running headlines about millions 
of illegal immigrants voting or secret United Nations plots to steal your guns, but the longer the right 
enables such fabrications, the weaker it will be in the long run. As uncomfortable as it may be, it will 
fall to the conservative media to police its worst actors. 
SUMMARY: From the loony claim that it wasn't raining during the inauguration to absurd claim that 
3 to 5 million illegal aliens in California voted for Hillary Clinton denying him the popular vote to 
illegally trying to intimidate Nordstrom's because that they canceled their relationship with his 
daughter and then denigrating the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court to offering to 'destroy career' of a 
Texas state senator to lambasting fellow Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham for criticizing 
the executive order temporarily barring people from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the 
US to getting into an argument with the Prime Minister of Australia (one of our strongest allies) to 
insulting our ally France to sending his press secretary to falsely claim that Iran had committed an act 
of war against the United States and other surrogates to present falsehoods on his behalf to falsely 
claim that his 306 Electoral Votes was the most since President Reagan and for so many other false 
claims — why aren't President Trump's advisors and supporters not distraught and demanding what he 
promised, integrity, competence and really drain the swamp instead of handing over the keys of the 
country to his friends on Wall Street and Big Business? And why doesn't his supporters and 
Republicans in Congress care when this President lies? 
****** 
So True 
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****** 
So True 50 Years Later 
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Web Link: https://youtu.be/j8d-IYSM-08 
A friend recently sent me an email with the above web link to Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's 
Three Evils of Society speech which is not a well-known as his epic I Have a Dream, I Have 
Been to the Mountain Top and The Other America speeches. An almost lost Dr. King speech, 
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this speech was given at the first and only National Conference for New Politics. It is an amazing 
speech which looks at American's three deadliest sins, War, Racism and Poverty. 
As Hatem Bazian wrote in 2015 — On August 31st, 1967, Reverend Martin Luther King delivered The 
Three Evils of Society speech at the National Conference on New Politics, which is the most 
prophetic and revolutionary address to date on the questions of militarism, poverty, and racism. "We 
are now experiencing the coming to the surface of a triple prong sickness" was how MLK framed the 
problem that "has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning." Identifying "the 
sickness of racism, excessive materialism, and militarism" and considering the three problems as the 
"plaque of western civilization." 
Revisiting the speech is instructive for anyone that is preoccupied with the current local-global 
condition affecting the human family with the visible ravages of racism eating at our soul, poverty's 
death march, and the ever expanding military industrial complex cancer devouring everything in 
sight. At the time of the speech, MLK was facing increasing white opposition to black empowerment 
and equality; an expansion of crony capitalism and open ended commitment to military expenditures 
on the Vietnam War that all together led to deepening poverty and rising discontent in the African 
American community. The conditions in today's America and the world, resemble what MLK 
described in The Three Evils of Society speech in 1967. 
MLK spoke of America's "Schizophrenic personality on the question of race" with two conflicting 
personalities. One professing "the great principles of democracy" and another that practices its 
antithesis. Every step forward in confronting racism in America has an equal step backward, which 
perceptively, MLK identified it to be white backlash- the "old prejudices, hostilities, and ambivalences 
that have always been there... The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has 
characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation." Racism, 
for MLK, was that "corrosive evil that will bring down western civilization" and white backlash was 
nothing more than good old White Supremacy that is never content with equality. 
In confronting materialism, MLK forthrightly, described the internal conditions of "the ghetto" where 
African Americans are locked up in perpetual misery as "a domestic colony." The link between 
poverty and lack of political statesmanship was pointed out. MLK spoke of the readiness of Congress 
to grant subsidies for the oil industry while six cotton plantations were given more than a million each; 
"not to plant cotton but no provision is made to feed the tenant farmer who is put out of work by the 
government subsidy." "What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the 
poor," was how MLK described such plans. 
Congress, state, and city leadership all worked on disrupting programs intended to uplift African 
American communities by utilizing the old-boys' political machines. The constant cry against welfare 
programs is used as a cover to punish the poor while extending subsidies to the rich in the society. 
MLK pointed out that American society is deluded "into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and 
prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice, the fact is, Capitalism was built on the 
exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor." The 
system is founded upon exploitation and to drive unjustly wealth to those on top and "the way to end 
poverty" according to MLK, is to end the exploitation of the poor, ensure them a fair share of 
government services, and the nation's resources." In order to bring this to a real end, a redistribution 
of political and economic power must take place, which has yet to be seriously attempted or promoted. 
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MLK's words on militarism and war were haunting, blunt, and exact: "This war has played havoc with 
the destiny of the entire world. It has torn up the Geneva Agreement, it has seriously impaired the 
United Nations, it has exacerbated the hatred between continents, and worse still between races. It 
has frustrated our development at home, telling our own underprivileged citizens that we place 
insatiable military demands above their critical needs. It has greatly contributed to the forces of 
reaction in America and strengthened the military industrial complex... This business of burning 
human being with napalm, of filling our nation's home with orphans and widows, of injecting 
poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples' humanity, of sending men home from dark and 
bloody battlefields, physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with 
wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year, to spend more money on military 
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." 
To address the tripartite problem of racism, materialism, and militarism MLK called for "a 
radical revolution of values" and a need for people to be maladjusted to injustice. The revolution of 
values is centered on moving away from taking the safe road by not challenging the destructive status 
quo. MLK concluded the speech by centering the question on what to do based on whether "is it right" 
and not because politics or popular sentiments demands it. "And on some positions, it is necessary for 
the moral individual to take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular; but he must do it 
because it is right." The time is right to ask the question whether the current wars ravaging the world, 
obscene militarism, racism, and Islamophobia are reflective of the highest human values. If the 
answer is no, then why the silence! Please feel free to download a transcript of the speech that is 
attached or take the 40 minutes to listen to what real truth to power really means.... 
Two Must See Films 
"13" and "I Am Not Your Negro" 
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Several weekends ago I experienced two wonderful documentaries that truly examine race in America 
in ways that very few films have ever attempted. One film "I Am Not Your Negro" by Raoul Peck is 
about the promise, goals and tribulations of the integration movement of the 195os and 6os through 
the words, legacy and the lens of some of the most traumatic moments of the writer and my dear friend 
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and mentor, James Baldwin. And Ava DuVemay's sensational Netflix documentary "13th" named 
after the 13th Constitutional Amendment, which abolished slavery except as "punishment for 
crime," that uses archival footage and expert commentary to make the case that slavery hasn't 
disappeared from the U.S. — it's evolved into our modem system of mass incarceration, one in which 
many prisons are run by for-profit companies and prisoners can be paid a pittance to work for 
corporations. 
In "13" the narrative placed upon us has often been one of a monstrous black figure or 
"superpredator" whose lack of control and humanity encourages him to lash out in his own 
community and at white people — especially when it comes to sexual violence against white women —
which necessitates that he needs to be policed. The 13th Constitutional Amendment was ratified 
in 1865 and stated: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment 
for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the 
United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Interviewing noted legal thinkers 
like Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow), the documentary argues that this "loophole"—
allowing forced labor for criminals—enabled resentful white society to imprison black citizens on 
minor charges and put them to work. 
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Since then, the film argues, a variety of measures—from Jim Crow laws to President Richard Nixon's 
"war on drugs" and President Bill Clinton's "three-strikes-you're-out" legislation — have served to 
send increasingly large numbers of black men in prison, and several legal scholars and activists 
interviewed on camera suggest a profit motive at work, as well as racism. Corporations have reaped 
profits off the privatization of prisons and prison labor; some prisoners have gotten paid as little as 12 
cents an hour, doing work for corporations, like Victoria's Secret and Walmart. 
The film charts the explosive growth in America's prison population; in 1970, there were about 
200,000 prisoners; today, the prison population is more than 2 million. Although the U.S. has just 5% 
of the world's population, it has about 25% of the world's prisoners, and about one in three prisoners 
are black men. More than 6o% of the people in U.S prisons are people of color. And as Ava DuVemay 
calls it, modem slavery. 
Based on an unfinished final manuscript entitled, "Remember This House" in 1979, James Baldwin 
wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project. The book was to be a revolutionary, 
personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends-Medgar Evers, 
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Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only 
thirty completed pages of his manuscript. Now, in "I Am Not Your Negro," filmmaker Raoul Peck 
envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute 
examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material. 
I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights 
movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in 
Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and 
assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very 
definition of what America stands for. 
Peck uses Baldwin's words (voiced eloquently by Samuel L Jackson), to not only outline the writer's 
personal journey as a Black man in 20th century America but to also examine the Black image as it has 
been dispersed throughout the media. At the beginning of cinema history, films like 
. Griffith's 
much acclaimed "The Birth of a Nation" as well as Stepin Fetchit's 1930's performances as "the 
Laziest Man in the World" were seen as the sole and true depiction of African-American life. 
My friend Jimmy Baldwin sought to shatter that image, while insisting on how harmful those 
depictions were not just to society as a whole, but particularly to black people in particular. Over the 
years, there has been a continued battle to hold on to our own narrative, to tell our truths and to strip 
away the stereotypes that have clung to us since we were first brought to this country. We are now in a 
period of reclamation. 
As one reviewer noted, these films work in conversation with one another. They force us to reassess 
our own views about blackness and black life while pushing back at the narratives that continually 
circle us. The fact that Bill Clinton was often described as our first Black President, while some critics 
of Barrack Obama argued that he wasn't black enough is evidence that neither Blacks or Whites agree 
or understand the state of race in America, as Whites believe that we are now living in a post-racial 
society and Blacks point out that if this was true Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir 
Rice, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland and hundreds of other people of color would still be alive. Therefore 
if you haven't already and really would like to see two great films with gravities that speaks to both the 
soul and one's intellect on this Academy Award weekend, I strongly suggest that you see both "1,9" and 
"I Am Not Your Negro" as they speak truth like very few films. 
****** 
How Can One Argue Against Equal Pay? 
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I actually started to believe Donald Trump's assertion about "fake news" when last week I read in the 
Washington Post that in a letter criticizing a bill that addresses pay gap in the workforce, a Utah 
Republican said that men have traditionally earned more than women and, citing "simple economics," 
argued that things should stay that way. James Green's letter to the editor, published in two local 
publications earlier this week, immediately prompted such outrage that within two days, Green had 
written an apology and resigned from his post as vice chair of the Wasatch County Republican Party. 
Green said in his letter, published Wednesday by the Park Record and the Wasatch Wave, that men 
make more than women because they're "the primary breadwinners" of their families, and paying 
women equally would somehow ruin the makeup of a traditional family where "the Mother" remains at 
home raising children. "If businesses are forced to pay women the same as male earnings, that means 
they will have to reduce the pay for the men they employ, simple economics," Green wrote. "If that 
happens, then men will have an even more difficult time earning enough to support their families, 
which will mean more Mothers will be forced to leave the home (where they may prefer to be) to join 
the workforce to make up the difference." 
And having more women in the workforce would create competition for jobs, "even men's jobs," Green 
wrote. That will, in turn, lower the pay for all jobs and force "more and more Mothers" into the 
workforce, he argued. That's "bad for families and thus for all of society," Green wrote. "It's a vicious 
cycle that only gets worse the more equality of pay is forced upon us. It's a situation of well-meaning 
intentions, but negative unintended consequences." 
Green's comments were directed at Senate Bill 210, which would make changes to laws related to 
employee pay in the state. The bill, authored by state Sen. Jacob Anderegg, a fellow Utah Republican, 
would commission a study on whether there's a pay gap between male and female workers in the state. 
It would require certain employers to adopt a uniform criteria that will be used to determine whether 
someone should get a raise based on performance, and would create a pay index that states the average 
pay range for each occupation based on years of experience. 
Thank God Green was immediately denounced, even by fellow Republicans. State Rep. Tim Quinn, a 
Republican who represents Utah's 54th district, which includes Wasatch County, denounced the 
comments and distanced himself from Green. Wasatch County, with a population of a little more than 
29,000, is southeast of Salt Lake City. "I am shocked and appalled to learn how James Green feels 
about equal pay for women. I don't know where this belief came from," Quinn said in a statement, 
according to Fox affiliate KSTU. "I do not subscribe publicly or privately to the words or the spirit 
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behind these words, thoughts or ideas. Of course, the Wasatch County Republican Party and I are for 
equal pay and rights for all people." 
Today women make only 79 cents for every dollar that men make. Critics claim this number is skewed 
because many women take lesser jobs in order to raise their children. But when it comes to the 
minimum wage, far too many working women in this country deserve a raise. Women account for less 
than half of the U.S. working population, yet nearly 6 in 10 workers earning the minimum wage are 
women. Many are working full time and are the sole breadwinners for their families — bringing in 
earnings of less than $15,000 a year. Consider this: a family of four trying to get by on that income is 
living 17 percent below the poverty line, even with tax credits. That's unacceptable. 
It's time to raise the national minimum wage. More than half of those who would benefit are women —
about a third of them have children. In fact, of the 2.8 million working single parents that would 
benefit, of which more than 8o percent are women. And research shows that raising the minimum 
wage reduces child poverty among female-headed households. Raising the wage makes sense as a way 
to reward work and give workers a lift towards the middle class. 
The good news is that women also continue to be overwhelmingly employed in certain occupations 
that have been traditionally oriented toward women. Women make up 96.3 percent of dental 
assistants, for example; 95.9 percent of secretaries; and 91.2 percent of registered nurses. It is within 
the occupational standings where we see the least change in our workforce over the past 4o years. The 
leading occupations for women in 1970 were secretaries, bookkeepers, and elementary school teachers. 
In 2006-2010, the leading occupations were secretaries and administrative assistants, cashiers, and 
elementary and middle school teachers. Some of this is numbers-driven: there are many more jobs 
available for elementary and middle school teaching positions than there are for surgeons, for 
example. Yet there are careers with 
And although half of management occupations are held by women, whereas in 2015 women held 51.5% 
of all management, professional and related occupations and 43.6% of all of the sub-category 
management, business and financial operations — In the S&P 500 companies, women are less 
represented the higher up they go. With the overwhelming majority of new directorships going to men 
with men holding 81.1% of S&P board seats, while women held 19.9%. In 2015 men received 73.1% of 
S&P new directorships, while women 26.9%. 2.8% of S&P companies had zero women directors, 24.6% 
had only one woman director, and only 14.2% of the companies had 30% or more women on their 
boards. 
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Again women earned on average women earned $0.79 to every $1 earned by men in 2014. And in 2015 
women earned 81.1% of men's salaries based on median weekly earnings for full-time workers. 
• 
Women's median weekly earnings for full-time work (2015) = $726 compared to $895 for men. 
• 
Women's median weekly earnings for full-time work (2014) = $39, 621 compared to $50, 383 
for men. 
And the gap doesn't close the higher you go. In 2015, the median weekly earnings for women in full-
time management, professional and related occupations was $996 compared to $1, 383 for men. As 
such, women will need to work more than 70 additional days each year to catch up to men. And 
though women's increased education and workplace participation has narrowed the gap there truly is 
an unexplained wage gap. = One year out of college, women earn 82% of what their male counterparts 
earn. The average full-time working women will lose more than $460, 000 over a 40 year period in 
wages due only to the wage gap. To catch up, she will need to work an additional 12 years. 
Federal Employment 
If men and women were evenly distributed among federal jobs and pay ranges, you'd expect women to 
make more than men about half the time. But women make more than men only 41 percent of the 
time. That's according to a Washington Post analysis comparing people with similar education, 
experience and job categories. It's an improvement over a dozen years ago but still represents a 17 
percentage-point gap with men. This gap has narrowed over the past dozen years, in part because 
women moved out of lower-paying jobs and into higher-paying ones. Since 2004, the percentage of 
clerical workers who are women has dropped. In that same period, women became more likely to hold 
better-paid professional jobs. 
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Women also account for a growing portion of federal workers with advanced degrees and a shrinking 
portion of workers with only a high school education. 
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But in some occupations that offer women the best chance to make as much as their male 
counterparts, women still hold few jobs. Women are at or near pay parity in engineering, science and 
technology job. But women hold only about a third or less of jobs in any of those areas, and that share 
is falling for technology jobs. 
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Women also account for a growing portion of federal workers with advanced degrees and a shrinking 
portion of workers with only a high school education. But in some occupations that offer women the 
best chance to make as much as their male counterparts, women still hold few jobs. The good news is 
that women are at or near pay parity in engineering, science and technology jobs. But women hold 
only about a third or less of jobs in any of those areas, and that share is falling for technology jobs. 
College Grads 
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Young men with a college degree make an average hourly wage of $20.94 right after graduation, 
according to the EPI figures, compared with the average hourly wage of $16.58 for women. That's a 
$9,000 annual difference. Some have argued that the wage gap, at any stage of a woman's life, starts 
with her choices. Women are more likely than men to scale back at work when they start a family, for 
instance. (Employers are also more likely to reward fathers and penalize mothers.) But EPI's data 
shows that the gender wage gap cracks open right after college graduation, well before decisions like 
maternity leave can affect women's earnings. 
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In Summary 
M the latest report from the Institute for Women's Policy Research said — The gender wage gap in the 
broader labor force has steadily declined since the 19805. But at the current rate, American women 
won't see equal pay until 2058. Women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, and their earnings 
are essential to the economic security of families across the nation. Yet, gender equality at work 
remains elusive. Women who work full-time, year-round still earn only 79 cents on the dollar 
compared with men, and during the last decade little improvement has been made in closing the 
gender wage gap. The glass ceiling persists, and occupational segregation — the concentration of 
women in some jobs and men in others — remains a stubborn feature of the U.S. labor market. 
A 2014 report from the National Women's Law Center found women are two-thirds of America's 20 
million low-wage workers. Men in the United States, the researchers found, require less education to 
achieve higher pay: Female workers with a high school degree make up nearly a quarter of the low-
wage workforce, while male workers with the same education level comprise 12 percent. 
As someone who was raised by a single working mother who made less than a dollar an hour when I 
was young, the fact that someone a half century later is still advocating suppression of women's pay is 
astounding. Approximately 20% of all women in the labor force are single and approximately 30% of 
women with young children are single mothers. The state with the highest children in single-parent 
families is Mississippi, where 71% of the mothers with young children in the state were single mothers. 
More than ever before, women are the breadwinners in their household. Over 40% of moms are now 
the sole or primary source of income in U.S. households. Women are now the primary or co-money 
maker in nearly two thirds of American families and working married women bring home 44% of their 
family's income. Of the 12 million single-parent families, women head 84% = approximately 10 
million families. Around 49% of single mothers have never married, 51% are either divorced, 
separated or widowed. Half have one child, 30% have two. About two thirds are White, one third 
Black, one quarter Hispanic. One third have a college degree, while one sixth have not completed high 
school. 
The majority of single mothers in the United States are separated, divorced or widowed; and they work 
more hours and yet have higher poverty rates than single mothers in other high-income countries. 
This is due to the fact that many employed single mothers are earning poverty wages. About 40% of 
U.S. single parents were employed in low-wage jobs — exceptionally high compared to single parents 
in peer countries. If a single mother in the U.S. loses her job, she will find an unemployment insurance 
(UI) system that is less generous and more difficult to qualify for than it is in peer countries. These 
along with less generous "safety net programs" and wage inequality among women help explain the 
exceptionally high poverty rate for single mother families in the U.S. And when we are taking about 
families please think about the children. Because millions of children go to be hungry in the richest 
country in the world and gender economic inequality is one of the main reasons.... And this is my 
rant of the week 
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WEEK's READINGS 
America wants jobs, jobs, jobs. 
To get them, workers will have to compete with machines. 
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Web Link: 
In the above video, Theoretical Scientist Michio Kaku says that the jobs of the future are jobs that 
Robots can't do, and as of now there are huge gaps with what a robot can do. Example: robots have 
very bad eyesight. They can see shapes but not objects like people, cups or chairs. And although they 
can see lines, circles and squares robots don't understand that these lines, circles and squares make up 
a face, or a chair or a cup as pattern recognition is one of the big problems for artificial intelligence. 
Second, Robots don't understand the simplest things about human behavior. They don't know that 
water is wet and that stings can pull but not push. Katu says that the two jobs that will thrive in the 
future and the two sets of jobs that will be destroyed are as follows. 
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Among blue collar jobs repetitive jobs will be wiped out. This means jobs in both the automotive and 
textile industries that are repetitive will disappear. While non-repetitive jobs will thrive; garbage men, 
sanitation personnel, gardeners, police and construction workers — these jobs will survive. In white 
collar workers defies common sense; middlemen, low-level accountants, bookkeepers, agents and 
tellers will be thrown out of work. Middlemen, the friction of capitalism will be obliterated. So who 
will benefit among while collar workers? Workers who engage in what Kaku describes as "Intellectual 
Capitalism." What is "Intellectual Capitalism?" Kaku says, it involves common sense; creative 
imagination, leadership, analysis, telling a joke, writing a script or a book and doing science. Realize 
that in England, said former Prime Minister Tony Blair, "England derives more money from music 
than it does from the coal industry." Because we are making a transition from a commodity based 
capital, like coal, to an intellectual capital like Rock and Roll music. 
****** 
When Rules No Longer Apply 
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Republicans in Congress seem strangely eager to let coal companies pollute streams without telling the 
public, to let oil and gas companies more easily bribe foreign officials, and to let any company win 
federal contracts no matter how badly it has violated labor laws. 
They're well on their way to getting all this done under the Congressional Review Act, a legislative 
cudgel that has rarely been used until now. The act lets Congress use fast-track procedures to pass 
"resolutions of disapproval" that, when signed by the president, nullify federal regulations issued 
roughly in the last six months of the previous presidential term. 
The stream pollution and bribery measures are already on President Trump's desk, and he's expected 
to sign both within days. 
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The goal of the Interior Department's "stream protection rule" was to prohibit mining practices that 
permanently pollute streams, destroy drinking water sources and threaten forests. It requires coal 
companies to compile and provide information about contamination, so affected communities could 
take legal action against polluters under the Clean Water Act. The companies argued, against all 
evidence, that the rule would cost jobs. What it really would have done is subject them to fines for 
pollution that harms human health. 
The anti-bribery rule was called for in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 and issued by the Securities and 
Exchange Commission in June. By requiring companies in extraction industries like oil and gas to 
disclose payments to foreign governments, it aimed to combat corruption. The American oil industry 
has said such disclosure would put it at a competitive disadvantage. That's ridiculous. Many other 
countries have similar rules. 
As of Wednesday, the House had sent several other rule-nullifying measures to the Senate. One of the 
rules it wants to undo requires the oil and gas industry to reduce polluting leaks, flares and ventings of 
methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — on public and tribal lands; another makes needed updates to 
the nation's Resource Management Plans for conserving federal public lands. Yet another helps to 
ensure that the names of severely mentally ill people, barred by federal law from buying guns, are 
included in the national background-check system. Also opposed by the House is a regulation 
requiring federal contractors to disclose labor law violations when bidding for government contracts. 
They say this amounts to blacklisting; it doesn't. It creates a clear process for resolving violations 
before contracts are awarded. 
Dozens of other regulations are vulnerable to this tactic. They include limits on fees on prepaid cards, 
rules that let states sponsor retirement plans for people who do not have pension coverage at work, 
chemical facility standards, Arctic drilling safeguards, student-borrower protections and internet 
privacy protections. 
Mr. Trump won the presidency, in part, by promising to hold powerful interests accountable for 
practices that harm the public. But nullifying final rules — which went through a long, public process 
on the way to being issued — elevates corporate interests above all others. 
NEW YORK TIMES - THE EDITORIAL BOARD - FEBRUARY 10, 2017 
Why Isn't This Person Labeled A Terrorist? 
Kansas Man Charged With Murder For Fatal Shooting Of Indian Engineer 
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By Carla Hcrreria - Buffington Post - February 24, 2017 
Prosecutors on Thursday charged a 51-year-old man with murder for a shooting at a Kansas bar 
Wednesday night that left an Indian engineer dead and injured two other men. The federal 
government has launched an investigation to determine if the shooting was a hate crime, officials said 
during a press conference on Thursday. Adam W. Purinton allegedly opened fire at Austins Bar and 
Grill as patrons watched a televised basketball game in Olathe, Kansas, on Wednesday night, the 
Associated Press reported. A bartender told the AP that the man used "racial slurs" before the 
shooting occurred, and witnesses told the Kansas City Star that he yelled "get out of my country" at the 
other men. Officers responded to reports of gunfire at the bar and found three victims with gunshot 
wounds. Emergency responders rushed them to an area hospital, where one of the victims was 
pronounced dead. 
Olathe police identified the deceased victim as 32-year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla. The two other injured 
victims, identified as Alok R. Madasani, 32, and Ian P. Grillot, 24, were recovering at a hospital in 
stable condition by Thursday afternoon. The FBI is working with the Olathe Police Department to 
determine whether the shooting was bias-motivated and the victims' civil rights were violated, FBI 
special agent in charge Eric Jackson said during Thursday's press conference. Kuchibhotla and 
Madasani worked as aviation engineers at Garmin, a GPS technology company with offices in Kansas, 
the Kansas City Star reported. 
Siva Sattanathan, a friend of the two engineers, told the New York Daily News that Kuchibhotla and 
Madasani were Hindus originally from Hyderabad, India. Grillot — the third victim, who attended 
high school in Olathe, according to his Facebook page — was at the bar separately from the engineers 
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Wednesday night when he "stood up for two people being mistreated by a man who was in the 
wrong," according to a GoFundMe page created by Grillot's sister. A GoFundMe campaign set up to 
raise money to help Kuchibhotla's family had raised more than $170,000 as of Thursday night. 
Police arrested Purinton at an Applebee's restaurant in Clinton, Missouri, some 70 miles away from 
the scene of the incident, early Thursday morning, according to Fox4KC. A bartender at the Missouri 
restaurant called police when Purinton revealed that he'd been involved in a shooting. According to the 
Star, he told the bartender he'd "just killed two Middle Eastern men." Purinton remains in a jail in 
Missouri with bail set at $2 million. He's currently awaiting extradition to Kansas. 
The Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal law enforcement on Thursday to file hate 
crime charges against Purinton. Moussa Elbayoumy, CAIR-Kansas board chair, told The Huffington 
Post the group stands up for any type of hate crime, regardless of ethnicity or religion, because "we see 
a wave of bigotry and hatred towards minorities" of all kind. Purinton currently faces charges on one 
count of premeditated first degree murder and two counts of attempted premeditated first degree 
murder. 
And where is the moral outrage from the President and his supporters? 
I Always Thought Sunlight Is the Enemy of Our Eyes 
Now we are being told sunshine helps 
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