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From: Gregory Brown
To: undisclosed-recipients:; 
Bcc: [email protected] 
Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 09/13/2015 
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2015 07:46:17 +0000 
Attachments: James_Moody_playlistn
August_2,_2015.docx; 
1.35_million_youths_a_year have_serious_sports_injuries_Michelle_Healey_USA_Today_ 
August_6,2013.docx; Top_5_Sports_Injuries_in_Children_and_Adolescents.docx; 
97_Percent_Of DC's_Prisoners_In_One_Type_Of Solitaty_Confinement_Are_Black_Dana 
Liebelson_Huff Post_09.02.15.docx 
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DEAR FRIEND 
Frequently wrong but never in Doubt. 
The deal "strengthens our adversaries, threatens our allies and puts our own security at risk." 
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As Dana Milbank recently wrote in a Washington Post op-ed — Cheney hyperbolized, hyperventilated 
and gave rein to hyperactive imagination — "desperation ... cave ...neutered" - and the audience at 
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the normally sedate American Enterprise Institute was riled. When Michaela Anang, a student from 
Boston with the liberal group Code Pink attempted to heckle the "war criminal" Cheney, Marc 
Thiessen, the moderator (and online columnist for The Post), leaped up to block her, audience 
members shouted "get out of here!" at her, and one man, in jacket and tie, engaged her in a violent tug 
of war to confiscate her banner. "Thank you very much," Cheney said with a wry grin. 
Supporters of the Iran deal are probably saying the same to Cheney. They are probably more grateful 
still that applauding Cheney from the front row were Paul D. Wolfowitz, a principal architect of the 
Iraq war, and Sen. Tom Cotton, (Ark.), author of the Senate Republicans' letter to the ayatollahs 
attempting to kill the deal during negotiations. In the second row were former congresswoman 
Michele Bachmann and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Cheney aide whose tenure led to a prison 
sentence. 
Surely, those who would like to see Congress undo the nuclear agreement can't expect that rolling out 
Cheney is going to save the cause. When it comes to dire predictions based on scary intelligence, the 
former vice president wouldn't seem to have the best track record. 
Moments after Cheney's speech came reports that the number of Senate Democrats supporting the 
Iran deal had climbed to 41— more than enough to sustain a presidential veto of any congressional 
disapproval of the deal, and possibly enough to block such a disapproval resolution from clearing 
Congress. This came despite an all-out campaign by the once-feared American Israel Public Affairs 
Committee and its affiliates, which spent tens of millions of dollars to rally opposition; The Post called 
it the largest defeat for AIPAC in more than two decades. The deal's survival also suggests Israeli Prime 
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's extraordinary meddling in American politics backfired. 
And now, as if to hammer nail into coffin, comes Cheney — angrily questioning "the veracity of the 
president's claims" about the deal and labeling several Obama assertions "simply false." 
A lecture on veracity and falsehood from the man who asserted before the Iraq invasion that Saddam 
Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons? The man who said hitting Iraq would strike "a major 
blow right" at the base of the 9/11 terrorists? The man who claimed that Iraq had "long-established ties 
with al Qaeda" and that it was "pretty well confirmed" that 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta met with 
senior Iraqi intelligence officials? 
Most everybody — including former president George W. Bush's brother, presidential candidate Jeb 
Bush — has come to acknowledge that, given the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the 
United States should not have gone to war in 2003. But not Cheney. When Thiessen relayed a question 
to him about whether containment of Saddam would have been better than military action, Cheney 
said "I disagree." 
He unabashedly made allegations against Iran Tuesday that he once made against Iraq, citing evidence 
of "an agreement between the Iranian government and al Qaeda." Echoing the old warnings about 
Iraq's "mushroom cloud," he noted that a nuclear Iran could kill 6 million Jews in a day. He 
acknowledged that intelligence failed to predict the North Korea nuclear test when he was in office —
but only to argue that there should be "serious concern" about Obama's claim that it would take Iran a 
year to produce nuclear weapons. 
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There should be concern about Obama's claims — but there should be even more about Cheney's. He 
said, for example, that the deal "threatens the security of Europe" without acknowledging that 
European powers negotiated it. Dropping his longstanding quest to expand executive power, he said 
Congress should have seized the authority to ratify the deal. 
Cheney said it's a "false choice" to claim the alternative to the deal is war. But he went on to say that 
unless Iran makes much deeper concessions," they must understand that the United States stands 
ready to take military action ... Iran will not be convinced to abandon its program peacefully unless 
it knows it will face military action if it refuses to do so." And this isn't war? In the immortal words of 
George W. Bush: "You can't get fooled again." 
****** 
1.35 million youths a year have serious sports injuries 
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Last week I did a piece on injuries in Pro Sports and how athletes are more than often pushed to play 
with injuries that could get worse and ultimately end their career. While researching the piece I 
discovered that there is an epidemic in America as 1.35 million youths a year have serious sports 
injuries. Safe Kit Worldwide survey of emergency room visits shows more than a million times a 
year, or about every 25 seconds, a young athlete visits a hospital emergency room for a sports-related 
injury. 
Injuries 
• 1.35 million kids were seen in a hospital ER in 2012 for a sports-related injury 
• 1 child every 3 minutes was seen for a sports-related concussion 
• Younger athletes, ages 12 to 15, made up 47% of concussions 
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Occasional bumps and bruises are expected when kids play sports, but for more than 1.35 million 
children last year a sports-related injury was severe enough to send them to a hospital emergency 
department. Sprains and strains, fractures, contusions, abrasions and concussions top the list of 
sports-related ER diagnoses for kids ages 6 to 19 — at a cost of more than $935 million each year, 
according to a report out Tuesday from the non-profit advocacy group Safe Kids Worldwide. 
The report, which analyzed data for 2011 and 2012, did not find a statistical difference between the two 
years, but is concerning — one in five kids who go to ERs for treatment of an injury is there for sports 
injuries, says Kate Can, Safe Kids president and CEO. "Far too many kids are arriving in emergency 
rooms for injuries that are predictable and preventable," Can says. 
Using data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury 
Surveillance System, the report focused on pediatric sports injuries related to 14 common sports 
activities, including football, cheerleading, soccer and basketball. More than 46.5 million children 
played team sports in 2011, says the report. 
It finds that in 2012, 12% of all ER visits (163,670) involved a concussion, the equivalent of one every 
three minutes. Nearly half (47%) were in kids ages 12 to 15. 
That's particularly troubling, given research showing that younger athletes take a longer time to heal 
than older athletes after a concussion, which is a traumatic brain injury, because their bodies are still 
growing, Carr says. "And we know that a second concussion later can cause even more issues." 
Like previous studies, the new report shows that in sports in which both girls and boys participate, 
girls report a higher percentage of concussions. Among youth basketball players, for example, 11.5% of 
girls seen in the ER are diagnosed with concussions, compared with 7.2% of boys. Among soccer 
players, it's 17.1% of girls compared with 12.4% of boys. 
It's unclear what accounts for the variation, says sports medicine physician Kathryn Ackerman, co-
director of the Female Athlete Program at Boston Children's Hospital. "We are still looking into it, 
trying to see if there are really genetic differences, differences in play, or differences in biomechanics, 
but we don't have that link yet." Ackerman was not involved in the new study. 
Although the number of injuries cited in the new report may seem high, the actual number is likely 
even higher, says Neeru Jayanthi, a sports medicine physician at Loyola University Medical Center in 
Chicago. That's because the study included only ERs, and many kids go to urgent care centers, their 
regular doctor or a sports medicine clinic, says Jayanthi, who was not involved in the study. 
Nor do the figures highlight the significant number of overuse injuries, "about 25% of which end up 
being serious," he says. Overuse injuries to tendons, bones and joints can result from playing the same 
sport and performing the same movements too often, too hard or at too young an age with inadequate 
recovery time. 
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Research reported earlier this year by Jayanthi and colleagues found that young athletes who played a 
single sport for more hours a week than years they were old — such as a 10-year-old who played 11 or 
more hours of soccer — were 70% more likely to experience serious overuse injuries. 
Letting the body rest, adding preventive and strengthening exercises, and following proper technique 
are among injury prevention strategies recommended in the new report. It also says athletes should be 
encouraged to speak up about injuries, coaches should be supported in injury-prevention decisions, 
and parents and young athletes should become better educated about sports safety. "These statistics 
don't have to be part of the game if we take some simple precautions," Carr says. 
Among other findings from the report: 
• Football resulted in both the highest number of all pediatric injuries (394,350) and the highest 
concussion rate (40 per 10,000 athletes). Wrestling and cheerleading had the second- and 
third-highest concussion rates (15 per 10,000 athletes and 12 per 10,000 athletes, respectively). 
• Ice hockey had the highest percentage (31%) of concussion injuries; its rate was 10 per 10,000 
athletes. 
• The most common injuries were to the ankle (15%), followed by head (14%) finger (12%), knee 
(9%) and face (7%). 
Acute traumatic injuries are things like fractures, sprains and strains, concussions, and cuts. They 
usually happen after a blow or force — like getting tackled in football or wiping out while 
skateboarding. Overuse injuries include things like stress fractures and tendonitis. 
As many children are playing organized sports during the summer months heat-related illnesses 
including dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat stroke are always dangerous and can be fatal. Heat-
related injuries are a particular problem for children because children perspire less than adults and 
require a higher core body temperature to trigger sweating. Playing rigorous sports in the heat requires 
close monitoring of both body and weather conditions. Fortunately, heat-related illnesses can be 
prevented. 
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lie 
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Preventing and Treating Injuries 
Injuries can happen to any child who plays sports, but there are some things that can help prevent and 
treat injuries. 
Prevention 
• Enroll your child in organized sports through schools, community clubs, and recreation areas 
that are properly maintained. Any organized team activity should demonstrate a commitment to 
injury prevention. Coaches should be trained in first aid and CPR, and should have a plan for 
responding to emergencies. Coaches should be well versed in the proper use of equipment, and 
should enforce rules on equipment use. 
• Organized sports programs may have adults on staff who are certified athletic trainers. These 
individuals are trained to prevent, recognize, and provide immediate care for athletic injuries. 
• Make sure your child has—and consistently uses—proper gear for a particular sport. This may 
reduce the chances of being injured. 
• Make warm-ups and cool-downs part of your child's routine before and after sports participation. 
Warm-up exercises make the body's tissues warmer and more flexible. Cool-down exercises 
loosen muscles that have tightened during exercise. 
• Make sure your child has access to water or a sports drink while playing. Encourage him or her to 
drink frequently and stay properly hydrated. Remember to include sunscreen and a hat (when 
possible) to reduce the chance of sunburn, which is a type of injury to the skin. Sun protection 
may also decrease the chances of malignant melanoma—a potentially deadly skin cancer—or 
other skin cancers that can occur later in life. 
• Learn and follow safety rules and suggestions for your child's particular sport. You'll find some 
more sport-specific safety suggestions below. 
Treatment 
• Treatment for sports-related injuries will vary by injury. But if your child suffers a soft tissue injury 
(such as a sprain or strain) or a bone injury, the best immediate treatment is easy to remember: RICE 
(rest, ice, compression, elevation) the injury. Get professional treatment if any injury is severe. A 
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severe injury means having an obvious fracture or dislocation of a joint, prolonged swelling, or 
prolonged or severe pain. 
Keep Kids Exercising 
Luckily for Raoul, his injury wasn't serious. In a few weeks, he will be fully recovered and able to play 
again. Even though Raoul got hurt, it's important that he continue some type of regular exercise and 
sports involvement after the injury heals. Exercise may reduce his chances of obesity, which is 
becoming more common in children. It may also reduce his risk of diabetes, a disease that can be 
associated with a lack of exercise and poor eating habits. Exercise also helps him build social skills and 
provides him with a general sense of well-being. Sports participation is an important part of learning 
how to build team skills. 
As a parent, it is important for you to encourage your children to be physically active. It's also 
important to match your child to the sport, and not push him or her too hard into an activity that he or 
she may not like or be capable of doing. Teach your children to follow the rules and to play it safe when 
they get involved in sports, so they'll spend more time having fun in the game and be less likely to be 
sidelined with an injury. You should be mindful of the risks associated with different sports and take 
important measures to reduce the chance of injury. For sport-specific suggestions, go on the Internet 
to the information. Attached please find the top 5 sports injuries in children and adolescents. 
The Brutal Realities Of The American Prison Complex 
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"We need to disassemble the notion that prisoners are different." 
"It's a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world's population, yet we have 
almost 25 percent of the world's total prison population," Hillary Clinton said in a criminal justice 
speech in April 2015. "The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago despite 
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the fact that crime is at historic lows." When discussing the contemporary state of the prison 
industrial complex in America, the numbers are frightening. The personal stories, however, are far 
more horrific. In the month of July alone, at least five black women were found dead in jail. There are 
numerous tales of grisly murders, suicides, rapes, beatings, and prisoners being denied medication and 
proper medical treatment, dying as a result. Each story is more chilling than the last. Yet as bad as the 
aforementioned, in many ways the practice of solitary confinement can be worse. 
Although solitary confinement conditions vary from state to state and among correctional facilities, 
systematic policies and conditions include: 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Confinement behind a solid steel door for 22 to 24 hours a day 
Severely limited contact with other human beings 
Infrequent phone calls and rare non-contact family visits 
Extremely limited access to rehabilitative or educational programming 
Grossly inadequate medical and mental health treatment 
Restricted reading material and personal property 
Physical torture such as hog-tying, restraint chairs, forced cell extraction 
• 
"No-touch torture," such as sensory deprivation, permanent bright lighting, extreme 
temperatures, and forced insomnia 
• 
• 
Chemical torture, such as stun grenades and stun guns 
Sexual intimidation and other forms of brutality and humiliation 
Beginning in the early 1970s, prison and jail administrators at the federal, state, and local level have 
relied increasingly on isolation and segregation to control men, women, and youth in their custody. In 
1985, there were a handful of control units across the county. Today, more than 4o states have super-
maximum security—or "supermax"-facilities primarily designed to hold people in long-term isolation. 
There are more than 8o,000 men, women, and children in solitary confinement in prisons across the 
United States, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Note that figure is a decade old and 
doesn't include people in jails, juvenile facilities, and immigrant detention centers. Nearly every state 
uses some form of solitary confinement, but there's no federal reporting system that tracks how many 
people are isolated at any given time. Prisoners are often confined for months or even years, with 
some spending more than 25 years in segregated prison settings. As with the overall prison 
population, people of color are disproportionately represented in administration segregation -- one 
type of solitary confinement -- isolation units. Example: 97 Percent of DC's prisoners in one type of 
solitary confinement are Black. Because the District lacks its own prison facility, inmates sentenced 
there are actually held in multiple federal prisons. How can this be and still claim that justice is color 
blind. 
On average, black prisoners made up 47 percent of the administrative segregation population and 39 
percent of the total male prison population in 21 jurisdictions that provided demographic data to one 
of the studies that I read. ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Colorado, held more than half of its 
prisoners in solitary confinement for over three years, according to the report. An inmate at that 
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facility told The New York Times that prisoners on his cellblock "screamed and banged on their doors 
for hours." The researchers also sought to shed light on the duration and conditions of solitary 
confinement. "Most participants reported that inmates in solitary spend 23 hours a day in their cells 
on weekdays; about half of all jurisdictions reported that prisoners spent 23 hours a day in a cell on 
weekends," the report said. 
Conditions varied widely by location. Virginia, for example, prohibited inmates in administrative 
segregation from having letters, paper or pens and pencils in their cells. New Hampshire banned 
magazines. Other states, including Montana and North Dakota, prohibited some segregated inmates 
from getting visits or social phone calls. Seven jurisdictions provided free televisions. North Dakota 
and Wyoming allowed video game consoles, Arkansas, MP4 players. But jurisdictions may limit access 
to activities and personal materials. With this said, most isolation is Spartan. 
Prisoners can be placed in isolation for many reasons, from serious infractions, such as fighting with 
another inmate, to minor ones, like talking back to a guard or getting caught with a pack of cigarettes. 
Other times, prisoners are thrown into solitary confinement for not breaking any rules at all. Prisons 
have used solitary confinement as a tool to manage gangs, isolating people for simply talking to a 
suspected gang member. Prisons have also used solitary confinement as retribution for political 
activism. 
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The stress of isolation inhibits neuron formation, scientists have found, which can cause permanent 
changes to the brain. General concerns about the practice prompted the Association of State 
Correctional Administrators, which includes heads of corrections agencies, to partake in the project 
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with Yale. They acknowledge in their report that prolonged isolation is a "grave" problem and say that 
they seek to limit or end it, an unprecedented statement. Numerous studies have documented the 
harmful psychological effects of long-term solitary confinement, which can produce debilitating 
symptoms, such as: 
• 
Visual and auditory hallucinations 
• 
Hypersensitivity to noise and touch 
Insomnia and paranoia 
Uncontrollable feelings of rage and fear 
Distortions of time and perception 
Increased risk of suicide 
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 
These effects are magnified for two particularly vulnerable populations: juveniles, whose brains are 
still developing, and people with mental health issues, who are estimated to make up one-third of all 
prisoners in isolation. If a person isn't mentally ill when entering an isolation unit, by the time they 
are released, their mental health has been severely compromised. Many prisoners are released directly 
to the streets after spending years in isolation. Because of this, long-term solitary confinement goes 
beyond a problem of prison conditions, to pose a formidable public safety and community health 
problem. 
Is solitary confinement considered "torture?" 
A: Yes. Prison isolation fits the definition of torture as stated in several international human rights 
treaties, and thus constitutes a violation of human rights law. T he M. Convention Against Torture 
defines torture as any state-sanctioned act "by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or 
mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person" for information, punishment, intimidation, or for a 
reason based on discrimination. 
Since the 1.99os, the M. CommitteeSginst Torture has repeatedly condemned the use of solitary 
confinement in the U.S. In 2011, the M. special rapporteur on torture warned that solitary 
confinement "can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment when 
used as a punishment, during pre-trial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons 
with mental disabilities, or juveniles." 
I understand that it may be difficult to totally end solitary confinement in the U.S., especially when 
some prisoners need to be placed in segregation for their own protection while for the protection of 
others we need segregate our most violent predators. Still the pervasive use of solitary confinement is 
not only inhumane it does little if not nothing to stem recidivism. Recently prisoners and their 
families have taken the lead in making the public and policymakers aware of this cruelty taking place 
in U.S. correctional facilities, forming coalitions and working to ensure their stories are told in the 
news media. Also several faith-based organizations, including AFSC, have accompanied survivors of 
solitary confinement in calling for an end to the practice. And even though politicians and other public 
figures — such as President Obama, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Pope Francis have 
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denounced long-term solitary confinement, as well as the U.S. Senate who has called for reforms from 
the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. 
We need to keep the pressure on until the pervasive use of solitary confinement is over. Prison 
isolation must end — for the safety of our communities, to respect our responsibility to follow 
international human rights law, to take a stand against torture wherever it occurs, and for the sake of 
our common humanity. 
****** 
Another Reason to Love Bernie 
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If you are a Liberal/Progressive (even if you are a Hillary supporter) or if you are really an 
Independent more than often you will find yourself loving Senator Bernie Sanders because he does not 
embrace or advocate the consensus of the herd or the special interest groups that do the bidding of 
others ideological preferences and/or personal gain. Even though he is a politician he speaks with the 
clarity of a sage. Most recently on his blog he wrote an op-ed on why he is supporting the Iran Nuclear 
Agreement that the United States negotiated with China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United 
Kingdom with Iran. The purpose of the Agreement is to make certain that Iran does not acquire a 
nuclear weapon -- an occurrence which many believe including all most all of the supporters of the 
Agreement would destabilize the region, as well as lead to a nuclear arms race in the area and would 
endanger the existence of Israel. 
Those who have spoken out against this agreement which include almost all of the Republican 
leadership in a partisan lockstep have made every effort to thwart the diplomatic process, are many of 
the same people who spoke out forcefully and irresponsibly about the need to go to war with Iraq --
one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the modern history of our country -- people like former vice 
president Dick Cheney and many of the other neo-cons who pushed us to war Iraq were not only 
tragically wrong then, they are wrong now. Clouded by the belief that they can't do no wrong and 
having rewritten the history in their own minds these individuals have learned nothing from the 
results of that disastrous policy and how it destabilized the entire region -- the only diplomacy that 
they support is that of aggression without any consideration of consequences. 
Should this Agreement be canceled what does these neocons believe ought to be done? Their answers 
is as fuzzy as their recollections of how we got into the second war in Iraq. They somehow gloss over 
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the cost of war -- such as the lives of the 6,700 brave men and women, and many others have come 
home without legs, without arms, without eyesight. Or the 5OO,OOO veterans of the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan who returned to their families with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain 
injury. The suicide rate of young veterans is appallingly high. The divorce rate is appallingly high, and 
the impact on children is appallingly high. God knows how many families have been devastated by 
these wars. And almost never mentioned by Cheney and his neocon friends are the many hundreds of 
thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children who died in that war, and the millions whose 
lives who have been completely destabilized, including those who are fleeing their country today with 
only the clothes on their back as refugees. The cost of war is real. 
Like Sanders and many others I support the Agreement. And YES, the military option should always 
be on the table, but it should be the last option. We have got to do everything we can do to reach an 
agreement to ensure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon without having to go to war. Even as a 
superpower we have an obligation to pursue diplomatic solutions before resorting to military 
engagement -- especially after nearly fourteen years of ill-conceived and disastrous military 
engagements in the region. 
Remember the agreement calls for cutting off Iran's pathways to the fissile materials needed for a 
nuclear weapon by reducing its stockpile of uranium by 98 percent, and restricting the level of 
enrichment of uranium to well below the level needed for weaponized uranium. The agreement 
requires Iran to decrease the number of installed centrifuges by two-thirds, dismantle the country's 
heavy-water nuclear reactor so that it cannot produce any weapons-grade plutonium, and commit to 
rigorous monitoring, inspection, and verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Only 
after Iran has demonstrated to the international community its compliance with the tenets of the 
agreement — the U.S. and European Union will lift the sanctions that helped bring Iran to the 
negotiating table in the first place. The agreement also contains a mechanism for the "snap back" of 
those sanctions if Iran does not comply with its obligations. 
Does the agreement achieve everything everyone would like? No, it does not. But it is far better than 
the path we were on -- with Iran developing nuclear weapons capability and the potential for military 
intervention by the U.S. and Israel growing greater by the day. Let us not forget that if Iran does not 
live up to the agreement, sanctions may be reimposed. If Iran moves toward a nuclear weapon, all 
available options remain on the table. As a result, it is incumbent upon us, however, to give the 
negotiated agreement a chance to succeed, and it is for these reasons our politicians should support 
the agreement because as Bernie Sanders wisely warns, "War Should Be The Last Option." 
Bravo.... Bernie.... 
****** 
An American Summer 
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; 12, 
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More than 3,700 killed by gunfire. Nearly 8,200 wounded. The real story of the season was not the shootings that drew the most 
headlines. 
Between the start of Memorial Day Weekend and August 28 (the date when the most recent statistics 
were pulled), an estimated 3,702 people were killed by guns in America. Another 8,153 were 
wounded. That's according to preliminary data from the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks incidents 
of gun violence through media reports and police blotters. This amounts to 81 more shooting deaths 
and 959 more gun injuries than during the same period in 2014. I am told that statistically, this 
summer's increase in firearms casualties has not been huge and that the real significance is the effect 
on perceptions. But numbers do matter yet people still haven't been blown out of their detachment and 
denial. 
If there is a lasting shift, it will owe in part to the way The Summer of 2O15 was a mix of horrors far 
too-familiar and new: Innocent churchgoers standing in for innocent school kids, a Tennessee Naval 
Reserve facility instead of a Texas army base, a movie theater shooting sequel, a workplace rampage 
that in a depraved twist was documented with not one but two cameras. And somehow it seems that 
Americans may have come to expect an Aurora or Newtown or Fort Hood on a semi-annual basis, but 
there yet remain varieties of brutality for which we aren't prepared, have not already pre-processed. 
There are of course other ways to view the 2O15 shootings that have made the most-read and most-
watched lists. For example: As the product of racism, pure and simple, or a "mental health problem," 
or the perils of gun-free zones. Dylann Roof, John Houser, Mohammad Abdulazeez, and Vester 
Flanagan were all able to buy guns through licensed dealers — never mind that Roofs purchase only 
went through because of a loophole in the law and "cascade" of clerical errors, nor that the other 
shooters all exhibited warning signs that might have disqualified them from gun possession under a 
background check system better designed to account for the role of substance abuse and anger 
management in violent crime. If you believe America already has all (or more than) the gun regulation 
it needs, then for you those four shootings fit neatly into a standing argument against reform. 
As such this summer should go down as a reminder of the downside of the public tendency to fixate on 
mass shootings while ignoring other types of gun violence. The fact that only two of the past three 
months' high-profile killings even qualify under the most widely used definition — four or more people 
shot dead, a public setting, a lack of gang or other criminal context — also gave fresh fodder to a group 
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of activists who have been pushing for an updated criteria. To the pseudonymous record-keepers 
behind the crowd-sourced Mass Shooting Tracker, "a shooting is a shooting," and a mass shooting 
is any that produces four or more victims, whether deceased or wounded. Using that standard, the 
numbers — and it's the numbers, remember, that matter — are these: more than 125 incidents since 
Memorial Day, or more than one every 24 hours. In the aggregate, those shootings left 58 people 
killed and another 571 injured. In a single incident in Fort Worth, Texas, six people were sprayed with 
bullets, and the counts climb from there. Seven shot at a party outside Cincinnati in Madisonville, 
Ohio. Eight in Modesto, California. Nine in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York 
The dubious distinction of the shooting producing the highest number of casualties this summer seems 
to belong to an outburst of violence on the evening of Saturday, August 8 in Blytheville, Arkansas, a 
town of around 15,000 residents near the Mississippi River. Adeline King, 19, was killed and it others 
were wounded after King said hello to her sister's ex-boyfriend, angering his new girlfriend. Few 
witnesses came forward to provide details to the police, even though there were reportedly 50 people 
at the crime scene and 200 at a hospital that received some of the victims. It took 12 days for police to 
publicly identify the suspect, 27-year-old Billy Dee Williams, who reportedly opened fire into a crowd 
gathered on the street, killing King. King had been attending a family gathering following the funeral 
of a cousin. The shooting received scant press coverage outside of Arkansas and the nearby Memphis 
area. 
Two similar shootings generated hardly more attention. On Father's Day, ten people, including a two-
year-old and a ten-year-old, were shot at a block party in West Philadelphia by two men who randomly 
sprayed the crowd with shotgun pellets. That same evening, at a block party on the west side of 
Detroit, another ten people were shot, one fatally, when a gunfight ensued on a basketball court. 
Detroit Police Chief James Craig called the shooting an "act of urban terrorism." 
Nonetheless there is another part of this story that happened almost every day if not twice or three 
times or more in the same day that may have gotten local notice but did not receive the national 
attention that it would have received in almost any other industrialized country. On the Fourth of July 
in Chicago, gunfire took the place of fireworks when 3o people were shot in an eight-hour period. 
Three were killed, among them 7-year-old Amari Brown, struck with a bullet intended for his father. 
"He wasn't crying, he was speaking. `Daddy, daddy,'" Brown's father said. In a two-hour span on one 
Baltimore Sunday in early August, ten people were shot, seven of them in a single incident. The next 
day in New York City, a pregnant woman was shot five times and her unborn child killed in a drive-by 
shooting. The incident was one of seven shootings over a long holiday weekend, leaving a total of 16 
shot. Days later, the city's parks, basketball courts, and streets erupted in mayhem again: In six hours, 
nine people were shot. 
And so this summer may also go down as a reminder of the downside of the public tendency to fixate 
on mass shootings while ignoring other types of gun violence. The fact that only two of the past three 
months' high-profile killings even qualify under the most widely used definition — four or more people 
shot dead, a public setting, a lack of gang or other criminal context — also gave fresh fodder to a group 
of activists who have been pushing for an updated criteria. To the pseudonymous record-keepers 
behind the crowd-sourced Mass Shooting Tracker, "a shooting is a shooting," and a mass shooting 
is any that produces four or more victims, whether deceased or wounded. Using that standard, the 
numbers — and it's the numbers, remember, that matter — are these: more than 125 incidents since 
Memorial Day, or more than one every 24 hours. In the aggregate, those shootings left 58 people killed 
and another 571 injured. In a single incident in Fort Worth, Texas, six people were sprayed with 
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bullets, and the counts climb from there. Seven shot at a party outside Cincinnati in Madisonville, 
Ohio. Eight in Modesto, California. Nine in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. 
Some in law enforcement attribute the increase in urban shootings to the "Ferguson effect," a term 
coined by St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson that describes overburdened and highly scrutinized forces 
quietly stepping down enforcement efforts. But gun violence had been increasing in St. Louis before 
the death of Michael Brown, and in Baltimore before the death of Freddie Gray, whose spine was 
nearly severed during a "rough ride" in the back of a police van. While theories falter, there are 
numbers, again, to be reckoned with: The Guardian has counted 298 people, 61 of them black —
seven of them black and unarmed — shot by police this summer. On the other side of the thin blue 
line, twelve police officers were killed in June, July, and August, eight of them in one ten-day stretch. 
One of them, Darren Goforth, a deputy sheriff ambushed while pumping gas in Harris County, Texas, 
was approached from behind by a man who emptied 15 rounds into his head. 
This is shameful and senseless. But not nearly as ugly as the stories of the n -year-old boy finds his 
mother's semi-automatic pistol and shoots his 9-year-old brother in the face or the three-year-old, 
likely searching for an iPad, instead discovers his parents' loaded Glock 9mm and shoots himself in the 
head. And the trend of course was not confined to any one state. July 6, Spring, Texas: a three-year-
old boy fatally shoots himself with his grandfather's handgun. July 29, Washington, 
A seven-
year-old boy, another unsecured handgun, another young sibling dead. August 25, back-to-school 
week, Augusta, Georgia: a third-grader is grazed by a bullet as a classmate plays with a .38o-caliber 
handgun. Perhaps the horror and shock of this last group of incidents can best be understood through 
the anguish of an Ohio mother, who called 911 after her three-year-old son shot himself. "The gun is 
mine. It is in the house, I carry it in my purse, I laid it down. We just got home," she howls into the 
phone, her voice hysterical. "His eyes are open, but he's out." 
A majority of Americans now believe that a home with a gun in it is a safer home, as the pollsters at 
Gallup tell us. First of all, statics tell us that this is not true — A gun in the home makes homicide 
three times more likely, suicide up to five times as likely, and accidental death four 
times higher than in non-gun owning homes. More importantly when a gun kept for self-
defense is a gun kept at the ready, loaded and unobstructed by locks or passcodes, it becomes a gun 
that can find itself into a child's hands and far too often does. But far too often gun violence happens 
between people who know one another; workmates, friends, families and lovers. Example: on August 
9, just 20 miles from where Texas sheriff Goforth was killed, a domestic dispute ended with eight dead, 
six of the victims under i8, an event tied for the most children fatally shot in a single place since Sandy 
Hook. David Conley, 49, broke into the home of his ex-girlfriend, restrained her, her boyfriend, and 
six children — one of whom was Conley's — and shot each of them in the back of the head. In a 
jailhouse interview, Conley said of the son he killed, "I love Nate to death." In one study children aged 
5 to 14 in the United States are 11 times more likely to die from an accidental gunshot wound than 
children in other developed countries and roughly 1 person dies every 17 minutes in America from gun 
violence. Yet it seems that our political leaders are too brain dead to even try to do something that 
might make a difference in this epidemic of gun violence that should shame every American and this 
is my rant of the week.... 
WEEK's READINGS 
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35 soul-crushing facts about American income inequality 
The money given out in Wall Street bonuses last year was twice the amount all minimum-wage 
workers earned combined 
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While Hillary Clinton occasionally gives some lip service to the problem of extreme inequality, Bernie 
Sanders is the only candidate really hammering away at it. He has even blasted the orthodoxy of 
economic growth for its own sake, saying according to Monday's Washington Post that unless 
economic spoils can be redistributed to make more Americans' lives better, all the growth will go to the 
top I% anyway, so who needs it? Sanders might know his history, but the rest of the candidates could 
use a little primer. 
The United States was not always the most powerful nation on Earth. It was only with the end of World 
War II, with the rest of the developed world in smoldering ruins, that America emerged as the free 
world's leader. This coincided with the expansion of the U.S. middle class. With the other war 
combatants trying to recover from the destruction of the war, America became the supermarket, 
hardware store and auto dealership to the world. Markets for American products abounded and 
opportunity was everywhere for American workers of all economic means to get ahead. America had a 
virtual monopoly on rebuilding the world. Combined with the G.I. Bill of 1944, which provided money 
for returning veterans to go to college, and government loans to buy houses and start businesses, the 
middle class in America boomed, as did American power, wealth and prestige. Between 1946 and 1973, 
productivity in America grew by 104 percent. Unions led the way in assuring wages for workers grew 
by an equal amount. 
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The 197os, however, brought a screeching halt to the expansion of the American middle class. The 
Arab oil embargo in 1973 marked the end of cheap oil and the beginning of the middle-class decline. 
The Iranian Revolution in 1979, with more resultant oil instability, combined with the rise of Ronald 
Reagan's conservative revolution at home, accelerated the long and painful contraction of the middle 
class. Cuts in corporate taxes, stagnant worker wage growth, the right-wing war on unions, and 
corporate outsourcing of work overseas greased the wheels of the middle-class decline and the upper-
class elevation. Cuts in taxes on the wealthy, under the guise of trickle-down economics, have resulted 
in lower government revenue and cuts to all kinds of services. All of which has led to today, an era of 
national and international inequality unparalleled since the days of the Roaring '20s. 
Here are 35 astounding facts about inequality that will fry your brain. 
1. In 81 percent of American counties, the median income, about $52,000, is less than it was 15 years 
ago. This is despite the fact that the economy has grown 83 percent in the past quarter-century and 
corporate profits have doubled. American workers produce twice the amount of goods and services as 
25 years ago, but get less of the pie. 
2. The amount of money that was given out in bonuses on Wall Street last year is twice the amount all 
minimum-wage workers earned in the country combined. 
3. The wealthiest 85 people on the planet have more money that the poorest 3.5 billion people 
combined. 
4. The average wealth of an American adult is in the range of $250,000-$300,000. But that average 
number includes incomprehensibly wealthy people like Bill Gates. Imagine to people in a bar. When 
Bill Gates walks in, the average wealth in the bar increases unbelievably, but that number doesn't make 
the other 10 people in the bar richer. The median per adult number is only about $39,000, placing the 
U.S. about 27th among the world's nations, behind Australia, most of Europe and even small countries 
like New Zealand, Ireland and Kuwait. 
5. Italians, Belgians and Japanese citizens are wealthier than Americans. 
6. The poorest half of the Earth's population owns 1% of the Earth's wealth. The richest 1% of the 
Earth's population owns 46% of the Earth's wealth. 
7. More locally, the poorest half of the US owns 2.5% of the country's wealth. The top 1% owns 35% of 
it. 
8. Inequality is a worldwide problem. In the UK, doctors no longer occupy a place in the top 1% of 
income earners, London plays host to the largest congregation of Russian millionaires outside of 
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Moscow, and also houses more ultra-rich people (defined as owning more than $3o million in assets 
outside of their home) than anywhere else on Earth. 
9. The slice of the national income pie going to the wealthiest i% of Americans has doubled since 
1979. 
to. The 1% also takes home 20% of the income. This figure is the most since the 1920s era of laissez 
faire government (under Republicans Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover). 
11. The super-rich An% of America, such as Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, take home a whopping 
6% of the national income, earning around $23 million a year. Compare that to the average $30,000 a 
year earned by the bottom 90 percent of America. 
12. The top 1% of America owns 50% of investment assets (stocks, bonds, mutual funds). The poorest 
half of America owns just .5% of the investments. 
13. The poorest Americans do come out ahead in one statistic: the bottom 90% of America owns 73% 
of the debt. 
14. Tax rates for the middle class have remained essentially unchanged since 1960. Tax rates on the 
highest earning Americans have plunged from an almost 70% tax rate in 1945 down to around 35% 
today. Corporate tax rates have dropped from 30 percent in the 195os to under to percent today. 
15. Since 199o, CEO compensation has increased by 300%. Corporate profits have doubled. The 
average worker's salary has increased 4%. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage has actually 
decreased. 
i6. CEOs in 1965 earned about 24 times the amount of the average worker. In 1980 they earned 42 
times as much. Today, CEOs earn 325 times the average worker. 
17. Wages, as a percent of the overall economy, have dropped to an historic low. 
i8. In a study of 34 developed countries, the United States had the second highest level of income 
inequality, ahead of only Chile. 
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19. Young people in the U.S. are getting poorer. The median wealth of people under 35 has dropped 
68% since 1984. The median wealth of older Americans has increased 42%. 
20. The average white American's median wealth is 20 times higher ($113,000) than the average 
African American ($5,600) and 18 times the Hispanic American ($6,300). 
21. America's highest income inequality is located in the states surrounding Wall Street (New York 
City) and the oil-rich states. 
22. Since 1979, high school dropouts have seen median weekly income drop by 22 percent. Ethnically, 
the highest dropout rates are among Hispanic and African American children. 
23. In 1970, a woman earned about 6o% of the amount a man earned. In 2005 a woman earned about 
8o% of what a man earned. Since 2005, there has been no change in that figure. African-American 
women earn just 64% of what a white male earns, and Hispanic women just 56%. 
24. Over 20 percent of all American children live below the poverty line. This rate is higher than 
almost all other developed countries. 
25. Union membership in the US is at an all-time low, about 11% of the workforce. In 1978, 40 percent 
of blue-collar workers were unionized. With that declining influence has come a concurrent decline in 
the real value of the minimum wage. 
26. Four hundred Americans have more wealth, $2 trillion, than half of all Americans combined. That 
is approximately the GDP of Russia. 
27. In 1946, a child born into poverty had about a 5o percent chance of scaling the income ladder into 
the middle class. In 1980, the chances were 40 percent. A child born today has about a 33 percent 
chance. 
28. Despite massive tax cuts, corporations have not created new jobs in America. The job creators 
have been small new businesses that have not enjoyed the same huge tax breaks. 
29. More than half of the members of the United States Congress, where laws are passed deciding 
how millionaires are taxed, are millionaires. 
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30. Twenty five of the largest corporations in America in 2010 paid their CEOs more money than they 
paid in taxes that year. 
31. In the first decade of the 21st century, the U.S. borrowed $1 trillion in order to give tax cuts to 
households earning over $250,000. 
32. In 1970, there were five registered lobbyists working on behalf of wealthy corporations for every 
one of the 535 members of Congress. Today there are 22 lobbyists per congressperson. 
33. In 1962, the i% household median wealth was 125 times the average median wealth. In 2010 the 
divide was 288 times. 
34. During the Great Recession, the average wealth of the i% dropped about 16 percent. Meanwhile 
the wealth of the 99% dropped 47 percent. 
35. Between 1979 and 2007, the wages of the top I% rose 10 times more than the bottom 90 percent. 
LARRY SCHWARTZ — Alternet — July 15.2015 
So Wrong for So Long 
Why neoconservatives are never right. 
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