Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 118

Trump’s Washington: Drowning in conflicts of interest?

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Not a single day passes without new tales of the ganefs in the Trump Administration. “Ganef” in Yiddish means swindler. These are mostly small-time crooks, but not always.

The New York Times just highlighted the activities of Elliott Broidy, the deputy finance chairman of the Republican Party National Committee and a wealthy old friend of Donald Trump.

Broidy seems to have taken some lucrative payments for helping friends associated with the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to see that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is fired (he was), to influence U.S. foreign policy against Qatar, and to strengthen personal ties for the Saudi and UAE rulers with Trump.

When it comes to lobbying and the expense accounts of government officials, not to mention conflicts of interest, U.S. law — which is generally described as very tough in many other domains — is often as flexible as a rubber band.

Unified by questionable ethics

At a minimum, the Trump team is unified by questionable ethics — small, big and sometimes ridiculous.

The Veterans Affairs Administration runs U.S.-based hospitals. Nevertheless, its chief, David Shulkin, needed to go on business to London and Copenhagen last summer with his wife. One of the highlights was a day watching tennis at Wimbledon.

The entire trip was billed to the Veterans Administration at a cost of over $100,000. When the details leaked, Shulkin first claimed that there were misunderstandings. Then he agreed to make a reimbursement.

Efforts at excuses or repayments are not, however, the style of his Trump cabinet colleagues, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Environmental Protection Agency chief Administrator Scott Pruitt. They just feel entitled.

Pruitt, who has a penchant for flying first class, for example, spent over $120,000 in public funds visiting Italy, including a private tour of the Vatican.

Zinke is a regular on private plane trips to national parks in the U.S. and, for example, billed the government $12,375 for a private helicopter trip from a meeting in Las Vegas to his ranch in Montana.

But, he is also in hot water for purchasing beautiful doors for the Interior Department at a cost of $129,000. He said the staff made the purchase.

 Dangerous coffee tables

That sounds a bit better than Housing Secretary Ben Carson. When it emerged that he ordered a new dining table and chairs for his office at a cost of $31,000, he declared that the choice of the furniture and the decisions were all taken by his wife — and besides the old table, he said, “was actually dangerous.”

Still closer to the president are the advocates for protecting U.S. steel companies by imposing 25% tariffs on imported steel. Leading the charge is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross who became a billionaire by investing over in bankrupt U.S. steel companies, merging them and selling them off.

It also appears that Ross only very recently divestedhimself of his business investment in a Chinese(!) shipping company called Diamond S. Shipping.

Of course, there are also the Trump children. The Trump organization has major deals in India, where White House Advisor Ivanka Trump made an official visit (exact purpose unknown) in January just before her brother Donald made a business trip there.

The Trumps generated huge and positive press in India, all the more so after both met individually with Prime Minister Modi. Business partners ran prominent advertisements offering dinner with Donald to people who would put down cash to buy apartments in Trump-licensed buildings.

Neither Ivanka Trump, nor her husband Jared Kushner, who is also an official White House advisor, have totally separated themselves from their business interests and, of course, neither has the president. Some of Kushner’s property dealings are now said to be part of the investigations being pursued by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

CREW vs. Trump

No single group has been more concerned to expose the conflicts of interest and ensure that there is justice than Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Government (CREW) whose board is chaired by president Obama’s former White House chief ethics officer Norman Eisen. CREW is suing Trump for violations of the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

At the same time, it has undertaken an exhaustive investigation into every instance in which government and special interests interacted with the president’s private businesses. The 2017 results at Trump Inc.: A Chronicle of Presidential Conflicts recorded more than 500 entries related to potential conflicts of interest.

So many of the activities of Trump, his family and his associates are secret — they may take place on the private planes that the government is paying for, or just on all the Trump-named golf courses that they have a penchant of visiting. All manner of campaigning and political events are now staged at Trump hotels, with expenses finding their way into the Trump family coffers.

The Republican Senators and Congressmen abuse their majority status by making sure that none of the oversight committees are pressing any of the cases, big or small. In fact, not a single Congressional Committee is looking into the abuse and utter mockery that is being made of official U.S. government ethics rules.

Intelligent to a fault: When AI screws up, you might still be to blame

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Artificial intelligence is already making significant inroads in taking over mundane, time-consuming tasks many humans would rather not do. The responsibilities and consequences of handing over work to AI vary greatly, though; some autonomous systems recommend music or movies; others recommend sentences in court. Even more advanced AI systems will increasingly control vehicles on crowded city streets, raising questions about safety — and about liability, when the inevitable accidents occur.

But philosophical arguments over AI’s existential threats to humanity are often far removed from the reality of actually building and using the technology in question. Deep learning, machine vision, natural language processing — despite all that has been written and discussed about these and other aspects of artificial intelligence, AI is still at a relatively early stage in its development. Pundits argue about the dangers of autonomous, self-aware robots run amok, even as computer scientists puzzle over how to write machine-vision algorithms that can tell the difference between an image of a turtle and that of a rifle.

Still, it is obviously important to think through how society will manage AI before it becomes a really pervasive force in modern life. Researchers, students and alumni at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government launched The Future Society for that very purpose in 2014, with the goal of stimulating international conversation about how to govern emerging technologies — especially AI. Scientific American spoke with Nicolas Economou, a senior advisor to The Future Society’s Artificial Intelligence Initiative and CEO of H5, a company that makes software to aid law firms with pretrial analysis of electronic documents, e-mails and databases — also known as electronic discovery. Economou talked about how humans might be considered liable (even if a machine is calling the shots), and about what history tells us regarding society’s obligation to make use of new technologies once they have been proved to deliver benefits such as improved safety.

What are your main concerns about AI?

I’m a political scientist by training as well as an entrepreneur who has advocated for the progressive adoption of AI in the legal system. So I’m a big believer that AI can be a force for good. But I think that it needs to be governed, because it does pose risks. People talk about risk in different ways, but I’m most interested in the risk that involves surrendering to machines decisions that affect our rights, liberty or freedom of opportunity. We make decisions not just based on rational thinking but also values, ethics, morality, empathy and a sense of right and wrong — all things that machines don’t inherently have. In addition, people can be held accountable for their decisions in ways that machine cannot.

Who should be held accountable for AI’s decisions?

That gets at the issue of competence. In entirely autonomous AI systems, you could say: the manufacturer. But most AI today is not autonomous; it relies on a human operator. If that person is not knowledgeable enough to use AI properly when making important decisions in, say, medicine, the law or financial services, should the person be held accountable for errors? Consider the [2016] case State v. Loomis, where a judge relied in part on a black-box, secret algorithm to assess whether a defendant was at risk for recidivism. The algorithm assessed [Loomis] to be a high risk but the methodology that the AI used to produce the assessment was not disclosed to the court or the defendant. The judge factored that recommendation in coming up with a six-year prison sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear that case, so it is now the law of the land. You can now be given a long prison sentence because, in part, of an AI algorithm’s assessment, without having much recourse. Was the judge competent to understand whether the algorithmic assessment was adequate and backed by sound empirical evidence? The answer is probably no, because judges and lawyers are not usually trained scientists.

How does one develop a transparent AI system that most people can understand?

It’s true that AI could have all the transparency in the world, but we as citizens couldn’t make heads or tails of what AI is doing. Maybe scientists can understand it, but to be empowered as citizens we need to know whether something is going to work in the real world. One model to consider is the automobile. The average person could watch a car being built from beginning to end and still not know whether the car is safe to drive. Instead, you trust that a car is safe because you consult the ratings provided by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which crashes cars every day to determine how safe they are. [Therefore], as a citizen I now have information that I can use to assess a very complicated sociotechnical system that involves technology and human intelligence. I have very simple metrics that tell me whether a car is safe. Whereas transparency into algorithms is helpful, knowing if they are effective in the real-world applications for which they are intended — often in the hands of human operators — is the key.

When people are informed about AI risks, does that shift accountability or liability to the person using the AI?

Liability is a huge legal question. With self-driving vehicles, for example, you can look at how much control the driver has over the car. If the driver has none, then you’d expect the manufacturer or the other companies involved in putting together the car to have more liability and responsibility. It gets more complicated when the driver has more control, and you might look at who made the decision that led to a crash. There are a couple of interesting questions related to liability. Sticking with cars as the example, let’s presume [hypothetically] that if everyone were being driven in an autonomous car, we’d reduce traffic-related deaths by 20,000 per year. If that were the case, then the public policy goal would be to encourage people to use autonomous cars. But at the same time people are scared of the technology. So you could imagine a couple of ways of supporting your policy goal in order to save those 20,000 lives. One might be to design autonomous vehicles to prioritize the safety of their occupants over pedestrians and other drivers. In other words, you’re safer inside the car than outside of it. This would encourage people to overcome their fear of autonomous cars, thus supporting your policy goal. But society would then be assigning higher value to some lives — those inside those vehicles — than to others.

Another way to encourage people to use self-driving cars is, essentially, to argue that it’s irresponsible to drive a conventional car if you know that an AI-driven vehicle is safer. There’s a case from the 1930s known as the T. J. Hooper case, in which two barges were lost in a storm in part because the company that owned the boats did not equip them with radios. The decision was, if manifestly effective new technology is developed, then it is imperative to use it as a precaution. Eventually, would an automobile driver be more liable if that person chooses to drive rather than getting into statistically safer self-driving cars?

How can public policy be developed for AI when the technology itself is still evolving and being defined?

I’m not sure it’s very helpful to define AI. We still don’t have a universally accepted definition of what intelligence is, so it would be hard to do that for artificial intelligence. The norms that govern AI use should be broad enough that they accept innovations from wherever they come. But they should be narrow enough to provide meaningful constraints in how it is used and how it affects people. An effective process would have four layers: You start with values. What do we want AI to do for us?; From there you go to ethical principles. How should AI go about doing its work? Then you can form public policy recommendations; and finally look at actual technical controls needed to implement that policy.

Forced sterilization programs in California once harmed thousands — particularly Latinas

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In 1942, 18-year-old Iris Lopez, a Mexican-American woman, started working at the Calship Yards in Los Angeles. Working on the home front building Victory Ships not only added to the war effort, but allowed Iris to support her family.

Iris’ participation in the World War II effort made her part of a celebrated time in U.S. history, when economic opportunities opened up for women and youth of color.

However, before joining the shipyards, Iris was entangled in another lesser-known history. At the age of 16, Iris was committed to a California institution and sterilized.

Iris wasn’t alone. In the first half of the 20th century, approximately 60,000 people were sterilized under U.S. eugenics programs. Eugenic laws in 32 states empowered government officials in public health, social work and state institutions to render people they deemed “unfit” infertile.

California led the nation in this effort at social engineering. Between the early 1920s and the 1950s, Iris and approximately 20,000 other people — one-third of the national total — were sterilized in California state institutions for the mentally ill and disabled.

To better understand the nation’s most aggressive eugenic sterilization program, our research team tracked sterilization requests of over 20,000 people. We wanted to know about the role patients’ race played in sterilization decisions. What made young women like Iris a target? How and why was she cast as “unfit”?

Racial biases affected Iris’ life and the lives of thousands of others. Their experiences serve as an important historical backdrop to ongoing issues in the U.S. today.

‘Race science’ and sterilization

Eugenics was seen as a “science” in the early 20th century, and its ideas remained popular into the midcentury. Advocating for the “science of better breeding,” eugenicists endorsed sterilizing people considered unfit to reproduce.

Under California’s eugenic law, first passed in 1909, anyone committed to a state institution could be sterilized. Many of those committed were sent by a court order. Others were committed by family members who wouldn’t or couldn’t care for them. Once a patient was admitted, medical superintendents held the legal power to recommend and authorize the operation.

Eugenics policies were shaped by entrenched hierarchies of race, class, gender and ability. Working-class youth, especially youth of color, were targeted for commitment and sterilization during the peak years.

Eugenic thinking was also used to support racist policies like anti-miscegenation laws and the Immigration Act of 1924. Anti-Mexican sentiment in particular was spurred by theories that Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans were at a “lower racial level.” Contemporary politicians and state officials often described Mexicans as inherently less intelligent, immoral, “hyperfertile” and criminally inclined.

These stereotypes appeared in reports written by state authorities. Mexicans and their descendants were described as “immigrants of an undesirable type.” If their existence in the U.S. was undesirable, then so was their reproduction.

Targeting Latinos and Latinas

In a study published March 22, we looked at the California program’s disproportionately high impact on the Latino population, primarily women and men from Mexico.

Previous research examined racial bias in California’s sterilization program. But the extent of anti-Latino bias hadn’t been formally quantified. Latinas like Iris were certainly targeted for sterilization, but to what extent?

We used sterilization forms found by historian Alexandra Minna Stern to build a data set on over 20,000 people recommended for sterilization in California between 1919 and 1953. The racial categories used to classify Californians of Mexican origin were in flux during this time period, so we used Spanish surname criteria as a proxy.

In 1950, 88 percent of Californians with a Spanish surname were of Mexican descent.

We compared patients recommended for sterilization to the patient population of each institution, which we reconstructed with data from census forms. We then measured sterilization rates between Latino and non-Latino patients, adjusting for age. (Both Latino patients and people recommended for sterilization tended to be younger.)

Latino men were 23 percent more likely to be sterilized than non-Latino men. The difference was even greater among women, with Latinas sterilized at 59 percent higher rates than non-Latinas.

In their records, doctors repeatedly cast young Latino men as biologically prone to crime, while young Latinas like Iris were described as “sex delinquents.” Their sterilizations were described as necessary to protect the state from increased crime, poverty and racial degeneracy.

Lasting impact

The legacy of these infringements on reproductive rights is still visible today.

Recent incidents in Tennessee, California and Oklahoma echo this past. In each case, people in contact with the criminal justice system — often people of color — were sterilized under coercive pressure from the state.

Contemporary justifications for this practice rely on core tenets of eugenics. Proponents argued that preventing the reproduction of some will help solve larger social issues like poverty. The doctor who sterilized incarcerated women in California without proper consent stated that doing so would save the state money in future welfare costs for “unwanted children.”

The eugenics era also echoes in the broader cultural and political landscape of the U.S. today. Latina women’s reproduction is repeatedly portrayed as a threat to the nation. Latina immigrants in particular are seen as hyperfertile. Their children are sometimes derogatorily referred to as “anchor babies” and described as a burden on the nation.

Reproductive justice

This history — and other histories of sterilization abuse of black, Native, Mexican immigrant and Puerto Rican women — inform the modern reproductive justice movement.

This movement, as defined by the advocacy group SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective is committed to “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”

As the fight for contemporary reproductive justice continues, it’s important to acknowledge the wrongs of the past. The nonprofit California Latinas for Reproductive Justice has co-sponsored

a forthcoming bill that offers financial redress to living survivors of California’s eugenic sterilization program. “As reproductive justice advocates, we recognize the insidious impact state-sponsored policies have on the dignity and rights of poor women of color who are often stripped of their ability to form the families they want,” CLRJ Executive Director Laura Jiménez said in a statement.

This bill was introduced on Feb. 15 by Sen. Nancy Skinner, along with Assemblymember Monique Limón and Sen. Jim Beall.

If this bill passes, California would follow in the footsteps of North Carolina and Virginia, which began sterilization redress programs in 2013 and 2015.

In the words of Jimenez, “This bill is a step in the right direction in remedying the violence inflicted on these survivors.” In our view, financial compensation will never make up for the violation of survivors’ fundamental human rights. But it’s an opportunity to reaffirm the dignity and self-determination of all people.

Nicole L. Novak, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, University of Iowa and Natalie Lira, Assistant Professor of Latina/Latino Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

How to talk to kids about violence, crime, and war

(Credit: AP Photo/Kristen Wyatt)

Mass shootings. Nuclear weapons. A robbery at your local corner store. Where do you start when you have to explain this stuff to your kids? Today, issues involving violence, crime, and war — whether they’re in popular shows, video games, books, or news coverage — reach even the youngest kids. And with wall-to-wall TV coverage, constant social media updates, streaming services that broadcast age-inappropriate content any time of day, plus the internet itself, you have to have a plan for discussing even the worst of the worst in a way that’s age-appropriate, that helps kids understand, and that doesn’t cause more harm.

We know that heavy exposure to media violence, such as first-person-shooter games and cinematic explosions, can negatively affect kids. We also know that kids report feeling afraid, angry, or depressed about the news. But in recent years — prompted by increased terrorist attacks around the world — researchers are exploring the effects of “remote exposure” to real violent events. Remote exposure is when kids understand that something traumatic has occurred but haven’t experienced it directly. Unsurprisingly, its lingering effects include feelings of grief, trauma, fear, and other mental health concerns. Kids can be deeply affected by images of war-torn countries, bloodied refugee children, and mass graves and need additional help processing them.

These tips and conversation starters can help you talk to kids of different ages about the toughest topics. Get more advice about explaining distressing news, difficult subjects, and sexual harassment.

Tips for Talking to Kids About Violence, Crime, and War

Age 2–6

Avoid discussion of or exposure to really horrific news. As much as possible, wait until after young kids are in bed to watch the news, and save conversations about heinous subjects, such as Charles Manson or the latest Dateline murder mystery, for child-free moments.

Don’t bring it up — unless you think they know something. There’s no reason to bring up school shootings, terrorist attacks, threats of war, or the like with young kids. If you suspect they do know something — for example, you hear them talking about it during their play — you can ask them about it and see if it’s something that needs further discussion.

Affirm your family’s safety. In the case of scary news, such as wilderness fires — even if you’re a little rattled — it’s important for young children to know they’re safe, their family is OK, and someone is taking care of the problem. Hugs and snuggles do wonders, too.

Simplify complex ideas — and move on. Abstract ideas can complicate matters and may even scare young kids. Use concrete terms and familiar references your kid will understand, and try not to over explain. About a mass shooting, say, “A man who was very, very confused and angry took a gun and shot people. The police are working to make sure people are safe.”

Distinguish between “real” and “pretend.” Young kids have rich fantasy lives and mix up make-believe and reality. They may ask you if a scary story is really true. Be honest, but don’t belabor a point.

Age 7–12

Wait and see. Unless they ask, you know they were exposed, or you think they know something, don’t feel you have to discuss horrific news or explain heinous crimes such as rape, beheadings, dismemberment, and drug-fueled rampages (especially to kids in the younger end of this age range or who are sensitive). If kids show signs of distress by acting anxious, regressing, or exhibiting some other tip-off that something’s amiss — for example, they’re reluctant to go to school after the latest school shooting — approach them and invite them to talk.

Talk … and listen. Older tweens hear about issues related to violence, crime, and war on social media, YouTube, TV, and movies — not always reliable sources for facts. Try to get a sense of what your kids know before launching into an explanation, since you don’t want to distress them further or open up a whole new can of worms. Feel them out by asking, “What did you hear?,” “Where did you hear that?,” “What do you know about it?,” and “What do you think about it?”

Be honest and direct. Tweens can find out what they want to know from different sources, and you want the truth to come from you. It’s not necessary to go into extreme detail. About a family who held their kids hostage, you can say, “The kids suffered many different kinds of abuse. But they were rescued, and their parents were arrested. Often in cases of child abuse, the parents are very sick with mental illness or other issues.”

Discuss sensationalism in news and media. Talk to kids about how media outlets — including news agencies, TV shows, movie companies, and game developers — use extreme subjects to get attention, whether it’s in the form of clicks, viewership, or ticket sales. Share the old newsroom adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” and talk about why we may be drawn to outrageous human behavior. This helps kids think critically about the relative importance of issues, the words and images used to attract an audience, and their own media choices.

Explain context and offer perspective. With your life experience, knowledge, and wisdom, you can explain the various circumstances around certain issues. This is the process that gives things meaning and clarity — and it’s important for kids to be able to make sense of negative and unpleasant things, too. To work through the powerful emotions that images of beatings, blood, and human suffering can bring up, kids have to learn to distance themselves from horrific events, understand the underlying causes, and perhaps get involved in meaningful ways to make things better, such as diplomacy and education.

Teens

Assume they know — but don’t assume their knowledge is complete. Teens get a lot of their information from online sources such as social media or YouTube, which can be misleading or flawed. Still, it’s important to respect their knowledge and ability to learn things independently because that’s a process you want to foster. You’ll still need to fill in the blanks, offer some history, and share what you know.

Get them talking. High school years can be tough, as teens start rejecting their parents’ ideas, becoming concerned with what friends think, and developing their own voice. This separation can be especially difficult when traumatic events occur or when you know they’re interacting with mature media. To continue the kinds of conversations you had when they were younger — and stay connected and relevant — resist the urge to lecture and instead ask their opinions about things. Encourage them to support their ideas with legitimate news sources, not just repeat what others have said. Say, “We may not always agree, but I’m curious to hear what you have to say.”

Accept their sources, but expand their horizons. Trending topics capture the headlines, but teens are just as likely to run across provocative subjects, stories, and characters on TV and in movies — such as the meth-making chemistry teacher of Breaking Bad — that get users clicking, viewing, and sharing. Give teens the tools to view information critically, whether they’re scrolling through Snapchat or Netflix. Teach them to question what they see by asking themselves, “Who made this?,” “Why did they make it?,” “What’s its point of view?,” “What information isn’t included?,” and “What would my friends think of this?” These media-literacy questions help teens evaluate information, think beyond the clickbait headline or funny meme, and look more deeply into a topic.

Offer hope. Mood swings are the hallmark of the teen years. But exposure to sad and depressing news, as well as to issues like violence, crime, and war, through social media, video games, and movies can make teens world-weary. Don’t be a Pollyanna (teens will see through that), but talk about meaningful ways to contribute something to the world — anything that benefits the greater good. The idea that you can make a positive impact restores the soul and boosts the resilience they’ll need their whole lives.

National flood insurance is underwater because of outdated science

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The National Flood Insurance Program, which covers some 5.2 million property holders in the U.S., was slated to get a badly needed overhaul today. The Senate’s task — which includes hammering out reforms that address the changing math of flood risk — has already been pushed back three times since November. Yet lawmakers still have not compromised on how to fix a broken system, so a reauthorization of the NFIP will almost certainly be punted again, to July 31.

The NFIP, which is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is struggling because it is trapped in a downward spiral of ballooning claims without the resources to cover them. The program has been unable to sustain itself since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but last fall, after a hurricane season that was unprecedented in both severity and frequency, administrators announced the program had maxed out the $30.4 billion it had been authorized to borrow from the U.S. Treasury. Although Pres. Donald Trump signed a disaster relief bill that forgave $16 billion of its debt, the NFIP continues to be steamrolled by extreme weather events, including the recent series of back-to-back nor’easters that have clobbered the Northeast.

In its current form, the NFIP is “ill-suited to deal with the challenges we face today and the flood risks we face five, 10, 50 years from now,” says Robert Moore, a senior policy analyst at the National Resources Defense Council. Pretty much everyone agrees this is true, regardless of party politics. In fact, SmarterSafer, a collation made up of insurance companies, progressive environmental organizations and right-leaning think tanks, is one group advocating for sweeping change (pdf).

Among the major reasons why the NFIP cannot keep up with the growing number of claims is that it assesses risk based on outdated science. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy it became widely known FEMA was demarcating flood zones using data from the 1980s, which failed to predict the inundations brought by the 2012 storm. Meanwhile development continues to bloom in increasingly vulnerable floodplains, creating more properties that the NFIP pays to repair — sometimes over and over again.

Since the chaos of Sandy, a growing number of researchers have analyzed flood risk on a more comprehensive and granular level. Their results have exposed an even more troubling gap between FEMA guidelines and recent estimations of risk.

One study, published in Environmental Research Letters last month (pdf), found the number of Americans exposed to serious flooding is about three times higher than previous estimates. That is partly because inland flooding is not as well considered as coastal flooding. According to the paper, maps delineating riverine and rainfall-driven flooding “are only partially complete nationwide, and no comprehensive estimate of U.S. population exposure currently exists. Where they are available, FEMA flood maps are of varying age and levels of quality.” They also have “notably poor coverage” of streams and creeks.

According to FEMA’s calculations, only 13 million people live within a 100-year-flood zone (that is, a place that has a one-in-100 chance in a given year of being hit with the worst flood in a century). But by doing a comprehensive evaluation of floods driven by rivers and rainfall and creating higher-resolution maps, the authors reported nearly 41 million people in the U.S. live within a 100-year-flood zone. In another example of glaring discrepancies, a 2016 study by Robert Criss of Washington University in Saint Louis found current estimates of 100-year-flood elevations could be off by as much as 6.6 feetin parts of the Upper Mississippi River. Numbers like these imply that many more Americans should be buying flood insurance, which would bring in more premium dollars to the program.

Sea-level rise, coupled with other factors such as shifts in wave action and storm surges, is changing those numbers, too. By 2050, according to a recent article in Nature, “some places can expect to see what is currently considered a 100-year-flood event recur as often as every one or five years on average.” FEMA mostly uses models based on historical storm data, which, of course, do not account for these predicted effects of climate change. “One of the biggest problems is that no flood map produced by FEMA contemplates a future that looks any different from the past,” Moore says. FEMA, for its part, is self-aware about its woeful maps; the NFIP’s chief, Roy Wright, recently told the Miami Heraldthat allFloridians should have flood insurance and “quit focusing just on the lines.”

For a while some legislators suggested they were wary of changing flood-insurance standards because there was not enough data to draw on. Now, “the science is already much, much further ahead than what FEMA is working with,” says Thomas Wahl, a coastal engineer and oceanographer at the University of Central Florida. Wahl published a paper in Nature Communications in 2015 on the effects of compound flooding, which is when increased river discharge, precipitation and storm surges happen at the same time. This helped drown communities near Houston during Hurricane Harvey.

From Wahl’s perspective, “the biggest gap is the fact that FEMA’s maps do not connect inland flooding and coastal flooding,” he says. “FEMA creates a flat map from the river side of things and a flat map from the storm surge side of things, and they just overlay them, which assumes that these two things are completely independent. But most tropical storms bring a lot of rain and storm surges. We understand why these events happen simultaneously, but what we haven’t done is include that information into risk assessments,” Wahl notes. Some of that backlog is bureaucratic: FEMA only uses officially approved models, he says, and the processes of approval can slow down the inclusion of newer, better data. Without a better understanding of the true risks, it is trickier for lawmakers to agree on solutions for how to make the NFIP financially stable.

As a growing body of research illuminates the current and future scope of flooding, adaptation strategies are beginning to look more attractive than the traditional (and bankrupting) cycle of rebuilding. In addition to making building codes stronger, installing hard flood barriers and funding projects such as raising homes on pilings, the once-disparaged concept of “buyouts” is slowly being embraced. Instead of repairing certain homes that flood over and over again, the government “buys out” your property at its pre-storm value using NFIP money, then permanently returns the land to nature. This more radical option gets people out of harm’s way and can be cheaper than repeatedly paying to repair the same property. The NRDC, for one, is advocating for a better pathway to buyouts as part of NFIP reform.

Uprooting from home is an emotionally and financially complex decision, but people who are repeatedly flooded seem to be growing more open-minded to relocation strategies. Take Harris County, Texas, for example. Prior to Hurricane Harvey, “the county had purchased 3,000 flood-prone homes over 20 years” in buyout programs, Moore says. “After Harvey hit they had 3,800 new application requests for home buyouts in just eight weeks.” The governor of Texas requested $1.5 billion from the federal government for buyouts alone.

But FEMA’s buyout process can take years to complete. In the aftermath of a disaster, homeowners often face an onerous choice: Hold off on repairs and live in limbo while awaiting a verdict on whether they qualify for a buyout or start investing in reconstruction so they have a place to live in the interim. The slowness and opacity of the buyout process disincentivizes many eligible homeowners from participating.

Trump plan to execute “big drug pushers” will do nothing to stop opioid overdoses

Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

On March 19, President Donald Trump unveiled his administration’s plan to stem the opioid overdose crisis in the United States, which has claimed some 350,000 lives since 2000. Among other measures, it proposes severe punishment for people involved in the illegal drug trade, including longer minimum jail sentences and potentially the death penalty.

This is an extreme version of what’s actually an old approach to combating substance use: Attacking the supply side of the drug trade.

From banning Chinese immigration in 1882 — supposedly on the grounds that Chinese people promoted vices like smoking opium — to the mass incarceration that followed the 1980s-era crack panic, the United States has long sought to reduce drug consumption by clamping down on drug sources. It has never killed citizens for trafficking drugs, though.

Worldwide, 33 countries have laws prescribing the death penalty for drug offenses, according to Harm Reduction International, a nonprofit group that advocates to end this practice.

Ample evidence shows that harshly punishing drug trafficking does not end drug consumption. Instead, my research suggests, it creates the spillover effect of criminalizing everyone associated with drugs — including drug users and, in particular, people from the most marginalized sectors of society.

Where is the death penalty used?

International human rights law mandates that the death penalty only be imposed for the “most serious crimes.” And many of the countries that allow capital punishment for drug crimes rarely apply this punishment in practice. A few — including Myanmar and Laos — never do.

Currently, seven countries regularly execute their citizens for drug offenses, according to Harm Reduction International: China, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.

Between January 2015 and December 2017, at least 1,320 people worldwide were executed after being convicted of drug-related offenses, many of them for nonviolent crimes like street dealing.

It’s noteworthy, I think, that all of these countries are either authoritarian regimes or democracies where civil liberties are seriously threatened. Among the 33 countries that punish drug offenses with death, only three — India, South Korea and Taiwan — are considered democratic by the watchdog group Freedom House.

China and Iran: High drug use despite death penalty

Typically, governments that kill their citizens for drug offenses don’t publish good statistics on drug use. That makes it difficult to document the effects of these policies.

Most of the information I use in this analysis comes from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and from reports by international human rights organizations. Taken together, this data shows little correlation between harsh criminal sanctions and rates of drug use.

Iran has persistently high opioid consumption despite the government’s relentless persecution of drugs. In 2017, Iran accounted for 242 of 280 people executed worldwide based on death penalty laws for drug crimes.

Over 2 percent of Iranians report having used heroin or other opioids in the past year. That’s higher than the global average, which is just 0.73 percent.

In China, researchers from Amnesty International estimate that least 13 percent of all executions between 2011 and 2016 were related to drug offenses. Nonetheless, global statistics suggest that the country has one of the world’s largest population of injection drug users.

Singapore and Philippines: No evidence of progress

Singapore, which executed three people for drug offenses in 2017, claims that the death penalty has worked to reduce drug use. But this position is difficult to verify.

Government data there indicates that just 0.3 percent of Singaporeans have taken drugs in the past year — which is a low consumption rate. But the most recent available estimates also show that opioid use in Singapore is now rising. If the death penalty actually deterred drug use, consumption rates should have either decreased or remained steady.

Then there’s Philippines, home to the world’s deadliest war on drugs. Since Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016, government forces have killed an estimated 12,000 Filipinos accused of using and selling drugs. Most of them were poor. None were given due process or allowed to defend themselves in court.

President Trump has praised Duterte, saying “he has done an unbelievable job on the drug trade.”

Little suggests that this bloody campaign is stemming drug consumption in the Philippines. In 2012, years before Duterte came to power, the country already had generally low rates of drug use, according to government data. And between 2008 and 2012, consumption of marijuana — the most widely used drug in the Philippines — decreased 17 percent.

These numbers call into question Duterte’s claim that “drug abuse” in the Philippines is a symptom of “virulent social disease.”

Minimum sentences and mass incarceration

Globally, more countries are introducing reforms to treat drug use as a public health problem rather than a criminal matter. At the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs, many nations voiced strong opposition to punishing drug crimes with execution.

The Trump administration has stipulated that the death penalty would only be used against “big drug pushers.” But, historically, United States drug laws have primarily punished the lowest-level people in the drug trade.

In 1986, the Reagan administration enacted mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. Under these laws, judges were required to give at least five years of jail time to people convicted of possessing just 5 grams of crack, for example — about 10 or 20 doses. By law, the judges could not account for mitigating factors such as addiction, mental health or poverty.

As a result, minimum sentencing guidelines have primarily swept up not violent kingpins but street dealers, mules, couriers and users who have occasionally sell drugs to maintain their own habit.

In 2016, 50 percent of federal inmates were drug offenders. Three-quarters of them were serving mandatory minimum sentences. Roughly half of those people had no or little criminal history prior to their drug convictions.

Mandatory minimums helped the U.S. prisoner population explode. Between 1986 and 2000, the number of people in jail almost quadrupled, though incarceration rates have somewhat slowed since the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act.

None of these policies led drug use in the United States to drop. Cocaine consumption, for example, decreased in the late 1980s, peaked in the 1990s and declined again starting in 2006. Meanwhile, heroin use has risen dramatically.

The real reasons for these trends remain under-researched but likely include demographic, social and economic factors, as well as changing perceptions of drugs.

Punitive drug policies have not helped countries deal with drugs. They’ve just created lasting social harms, both in the U.S. and worldwide.

Angélica Durán-Martínez, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Could the fossil fuel industry start drilling for oil in your local park?

(Credit: Daniella Beccaria/seattlepi.com via AP, File)

After eight years on the Kalamazoo County Parks Commission board, board member and local activist Matt Lechel had never encountered an issue like the one that confronted the board last January: a proposal to drill for oil in one of Kalamazoo’s community parks.

The proposal came from a representative of Wolverine Gas and Oil, a Michigan corporation that had distinguished itself in 2004 with the largest continental U.S. oil discovery in 30 years. The representative provided handouts for his presentation, which proposed to lease land within Kalamazoo’s Scott’s Mill County Park for the purpose of drilling for oil.

 Lechel was flabbergasted that the parks commission was hearing the proposal at all. In 2010, the area suffered the biggest inland oil spill in U.S. history when Enbridge Line 6B burst and flooded the Kalamazoo River Valley. The scars of this disaster run deep in the community, leaving great sensitivity around the intersection of public land and the oil industry. Plus, the noise and upheaval of oil drilling would hurt the public’s enjoyment of the space. How, he asked, did an oil rig fit in with that?

At least half the board disagreed with him, resulting in a tie vote on the measure. But the following month, the Wolverine representative was back with the same presentation, the same handout and a slightly modified proposal. This time, the company wasn’t asking for drilling rights to the park. It just wanted to excavate, using seismic testing, to see if there was oil there.

Lechel wondered what was so important about this small parcel of land that Wolverine wouldn’t take their initial no for an answer. Why were board members who took public pro-environment stances arguing in favor of the measure?

Most of the board saw the proposal as an economic boon. Across the country, similar deals have brought millions of dollars to state and county governments. Along with the five-county Huron-Clinton Metroparks system in southeastern Michigan, Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, North Dakota’s Mountrail County and Ohio’s Medina and Geauga counties fund local infrastructure by leasing public land.

According to Jim Gipson of Chesapeake Energy Corporation, a petroleum and natural gas exploration and production company headquartered in Oklahoma City, “One of our larger royalty owners is the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.” This despite the 600 percent increase in earthquake tremors over the past 10 years of heavy hydraulic fracturing throughout the state.

Back in Kalamazoo, the board voted 7-2 in favor of moving forward with Wolverine’s proposal. In response, Lechel turned to social media, alerting the public of the potential for drilling in their local park.

The backlash was so great that a public hearing was held a few days later. To start, Kalamazoo County Commissioner Stephanie Moore provided a statement that the parks commission had no authority to grant a lease to Wolverine and that the county had no intention of considering it. Despite the assurance that there would be no drilling in the park, emotions ran high during the hearing. For an hour and a half, citizens stood up to speak passionately against giving the oil industry access to public space.

The parks commission objected to the meeting with Wolverine being publicized. They said Lechel had blown the issue out of proportion, and that they had approved it “in concept only.” By making it public, he had compromised their brand. Lechel maintains that this was not his intention; he simply wanted the elected officials on the board to be accountable for their positions on the issue.

One aspect of accountability is the standing deal between the oil industry and Michigan’s administration of public land, known as the Michigan Nature Trust Fund. Michigan is the first, and maybe the only state in the country that receives money from state land oil excavation to protect national resources. As Melissa Molenda, marketing director of the Nature Conservancy’s Michigan chapter, proudly explains, “That’s how we’ve protected so many natural lands in Michigan.”

Lechel says that when asked about the downsides of drilling technology, the Wolverine rep assured the Kalamazoo Parks Commission that there were “virtually none.” Richard Bowman, the director of government relations of the Nature Conservancy’s Michigan chapter, agrees, noting, “The fact is that the extraction of oil and gas from under the surface of the earth, for the most part, has no real or very limited impact on environmental function.”

His statement contradicts evidence that mineral extraction is a hazard to public health, let alone public enjoyment. Faced with a similar proposal in 2012, Colorado’s Boulder County Parks Department released a report documenting the impact observed in oil drilling operations existing on public spaces since the late 1990s. Along with short-term impacts such as road damage, noise, dust and impaired aesthetics of the public space, drilling operations compromised the area’s soil structure, causing drainage problems and leaving denuded swaths that were soon covered by noxious weeds, as well as disrupting the habitat of prairie dogs. Furthermore, the parks department reported that once operations ceased, the oil companies often failed to follow up on their obligatory reclamation efforts.

The fate of local parks seems to depend on the social inclination of local parks boards. Neil Munger, director of Ohio’s Wood County Park District, denied an excavation lease proposal from Reserve Energy Exploration in 2014, noting that his board didn’t even debate the issue. “As soon as we understood was the exploration was for, we didn’t have to go any deeper,” he said. “It’s not just the danger of any type of contamination, it’s also the disturbance to the area that would happen no matter what. We want to leave the natural area natural.”

It would seem that the same instinct led the Kalamazoo County Commission to reject the Wolverine proposal out of hand. “We want to maintain a healthy, strong environment for everybody,” said Moore, the Kalamazoo County Commissioner. “In my opinion, oil drilling is not how we maintain that high standard of quality of life. That’s always going to be my position. There were conversations [that] this could generate some revenue for the county parks. I don’t buy that argument — not all money is good money, and it doesn’t maintain the highest quality of life for all our residents.”

Lechel says many individuals at the public hearing said that they were approached by Wolverine for similar leases on their private property. What started as generous offers, they said, later became manipulative, e.g., “We’re going to get the lease anyway. If you don’t give us access now, you’ll have to settle for what you can get.” Some said they were harassed so persistently that they threatened to call the police. Others said they were awakened by a seismic testing truck running across the street from their property. Without mapping any actual data, the truck was firing explosives into the ground 100 feet away from one house, creating defining reverberations so violent it rattled the windows.

“They said to the parks commission, ‘This is the first time Wolverine approached you? They are definitely coming back. They are ruthless.'”

Matt Lechel agrees it’s unlikely that Wolverine has given up on its interest in Kalamazoo drilling. At the same time, he is encouraged by the response from the community; it was worth whatever contempt he might have earned from his fellow parks commission volunteers.

“At the local level, Kalamazoo is going to definitely resist,” he said. “Some have said we could use this as an opportunity to think about policies for clean energy. It would be a fight, but we could at least get it out there.”

The gay appeal of superheroes

Superboy #78 (Credit: Superman family TM & © DC Comics)

Excerpted from: “Sense of Wonder: My Life in Comic Fandom – The Whole Story,” by Bill Schelly. Published by North Atlantic Books (April 17, 2018); reprinted with permission. 

Empowerment fantasies are the heart and soul of the appeal superheroes have for readers of any sexual orientation. The desire to escape the humdrum world around us motivates all of us to enter into a world where people have powers and abilities “far beyond those of mortal men” and where things can transpire that don’t happen in everyday life. Also driving us is the human race’s universal need for stories.

There are, however, ways in which the appeal of superheroes is different for a homosexual male than for a heterosexual male. My straight friends like comics featuring what collectors call “good girl art,” that is, comics that feature the female form prominently and use sexual titillation to at least partly generate sales.

For gay comics fans like myself, virtually all superhero comics feature “good guy art.” Obviously straight guys notice the prominence of the male physique in comics; they just don’t experience it as anything sexual. For gay comic book readers, superhero comics had always presented that extra frisson of the male body drawn as if covered but delineated in ways to reveal the hero’s every rippling muscle.

Confession time: I found myself paying close attention to the way Spider-Man’s skintight costume fit, especially in the crotch. A special page in the Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 detailing the features of Spidey’s costume was sexy as hell. Unlike the way other artists drew the male hero in tights, Ditko’s handling of Spidey actually included a bulge where Peter Parker’s male organs nestled. Yes, Peter Parker had a dick, and he had balls. (His bare feet and bare midriff shown as he was about to strip added to the hotness.)

Beyond the semi erotic male imagery, it’s not much of a stretch to point out how the perennial superhero trope of the secret identity could be meaningful in a different way for the gay reader. Should he tell his friends his secret? What if, in the case of Peter Parker’s frail Aunt May, it would be too much of a shock? His enemies might use that knowledge to destroy him or his loved ones.

Then there’s the wearing of a colorful costume. I used to fantasize about how cool it would be to wear such a getup, which was beyond the pale in the real world for anyone but a ballet dancer or a circus performer. This wasn’t true of me, but I can imagine other gay readers being attracted to the wearing of a superhero costume almost as a form of drag. Wasn’t that what “camp” was more or less about? One can imagine the young, hot members of DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes voguing at a meeting in the Legion Clubhouse, each one playfully displaying his or her outfit before the others.

I do wonder what straight readers made of Jimmy Olsen’s adventures in female impersonation in such stories as “Miss Jimmy Olsen!” (Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #44, 1960), where Jimmy disguises himself as a woman to get close to a gangster and find out where he’s hiding stolen gems. I can only imagine what a boy experiencing what is now called “gender dysphoria” felt while reading “Claire Kent, Alias Super- Sister!” (Superboy #78, 1960), a story where Superboy dreams an alien has changed him into a girl. That tale is overdue for reprinting.

 

How exercise can help tackle the opioid crisis

(Credit: Getty/BraunS)

U.S. President Donald Trump is calling for high-intensity drug traffickers to face the death penalty in the United States as part of a new plan to tackle the opioid epidemic.

The misuse of opioids has reached crisis levels across North America. Every day in 2016, 116 Americans died from opioid-related drug overdoses. And almost 1,500 Canadians died from such overdoses during the first half of 2017.

Meanwhile, health-care providers continue to prescribe opioids — to try to help people suffering from chronic pain.

Prescription of low-dose opioids over the medium-term may be a useful pain management strategy. Nearly one in five adults live with chronic pain in Canada, and the rates are higher among older adults and women. However, uncertainties about the long-term effectiveness of opioids, along with addiction, tolerance and dependency risks, mean that other pain management strategies are urgently needed.

Exercise is one such strategy. Exercise is recommended as an effective non-opioid strategy for non-cancer pain such as fibromyalgia and chronic low back pain. Yet most adults living with chronic pain do not exercise. Or they exercise very little.

As former collegiate athletes, we have experienced chronic pain ourselves. Now, as researchers, we study the psychological factors that may help people with chronic pain exercise daily.

We have found three factors — acceptance of pain, resiliency and the confidence to cope — boost exercise participation for those living with chronic pain.

Exercise reduces pain intensity

Pain is considered to be chronic when lasting beyond an expected time for tissue healing, usually three to six months or longer, and it is not due to cancer.

Chronic pain arises from various causes such as an underlying chronic disease like arthritis, an injury or a hypersensitive nervous system. The origin of the pain can also be unknown.

There are no specific exercise recommendations for adults living with chronic pain. However, we know that 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity exercise each week provides health benefits to all people.

You know that exercise is of moderate intensity if you can talk but not sing. At vigorous intensity, most people can say only a few words at a time because they are breathing too hard.

For individuals with chronic pain who are just beginning to exercise, low- intensity activity can also be helpful.

Overall, exercise helps people better manage chronic pain and its impacts. For example, exercise reduces how intense pain feels. Exercise also reduces disability, fatigue, depression and anxiety, all of which are commonly experienced by those living with pain. Those who exercise are better able to do physical tasks and have better overall fitness levels.

Despite the many benefits, participating in exercise is challenging. Researchers have found that women with chronic widespread pain participated in only nine minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity exercise on weekdays and 12 minutes on weekends.

Men with chronic widespread pain did not exercise much more. They participated in 20 minutes on weekdays and 17 minutes on weekends.

Acceptance of pain is key

Early in our own research, we expected pain intensity to be the main barrier to participation in exercise. However, research shows this is typically not true.

In an early key study, researchers found that individuals’ pain intensity was no higher on non-exercise days compared to exercise days. They suggested that study participants’ pain may not have been intense enough to interfere with exercise.

To examine this possibility, we studied adults who were having a flare in their usual pain from arthritis. Even in this situation, pain intensity was not associated with exercise participation.

 

How people think about their pain seems to be much more important than the intensity of the pain.

One example is acceptance of pain. Acceptance happens when people give up the struggle to completely control their pain and are willing to live a satisfying life by engaging in valued activities, like exercise.

We found that adults reporting greater acceptance of their chronic pain from arthritis also participated in higher levels of moderate to vigorous intensity exercise compared to those with lower acceptance.

In fact, individuals with higher acceptance exercised for over 200 minutes in a week — well above the health-promoting duration of 150 minutes each week.

Resiliency and confidence

Recently, we also examined resiliency and how it related to whether people with chronic pain exercised or not.

Resiliency is an individual’s ability to adapt well to difficult situations and sources of stress, such as a health challenge like chronic pain.

In preliminary work with one of our graduate students, Miranda Cary, we found that people who are more resilient exercised more at moderate to vigorous intensities. They also had fewer symptoms of depression and less anxiety about their pain.

Another psychological factor important for exercise participation is the confidence to cope with pain and related barriers, like fatigue and stiffness.

We have found that the more confidence individuals have that they can use strategies to cope, the higher their exercise levels.

More confident individuals also persist longer and harder in using coping strategies when faced with challenging barriers compared to less confident individuals.

Mindfulness as a strategy

How can these psychological factors (pain acceptance, resiliency, confidence to cope) be improved among individuals living with chronic pain?

Working with a registered psychologist who has expertise in acceptance and commitment therapy and/or resiliency is a good starting point.

Practising mindfulness, or being present in the moment, may also be helpful. Many mindfulness apps are available for use on smart phones and tablets.

Building confidence to cope with pain and related barriers takes planning and practice. A good starting point to identify effective strategies is to use the 4 P’s of Pain Management Tool developed by Dr. Susan Tupper at the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

The 4 P’s include the strategies of: Physical (e.g. acupuncture, ice/heat), psychological (e.g., mindfulness, relaxation), pharmacological (e.g. non-steroidal anti-inflammatories) and prevention (e.g. activity pacing).

Other strategies can be identified via brainstorming with others who have chronic pain, as well as health-care and exercise providers, and using online search engines. Once people try using strategies, and figure out which ones work, this builds their confidence and exercise levels.

Ultimately, exercise helps individuals better manage their chronic pain. However, exercising is not as easy as “just do it.” Psychological strengths must be nurtured within individuals to help them start and stick with exercise.

Nancy Gyurcsik, Professor of Exercise Psychology, University of Saskatchewan and Danielle Brittain, Associate Professor at Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Ted Nugent calls Parkland activists “mushy-brained children,” internet reacts

Ted Nugent (Credit: AP/Morry Gash)

Ted Nugent, who sits on the board of the National Rifle Association, is the latest conservative to launch insults at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School teens who are fighting for stricter gun control laws.

Indeed, on “The Joe Pags Show,” a conservative radio show, he called them “liars” and said they have “no soul.”

“All you have to do now is not only feel sorry for the liars, but you have to go against them and pray to God that the lies can be crushed and the liars can be silenced so that real measures can be put into place to actually save children’s lives,” Nugent said. “These poor children, I’m afraid to say this and it hurts me to say this, but the evidence is irrefutable, they have no soul.”

“The lies from the left, the lies from these poor, mushy-brained children who have been fed lies and parrot the lies, they are actually committing spiritual suicide because everything they recommend will cause more death and mayhem, guaranteed,” Nugent said.

“The dumbing down of America is manifested in the culture deprivation of our academia that have taught these kids the lies, media that have prodded and encouraged and provided these kids lies. I really feel sorry for them because it’s not only ignorant and dangerously stupid, but it’s soulless,” Nugent continued.

“The level of ignorance goes beyond stupidity. Again, the National Rifle Association are a bunch of American families who have a voice to stand up for our God-given, constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms,” Nugent also said.

Once word spread about his malicious remarks, some Twitter users rushed to defend the Parkland students. One survivor from the Feb. 14 shooting, Cameron Kasky, tweeted and demanded an apology.

“If only he saw all the tears. If only he had to look into the eyes I’ve looked into. If only he saw what this did to all of us. And here the NRA is, receiving more fear-based donations than ever. Talk about ‘no soul.’ This guy better apologize. Seriously,” Kasky said on Twitter.

If only he saw all the tears.

If only he had to look into the eyes I’ve looked into.

If only he saw what this did to all of us…

And here the NRA is, receiving more fear-based donations than ever.

Talk about ‘no soul.’ This guy better apologize. Seriously. https://t.co/NHL4yr5r4M

— Cameron Kasky (@cameron_kasky) March 31, 2018

Others, like Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, have publicly wondered why the NRA stays silent when their members launch offensive remarks to teenagers.

Why doesn't the @NRA ever speak out about the disgusting and offensive – not to mention racist, bigoted and sexist – rants of its longtime Board member, Ted Nugent? How can they claim with a straight face to be good actors when this person is steering their ship? https://t.co/cc7l6g1000

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 31, 2018

The Democratic Coalition chimed in.

According to bag of human garbage @TedNugent, the #Parkland students pushing for tighter gun laws are “poor mushy brained children who have been fed lies” and are “committing spiritual suicide.” https://t.co/mDRF8xPVep #Enough

— Democratic Coalition (@TheDemCoalition) March 31, 2018

And so did actor Ed Helms.

My thoughts and prayers are with @TedNugent today as he struggles with the senseless tragedy of being @TedNugent.

— Ed Helms (@edhelms) March 31, 2018

Meanwhile, Dana Loesch tweeted from a shooting range.

Range time at @CrossFireRange ! pic.twitter.com/TWe0vOx7iz

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) March 31, 2018

Of course, Nugent has a history of vehemently defending the Second Amendment. Indeed, he once argued to Piers Morgan on CNN that the man who tried to assassinate Rep. Gabby Giffords was some “guy had gone through the cracks of the mental health system.”

His spiteful comments are likely for attention, but they become part of the running-list of malicious remarks made by conservatives.

As disgusting as these remarks are, as Salon writer Amanda Marcotte explained, they could work out in the favor of the teenagers-and give them more power to create real change.

“Research shows that gun owners are more likely to call elected officials than non-gun owners about gun policy,” Marcotte wrote. “That could change if conservatives keep enraging liberals by picking on these traumatized kids. By trying to undermine these young activists, the right may only be giving them more power.”