Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 145

Guns kill kids in cities, too

(Credit: Getty/Rex_Wholster)

Outrage over school shootings has been dominating headlines, not just because the victims are children but also because the attacks occur so randomly and in places — Parkland, Fla., Newtown, Conn. — where it once seemed such a thing could never happen.

It’s much harder to stir a national debate about the persistent problem of gun homicides in the country’s poorest urban neighborhoods, even though more children die in urban gun violence than in school shootings, according to University of Pennsylvania criminologist John Macdonald. Maybe urban gun violence is just too predictable to hold our attention: It is extraordinarily concentrated — “hypersegregated” in Macdonald’s phrase — with a handful of neighborhoods in the 10 largest cities accounting for 30 percent of all gun homicides nationwide.

Now, though, it appears predictability and geographic concentration could actually make urban gun violence easier to prevent. For Columbia University epidemiologist Charles Branas, one answer is a relatively simple and inexpensive infrastructure improvement of derelict or abandoned city lots. These comprise about 7.5 million acres of land and about 15 percent of the area of cities across the U.S. — and significantly higher percentages in midsize cities like Flint, Mich., or Camden, N.J.

Derelict lots often become settings for drug dealing and other criminal behaviors. Thus, they function as a primary threat to nearby residents’ health and safety, according to Branas, lead author of a study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He and his co-authors, including Macdonald, liken efforts to clean up these lots to the 19th-century public investments in sewage treatment and clean water systems that helped curb epidemic diseases and made cities more livable. Instead of cholera, Branas says, the “contagion” this time is urban gun violence. He contends it spreads — and can be interrupted in its course — like any other epidemic.

Branas and his colleagues looked at 541 vacant lots in randomized clusters across Philadelphia, which has one of the country’s highest murder rates. The study, supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, assigned each cluster to one of three experimental options: a control group (meaning no treatment); a basic cleanup; or a “cleaning and greening” treatment, including a lawn, a few trees and a low perimeter fence — “to show that the lot was cared for and to deter illegal dumping.”

The study describes conditions in the worst neighborhoods that make the two treatment options seem like improbable remedies, at first. Some of the vacant lots involved were crisscrossed by footpaths to intravenous drug “shooting galleries.” And some were in areas where dealers paid drug bosses up to $5,000 a week in “rent” for “the right to sell on blocks where inhabited row homes were interspersed with vacant properties,” according to the study. Despite these odds, even the more expensive treatment — cleaning and greening — cost just $9,300 for a typical 1,000-square-foot lot, and about $50 a year for maintenance thereafter. Yet both treatments made a measurable difference.

In response to survey questions — which did not mention vacant lots — residents in low-income neighborhoods that received the cleaning-and-greening treatment reported a 15.8 decrease in their perception of crime incidence and a 61.9 percent increase in their willingness to relax and socialize outdoors. More impressively, police records for the 18-month period following the cleanup showed a 9.1 percent decrease in gun assaults in those neighborhoods, together with significant decreases in burglaries and nuisance complaints. When the researchers reanalyzed their data to weed out areas where maintenance of clean and green lots had lapsed for one reason or another, they found a 29.1 percent decrease in gun violence in neighborhoods where the lots had remained clean. It was such a significant improvement that the funding agencies for the study paid for the 150 lots in the control group to receive the cleaning-and-greening treatment. If extended to vacant lots citywide, the authors wrote, that treatment would translate into 350 fewer shootings a year in Philadelphia alone.

The link between greenery and crime prevention is of course not new. But anticrime initiatives for decades treated greenery mainly as a hazard, and advocated clearing dense vegetation to reduce hiding places as well as trimming trees to create clear lines of sight. Then a landmark 2001 study of Chicago public housing projects turned greenery into a tool for crime prevention, showing trees and green spaces seemed to reduce crime rates by bringing residents out more often, and putting more eyes on the street. But evidence greening actually causesa reduction in crime has proved elusive, making it harder to lobby for public action — until now.

The new study is the first to use a randomized experimental protocol to test the effects of greening on crime. “We knew that violence is generally lower in low-income urban neighborhoods when they’re greener, and we knew that reductions in violence tend to follow greening efforts,” says Ming Kuo, a University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign specialist on how the physical environment affects human behavior, who was not involved in the new study. “But we didn’t know if the greening was actually responsible for the reduction in violence. Now we know. This is a great advance — one the field has been waiting for,” she notes. “I don’t know if there is much point in asking a scientist what arguments a politician will find compelling. But from a scientific point of view, this should persuade city governments to try. I think it’s fair to say we don’t know for sure that this will have the same effects in every community — but the evidence we have suggests it should.”

Branas says cleaning and greening vacant lots does not “affect legal gun owner rights,” meaning people who are otherwise bitterly divided over gun control could potentially agree on such efforts as a politically acceptable strategy to reduce gun violence. But Mark Kaplan, a public health researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, Luskin School of Public Affairs, who was not involved in the study, cautions these programs “need to be done alongside other things. You have to address the question of social and economic inequality, and green space alone is not going to fix that.” A major reduction in urban gun assaults is unlikely, he adds, “without regulation of the guns that are contributing to the violence.”

Oddly, though, a strength of the new study could be its minimal approach to larger social and economic inequities: The risk in fixing too many things too fast is that it may attract developers, trigger gentrification and drive out long-time residents. Branas and his co-authors worried about that possibility enough to add a study within a study, aiming to counter the argument that any improvements they measured were the result of gentrification. Cleaning and greening vacant lots might be just enough of a change, Kaplan says, to help build a sense of ownership and neighborhood identity in the affected communities so they can come together and push for larger improvements like better schools and sanitation — and remain in the neighborhood to enjoy them.

For Branas, one of the most poignant moments in the study — and perhaps the beginning of that neighborhood identity — was the experience of having residents venture out from behind locked doors to greet the work crews as they arrived to clean up derelict lots. “And they said, ‘We called you about this 30 years ago! I can’t believe you’ve finally come to do this!’ — thinking that we were the City of Philadelphia.”

Garbage in, garbage out: Incinerating trash is not an effective way to reduce waste

(Credit: somchaiP via Shutterstock)

U.S. cities have been burning municipal solid waste since the 1880s. For the first century, it was a way to get rid of trash. Today advocates have rebranded it as an environmentally friendly energy source.

Most incinerators operating today use the heat from burning trash to produce steam that can generate electricity. These systems are sometimes referred to as “waste-to-energy” plants.

Communities and environmental groups have long opposed the siting of these facilities, arguing that they are serious polluters and undermine recycling. Now the industry is promoting a new process called co-incineration or co-firing. Operators burn waste alongside traditional fossil fuels like coal in facilities such as cement kilns, coal-fired power plants and industrial boilers.

I study environmental justice and zero-waste solutions and contributed to a recent report about the health and environmental impacts of co-incineration. Since that time, the Trump administration’s lenient approach to enforcing environmental laws against polluters — including incinerators — has deepened my concern. I’ve come to the conclusion that burning waste is an unjust and unsustainable strategy, and new attempts to package incineration as renewable energy are misguided.

Incineration industry capitalizes on renewable energy

Currently there are 86 incinerators across 25 states burning about 29 million tons of garbage annually — about 12 percent of the total U.S. waste stream. They produced about 0.4 percent of total U.S. electricity generation in 2015 — a minuscule share.

Classifying incineration as renewable energy creates new revenue streams for the industry because operators can take advantage of programs designed to promote clean power. More importantly, it gives them environmental credibility.

In 23 states and territories, waste incineration is included in renewable portfolio standards — rules that require utilities to produce specific fractions of their power from qualifying renewable fuels. The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan — which the Trump administration has pledged to replace — allowed states to classify waste incineration and co-incineration as carbon-neutral forms of energy production.

Another EPA policy, the Non-Hazardous Secondary Materials rule, was amended in 2013 to redefine waste so that municipal solid waste can now be processed to become “non-waste fuel products.” These renamed wastes can be burned in facilities such as boilers that are subject to less-stringent environmental standards than solid waste incinerators. This is good news for an industry trying to monetize waste materials such as railroad crossties by treating them as fuel.

Why waste incineration is not sustainable

Many environmental advocates in the United States and Europe are alarmed over government approval of increasingly diverse waste fuels, along with relaxed oversight of the incineration industry.

Although municipal solid waste combustion is regulated under the Clean Air Act, host communities are concerned about potential health impacts. Emissions typically associated with incineration include particulate matter, lead, mercury and dioxins.

In 2011 the New York Department of Environmental Conservation found that although facilities burning waste in New York complied with existing law, they released up to 14 times more mercury, twice as much lead and four times as much cadmium per unit of energy than coal plants.

Disproportionate siting of incinerators and waste facilities in communities of color and low-income communities was a key driver for the emergence of the environmental justice movement. In 1985 there were 200 proposed or existing incinerators online, but by 2015 fewer than 85 plants remained. Many U.S. communities effectively organized to defeat proposed plants, but poor, marginalized and less-organized communities remained vulnerable.

Now some companies are turning to co-incineration rather than building new plants. This move sidesteps substantial upfront costs and risky financial arrangements, which have created debt problems for host municipalities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Co-incineration offers new markets for waste-derived fuels using existing infrastructure. It is hard to measure how many facilities are currently using co-incineration, since EPA’s Non-Hazardous Secondary Materials rule does not require them to report it. But as one data point, two affiliated building material companies, Systech and Geocycle, are co-processing waste in 22 cement kilns in the United States and Canada.

Co-incineration is not clean

As an example of concerns over co-incineration, consider the Hefty Energy Bag program, which is sponsored by Dow Chemical Company and promoted by the nonprofit group Keep America Beautiful. This project offers grants to municipalities to participate in a curbside pilot program that collects hard-to-recycle plastics for energy production.

Currently this initiative is collecting plastics in Omaha, Nebraska, and mostly co-incinerating them at the Sugar Creek cement kiln in Missouri. In 2010, the owner of this plant and 12 others settled with EPA for violating the Clean Air Act and other air pollution regulations, paying a US$5 million fine and agreeing to install new pollution controls. Although this is just one example, it indicates that concerns over air quality impacts from co-incineration are real.

Waste incineration deflects attention from more sustainable solutions, such as redesigning products for recyclability or eliminating toxic, hard-to-recycle plastics. Currently only about one-third of municipal solid waste is recycled in the United States. Rates for some types of plastics are even lower.

Dow’s partnership with Keep America Beautiful is particularly problematic becomes it takes advantage of local municipalities and residents who want to promote zero-waste, climate-friendly policies. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, burning municipal solid waste emits nearly as much carbon per unit of energy as coal, and almost twice as much as natural gas.

As the Trump administration reverses or abandons national and international policies to address climate change, many Americans are looking to local and state governments and the private sector to lead on this issue. Many cities and states are committing to ambitious zero-waste and renewable energy targets.

These policies can drive innovations in a greening economy, but they can also provide perverse incentives to greenwash and repackage old solutions in new ways. In my view, incineration is a false solution to climate change that diverts precious resources, time and attention from more systemic solutions, such as waste reduction and real renewable fuels like solar and wind. Whether it’s an incinerator, cement kiln or coal plant, if you put garbage into a system, you get garbage out.

Ana Baptista, Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management, The New School

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg, possibly drunk, says he won’t cooperate with Mueller subpoena

(Credit: CNN)

In multiple media interviews throughout the course of Monday, a volatile and belligerent former Trump aide expressed incredulity at the subpoena he had received from Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and foreign agents. The aide in question, Sam Nunberg, worked for Trump’s campaign as a communications advisor from February 2015 to August 2015 and was fired after his old racist Facebook posts were uncovered by journalists.

First, speaking with Katy Tur on MSNBC, Nunberg defended his decision not to comply with Mueller’s subpoena and reiterated that he would not cooperate.

“I’m not a fan of Donald Trump,” Nunberg said on MSNBC, and later, CNN too. “He treated Roger [Stone] and me very badly and screwed us over during the campaign. But when I get a subpoena like this — the president’s right. It’s a witch hunt. I’m not going to cooperate.”

“What [sic] does Bob Mueller need to see my emails?” he said to Katy Tur on MSNBC.

Nunberg’s chief objection to the subpoena seemed to be the time that it would take him to deal with the subpoena. Nunberg repeated a variation of the phrase “why should I hand over all my emails since 2015?” at least five times, and emphasized the time commitment — “80 hours” — that he thought it would take him to comply with the subpoena.

“The idea that I was colluding with the Russians — that Roger [Stone] was colluding with the Russians — all we were doing was trying to get Corey [Lewandowski] fired!” he said on CNN.

“I’m not going to spend 80 hours [going over my emails] because a bunch of U.S. attorneys… want to harass me,” Nunberg told Tur.

“Donald Trump caused [these subpoenas] because he’s an idiot,” Nunberg said to former Salon contributor Jake Tapper on CNN. “I don’t want to hear from whats-her-name attacking me,” he said, forgetting the name of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Are you willing to go to jail for this?” Tapper asked Nunberg.

“I’m not cooperating, if you want to arrest me, arrest me,” Nunberg said to Tapper. “It’s a witch hunt.”

As Tur explained to Nunberg, he could be held in contempt of court or arrested — Nunberg said he thought that such a scenario would be “funny.”

Nunberg did at least six interviews on Monday on multiple TV news channels, and he was a trending topic on Twitter all day as users debated his bizarre behavior.  

My jaw has been on the floor for 5 straight minutes

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) March 5, 2018

Is anyone watching this all playing out and thinking "They are *definitely* not hiding anything. No, sir. All seems on the level."

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) March 5, 2018

Nunberg. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?

— Sam Stein (@samstein) March 5, 2018

Many speculated that Nunberg was drunk or on drugs. When Nunberg appeared live on Erin Burnett’s CNN segment, Burnett noted that she smelled alcohol on his breath. He denied drinking, mentioned being on antidepressants, and changed the topic.

WOW.@ErinBurnett just called out Sam Nunberg for drinking.

"I can smell it on your breath." pic.twitter.com/mWMxfwXSxR

— jordan (@JordanUhl) March 6, 2018

 

Understanding tornadoes: Five questions answered

(Credit: Dusty Compton/The Tuscaloosa News, via AP, File)

Editor’s note: Tornado season in North America typically starts in the Southeast in March and April, then moves north and west into the Plains states in May and June. We asked Penn State meteorology professors Paul Markowski and Yvette Richardson to explain why tornadoes form, how to stay safe if you’re near one and whether climate change is affecting tornado patterns.

Where are tornadoes most likely to occur?

Most headline-making tornadoes are spawned by what are known as supercell thunderstorms. These are large, intense storms characterized by an updraft (rising air) that rotates.

Thunderstorms develop when warm, humid air near the surface lies beneath a thick layer of air in which the temperature decreases rapidly with height. We call this type of atmosphere “unstable,” meaning that when air is nudged upward, the water vapor that it contains condenses. This releases heat, making the air warmer than its surroundings. The air becomes buoyant and rises, creating the towering clouds we associate with thunderstorms.

The second key condition for supercell formation is wind shear — large changes in wind at different levels. Winds at different altitudes blowing at different speeds and/or from different directions is associated with horizontally spinning air, like a rolling pin. As this horizontally spinning air flows into the updraft, the spin is tilted into the vertical, creating a rotating updraft.

Tornadoes are especially likely to be spawned by supercell thunderstorms when the lowest altitudes are particularly humid and possess exceptionally strong wind shear. These conditions are more likely to come together in certain locations, such as the U.S. Great Plains and Southeast.

How do actual tornadoes form?

Not all supercell thunderstorms produce tornadoes. Once wind shear has created a rotating updraft in our supercell thunderstorm, other processes develop rotation near the ground, in the cool air underneath the storm, which we call its “cold pool.” The cold pool is produced mostly by the evaporation of rain.

Within and beneath the storm, warm air is rising and cooler air is descending. As air descends and flows through the cold pool, the horizontal differences in temperature and acceleration of air along the ground combine to produce more horizontal spin. If there is strong upward suction from the overlying rotating updraft of the supercell storm, and the air in the cold pool is not too cold, the horizontally spinning air can be tipped toward the vertical and sucked upward. It also can be contracted inward and spin faster, just as skaters increase the speed of their spins by pulling in their arms. This forms the tornado.

How precisely can weather scientists predict tornado strikes?

In the past decade, forecasters have become skillful at identifying conditions that can support strong tornadoes — those rated EF2 or higher on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center routinely predicts large outbreaks days in advance. “High-risk” outlooks capture most major tornado events, and strong tornadoes rarely occur outside of tornado watches. We have less ability to forecast tornadoes in more marginal situations, such as within non-supercell storms.

Even if the environment is extremely favorable for supercell tornadoes, forecasters have limited ability to say when or if a specific storm will produce a tornado. Researchers are studying triggers for tornado production, such as small-scale downdraft surges and descending precipitation shafts on a supercell storm’s rear flank, and processes that sustain tornadoes once they form.

We don’t understand tornado maintenance well, or how tornadoes might be affected by interactions with obstacles such as terrain and buildings. This means that when a tornado is occurring, forecasters have limited ability to tell the public how long they expect it to last.

What should I do during a tornado warning?

Basements, storm cellars or “safe rooms” that meet federal guidelines provide excellent protection. If none of these is available, the best strategy is to go to the lowest floor of a sturdy building and put as many walls between you and the tornado as possible. In other words, shelter in an interior room, such as a closet or bathroom. Also, make sure you are wearing good shoes. If your area takes a direct hit, you do not want to walk through a debris field barefoot.

Don’t chase tornadoes without professional training. Observations from spotters are valuable to forecasters who are issuing warnings, but they can be made from a distance. We don’t need people driving in harm’s way to know that a dangerous storm is approaching.

Is climate change making tornadoes bigger or more frequent?

It’s hard to say. Reliable U.S. records of tornadoes go back only to roughly 1950, and records outside of the United States are even less complete. Thanks to storm chasing and the spread of camera phones, more tornadoes are counted today compared with yesteryear, but that does not necessarily mean that more are occurring. And there’s a lot of natural variability from year to year. Over the past decade, the annual U.S. tornado count has ranged from 886 to 1,690 storms per year.

Estimates of wind speeds based on post-storm damage surveys can be off by 50 percent or more. And many tornadoes in remote areas leave no clues as to how strong their winds were.

Most climate models predict that there will be more days per year when the atmosphere would have sufficient instability and wind shear to support tornadoes. But we need to be careful in interpreting this result. Climate models don’t capture tornadoes, their parent thunderstorms or nuances in the lowest level of the atmosphere that affect tornado formation. So it is hard to say whether there will be more tornadoes, even if tornado-supporting environments become more common.

Paul Markowski, Professor of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University and Yvette Richardson, Professor of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University

“Mister Rogers: It’s You I Like”: a special, with feeling

(Credit: AP)

One heartening accompaniment to the recent flood of interest in the iconic children’s TV series “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” is the perceptible surge of enduring affection for its host, the late and still beloved Fred Rogers. The series celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first broadcast on national public television February 19, and pop culture loves an anniversary. But for many reasons, this marker felt different.

Part of that is due to a matter of timing. The show’s anniversary coincided with a harrowing time in the United States, only days after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. That tragedy that would have struck Rogers to the core. A Presbyterian minister, Rogers was decidedly peace-loving and, more than this, he was a champion of children’s psychological and emotional health.  He cared deeply about his audience, and he took his charge as a children’s television programmer very seriously.

Faithful viewers of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” during any of its 31 seasons are bound to harbor profound feelings about Rogers himself. Awareness and validation of feelings was the core mission of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” but an auxiliary result of succeeding at it is that several generations of American viewers came to view him as something of a vicarious parental figure.

“He was such a good communicator, like really drilling down to the really simple and important ideas that transcend a fashion and a TV style,” explained Ellen Doherty, executive producer of  “Mister Rogers: It’s You I Like,” a special premiering Tuesday on PBS member stations. “Just really talking to camera and saying, ‘you know, people can like you just the way that you are.’ And I think that’s why the show really resonates so much, and why people really respond to it now, as grown-ups, either with or without kids. The messages are so profound in a lot of ways, and really thought provoking.”

This also explains “Mister Rogers: It’s You I Like” feels very different from other TV anniversary celebrations. The hour-long “It’s You I Like” has the usual bells and whistles, such as the most memorable footage culled from more than three decades of the series, and an impressive roster of celebrities singing the praises of Rogers and the show itself. Its producers also landed Michael Keaton to host.

But the stars appearing in “It’s You I Like” aren’t there to regale us with expert takes as to what it all means or share behind-the-scenes dish. Even Keaton, who worked on the production side of “Mister Rogers’” early in his career (as a stagehand, he operated the trolley to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe), offers little in the way of industry context as he bridges one segment to the next. Here, just like everyone other celebrity appearing in the special, and all of the kids and secretly childlike watching at home, Keaton is paying tribute as a fan.

The first time we see John Lithgow, for example, we watch him watching a segment on featuring Tony Bennett singing “It’s You I Like” at Lady Elaine Fairchilde’s Museum Go-Round television studio in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. More specifically, we see Lithgow take in the sight as a kind smile breaks across his face.

He shares his thoughts about watching that moment with his three-year old son, and what that song is about, but it’s Lithgow’s gentle smile that leads. We’re watching and smiling along too.

Nicholas Ma, who appears in “It’s You I Like” as an interview subject as well as in archival footage featuring him performing with his father Yo-Yo Ma, is similarly reflective in a recent phone conversation. “Fred was a hero for me long before I met him,” he said. It’s almost unnerving when you finally meet someone like that in person, you know. You don’t quite know what to expect.”

What he recalled of Rogers, Ma said, is that “Fred was one of those people who is so generous in the way that he meets people. He sort of lets them come to him either with reckless abandon or without hesitation in fits and starts. And I remember that generosity very clearly from when I was a child.”

The experience, seen in part in “It’s You I Like,” stayed with Ma through his adulthood. He’s co-producing the soon-to-be released documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” alongside Morgan Neville and Caryn Capotosto.

“It’s You I Like” gently moves along in this way, riding the gentle current of memory and appreciating Rogers as a guide as opposed to a groundbreaking TV personality. He was both, as we know, and his role in establishing a framework for arguing for the continued necessity of public television has made him enough of a folk hero to inspire an upcoming movie starring Tom Hanks, and a recently aired “Drunk History” segment in which Rogers was played by Hanks’ son Colin.

Rogers created “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” which was in production between 1968 and 2001, as a nourishing alternative to the empty silliness of most children’s television — a means of shaping the interior world of children’s feelings. In doing so, he helped to guide them into taking personal responsibility over their actions and reactions. To watch classic “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” episodes is to marvel at the timelessness of his appeal and message, and the simplicity of his approach. The set wasn’t fancy, and even well into its final years its sustained frugality somehow made what Rogers did more accessible and relatable to the kids watching at home (Rogers died in 2003 at the age of 74).

“It’s You I Like,” in the way of the show it celebrates, probably won’t influence many future TV retrospectives. Not many shows proudly wear their hearts on cardigan sleeves like “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” does.

By leading with the warmth of shared memory and endearment, producers JoAnn Young and John Paulson mold “It’s You I Like” into experiential viewing that emphasizes intimacy.  The special includes  interviews with “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” cast members Joe Negri and David Newell (aka Mr. McFeely, the “Speedy Delivery” postman) as well as Rogers’ widow Joanne. More people are bound to tune in to see what famous “Mister Rogers’” fans such as Sarah Silverman, Judd Apatow, Esperanza Spalding, Ma and his father Yo-Yo Ma, who appeared on the original show, have to say. That’s the primary role of star cameos in retrospectives like these, to attract viewers.

But to see, say, Silverman’s innocent glee and wonder at watching an episode segment featuring a cat giving birth mirrors our own awe at that memory. Most broadcast programming for young children airing today wouldn’t dare to show such a thing. That’s why watching “It’s You I Like,” and the series it celebrates, never gets old.

How the Trump Hotel Panama saga captures the failures of the #Resistance

A man removes the word Trump from the marquee outside the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City, March 5, 2018. (Credit: AP/Arnulfo Franco)

“Ogres are like onions,” the Duloc-ian political philosopher Shrek famously opined. “Onions have layers. Ogres have layers … you get it? We both have layers.” In a political and technological epoch whose defining characteristic appears to be its cascading layers of irony, our media discourse is comparable to an onion. A few days ago, we witnessed a Cypriot private equity fund manager, Orestes Fintiklis, briefly become a #Resistance icon after he was victorious in removing the “Trump” brand from the Panama City hotel in which his company is a majority owner. After succeeding in the Panamanian court system, Fintiklis celebrated in the lobby of the hotel by sitting at the piano to play “Akordeon,” an anti-fascist Greek song.

The only way I can possibly think to cover such a farce is to trace the onion outwards as it is peeled. Where you prefer to stop peeling really depends how trenchant you want to get. As such, I’ve written a different headline for each layer, which pole-vault upwards in scrutiny from BuzzFeed-style to Baffler-style as you keep peeling.

Layer 1: #Resistance hero gets Trump name taken off Panama hotel — and celebrates by playing anti-fascist anthem

Let’s hope the famously petty president doesn’t get wind of being owned by this noble #Resistance hero. Orestes Fintiklis, the majority owner of the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City, has been fighting with the Trump Organization in Panama City to get the Trump name scrubbed from his hotel. Fintiklis succeeded in the courts this week, and how did he celebrate? By sitting down and playing a Greek anti-fascist song on the piano in the hotel lobby.

The Miami-based majority owner of the Trump Ocean Club hotel in Panama, Orestes Fintiklis, celebrated the apparent eviction of Trump’s management group by playing a Greek folk song on the hotel lobby piano. pic.twitter.com/z5zA2JXvGR

— David Adams (@dadams7308) March 5, 2018

Yass, queen! The internet went wild celebrating this #win for the #resistance:

Play it Sam, play it.

— John DeMetropolis (@jdemet) March 5, 2018

I'll bet Cheetolini choked on his cheeseburger watching this :-)

— Rich V (@rsv777) March 5, 2018

Layer 2: An investor succeeds in getting the “Trump” brand off his hotel, citing bad branding

There are a lot of reasons that one might dislike the president; for Fintiklis, and many rich people generally, it’s not the man or his policies, but his brand. “Fintiklis, who manages the Miami-based private equity fund Ithaca Capital, [has] said Donald Trump’s statements on immigration have destroyed his brand in Latin America,” the Associated Press reported. Fintiklis himself said, “Our investment has no future so long as the hotel is managed by an incompetent operator whose brand has been tarnished beyond repair,” per the AP.

It’s money that influenced Fintiklis, not morality. Or are they one and the same thing, given the nature of our economy?

Layer 3: One-percenter sings communist-written song to celebrate wresting control of hotel from fellow one-percenter

Consider the song that Fintiklis played — artfully, I might add — on the baby grand in his hotel’s lobby. That would be “To Akordeon,” which most outlets reported as a “Greek anti-fascist song.” That isn’t quite accurate.

“To Akordeon” was composed by Manos Loïzos, a Greek composer who lived through the military junta in Greece. A card-carrying member of the Greek Communist Party, Loïzos spent time in the Soviet Union and died there in 1982.

Contrast Loïzos with Fintiklis, who is the “Director of Acquisitions” for Dolphin Capital Partners, according to his Bloomberg profile. The Oxford-educated businessman notes on his LinkedIn profile that he was a member of the “Private Equity Club” in grad school. It’s not a stretch to say that Loïzos may be spinning in his grave at the news of a bourgeois banker like Fintiklis appropriating his anthem. Or perhaps appreciating the absurdity?

*  *  *

This is the state of American politics in 2018: A private equity fund manager becomes a #Resistance hero, plays a socialist anthem on the piano, and the #Resistance goes unironically wild.

If you want to understand why many on the left mock the shallowness of the anti-Trump #Resistance, let this be your case study. Celebrating Fintiklis as a hero simply because he doesn’t like Donald Trump illustrates an alarming lack of self-awareness when it comes to understanding what swept Trump into office in the first place. The #Resistance movement, like Hillary Clinton’s campaign before it, brought some questionable figures under one roof, including venture capitalist , Reagan spokesman Doug Elmets, former HP exec  and billionaires like Tom Steyer.

What rankles some folks on the progressive left about these alliances is that by bringing billionaires and right-wing architects into the same so-called movement, it presupposes that they’re on the same “side” as the rest of us, and share our political and economic interests. That couldn’t be further from the truth, as at least one 2016 candidate (cough, Bernie Sanders, cough) repetitiously pointed out.

Trump rose to power because of a neoliberal celebrity culture that presupposes fame and wealth to be synonymous with intelligence and work ethic. From Whitman to Elmets to Steyer to Fintiklis, these are the elite ruling-class types that rule the world, some in brutal and obvious fashion and others more subtly. It is our folly to celebrate them, even if they see an enemy in Trump.

“Fox & Friends” hosts dismayed by political jokes at Oscars

Jimmy Kimmel speaks onstage during the 90th Annual Academy Awards, March 4, 2018. (Credit: Getty/Kevin Winter)

The political discourse at the 90th annual Oscars was pretty mild – to everyone except for Fox News. During a segment titled “Lights, Camera, Politics” on Monday, the hosts of “Fox & Friends” lamented how polarizing the Academy Awards have become.

“Despite the fact that Jimmy Kimmel said, at the very beginning, it [the broadcast] should be filled with positivity, it turned political quickly,” Steve Doocy said. Then, a selectively-edited montage of some of Kimmel’s Oscars night quips rolled, including jokes that took on President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Fox News itself.

“So much for positivity!” Brian Kilmeade exclaimed. “Jimmy Kimmel is basically Chuck Schumer with a sense of humor.” Kilmeade also attacked Kimmel for suggesting that viewers attend the Parkland students’ March for Our Lives rally later this month. “He’s basically an activist,” the morning show host charged.

“You knew it was going to be political,” Ainsley Earhardt added. “If you are a Democrat, you love it. If you’re a Republican, you probably don’t watch.” She then proceeded to call out Lupita Nyong’o and Kumail Nanjiani for highlighting their immigrant roots and lending their support to Dreamers.

“A lot of people tune in, because this is supposed to be one of the funniest shows of the year. And that hasn’t happened for a long time,” Doocy, who mentioned he only watched the Oscars for 20 minutes, said. Kilmeade, on the other hand, “could not get through it.” But that didn’t stop them either of them from levying criticism against the Academy.

But the most egregious portion of this segment occurred when Kilmeade attempted to call out Hollywood for its hypocrisy. He had the audacity to mention the gender pay gap and sexual harassment – while broadcasting live from Fox’s studios. “I think Hollywood is not only not better than the average American and the businesses, you could argue that they’re worse in terms of the sexual harassment and everything like that,” he said, with a straight face. “So clean up your own house, when it comes to gender pay and all these other behaviors in the office before you start condemning people.”

In the last few years, three of Fox News’ top figures were ousted for multiple sexual misconduct allegations: chief executive Roger Ailes, longtime host Bill O’Reilly and co-president Bill Shine. Perhaps Kilmeade might want to sponsor Fox’s own cleaning service.

 

This tiny sensor takes the guesswork out of color matching

Sometimes, you see a shade in passing that you know you need to paint your next wall with – or maybe custom-paint your next car. For design aficionados, interior designers or just people who love a good re-design project, there’s this Nix Mini Color Sensor.

This innovative little cube fits in your pocket and is used in conjunction with an app that you download on your phone. It’s a color sensor that scans any surface and matches what you see to an existing color library of more than 31,000 brand name paint colors, as well as RGB, HEX, CMYK and LAB colors.

That means you can take the guesswork entirely out of your time in the paint store, and focus more on the project you have on hand. You can save and organize your favorite color palettes, and even share paint colors with friends, family or clients.

The Nix is small enough to fit on a keychain but durable enough to withstand even your klutziest DIY moment – and thanks to the integrated high CRI white LEDs, you get a consistent scan every time. Usually, this Nix Mini Color Sensor is $99, but you can get it now for $69.

Meet the tripod that’s built for adventure

You want to capture the beautiful nature that surrounds you when you hike — but the last thing you want is to be weighed down by a heavy or cumbersome tripod. This Pakpod Adventure Tripod was made to move with you and is perfect for stashing in your backpack until you’re ready to use it.

Whether you’re in the forest, on top of a mountain or by a lake, this tripod is durable, weatherproof and packs light. Named a “Best Photo Accessory of 2016″ by Outside Online, you can quickly set up the perfect shot in moments. It’s ideal for all kinds of photography, whether that’s time-lapse, video or underwater — and the patented stabilizing stakes are made to secure your camera whether you’re in turf, sand or snow.

This is the must-have accessory for your next hike — get the Pakpod Adventure Tripod for $69, reduced from $99.

Looking down the barrel: The gun debate after the Florida Shooting

(Credit: Getty/tab1962)

After the Valentine’s Day mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the 18th this year, the United States had to grapple with the aftermath once again. Appalachia experienced a high school shooting in January in Benton, Kentucky, mourning a loss of two students.

Given recent events, one could, sadly, concur with Albert Einstein that to expect different results while doing the same thing over and over again is, in fact, the definition of insanity.

During a roundtable at the White House on February 22, the majority of the participants thanked the President for what they saw as his strong leadership in the wake of tragedy. At the event, Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rick Sanders said he’s concerned with “what are we going to do now to protect our children. There’s going to be a lot of debate but I applaud you sir for having the courage to bring together law enforcement, mental health professionals and educators all sitting around this table deciding together what we need to do. […] I think the gun violence restraining order is critically important and I also think that we, as law enforcement, we need to create a database […] so we can take information we have and understood as maybe a threat and put that into a database, so that the FBI can share with local law enforcement and state police.”

Among the solutions proposed by Trump and some of the legislators are: banning bump stocks, arming school teachers, and raising the purchasing age for assault rifles.

The views of these proposals from educators and legislators in Appalachian states vary. Sam Brunett, President of the American Federation of Teachers of Monongalia County, WV, said in a phone interview that the last thing he wants, after 25 years of teaching at a high school, is to become a police officer.

As a representative of the Federation, he stated that his “personal opinion would coincide with the labor union’s opinion, which would be: teachers have enough to do, you know; then to also manage weaponry and ammunition in their classrooms… We’re not there for that, we’re there to educate kids.”

He did make a point of saying that he believes it would be a good idea to place additional police officers in schools in order to boost security.

Brunett, a lifelong hunter himself, didn’t want to speak for other teachers when it comes to the idea of banning assault rifles in general, but said that very few teachers, regardless of their views, see guns as “having any place on the school campuses whatsoever.”

“You know, anything that has AR in front of it means Assault Rifle, it’s not HR, which is a hunting rifle. Anything that has AR means you’re going to assault a human being. That’s my opinion, and the only people who should be assaulting human beings would be those in our armed forces, off of our country’s soil.”

(Editor’s note: “AR” doesn’t stand for “Assault Rifle.” It stands for “ArmaLite Rifle,” named after the company that developed the weapon.) 

But there are opposite views among education professionals as well. Fred Kittle, a school board member from Bartow County in Georgia, also in attendance at the White House roundtable, is in favor of the President’s proposed solutions.

In an email exchange, Kittle pointed out that Georgia already allows school districts to choose if they want to train individuals to carry weapons on school grounds under the provisions of the Safe Carry Protection Act.

He said that if one of the two non-conservative board members were to lose his seat in the upcoming elections, a change in the policy allowing carrying rights to some employees might be in the works.

Kittle believes “The weapon used was a tool like the planes on 9/11, the truck with fertilizer in Oklahoma, the truck in New York, the bombs in Boston. Tools are not the biggest issue.” He’d much rather see issues such as mental health, radical faith, or parental drug abuse addressed first. He is not supportive of banning assault rifles, but would be willing to compromise on raising their purchasing age.  

But there is a gentle breeze of hope for change in gun policy and our schools the air. The national media took notice of the outburst of activism among the students of Florida’s Douglas High School. The young boys and girls brutalized in the attack started a movement with hopes of forcing lawmakers in Florida and Washington to finally take action on gun violence.

Students held rallies, travelled to the Florida State Legislature (where lawmakers refused to even debate potential reform to the state gun laws) and will march in Washington, DC on March 23. When confronted by some of the survivors during a televised town hall meeting with constituents, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has significant backing from the National Rifle Association, failed to support a ban on assault rifles. He also would not vow to reject further donations from the NRA, but did state publicly that he would support some stricter gun regulations.

President Trump finds himself in a new environment, in which he has to navigate the wishes of his radical base, the guarded interests of the NRA and his most loyal base and mounting pressure behind his own pledges to solve the problem.

Press reports suggest that Donald Trump shows an unprecedented eagerness to deliver a solution. In the days immediately following the shooting, he held a number of meetings. Raj Shah, White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary, called it a “listening phase.”

Quickly, however, it became clear that the Administration and the GOP was pushing to frame the discussion more around the idea of arming teachers and addressing what leaders perceive as a national mental health issue, rather than reassessing lax gun laws.

Sheriff McDonald from Henderson County in North Carolina said at the previously mentioned roundtable that he sees mental health as a national crisis, and one severely affecting North Carolina. He was also supportive of the idea of arming some school employees with concealed weapons.

“I wouldn’t say that we are or aren’t going to propose some things that is as specific as legislative language,” Deputy Press Secretary Shah stated at the press briefing after the roundtable. “But [President Trump] is going to come forward later on with something a little bit more concrete.” The comments from the administration left all in the room essentially clueless as to what the potential legislative proposals could look like, or when actual solutions could arrive.

As politicians were dispatched on the regular TV circuit, the public had an opportunity to hear a whole gamut of views. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania expressed his doubts regarding the purchasing age of assault rifles being raised on NBC’s Meet The Press: “I’m very skeptical about that. Because the vast majority of 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds are law abiding citizens who aren’t a threat to anyone. So I’m skeptical about that. I’m willing to hear the other side on this, but I’m skeptical.”

At the White House, the “listening phase” continues, and we have yet to see a single legislative proposal. Meanwhile, the House and Senate seem divided along partisan lines, but also within their respective parties. The Florida shooting could potentially be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

At a bipartisan school safety meeting at the White House this past Wednesday, Trump directly questioned Sen. Toomey and Sen. Manchin of West Virginia on a bill they are co-sponsoring. When the President learned it doesn’t address the purchasing age of particular types of weapons, he responded by saying “You know why?  Because you’re afraid of the NRA, right?”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky put a banking reform debate on the agenda for the upper house of Congress for the next week. A move that put a damper on hopes for passing at least some of the debated measures on gun safety revealed that there is a significant gap between Republican President’s leadership on the issue and GOP’s willingness to act.