Sam Baldwin is the Online Editor at Mother Jones. Before joining MoJo, Sam worked on the finance team for the 2008 Obama campaign. A proud Chicagoan, Sam loves flat-water canoeing, home-brewed beer, and consistently winning his fantasy football league. He is a graduate of Pomona College and lives in Oakland.
With bullying in the news this week after the Washington Post's investigation into Mitt Romney's private school years (more on this here, here, and here), I polled the Mother Jones newsroom for their favorite long-form journalism on bullying. For more long-form picks from the MoJo staff check out our shiny new page on longreads.com. For more long stories from the pages of Mother Jones, check out our longreads archive. And, of course, if you're not following @longreads and @motherjones on Twitter yet, get on that. Have a great weekend, readers!
Bazelon has owned the bully beat over at Slate the last few years and this deeply reported and brave series pushed back on the initial narrative of the Phoebe Prince suicide.
"I'm upset and angry that bullying wasn't taken more seriously here before this," says Nina, almost 16, who was taunted for being a "poseur" by a group of girls in middle school. (I have changed the names of kids who talked to me but have not already been identified in the press.) But Phoebe's death "has been turned into this Lifetime movie plot. It's so unlike what actually happened."
The crisis facing gay foster kids told through the story of Kenneth Jones.
As a gay foster child in Washington, DC, Kenneth spent most of his weekends alone. By the summer of 2009, the isolation had gotten so bad that he'd started calling his cell-phone carrier's help line with imaginary complaints, just so he could vent to somebody about something. He would even text himself encouraging messages, like "Good job," or "Damn you so strong."
A hilarious and moving account of the writer's experience sitting in on an anti-bullying class for 5th graders.
In an attempt to convey that I have literally nothing to do with the world of punishment and rewards that they currently inhabit, I add, out of laziness more than anything else, "I'm totally cool." This is a mistake.
Two years. Nine suicides. Why critics blame the congresswoman's anti-gay allies for contributing to a mental health crisis.
The first was TJ. Then came Samantha, Aaron, Nick, and Kevin. Over the past two years, a total of nine teenagers have committed suicide in a Minnesota school district represented by Rep. Michele Bachmann—the latest in May—and many more students have attempted to take their lives. State public health officials have labeled the area a "suicide contagion area" because of the unusually high death rate.
Some of the victims were gay, or perceived to be by their classmates, and many were reportedly bullied. And the anti-gay activists who are some of the congresswoman's closest allies stand accused of blocking an effective response to the crisis and fostering a climate of intolerance that allowed bullying to flourish. Bachmann, meanwhile, has been uncharacteristically silent on the tragic deaths that have roiled her district—including the high school that she attended.
At Saturday's GOP presidential debate, Mitt Romney, questioned about his record at Bain Capital, doubled-down on the claim that the firm created 100,000 net jobs. "In the business I had, we invested in over 100 different businesses and net-net, taking out the ones where we lost jobs and those that we added, those businesses have now added over 100,000 jobs," he told George Stephanopolous. It's an impressive figure, but one that turns out to have little basis in reality. Factcheck.org considered the evidence on Thursday:
When we asked the Romney camp for support, spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom sent us a list of jobs added at three companies in which Bain had invested, saying that these three examples alone created over 100,000 jobs: Staples, which had 89,000 employees as of Dec. 31, 2010; The Sports Authority, which had 15,000 employees as of July 2011; and Domino’s, which has added 7,900 jobs since 1999.
That’s hardly a rigorous analysis of jobs gained and lost at companies Bain backed. And does Romney deserve credit for all of those jobs? Bain was but one of several investors in The Sports Authority, which was launched with the monetary help of William Blair Venture Partners, Phillips-Smith and Marquette Venture Partners. Not to mention the work of founding executives at the company, such as CEO Jack A. Smith.
Plus, Kmart owned the company for about five years starting in 1990. Does Kmart get credit for whatever job growth occurred then? In 2006, the private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners acquired Sports Authority. Does Bain, and Romney, still get credit for jobs created after the company is bought or sold years later?
And so on. The bottom line is that the 100,000 figure was not actually calculated; it was just a composite of a couple of data points, and there's no evidence that it's actually a "net" figure, according to Romney's own campaign. When challenged on the accuracy of his figures by Stephanopolous, Romney told the audience they should just trust him: "I'm a good enough numbers guy to make sure I got both sides of that."
During Saturday's ABC News debate, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) was questioned about the many newsletters published in the 1970s and 1980s under his name that contained racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and conspiratorial claims. One of those newsletters, published in December 1990, singled out civil rights champion Martin Luther King Jr. for a barrage of nasty rhetoric. That newsletter called King "a world-class adulterer" and went on to say the legendary civil rights leader "seduced underage girls and boys" and "replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."
Amazingly, Paul responded to the question about his racist newsletters by...praising King. Here's what he said:
More importantly, you ought to ask me what my relationship is for racial relationships. And one of my heroes is Martin Luther King because he practiced the libertarian principle of peaceful resistance and peaceful civil disobedience, as did Rosa Parks did.
Paul's newsletters contained plenty more incendiary, controversial rhetoric, including instructions for gunning down an "urban youth." ("An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible.") They also said AIDS could be spread intentionally by "a malicious gay" and suggested renaming New York City "Welfaria," "Zooville," or "Rapetown."
At the debate, Paul vehemently denied writing the newsletters. "Well, it's been explained many times, and everything's written 20 years ago, approximately, that I did not write," Paul said. "So concentrating on something that was written 20 years ago that I didn't write, you know, is diverting the attention from most of the important issues." But this denial clashes with his own past remarks. In 1996, in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, Paul took ownership of the newsletters. Instead, he blamed critics for skewing the information that appeared in those newsletters. "It's typical political demagoguery," he said at the time.
What's more, in other interviews in 1996 Paul failed to distance himself from the newsletters, defending them repeatedly. Here's a rundown from ThinkProgress:
—In 1996, Ron Paul's campaign defended his statements about the rationality of fearing black men. ("[W]e are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational.") The Houston Chronicle reports, "A campaign spokesman for Paul said statements about the fear of black males mirror pronouncements by black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson." [Houston Chronicle, 5/23/96]
—Paul said that his comments on blacks contained in the newsletters should be viewed in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time." [Houston Chronicle, 5/23/96]
Paul defended statements from an August 12, 1992 newsletter calling the late Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-TX) a "moron" and a "fraud." Paul also said Jordon was "her race and sex protect her from criticism." In response, Paul said "such opinions represented our clear philosophical difference." [Roll Call, 7/29/96]
"Also in 1992, Paul wrote, 'Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions.' Sullivan said Paul does not consider people who disagree with him to be sensible. And most blacks, [Paul spokesman Michael] Sullivan said, do not share Paul's views." [Austin American Statesman, 5/23/96]
During Saturday's GOP Primary debate, Rep. Ron Paul accused Rick Santorum of being a "big government person" who exploited his beltway connections with lobbyists to get wealthy after losing his Senate seat in 2006. Santorum insisted that he only took a series of high paying "consulting" jobs because he believed in the causes.
"I'm known in this race and I was known in Washington, DC, as a cause guy. I am a cause guy. I care deeply about this country and about the causes that make me —that I think are at the core of this country," Santorum said. "And when I left the United States Senate, I got involved in causes that I believe in."
Santorum was one of the less wealthy members of the Senate during his tenure, though as the main gatekeeper for the "K-Street Project," the attempt to place Republicans in influential positions in DC lobbying firms, Santorum developed plenty of key connections with lobbying firms and trade associations. After leaving Congress those connections proved financially beneficial. Financial disclosure forms filed last year indicate that Santorum went from making around $200,000 a year to more than a million dollars in 2010.
As part of the board of directors of Universal Health Services, Santorum made $395,000 in 2010 from a company that was sued by the Justice Department over Medicaid fraud for allegedly billing the government for psychiatric services to children it never provided. As a "consultant" for Consol Energy, Santorum was paid $142,500 in 2010. Santorum has had a long and beneficial relationship with Consol, who also donated $73,800 to his campaigns over the years. Santorum also made $65,000 from American Continental Group, a high-powered lobbying firm that largely gives money to Republicans. While Santorum might not have been a lobbyist in the strictest legal definition of the term, these groups generally hire old Washington hands like the former Pennsylvania senator because they help open doors in Washington.
Whether Santorum really cares deeply about the issues he was paid to work on is anyone's guess. But he certainly got paid well for it.
During Saturday's Republican debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, GOP front-runner Mitt Romney took his standard swipe at the Obama administration's foreign policy. Romney went after the president for, among other things, pursuing a murky strategy in Libya (really?) and for making "one error after another" on key foreign policy issues, particularly the Iranian regime's nuclear capabilities.
"We have a nation, which is intent on becoming nuclear," Romney said. "Iran has pursued their ambition without having crippling sanctions against them... And he's failed to put together a plan to show Iran that we have the capacity to remove them militarily from their plans to have nuclear weaponry. Look, this is a failed presidency."
Here's the snag with Romney's critique: There are strict sanctions currently imposed on the regime in Tehran—and on Barack Obama's watch, they've gotten harsher than they've been in decades. The Iranian economy is already showing signs that the new economic sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran are tanking the country's currency. And that's just the tip of a possibly very ugly iceberg. My colleagues Adam Weinstein and Hamed Aleaziz have a solid run-down of the tense situation in the Persian Gulf:
Over New Year's weekend [President Obama] signed a defense-spending bill with an amendment that effectively freezes international deals with Iran's Central Bank. If successful, it would halt much of Iran's oil sales and further destabilize its currency. It would also hurt European trade and likely cause global oil prices to soar...The White House had strongly opposed the legislation despite bipartisan support for it in Congress, but Obama went on to sign the bill anyway. Why? Apart from the fact that defense spending isn't really optional, the politics of the situation didn't seem to favor the White House. As Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), one of the amendment's sponsors, put it, "[A]s you enter a presidential contest, there's no upside to being soft on Iran."
Think any of this is tough enough for Romney? Considering that he has been saying for years that the United States should aggressively pursue indicting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for violating the Genocide Convention, I wouldn't bet a dime on it.
When moderator George Stephanopolous asked Mitt Romney about his views on contraception at Saturday's debate, the GOP front-runner acted as if he'd just been asked about chupacabras or spaceships—ignoring his own stated positions on the state efforts to limit access (and ban outright) some forms of contraception.
Stephanopolous' question was simple: "Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception? Or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?" Here was Mitt's answer:
George, this is an unusual topic that you're raising. States have a right to ban contraception? I can't imagine a state banning contraception. I can't imagine the circumstances where a state would want to do so., and if I were a governor of a state or...or a—or a legislature of a state—I would totally and completely oppose any effort to ban contraception. So you're asking—given the fact that there's no state that wants to do so, and I don't know of any candidate that wants to do so, you're asking could it constitutionally be done? We can ask our constitutionalist here.
At this point, Romney turned to Rep. Ron Paul, a self-described "constitutionalist," and the crowd laughed. But it was a serious question, given that in 2007 Romney supported a federal personhood amendment that would have defined life as beginning at fertilization, and in 2011, he did his best to avoid saying definitively whether he opposed Mississippi's "personhood ammendment," which would have made all forms of hormonal contraception illegal. (My colleague Kate Sheppard has explained the issue quite clearly.) In other words, state- and federal lawmakers are very much trying to ban contraception.
After some crosstalk, Romney started up his answer again, and was insistent. "George, I—I don't know whether a state has a right to ban contraception. No state wants to. I mean, the idea of you putting forward things that states might want to do that no—no state wants to do and asking me whether they could do it or not is kind of a silly thing, I think." When Santorum again pressed him, Romney was incredulous, "Has the Supreme Court—has the Supreme Court decided that states do not have the right to provide contraception?"
No—they decided the opposite in Griswold v. Connecticut, ruling that the right to privacy prohibited states from banning contraception. But it's a sore point with conservatives, like Rick Santorum, who believe the right to privacy is a load of a baloney. And in light of the nationwide Personhood movement, it's hardly a dead issue.
"Demo of the first Apple Macintosh by Steve Jobs, January 1984, in front of 3000 people. Andy Hertzfeld captured the moment quite well in his retelling: 'Pandemonium reigns as the demo completes. Steve has the biggest smile I've ever seen on his face, obviously holding back tears as he is overwhelmed by the moment. The ovation continues for at least five minutes before he quiets the crowd down.'"
A few months later, in 1984, Mother Jones published a short piece about Jobs' upstart company and its now famous "1984" ad. It contains this quote, from an employee at Apple's advertising agency at the time: "There's a residual feeling on the part of corporate computer buyers that Apple builds computers for people, not for companies." Sounds about right. Read the full piece here: Apple's Free Spirits Vs. Big Blue's Meanies.
And we'd be remiss if we didn't link to this classic from the Steve Jobs personality cult cannon, in which the world's most famous businessman responds to customer service queries. RIP Steve.
Update: This video of Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement address is making the rounds on Facebook. From the speech, delivered about 10 months after he'd undergone successful surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
In honor of road-trippingMoJo intern Tim Murphy's stop in Woody Guthrie's hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma, we've loaded up a player with five of Woody's most labor-oriented songs and matched them with another five commie pinko classics, including Gene Autry's version of "The Death of Mother Jones." As you enjoy the end of summer this fine Monday check out Josh Harkinson's dispatch from coal country, West Virginia, where the memory of Mary Harris "Mother" Jones lives on despite Massey Coal CEO Don Blankenship's rampant villainy. Click the video thumbnails to listen to each song and don't forget to ask yourself the necessary question: What Would Woody Do?
It's been nearly a year since Mother Jones published our cover story on the plight of exiled Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, and in that time the Mexican drug war death count has soared to 23,000 since President Calderón launched his war on the cartels in December of 2006. Emilio's home state of Chihuahua has been the hardest hit, with an estimated 6,757 people killed. While Emilio is still waiting for his asylum trial, the stats don't look good: of the 13,000 asylum claims from Mexico filed over the past three years, only 232 have been granted. Emilio is again working for his long-time employers, El Diario, in their El Paso office, where PBS's excellent new show (and Climate Desk partner) Need to Know checks in on him:
Paul Stamets envisions a world in which mushrooms aren't just for foodies but are a powerful way to fight disease, clean up pollution, and produce clean energy. Some fungi-friendly developments that could spring from his research:
A MUSHROOM OF ONE'S OWN Cardboard is impregnated with spores so that instead of throwing away boxes, you can put them outside and—voilà!—organic, locally grown mushrooms.
MUSH-VROOM Myconol, a cellulose-based biofuel produced by fungal sugars, is nearly identical to corn ethanol, without the oily agribusiness connection.
FUNGI.GOV The forests where fungi such as agarikon grow are preserved as a matter of national security. The feds stockpile fungal drugs in case of a bioterror attack or flu pandemic.
MUSHROOMS TO MARS Stamets theorizes that fungi could thrive on other planets—should we decide to enlist them as interplanetary ambassadors. "Spores have no borders," he writes.
The fungi kingdom is vast and varied, encompassing everything from single-celled baking yeast to what might be the world's largest organism —a 2,200-acre mycelium in Oregon. Fungi are everywhere, from the roots of most plants to the stomach of nearly every animal. Mycologists estimate that there are more than 1.5 million species of fungi, but fewer than 7 percent have been identified. Of those, about 20 percent are mushrooms. Below, an abridged family tree.
The mayor of the Mexican border town of Palomas, Estanislao Garcia, was kidnapped yesterday morning and then found dead yesterday afternoon. Whether it was the drug cartels or the Mexican army that tortured and shot Garcia, he has become a statistic in the Mexican drug war. So far in 2009 6.8 people have been murdered each day in the drug siege. And the 2nd-year mayor has now become one of the 14,000 people killed since Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006.
In Palomas, a town that like Ascensión falls within the gravitational pull of the sprawling border city of Ciudad Juárez, the entire police force recently resigned, forcing the police chief to seek shelter in the United States. The town is dying. Few people cross from America to shop because of the violence. There is a gray cast to the children begging in the streets that suggests malnutrition. Work has fled—the people-smuggling business has moved because of US pressure in the sector and so the town is studded with half-built or abandoned cheap lodgings for migrants heading north. Also there is an array of narcomansions whose occupants have moved on. And there are eyes everywhere. I walk down the dirt streets tailed by pickups with very darkly tinted windows. The biggest restaurant in town for tourists closes every day at 6 p.m.—get home before dark.
To follow developments in the Mexican drug war, the Juárez region, and the ongoing plight of Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, join the Frontera Google Group maintained by NMSU librarian and border expert Molly Molloy. I will also be posting updates on Emilio's trial here as the preliminary proceedings get underway later this month.
Photo of marine debris courtesy of Tay Wiles. Front page photo courtesy of Project Kaisei.
After a month spent studying the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," a vortex of waste twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific Ocean where there's a 36-to-1 ratio of plastic to plankton, the scientists behind Project Kaisei offered tours of their vessel and talked with Mother Jones' Sam Baldwin, Andy Kroll, and Taylor Wiles about finding lawn chairs and laundry baskets floating a thousand miles at sea. Environmental experts also weighed in on how all that junk got out in the Pacific, its impact on marine life, and why "benign by design" is a phrase to know. Watch the video below.
MoJo extra: Check out a slideshow of plastic items that Project Kaisei brought back.
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