MetaFilter posts tagged with motherjones

America's 10 Worst Prisons

zarq — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:15:31 -0800

"'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.' So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment." Mother Jones is profiling "America's 10 Worst Prisons." Facilities were chosen for the list based on "...three years of research, correspondence with prisoners, and interviews with reform advocates." The List 1: ADX (federal supermax: "A federal isolation facility that's "pretty close" to hell.") 2: Allan B. Polunsky Unit (Texas: "'The hardest place to do time in Texas'—and then you die.") 3: Tent City Jail (Phoenix: Feds say notorious facility has a 'pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos.') 4: Orleans Parish (Louisiana: "'A violent and dangerous institution,' says the Justice Department.") 5: LA County Jail (Los Angeles: "And you thought the Rodney King beating was bad?") 6: Pelican Bay (California: "Where a Christmas card might land you in the hole.") 7: Julia Tutwiler (Alabama: "Prisoners fear 'that it's not safe to take a shower, that it's not safe to go to sleep...that you can be manipulated into sexual favors, it's really horrific.'") 8: Reeves Country Detention Complex (Texas: "An overcrowded, understaffed lockup—with health care bad enough to spark riots.") 9: Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility (Mississippi: "'A picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.'") 10: Riker's Island (New York City: "New York City lockup has a "deeply entrenched" pattern of violence by guards, lawsuit claims.") The piece will conclude tomorrow with a list of "Dishonorable Mentions." Accompanying Articles (Some are older pieces covering the same topic) * Maps: Solitary Confinement, State by State: "An exclusive review of how state prisons use isolation to discipline inmates and weed out gang members." * God's Own Warden: "If you ever find yourself inside Louisiana's Angola prison, Burl Cain will make sure you find Jesus—or regret ever crossing his path." * The Silent Treatment: "Imagine serving decades in prison for a crime your sibling framed you for. Now imagine doing it while profoundly deaf." * Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons: "We throw thousands of men in the hole for the books they read, the company they keep, the beliefs they hold. Here's why." (Previously on Mefi) * Life in the Hole: Inside a Solitary Cell: "A guided tour of the seven-by-eleven-foot space where inmates spend 23 hours a day."

Al Gore Is Fat, Therefore Global Warming Doesn't Exist

kuujjuarapik — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:42:46 -0800

When conservative pundits write about climate change, they're more likely to mention Al Gore than science.

The Files Will Get Out

Artw — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:20:01 -0800

Mitt Romney's damning '47 Percent' video and the new politics of privacy

"Now, watch this drive."

the man of twists and turns — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 05:38:38 -0800

Obama, DC Press Corps Locked In Mutual Loathing Pact. Mike Allen, of Politico, in his article Obama, The Puppet Master, said that Obama " has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions." John Cook (Gawker) replies: I will now tweet every question Politico's Mike Allen asked President George W. Bush during a May 2008 interview" (Screenshot) More ~~Tiger Beat On The Potomac~~ Politico: "This Isn't About A Golf Game". In Brief: Politico's Article on Obama's Media "Manipulation" Lacks a Mirror. Is Obama Being Too Mean To The White House Press Corps?

This weekend those tensions went public when the press corps learned of the president’s golf outing with Tiger Woods through a tweet by a Golf Digest writer who had access to the clubhouse at the Florida course where the president was playing. The White House press office seems to have circumvented the “pool” system whereby members of the White House press corps travel with the president to events and is kept informed of his whereabouts. The head of the White House Correspondents Association, Ed Henry, told Politico Monday night: "This is a fight for more access, period.... I've heard all kinds of critics saying the White House press corps is whining about a golf game and violating the president's privacy. Nothing could be further from the truth." "We're not interested in violating the president's privacy. He's entitled to vacations like everyone else. All we're asking for is a brief exception, quick access, a quick photo-op on the 18th green," Henry continued. "It's not about golf — it's about transparency and access in a broader sense."

Play Of The Day - Golf And Transparency. Stephen Colbert asks hard-hitting questions about transparency (and golf). Press Tries to Get Into Obama's Vacation Golf Club, But Is Denied. Obama Golfs With Tiger Woods, Shuts Out Press Corps. Obama on Woods: He's On Another Planet. Woods on Obama: "He hit the ball well and he's got a good touch".

좋은 하루 되세요 내 친구

davidjmcgee — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:00:56 -0800

North Korea follows only three people on Twitter. One of them, for some reason, is 25-year-old Coldplay superfan Jimmy "Jammy" Dushku.

Senator Chip Rogers - Agenda 21 - Mother Jones

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 08:54:17 -0800

Chip Rogers is the Republican Majority Leader of the Georgia State Senate, and Treasurer of ALEC (previously 1 2). On October 11th he hosted a four-hour briefing for his fellow senators, regarding Obama's mind-control techniques which are forcing the US into a United Nations-led Communist dictatorship in which suburbanites are forcibly relocated to cities. The theory is based on Agenda 21, the non-binding 1992 UN treaty on sustainable development. Rogers narrowly failed to pass a resolution against Agenda 21, but other states have done so, and Alabama has even forbidden its implementation in law.

my job is is not to worry about those people

gerryblog — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:00:45 -0800

As internal leaks from the Romney camp suggest a campaign in serious disarray, and poll-of-polls meta-analyses show him with little time to recover his position before November, Mother Jones has acquired video from a private Romney fundraiser at which the candidate said of Obama supporters: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. Ezra Klein puts aside the political ramifications and crunches the numbers about who does and doesn't pay income tax in America. The Romney camp responds to the leak.

The Physics of physicality

the man of twists and turns — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 01:07:59 -0800

WIRED has been running a fascinating series: Olympic Physics: Can Runners Benefit From Drafting?, Scoring the Decathlon, New [Swimming] Platform Is No Chip Off The Old Block Air Density And Bob Beamon's Crazy-Awesome Long Jump, How The Hammer Throw Is Like A Particle Accelerator and is also Exciting and Artisitc The Social Psychology of Relay Racing

Both the 4×100-meter relay and the 4×400-meter relay require speed, endurance and great depth of talent on the team. But the relays also are a fascinating laboratory for social science, bringing to two of the field’s most interesting observations to the fore: the Köhler effect, and the social-loafing effect.

Modern penthathlon gets 'more modern' with frikkin' lasers. With the end of the Games, The US Team won 46 gold medals,' the most in a non-boycotted game since 1904.' With so many golds, What if US female Olympians were their own country? There are also 30 other questions remaining.There is: The Olympics most painful moments, in GIFs(Mashable, slideshow). And for the distance, a detailed analysis of the Women's Marathon. And a look at The Ancient Roots of Iran's Wrestling and Weightlifting Olympic Dominance. Usian Bolt adds to his legend with straight 100m and 200m wins. Finally, an Olympics Cartoon review(slideshow) The Olympics wasn't always about sport, in fact, 'In the modern Olympics’ early days, painters, sculptors, writers and musicians battled for gold, silver and bronze'

$20 million ... 'sold to the public as charity work in the service of human rights.'

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 08:17:59 -0800

Mark Ames (of the eXile): The Left’s Big Sellout – How the ACLU and Human Rights Groups Quietly Exterminated Labor Rights (via naked capitalism)

Less than twenty years after Fred Koch fought to destroy labor rights through “Right To Work” laws, the executive director of the ACLU, Aryeh Neier—the same Aryeh Neier who later led Human Rights Watch— colluded with William Buckley to push the ACLU rightward against labor by getting the ACLU to represent big business and “Right To Work” laws, under the guise of “protecting free speech”—the same bullshit pretense always used by lawyers and advocates to help big business crush labor and democracy. This “free speech” pretense is the basis on which the ACLU currently supports the Citizens United decision, which effectively legalized the transformation of America into an oligarchy.

Mother Jones: Why Screwing Unions Screws the Entire Middle Class (print version) Antiwar.com: Amnesty’s Shilling for US Wars (via Mondoweiss) Salon: When Blue Collar Dreams Became Identity Politics NY Times: Turning Our Backs on Unions', by Joe Nocera, on Timothy Noah's book The Great Divergence, reviewed by the NY Times and previously on MetaFilter And a quick search for 'labor' on AmnestyUSA's website this post inspired by this post

Law Enforcement Theatre

jeffburdges — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 05:56:22 -0800

The FBI has orchestrated "14 out of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks [on U.S. soil] since 9/11" according to the NY Times' counting. As noted previously though, Mother Jones' investigative report found that "all [but three] of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings" and one third of terrorist defendants were actually led by an FBI agent provocateur, often outside contractors. A Rolling Stone blogger has now called out the FBI for "singling out ideological enemies [of the State]", including the FBI's recent Ohio bridge plot, while ignoring much more dangerous right wing groups, including white supremacists. In Cleveland, the FBI had apparently repeatedly failed to inspire other Occupy protestors before finally selecting several mentally ill people for the bridge plot. "The way the FBI conducts their operations, It is all about entrapment … I know the game, I know the dynamics of it. It's such a joke, a real joke. There is no real hunt. It's fixed." - Ex-FBI informant Craig Monteilh As a bonus, there have been several interesting pieces by This American Life around the FBI's anti-activists efforts and methods bordering on entrapment as well : Arms Trader 2009 - How the FBI made an arms dealer out of Hemant Lakhani. Turncoat - Brandon Darby's efforts spying on activists for the FBI. The Prosecutor - Richard Convertino's prosecution of the Detroit Sleeper Cell case.

Meet Ms. Ruth, Aryan Outfitter

liketitanic — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:15:06 -0800

"Ms. Ruth" is a seamstress who makes robes and garments for members of the Ku Klux Klan. Photojournalist Anthony Karen documents her work in this photo essay with audio of interviews.

Spring Awakening

The Whelk — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:04:43 -0800

Mother Jones: The 10 'Occupy' candidates vying for seats in the US House Of Representatives and Senate and their prospects.

Don't take it personally

vidur — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:47:12 -0800

"I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine"

Is your food spending normal?

desjardins — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:16:48 -0800

Is Your Food Spending Normal? This interactive calculator from Mother Jones compares your spending with others in your location and income bracket.

Big Food Makes Big Finance Look Like Amateurs

davidjmcgee — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:54:12 -0800

"Agribusiness is concentrated to a point that would make a Wall Street master of the universe blush. Vast globe-spanning corporations, many of them US-based, dominate the industry." Tom Philpott, writing in Mother Jones, says Big Food makes Big Finance look like amateurs

Here, kitty, kitty. Or maybe not.

peripathetic — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:00:38 -0800

Cats are apparently the culprits behind several avian extinctions worldwide. So, are cats bad for the environment?

Life is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work

Terminal Verbosity — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:38:42 -0800

"I can't tell you about all the suicides and the accidental deaths where I work. ... One guy was 38. He went home after a really long day, poured himself a drink, sat down in his armchair, and died." Harrowing, Heartbreaking Tales of Overworked Americans. First person stories of doing more with less, from warehouses and classrooms to operating rooms and air-traffic control towers. Culled from the Mother Jones Public Insight Network

Secrets of the Tax-Prep Business

vidur — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:40:01 -0800

"Customers wanting a RAL paid Jackson Hewitt a $24 application fee, a $25 processing fee, and a $2 electronic-filing fee, plus 4 percent of the loan amount. On a $2,000 refund, that meant $131 in charges—equivalent to an annual interest rate of about 170 percent—not to mention the few hundred bucks you might spend for tax preparation."

Eco-friendly Wilderness Evacuation

vidur — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 22:50:57 -0800

Ah wilderness! What better place to escape the stifling trappings of urban existence - overflowing inboxes, two-hour commutes, social-media addiction. And, of course, indoor plumbing. "Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth," the great Western author and curmudgeon Edward Abbey once exhorted car-bound city slickers. Contemplating the reasons for taking a trek down the Appalachian Trail (and aping Abbey-ish machismo), travel writer Bill Bryson mused, "I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, 'Yeah, I've shit in the woods.'"

Dan Rather on Mark Cuban's island.

shadytrees — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:42:50 -0800

Dan Rather is doing valuable journalism on a subscription cable channel of 20 million households, on a show whose ratings Mark Cuban will not reveal to him, on a show bracketed by pro-wrestling and Girls Gone Wild -- and he loves it. A profile of Dan Rather by Jim Rendon in Mother Jones. (via)

Where'd I put that nuclear recipe again?

kmz — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:41:41 -0800

Did America Forget How to Make the H-Bomb? Nobody in the general public knows exactly what it is, though there are guesses, but it seems the bombmakers themselves forgot how to make a crucial ingredient in US thermonuclear weapons, FOGBANK.

Be all that you can be

Joe Beese — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:52:11 -0800

The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that military scientists tested hundreds of chemical and biological substances on them, including VX, tabun, soman, sarin, cyanide, LSD, PCP, and World War I-era blister agents like phosgene and mustard. The full scope of the tests, however, may never be known. As a CIA official explained to the GAO, referring to the agency's infamous MKULTRA mind-control experiments, "The names of those involved in the tests are not available because names were not recorded or the records were subsequently destroyed." Besides, said the official, some of the tests involving LSD and other psychochemical drugs "were administered to an undetermined number of people without their knowledge."

The Failure of the Business Press

ornate insect — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:25:55 -0800

How Could 9,000 Business Reporters Blow It? A former Wall Street Journal writer dissects why business reporters bought the bull—and missed the biggest story on their beat. from the linked Mother Jones article: FOR CASUAL readers of business coverage—that is, most of us—the past 18 months have been a crash course in things we never knew existed but that, we are told, have already done us all irreparable harm. Not only are the problems catastrophic, goes the somewhat frustrating message, but it is already too late to do anything about them—other, that is, than pay for them.[...]business journalists as a rule are as smart, sophisticated, and plugged-in as they seem. And yet that army of professional business reporters—an estimated 9,000 or so nationwide in print alone—for all practical purposes missed the biggest story on the beat. Why? ** In addition to examining the question of why the mainstream business press mostly failed to recognize, predict, or properly understand the current financial crisis, the author of the article, Dean Starkman--who worked as a Wall Street Journal staff writer for eight years ending in December 2004 and now critique[s] the business media full time at the Columbia Journalism Review--also addresses the dismal failure of the financial regulators: IT WASN'T JUST the media abdicating their watchdog role: Just as financial news outlets were weakening, regulators were also abandoning the field, leaving business reporters starved of the investigative leads they rely on.[...] In 2002, the [FTC] announced a then-record $240 million predatory lending settlement involving Citigroup's giant subprime units, and covering no fewer than 2 million customers. Since then the FTC has brought no major consumer lending cases. Zero. The last such case brought by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, against Providian National Bank, came in 2000.[...] It is worth remembering that prior to the Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and Tyco scandals earlier this decade, the SEC had already opened formal investigations into each doomed company—forcing disclosures that tipped off investors, yes, but also providing road maps and official cover to the financial press. (The problems at Enron, a special case, were first uncovered by a short seller, who tipped off reporters.) Contrast that with the most recent disasters: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac had all collapsed before the SEC had even launched an investigation....

Hate's Haberdasher

ooga_booga — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:16:25 -0800

Aryan Outfitters - a photo and audio essay from Mother Jones magazine about a day in the life of a 58-year old seamstress who caters to the Ku Klux Klan.

Iraq Out How

shotgunbooty — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:46:51 -0800

The focus of the current issue of Mother Jones is the Moral Dilemma of Leaving Iraq.