Thursday, August 30th, 2018
Stephan: Anybody who reads me knows of my belief that as a culture America has a gun psychosis. We are quite literally societally insane when it comes to firearms. The other day I published a report that laid out the facts. I think this psychosis is undeniable. But I also dislike propaganda and false information, and I am publishing this report as a corrective about school shootings. Things are not what you might think because of the fog of misinformation.
How many times per year does a gun go off in an American school?
We should know. But we don’t.
This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” The number is far higher than most other estimates.
But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government’s Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn’t respond to our inquiries.
“When we’re talking about such an important and rare event, [this] amount of data error could be […]
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Wednesday, August 29th, 2018
DAN SPINELLI, - Mother Jones
Stephan: The news is so dominated by the sewage that pours out day after day from the White House, that the changes in policies that affect all of our lives just get lost. But that doesn't mean they aren't happening. And almost universally, I can't think of a counter-example at the moment, the Trump policies degrade the lives of most Americans. Here is a stark example of what I mean.
November is coming folks, and I think each of us should take a pledge to vote and to see that everyone in our families who can vote does vote. And please can we avoid the usual behavior of Democrats splintering over minutiae, and l0sing the election as a result -- no more Jill Steins.
Credit: Zhou Changguo/AP
When President Barack Obama unveiled the Clean Power Plan in the East Room of the White House three years ago, he called it “the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change.” Today, that plan, which would have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 19% in 2030 relative to 2005 levels, will be replaced by the Trump administration’s “Affordable Clean Energy” proposal, which will give states more authority to craft regulations for coal-burning power plants and replaces the “overly prescriptive and burdensome” requirements in the CPP with what they describe as “on-site, heat-rate efficiency improvements.”
These regulations are expected to only decrease CO2 levels by a fraction of the amount that were anticipated under Obama’s plan. The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged this will lead to hundreds of more deaths each year, along with sharp increases in the number of hospital admissions, lost work days, and school absences because of the health impacts of dirtier air. Not to mention the fact that increased emissions of carbon dioxide will further accelerate […]
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In January, Senate Republicans set their sights on a new foe in the 
Aimee Stephens worked for R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Home for six years before beginning her gender transition. Then serving as funeral director and embalmer, she wrote a letter on July 31, 2013, to her employers to share that she would begin wearing appropriate women’s business attire at work. They decided that was unacceptable, and 
