Tightening the noose on the polio virus

Not long ago, the virus that causes the paralyzing, often deadly disease polio circulated freely worldwide, crippling or killing half a million people every year, including thousands in the U.S. and Canada.

The mid-20th Century development of the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines gave mankind the tools needed to eradicate this dreaded disease. It's taken 7 decades, but the worldwide campaign to wipe out polio, spearheaded by the UN's World Health Organization and UNICEF, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and The Gates Foundation, is closing in on the polio virus' last strongholds, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0! Let's end this terrible disease

Credit RIBI Image Library

So far this year, polio has only sickened five children, three in Afghanistan and two in Pakistan. At the same time, 116 million were vaccinated. With such an active monitoring and vaccinating program, the total eradication of polio is in sight.

That will represent just the second human disease to be complete eradicated. Another deadly viral scourge, smallpox, was completely eradicated nearly four decades ago through a similar worldwide campaign.

The eradication of polio will represent a second great achievement for mankind.

A MOTHER'S LULLABY MAKES A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE

I'll keep this story short and sweet.

It turns out that when mothers sing to their babies during pregnancy and after delivery, they and their infants are more securely attached, their babies sleep more, cry less, and suffer less colic than babies whose mothers didn't sing to them. Not surprisingly, the mothers of these healthier, happier babies experience less stress.

Mothers who sing lullabies have happier and healthier babies
Credit: makelessnoise

I won't go into all the details of the carefully designed study that found this lovely result, except to say that it took place in Italy, involved 168 expectant mothers and their babies, and showed that singing had remarkably powerful positive effects. For example, babies that were sung to were three times more likely to sleep well than babies who weren't, and were 40 percent less likely to suffer from colic.

The authors also note that the mothers enjoyed crooning lullabies-- " . . . the mothers continued to sing lullabies to their newborns and a remarkable percentage (93%) reported that this activity enriched the relationship with their babies." They also point out that the quality and security of parent-child bonding " . . . is of utmost importance for the development and well-being of the baby." As a psychologist, I would add that a positive parent-infant bond provides the best foundation for a healthy life.

It's delightful to be reminded that something as simple and natural as a mother singing lullabies to her baby can have such powerful, positive and long-lasting impacts.

HOW TO PAY FOR TRUMP'S $54 BILLION DEFENSE SPENDING INCREASE--A MODEST PROPOSAL

On Monday, February 27, President Trump announced his new "public safety and national security" budget. The centerpiece is a $54 billion raise for the military, to be paid for by an equal package of cuts to social, educational, environmental, health and other "non-essential" government programs. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of State reportedly are first in line at the chopping block.

David Koch, worth $39.6 billion--Will he be the first to pitch in?
Credit: Gage Skidmore

Unfortunately, $54 billion in cuts to those programs will do some serious damage. As quoted in the NYT article cited above, longtime Republican budget specialist Bill Hoagland comments "I don't know how you take $54 billion out without wholesale taking out entire departments."

In other words, boosting our safety and security by pumping up our military muscle will inflict a lot of pain on school children and their teachers, workers, poor people, disabled people, the unemployed, and those of us who have gotten used to clean air and water, safe food and drugs, and a functioning federal government.

However, there's a simple way to come up with $54 billion, and one that will only impact fewer than two dozen people rather than hundreds of millions of us. Why not ask Trump, his cabinet members, and his billionaire backers to help out?

A few minutes of online research shows that Trump and his cabinet are worth around $13 billion. If we add in just the top dozen Trump supporters--billionaires like the Koch brothers, Robert Mercer, Peter Thiel and Sheldon Adelson, all of whom pumped a lot of cash into his campaign--we find that they're worth around $163 billion. So Trump, his cabinet, and twelve of his biggest backers have a combined worth of $176 billion.

Given their obvious patriotism, and the fervent support for Trump demonstrated by their generous contributions to his election, I'm sure that these munificent ladies and gentlemen would be happy to contribute, say, 30% of their net worth to pay for the bigger and better armed forces we so urgently need. That would neatly cover the $54 billion Trump has earmarked, and, remarkably, all of those noble donors would still be incredibly rich.

Nor will their generosity go unrewarded if Trump's proposed tax cuts become law. According to Forbes, the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population will receive 24 percent of the $6.2 trillion in tax cuts, or just under $1.5 trillion, and will see their after-tax income increase by 14.2 percent. With that $1.5 trillion pie to divide up, I'm guessing it would not be long before those generous billionaires will be even richer than before. Talk about a win-win solution!

Ladies and gentlemen of the billionaire class, please consider this an open invitation, not just to Trump, his cabinet and his top dozen supporters, but to all 540 U.S. billionaires. With your combined worth of $2.4 trillion, just think of what you can accomplish.

Who will be the first to step up? Bill, Warren, Jeff, Mark, Larry, Michael, Charles, David, Larry, Jim, Alice, Sheldon . . .?

TRUMP ON TORTURE

Now that President Trump has said that he might send more suspected terrorists to Guantanamo, reinstate the CIA's black sites--prisons in foreign countries into which people can be "disappeared" and tortured--and now that he has said that he absolutely believes that torture works and that if his advisers want to torture, he'll "work toward that end," all of us who refuse to condone torture need to speak out against it once again.

Here's what I believe about torture:

1. Torture in any guise is morally wrong, repugnant, and soul-destroying, not only to the victims but also to the torturers. Whenever and wherever it has been used, it has left a stain that lasts for centuries. We still recoil at the horrors inflicted on suspected witches in medieval Europe, the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition, or the tortures inflicted on "enemies of the state" in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Calling torture "enhanced interrogation" does not make it any less repugnant or reprehensible.

Institutionalized Torture at Abu Ghraib

Credit: Wikipedia

2. It doesn't work. Under torture people will admit to anything and everything. Although proponents of torture always trot out the tired argument, torture cannot be justified as necessary to elicit potentially lifesaving intelligence. When a state institutionalizes torture, it is almost always to  terrorize and control its own population or some demonized subgroup. 

3. It's an unhappy commentary on human nature, but both history and decades of psychological research have shown that it's remarkably easy to use authority, peer pressure and institutional norms to turn ordinary people into torturers. 

4. Therefore we need a strong moral stance, laws and positive leadership to prevent torture from becoming institutionalized and "normalized," especially in times of uncertainty and fear. If our elected leaders fail in this vital role, or worse yet, conspire to lead our nation to once again practice and justify torture, it's up to all of us to resist in every way we can.

It seems to me that torture is such a gross violation of our shared humanity that it is not an issue on which anyone can remain neutral or silent.

ARIZONA BILL TO BAN TEACHING OF "SOLIDARITY" OR "SOCIAL JUSTICE"

If you're rich, it's inconvenient if poor people start to wonder why they're poor, and even worse if they recognize they're not alone, come together, organize, and gain political power. If you're white in America, it's inconvenient if people of color start to wonder why they face so many more obstacles than you, and even worse if they come together, organize and gain power. If you're a member of a privileged group, it's not surprising that you would see recognition of that fact by non-members as divisive and dangerous.

Sarah Palin's tweeted advice to President Obama on this year's Martin Luther King day is a great example of this: "Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card." 

And if you're Arizona State Representative Bob Thorpe, a " . . .life-long Fiscal-Conservative Republican who promotes Constitutional Liberties (freedoms), limited government, low taxes, protecting the lives of our unborn children and 2nd Amendment rights . . .," and you sit on the legislature's Education Committee and chair the Government and Higher Education Committee, you're the right person in the right position at the right time to propose HB2120--the "education; prohibited courses and activities" bill.

The University of Arizona, Tucson--soon an idea-free zone?/Credit Jr P/Flickr

Coming from an avowed promoter of "Constitutional Liberties (freedoms)", the bill is remarkable in that it sets out to limit the freedom of school teachers and college professors to teach, and students to learn about pretty much anything involving how groups of people have been defined and treated in the past or are being seen and treated today.

Here are some of the bill's "prohibited courses, classes, events and activities" for school districts and charter schools throughout Arizona, community colleges, and universities under the State Board of Regents, including the state's educational flagship, the University of Arizona. To be banned, classes, events or activities that . . .

Promote DIVISION, resentment OR SOCIAL JUSTICE toward a race, GENDER, RELIGION, POLITICAL AFFILIATION, SOCIAL CLASS or OTHER class of people.

 Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

Advocate ethnic solidarity OR ISOLATION BASED ON ETHNICITY, RACE, RELIGION, GENDER OR SOCIAL CLASS instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

God forbid that teachers should expose students to a crazy, divisive idea like social justice.

Thorpe's bill significantly expands and extends to colleges and universities a 2010 law that banned K-12 courses or classes that "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of students as individuals."

The new bill has some very sharp teeth--a school district, community college or university could lose ten percent of its state funding if it's caught teaching a forbidden subject or allowing prohibited activities.

Tacked onto the bottom of the bill is a statement with a remarkable twist on the words of Martin Luther King, whom I imagine would be appalled by this gross misuse of of his dream for justice.

Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Bob Thorpe: "It is the intent of the legislature that Arizona shall not educate nor judge an individual based upon their religion, political affiliation, social class, gender, ethnicity, race or by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." (Emphasis mine).

King's dream was of a nation providing equal rights, respect and justice for all. Thorpe's dream is of a state prohibiting teaching or learning about unequal rights, prejudice and injustice impacting the very groups he names.

To say that enacting this bill into law would have an enormous effect on education, especially higher education, would be a huge understatement. A quick glance at the University of Arizona's course catalog shows multiple classes dealing with all of those issues--as would the catalog of any self-respecting institution of higher education.

I can picture someone in the Attorney General's office--that's the agency that would be empowered to vet what gets taught or not at the college level--going through the university's course offerings line by line:

"OK, here we go. Anthropology 150A1--Race, Ethnicity and the American Dream. That one's got to go."

"Anthropology 222--African American Studies: A History of Ideas. Cross that one off."

"303--Gender and Language? Hmm. Questionable. Let's cancel it."

"314--Race and Language in the US. No way."

"317--Latin American Immigration and the Remaking of the US. Are they kidding?"

"319--Mexican American Culture. When in doubt, close it out."

"344--African American Religion--Could go either way. I'll kick that up to the A.G."

And that's just part of the offerings of one department. What about African Studies; Care, Health and Society; Communication; Public Health; Education; Environmental Health; Family and Community Medicine; History; Gender and Women's Studies (clearly that whole department needs to go); Latin American Studies (likewise); Mexican American Studies (ditto); Psychology; Public Health; Sociology; Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies; etc., all of which offer courses analyzing those forbidden group differences?

I'm guessing that a few departments, such as Veterinary Science, might escape unscathed.

It's also impossible to exaggerate the chilling effect such a law would have on all teachers, professors and administrators, knowing that a class exercise or even a comment that someone in the Attorney General's office might decide was in the forbidden zone could threaten financial support for their institution.

In George Orwell's disturbingly prescient novel, Nineteen Eighty-four, he elaborates Newspeak, a debased version of English in which concepts like "freedom," "peace," or even "science" do not exist, and so cannot be thought. Anyone who somehow managed to think a forbidden thought was committing a thoughtcrime and would soon be found out by the Thought Police.

In light of the progress this proposed law makes towards Newspeak, I suggest that Representative Thorpe change the name and number of the bill to HB1984--the "Education; Ignorance is Strength bill."

Credit: Stephen Bettany

Click here to read about a brilliant response to Arizona's embrace of ignorance, the Librotraficante Caravan, which is carrying banned books about Mexican-American history to Arizona.

And go here to read a deeply insightful essay by Roberto Rodriguez, an associate professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of  Arizona, who links HB2120 with the book burnings and torture carried out by the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico as part of the demonization and destruction of indigenous knowledge and culture.

And here and here to read about successful legal challenges to this legislation.

2021 update: Under the new banner of fighting "critical race theory," the Republican controlled Wisconsin State Legislature just passed legislation prohibiting the use of certain terms in K-12 classes. These include "white privilege," "diversity," "woke," "structural bias," "systemic racism," "multiculturalism," "social justice" or "patriarchy." In addition, teachers and administrators would not be allowed to attend training in which such concepts might be discussed. 

God forbid that anyone in the great state of Wisconsin should be able to think about such issues. Clearly, enforced ignorance is much better.

GOOD NEWS FOR ONCE--HOLLAND'S TRAINS NOW RUN 100% ON RENEWABLE ENERGY

While the US marches ever deeper into the swamp of climate-change denial, led by Donald Trump and his appointees, much of the rest of the world is surging ahead into a sustainable future.

One case in point--since January 1 of this year, every train in Holland has been running on 100% renewable energy, almost all of it generated by wind. Dutch trains carry 438 million passengers and haul 36.5 million tons of freight every year.

Dutch train, now 100% wind-powered/Credit I, Maurits90

This remarkable accomplishment only took two years, starting with an agreement between the train companies and energy company ENENCO in 2015. The goal was 100% renewable energy by 2018, but the project was completed a year early, in part because of the early completion of wind farms in the Netherlands, Belgium and Finland.

While Trump rails against wind energy, seemingly because it offends him to see the turbines from his Scottish golf course, the Dutch, who have a long tradition of windmills, don't seem to mind at all. Especially when they know that they are doing their best to fight climate change and, of particular threat to them, rising sea levels.

Dutch windmills--old and new--Eemshaven, the Netherlands
Credit Wikipedia

HERE'S TO "WEEKEND WARRIORS"--THE EXERCISE YOU GET IS LIFE-SAVING

We all know that exercise is good for us. Decades of research has shown that even moderate physical activity--such as brisk walking--improves health and lengthens lives.

Based on this, both the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend at least 2 1/2 hours of moderate physical activity or 1 1/4 hours of intense exercise per week, spread throughout the week.

Biking and other exercises add miles--and years--to your life/Credit Connie Ma

Recognizing that many people can't build daily exercise into their schedules, but might hit the streets, the courts or the trails on weekends, a team of British researchers set out to see if even "weekend warriors" are healthier because of the the exercise they do.

The short answer is--you bet they are.

Writing in this week's edition of the prestigious medical journal, JAMA Internal Medicine, Gary O'Donovan and his colleagues conclude that men and women who got the recommended amount of exercise in just one or two outings per week were 40 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease, 30 percent less likely to die from any cause, and nearly 20 percent less likely to die of cancer, compared to inactive adults.

The health benefits for weekend warriors were similar to those for people who exercised the same amount, but more regularly during the week.

"The weekend warrior and other physical activity patterns characterized by 1 or 2 sessions per week of moderate or vigorous-intensity physical activity may be sufficient to reduce risks for all-cause, CVD [cardiovascular disease], and cancer mortality regardless of adherence to prevailing physical activity guidelines," the researchers write.

Their study tracked almost 64,000 men and women 40 years and older over the course of 8 years, as part of a long-term English-Scottish health survey. Exercise patterns were determined from self reports while causes of death came from death certificates. The study's findings are particularly useful because of its length and the large number of participants.

Here's the take-home message from O'Donovan:

If you already are a weekend warrior, keep up the good work. If you are thinking of becoming more active, begin with a moderate-intensity exercise like brisk walking. Walking is associated with low risk of injury and it's important to set realistic goals that provide motivation and build confidence. I would recommend that middle-aged and older adults take part in at least 12 weeks of moderate-intensity exercise before introducing any vigorous-intensity exercise.

A new study, published in the prestigious British Medical Journal, analyzed 39 separate studies and concluded that both aerobic and resistance exercise can improve cognitive functioning in people over the age of 50. The exercise can be moderate, yet the cognitive gains are significant.

The bottom line--get up, get out, and exercise, even if you can only manage it once or twice a week.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: PROFESSORS OF CYBERPSYCHOLOGY AND EXTREME-WEATHER RISKS

My email today included notices of two new academic posts that I found eye-opening:

KIT, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in Germany, has endowed a new professorship dedicated to the study of the risks from extreme weather events. I guess they haven't been convinced by the arguments of climate-change deniers.

Tornado, Andarko Oklahoma, May 1999/Credit Dizpics1/Wikipedia
Intense, large-scale tornado outbursts like this are happening more frequently

The University of Warwick, in the UK, has appointed its first cyberpsychologist, Monica Whitty. Professor Whitty joins other researchers at the university's Cyber Security Centre. Her focus is "on the human element . . . behaviour online to identify cyber criminals and in turn protect people from becoming victims."

Maybe if Hillary Clinton had known about Dr. Whitty a year or two ago, we'd have a different person taking the oath of office on January 20.

US POLICE KILLED THREE PEOPLE A DAY IN 2016

The international newspaper The Guardian has been tracking killings by police in the US since 2015. They've just published their findings for 2016. The numbers continue to be shocking, both in terms of racial disparities and the enormous contrast between the US and other countries.

Protest following the death of Akai Gurley, 11/20/14--Credit Wikimedia

The basics:

--Police in the US killed 1091 people in 2016, slightly down from 1,146 in 2015.

That represents a rate of 3.4 deaths per million people in the US. For perspective, that's 44 times the rate in the UK, 38 times higher than in Germany, 24 times the rate in Canada and 15 times that of France.

--If you're Black in America, your risk of being killed by police is 2.3 times as high as if you're white.

--If you're a Black man 15 to 34 years old, your risk of dying in a police encounter is 9 times that of whites and 4 times higher than a white man your age.

--If you're a Native American, you have 3.5 times the risk of being killed by police than if you're white.

--Deaths at the hands of police vary greatly state-by-state. Police in Alaska, New Mexico and Oklahoma are 3 times as likely to kill people as the national average, and 10 times more likely than police in Delaware, with just one such death in 2016 and a population just under 1,000,000.

In recent years, videotapes of shootings by police under questionable circumstances have shocked millions of people, provoked multiple demonstrations and riots, and brought the issue of police use of lethal force in the US out into the open. Although the statistics for 2016 (and earlier years) clearly show a serious racial bias in US policing, we should be equally concerned about the fact that US citizens, regardless of race or ethnicity, are far more likely to die at the hands of police than citizens of any other western nation.

You can read about some of the causes and possible cures for this ongoing epidemic in two earlier postings:

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE US--DUE PROCESS VS STREET "JUSTICE"

OFFICER-INVOLVED DEATHS IN BLACK AND WHITE

And you can read an update for the first 10 months of 2017, showing a continuation of the same deadly pattern, here.

NATE SILVER'S 538 REPORTS THAT DEMOCRATS WHO DIDN'T VOTE COST CLINTON THE ELECTION

WHEN INDIFFERENCE MAKES A DIFFERENCE

On September 16 of last year I posted about pre-election polling research that showed that potential Trump voters were far more enthusiastic than potential Clinton voters. The pollsters warned that this enthusiasm gap could make the difference in a close race.

Unfortunately, that prediction turned out to be right on target. Today, Nate Silver's 538 published an analysis showing that Democrats and independents who stayed home rather than voting did make the difference. Thanks to them, as much as those who were enthusiastic enough to actually vote for Trump, we'll be inaugurating President Trump in a few days, with all that implies.

". . . Donald Trump probably would have lost to Hillary Clinton had Republican- and Democratic-leaning registered voters cast ballots at equal rates," concludes the author of the 538 analysis, Harry Enten.

Once again we're reminded that evil doesn't just happen because of the actions of bad people but, as Martin Luther King said, because of " . . . the appalling silence and indifference of the good people . . ."

Not voting counts too--this time a lot/Credit: nshepard

OF BOATS AND BUOYS--OCEAN WARMING "HIATUS" MYSTERY SOLVED

Climate-change deniers were thrilled to report about an apparent slow-down in ocean warming noted in a 2013 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. For once, it appeared that they had some actual data on their side. They will now have to switch back to denying the data, demeaning the researchers (or following Trump and blaming China for making up the whole concept of climate change), since first NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and now an independent consortium of researchers from the US and the UK have shown that the slowdown didn't happen.

It turns out that the slowdown or "hiatus" was largely the result of inappropriately combining temperature readings from satellites, ships and buoys. Buoys tend to give cooler readings than measurements made aboard ships, so as more buoys came on line in recent years, they produced a false cooling signal.

An ARGO float at work--one way scientists measure ocean temperatures/Credit: UCSD

When the three data sets--from ships, buoys and satellites--are analyzed separately, each shows continuous warming of the oceans averaging 0.12 degrees C (0.22 degrees F) per decade over the past 75 years.

"Our results mean that essentially NOAA got it right, that they were not cooking the books," said Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student in UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group and the lead author of the new study, published today in the open-access journal Science Advances.

Note, 1/11/17: It didn't take long for the denial to kick in. A story in the conservative UK Spectator argues that "their case rests on the El Nino temperature increase and will be destroyed when the El Nino subsides, as it is currently doing. A temporary victory over the ‘pause’."

Environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli promptly destroys that argument by pointing out that if the El Nino years are analyzed separately, they show warming of 0.18 degrees C (0.32 degrees F) per decade over the past fifty years, as do the La Nina years taken separately, with neutral years averaging 0.16 degrees C (0.29 degrees f) per decade.

If you wonder why climate change denial persists in the face of basic physics, decades of research, and a now visibly destabilized climate, please read Naomi Klein's 2014 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Klein makes the case that conservatives, representatives of the neoliberal market-fundamentalist consensus realized long ago that acceptance of the reality of human-caused climate change would threaten the foundations of the current global economic system. To preserve the system, they have no choice but to deny the reality as long as they can.

"SHOCK AND AWE" COMES HOME--WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER JANUARY 20

I hope I'm wrong, but . . .

I've been re-reading Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In it, Klein details how for the last three decades powerful disciples of radical-free-market economist Milton Friedman have perfected the art of seizing on chaos, crises and disasters to implement their agendas of deregulation and free trade, privatization and the gutting of the social safety net while those who are impacted or might resist are still reeling and disorganized.

Klein opens the book with an enlightening story about Hurricane Katrina, which struck in August, 2005, killing more than 1200 people and wreaking more than $100 billion in property damage. Even while thousands of its victims were still struggling to survive, Friedman was urging his moneyed and powerful acolytes to seize the moment to advance one of their pet projects--privatizing education. The result was that most of New Orleans' public schools were never re-opened, thousands of teachers lost their jobs, their union and their legal protection, and the entire public education system of New Orleans was the victim of a quick and thorough takeover by voucherized charter schools. And that was only one of the many ways in which the catastrophe was turned into a fantastic profit opportunity for the few while the people of New Orleans were re-victimized.

Interestingly, Republicans are now using New Orleans as a poster child for school privatization nationwide.

Flooding from Hurricane Katrina--What a Great Opportunity!--Credit US Navy

Klein goes on to discuss many other instances of what she calls disaster capitalism, such as the murderous history of Chile under Pinochet; Russia under Yeltsin and Iraq after the 2003 "shock and awe" invasion by the United States under George Bush. Many of these forced transformations took place outside the U.S., but some, such as the surge of the surveillance state following 9/11, happened right here at home.

Shock and Awe: Operation Desert Storm/Credit ultradesktop.us

On January 20, 2017, all the pieces will be in place for a massive, multi-front assault on the entire public sphere. We will have a president who has a deep authoritarian streak, whose main motives seem to be self enrichment and self aggrandizement, and who has little or no respect for the rule of law; a cabinet filled with billionaire capitalists, a congress dominated by tea partiers and other conservatives drooling to demolish pretty much everything that's been implemented to help ordinary people since the New Deal, and a Supreme Court that will soon be dominated by the right.

How likely do you think is that this energized and empowered collection of conservatives will advance their programs in a studied, thoughtful way, for example consulting with stakeholders--that's all of us--considering implications and alternatives, and negotiating in good faith with the opposition?

It's much more likely--to my mind almost a certainty--that they will launch a simultaneous attack on every front with the most radical versions of their plans. Name an issue or program you care about--the environment, energy, climate change, healthcare, consumer protection, financial regulation, education, labor, immigration, civil rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, surveillance, torture, taxation, separation of church and state, freedom of speech, a free press, voting rights, gun control, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, the EPA, NASA--and expect legislation, litigation or presidential fiat to slash it, gut it, kill it or push it as far to the right as can be imagined.

And not one issue or program at a time, but all at once and as soon as possible.

As I wrote in the days after the election:

. . . things appear normal. But in New York and Washington, angry, arrogant men and women are circling like wolves, salivating as their time draws near. For them, life is a zero-sum game that they have won. That makes the rest of us losers, and in their world losers deserve no more than scorn. Women and children, Muslims and Mexicans, journalists and Jews--and who knows who else--beware, because the knives are out.

The newly empowered threaten that undesirables will be registered and tracked, millions deported and the press whipped to heel. People will need to watch what they say. Torture-lovers will be re-empowered; drillers, extractors and polluters will run free, climate and environment be damned. Schools must be privatized. Obamacare must go, along with Medicare, Planned Parenthood and women's right to choose. Discrimination by Christians against the LGBTQ community or others will be legalized along with discrimination against Muslims. NASA will be ordered not to monitor the Earth, but the NSA will monitor us all. The rich will have their tax cuts and sooner or later the deficit hawks will have theirs. We know who will bleed; it will not be the billionaires.

Their goal is a simple one--use shock and awe to overwhelm and rout any resistance in order to radically reshape America. The means to do it are in their hands. And the people who will be in charge after January 20 are not the kind to use power with moderation.

I very much hope I'm wrong, but it sure looks like a deluge to me.

Storm Front Approaching / Credit Jonny Ross

Note (1/7/2017): I was wrong--thinking that the storm would hit after Trump's inauguration on January 20. Media Matters reports that Trump has scheduled his first press conference in months for January 11. His cohorts in the Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, have scheduled six confirmation hearings for the same day. A beautiful example of overloading the opposition, the press and the public. The Office of Federal Ethics points out that the early hearing date has overwhelmed their staff, leaving them with inadequate time for the necessary ethics reviews, made worse in that many of the nominees have not provided financial and other information.

Shock and awe has come home.

-----------

For a similar, more detailed analysis of the coming "shock doctrine blitzkreig" by attorney and commentator Miles Mogulescu, click here.

And for an update on how the deluge has progressed in the first 10 days of Trump's reign, read this piece by William Rivers Pitt.

CLIMATE SCIENTISTS TAKE TO THE STREETS TO PROTEST TRUMP AND HIS CABINET

When hundreds of scientists leave their labs and take to the streets to protest, you can bet that something serious is going on.

Scientists rally for climateSan Francisco, 12/13/16/Credit: ClimateTruth.org

What led hundreds of scientists to rally in the streets of San Francisco on December 13 was the realization that president-elect Trump is filling his cabinet with climate-change deniers and fossil-fuel advocates. 

For the scientists, the risks of inaction, or worse yet, backward steps with respect to global climate change are simply to great to ignore. Floods, fire, famine, food shortages, forced migration and increased political instability loom if the US and the rest of the world fail to move aggressively away from our current carbon-based economy.

The technology is already available, it's the political will that's lacking. These courageous scientists went way beyond their comfort zone to alert us. Take a look at what they did and why they did it at this link:

https://act.climatetruth.org/sign/standupforscience_rallyvideo/?t=2&akid=5553.97426.1jsCnq

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE US--DUE PROCESS VS STREET "JUSTICE"

As I discussed in an earlier post, "Officer Involved Deaths in Black and White," there's an enormous gap between justice as its administered in our courts and "justice" as it is meted out in the thousands of fatal encounters with police that take place in the US every year.

Justice in a court of law / Credit Slater and Zurz

First, a little background about capital punishment.

The US is the only western nation that currently enforces the death penalty. Thirty-two states and the US federal government apply it; 18 states and the District of Columbia do not. There were no legal executions in the US between 1967 and 1977. Since then, more than 1400 convicts have been executed, an average of about 40 people per year (just 20 in 2016, a 25-year low). The death penalty has not been shown to decrease murders or other crimes. The murder rate in non-death-penalty states is consistently lower--30 percent on average--than in death-penalty states. Nonetheless, capital punishment in the US retains strong popular support.

As you would expect, the death penalty is only applied for very serious offenses. These vary from state to state, for example intentional homicide with aggravating circumstances such as rape, multiple victims, or the killing of an on-duty police officer. At the federal level, treason, espionage and large-scale drug trafficking are also capital offenses. The constitutional right to due process guarantees that even after a fair trial, conviction and sentencing, convicts facing death have access to legal appeals that can delay their execution for years--currently an average of more than 14 years.

None of the above is true on the streets:

--Rather that 40 per year, 1000 to 2000 people die in encounters with police every year--25 to 50 times more than are legally executed.

--As multiple notorious cases have shown in recent years, a fatal encounter with police can stem from a broken tail-light, shoplifting, carrying a crucifix, or as minorities have been reporting for years, walking, driving or parking while Black, Hispanic or Native American.

--As a depressing number of videos show, "due process" is often reduced to minutes or even seconds between an officer's first contact with a suspect and a fatal barrage of shots.

--Fatal encounters with police are far from fair with respect to race or ethnicity. A recent study in the American Journal of Public Health analyzed 2,285 "legal intervention deaths" in the US between 2010 and 2014 and found that Blacks, Native Americans and Alaskan Natives were 2.7 times more likely to die in police encounters than Whites, and Hispanics 1.6 times more likely to die.

--The interactions between police and the people they are supposed to serve and protect vary greatly from state to state. Police in New Mexico, with a population just over 2 million, killed 28 people in the first half of 2016. Nevada, with a comparable population, saw just 4 police-related deaths. Arizona has a slightly smaller population than Washington, yet Arizona police killed more than twice as many people. Californians are three times more likely to die in an arrest-related event than New Yorkers. There's something wrong with this picture.

Justice on the street / Credit A Gude

Of course, this does not mean that all or most of those deaths are illegal or illegitimate. Police officers do represent the front line of our system of justice, place their own lives at risk (although not nearly as much as the public believes), and have to deal with many difficult and sometimes dangerous people and situations. University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert points out that in 98.9 percent of cases, killings by police are found to be justified.

However, justified does not mean necessary or just. The number of police killings places the US at the ragged edge of other developed countries. A few examples:

The US has about 6 times the population of England and Wales. Yet US police killed more people in the first 24 days of 2015 than police in England and Wales over the last 24 years.

The US has about 4 times the population of Germany. US police kill two or three times as many people every week as German police do in a year. Almost twice as many unarmed Black men (19) were killed by US police in 2015 than all the people killed by police in Germany that year (10).

The police in Kern County, California--population 875000--killed 14 people in 2015. That's almost three times as many as were killed that year by police in Germany and the UK combined--total population 145,000,000.

Police in my home town, Albuquerque, New Mexico, killed 28 people between January, 2010 and July, 2014. That's more than twice as many as police killed in Germany during the same time period. Albuquerque has a population of 556,000. Germany has a population of 80,620,000. That means that the citizens of Albuquerque were 300 times more likely to die at the hands of police than the citizens of Germany.

Clearly, there's something different about how US police are trained, governed and see their relationship to the rest of us, compared to police in other countries. You can read a thoughtful expert commentary by criminal justice professor Paul Hirschfield at this URL.

Hirschfield identifies a variety of contributing factors, but emphasizes that police in other developed countries receive significantly more training than in the US, including  much more training in how to manage critical situations--for example dealing with agitated or mentally ill people--without resorting to lethal force.

He also focuses on national and international standards which typically permit lethal force only as a last resort and when absolutely necessary. In the US, standards are far more lax. Most states empower police to use lethal force if they reasonably believe they or someone else is at risk of imminent or grave harm. In the vast majority of cases, review boards, district attorneys, judges and juries give police officers enormous leeway concerning the circumstances or behavior that could have justified their perception of risk, resulting in a lack of accountability. A recent in-depth study by Reuters reveals how police union contracts across the country can shield officers who repeatedly use excessive force or even engage in clearly criminal acts, for example by expunging their records every few years. A recent Pew Research Center survey finds that 72 percent of police officers nationwide agree that badly performing fellow officers are not held accountable.

It's in large part that very low bar to the use of lethal force in the US that leads to the kinds of killings that outrage us all too frequently. Both training and the legal standards for the use of lethal force need to be improved if the police are to be seen not as soldiers on the front line of a war, but as the face of justice in our communities and on the streets.

YOU'RE LESS LIKELY TO DIE IN HOSPITAL IF YOU'RE TREATED BY A FEMALE PHYSICIAN

Women doctors treat differently, save lives

Male and female physicians practice medicine differently. For example, women doctors spend more time with their patients, communicate more, offer more encouragement, and are more likely to adhere to the latest clinical guidelines.

A major new national study shows that those or other differences save lives. The study found that hospitalized elderly patients treated by female rather than male internists were 4 percent less likely to die and 5 percent less likely to be re-hospitalized within 30 days of admission. This was true across a wide range of conditions. And the sicker the patient, the bigger the difference between patient outcomes for female vs. male physicians.

Female physicians practice medicine differently--and more effectively

Credit: Ilmicrofono Oggiono

"The difference in mortality rates surprised us," said Yusuke Tsugawa, a researcher at Harvard University's T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the study's lead author. "The gender of the physician appears to be particularly significant for the sickest patients."

A four or five percent difference in survival rates may not seem like a lot, but since 10,000,000 patients like those in this study are hospitalized in the US every year, the authors estimate that if male physicians performed as well as their female colleagues, 32,000 lives would be saved--more than the number of Americans who die in traffic accidents every year.

The study, published today in the prestigious JAMA Internal Medicine, tracked the outcomes of more than 1.5 million Medicare hospitalizations from 2011 through 2014. All of the patients were 65 years old or older, 40 percent were men, 60 percent women. These were seriously ill patients--within 30 days of being admitted to the hospital, more than 15 percent were re-hospitalized and more than 11 percent died. About one third of patients were treated by female internists or hospitalists, two thirds by male physicians. Although earlier research has identified a number of differences between how female and male physicians practice, this is the first national study to see if those differences impact patient outcomes.

Although this study shows conclusively that the physician's gender does affect the risk that hospitalized elderly patients will die or be re-hospitalized, it does not pin down just what produces those differences.

"There was ample evidence that male and female physicians practice medicine differently," says Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "Our findings suggest that those differences matter and are important to patient health. We need to understand why female physicians have lower mortality so that all patients can have the best possible outcomes."

In the meantime, an accompanying editorial in the same journal points out that the medical profession needs to take a hard look at the gap in both pay and career advancement between female physicians and their male colleagues.

You can listen to an interview with the authors at this URL.

HILLARY CLINTON'S POPULAR VOTE LEAD NEARING THREE MILLION

According to the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Election Results, as of December 19, 2016--the day the Electoral College votes to elect the new President--Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 2,871,974 votes (and still counting). With just over 137,000,000 votes cast, that means she won the popular vote by more than two percent. Nonetheless, Trump will be sworn in as President (OMG), but to claim that he has a mandate is a travesty.

But because of the Electoral College, it just didn't count/Credit Vox Efx

Remarkably, despite Hillary Clinton's 2.8 million vote lead, more than half of Republicans think Trump won the popular vote, as do 60 percent of Republicans with no college education. Trump clearly has millions of reasons to back up his famous "I love the poorly educated" quote.

As Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time. . . " Trump lives by those words.

Let's hope that Lincoln was also right in concluding, ". . . but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

INEQUALITY AND THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

Nate Silver's website, fivethirtyeight.com isn't just about sports and political polls. It also hosts statistics-based commentaries on a variety of important subjects. A recent post by Ben Casselman entitled "Inequality is Killing the American Dream," is well worth reading.

Casselman presents statistics supporting three main points:

1. The dream that each generation of Americans would do better than the last has been fading since around 1970. At that time, nearly nine out of ten 30 year olds were earning more than their parents had at the same age. By 2014, that was true for less than half of 30 year olds.

2. Another way of documenting the erosion of economic progress is the finding that, adjusted for inflation, the lower half of American wage earners today aren't earning any more, pre-tax, that the same segment of earners did in the 1970s. Zero progress in 45 years.

3. The key factor is not lack of growth in the overall economy, but too much growth in economic inequality. Only the topmost rungs of the economic ladder have stretched, carrying a few to great wealth while leaving most of the population behind.

Getting ahead has become out of reach for many/Graphic credit: Peggy_Marco

Again, the full story is worth reading for anyone who wants to understand what's really happening to America.

WE'VE ALREADY HIT THE 1.5 DEGREE C GLOBAL WARMING CEILING THAT WE'VE AGREED NEVER TO GO BEHOND

Meeting in Paris last year, representatives from 195 nations agreed to work together to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above the temperature that prevailed before the industrial revolution. Scientists and policy members agreed that global warming beyond that level creates unacceptable levels of risk to the environment and civilization--much like revving your car's engine into the red zone. The Paris Agreement (Accord de Paris) went into effect in November of 2016.

Negotiators celebrate Paris Agreement 4/22/16

Credit: UN

In what should serve as a three-alarm wake-up-call, researchers at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, a prestigious independent intergovernmental organization, reports that Earth hit that 1.5 degree C ceiling for the first time in February of 2016 (see section 10 in the above link).

Global Temperatures 1880 to Present

Credit: NASA GISS

The researchers are quick to note that the early months of 2016 were exceptionally warm, following a strong El Niño, and that Earth has cooled approximately 0.3 degrees C (0.5 degrees F) since then. However, with the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere continuing to rise, it's only a matter of time before we don't just bump against the 1.5 degree ceiling, but crash through it.

And not much time. The Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) calculates that under the most optimistic assumptions, we have only 4 years before we lock in more than 1.5 degrees C of warming, and under the most pessimistic assumptions, just one year.

Atmosperic CO2 levels over the last 500,000 years/Credit NASA

"It is salutary that the world touched the 1.5 degree C level less that twenty years after touching the 1 degree C level in the record-breaking year of 1998," says Adrian Simmons, the study's lead author. 

"Salutary" is a polite, understated, British way of saying that if we value Earth's health and our own, we'd better pay attention and take action.

(Note 1/10/17: I hate to be pessimistic, but it's clear from Trump's own statements and his appointees that the US government will be leading a climate-change charge, but in exactly the wrong direction--away from wind and other renewable sources of energy, and back towards coal and other greenhouse-gas belching technologies.)