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How the Aurora Mass Shooting Cost More Than $100 Million

Mother Jones

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What Does Gun Violence Really Cost?


16 Charts That Show the Shocking Cost of Gun Violence in America


This Is What It’s Like to Survive a Gunshot


Methodology: the Data Behind Our Investigation


Watch: The Total Cost of Gun Violenceâ&#128;&#148;in 90 Seconds

“We focus on the proceedings. We focus on the death penalty. We focus on the perpetrator. But we don’t focus on the people affected.”

That was how Sandy Phillips, whose daughter Jessica Ghawi was among the 12 people murdered in a movie theater in July 2012, described the American public’s perception as the trial of mass shooter James Holmes got underway on Monday in Aurora, Colorado. It’s a fair point given the inordinate attention that such killers crave, and tend to get, from the media. Yet as Phillips also noted, “that ripple effect of how many people are affected by one act by one person, one animal, is incredibly large.”

She’s right—not just in terms of the trauma and suffering borne by the victims (an additional 58 wounded and 12 others injured in the chaos), their families, and their communities, but also in terms of the literal cost. The price tag for what was one of the worst mass murders in US history is in fact stunningly high: well over $100 million, according to our groundbreaking investigation into the costs of gun violence published earlier this month.

For a quick explanation of the data behind the large sums our country pays for this problem, watch the following 90-second video, with more details on the Aurora tally continuing just below:

The economic impact of Aurora: For starters, long before the attorneys gave opening statements this week, legal proceedings for Holmes had already topped $5.5 million back in February, including expenses related to the unusually large pool of 9,000 prospective jurors called for the case. Add to that the total costs for each of the 12 victims killed: At an average of about $6 million each, that’s another $72 million. For the 58 who survived gunshots and were hospitalized, with an average total cost for each working out to about $583,000, add another $33 million. (Costs for some of the gunshot survivors may have varied widely, of course.) And these figures don’t even begin to account for what the city of Aurora, the state of Colorado, and the federal government have since spent on security and prevention related to the attack.

Indeed, a mass shooting like the one in Aurora doesn’t just have an outsize psychological impact but also a financial one. And these days, fiscal conservatives may want to note, we’re paying that price more often.

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How the Aurora Mass Shooting Cost More Than $100 Million

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How Conservative Brits Tried to Use the Beatles to Win Elections

Mother Jones

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February 9 marks the 50th anniversary of The Beatles‘ historic performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS. It was one of the opening salvos of the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, and the broadcast drew 73 million viewers. It is consistently hailed as one of the most influential and biggest (if not the biggest ever) televised moments for rock n’ roll and popular music.

“The Beatles are delightful,” Sullivan said shortly after the performance. “They are the nicest boys I’ve ever met.”

You can watch their 1964 Ed Sullivan performance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (along with some other gigs) below, via Rolling Stone:

Many tributes and commemorative packages have been prepared for the anniversary. On Sunday, CBS will air a special all-star salute, featuring Stevie Wonder, Gary Clark, Jr., Katy Perry, and ex-Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, among others. The Ed Sullivan appearance was just one of many indicators of The Beatles’ immense popularity and influence. Concert promoters, cultural observers, and screaming teenage girls weren’t the only ones who understood this—British politicians did, too, and they weren’t shy about trying to exploit Beatlemania for electoral gain.

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How Conservative Brits Tried to Use the Beatles to Win Elections

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Federal climate hubs will help farmers adapt

Federal climate hubs will help farmers adapt

Gareth Bellamy

With global warming changing growing seasons and ranges, and with droughts and storms picking up in intensity, the men and women who produce America’s food could use some scientifically sound advice for coping with the changing climate.

And that’s just what seven planned new federal climate hubs aim to offer. The Washington Post explains:

The hubs will provide information about ways producers can prepare for potential threats to their crops and livestock as parts of the country are experiencing increasing severe weather events and pest invasions, which scientists have tied to the affects of climate change. And they will coordinate resources through federal and state governments, universities and non-governmental agencies.

The Obama administration initially announced that the hubs would be developed when it unveiled a climate strategy last June. Now it has identified the locations for the hubs: Ames, Iowa; Corvallis, Ore.; Davis, Calif.; Durham, N.H.; El Reno, Okla.; Fort Collins, Colo.; Las Cruces, N.M.; and Raleigh, N.C.

The New York Times puts the move in perspective:

In substance, the creation of the climate hubs is a limited step, but it is part of a broader campaign by the administration to advance climate policy wherever possible with executive authority. The action is also part of a push to build political support for the administration’s more divisive moves on climate change — in particular, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations on coal-fired power plants.

Farmers are overwhelmingly aware that the climate is changing, polls show, but many are still not convinced that humans are responsible. Here’s hoping that the information shared by these climate hubs helps them understand how to adapt to climate change — and, perchance, to understand its causes.


Source
White House to unveil ‘climate hubs’ to aid farmers across country, The Washington Post
Next Phase of Obama’s Executive Push: Climate Hubs, The New York Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Federal climate hubs will help farmers adapt

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Charts: Catholic Hospitals Don’t Do Much for the Poor

Mother Jones

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Catholic hospitals have been on a merger spree over the last few years, as Mother Jones reported earlier this year. Ever-expanding swaths of the country are now served only by a Catholic hospital, where patients have no choice but to receive care dictated by Catholic bishops whose religious edicts don’t always align with what’s best for a patient. Catholic hospitals generally follow the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care, which restrict abortion even in cases where a fetus isn’t viable, for instance, a practice that has resulted in hospitals denying proper care for women suffering from miscarriages. The ACLU recently filed suit against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on behalf of a Michigan woman who was suffering a second-trimester miscarriage and was sent home twice by a Catholic hospital, developing a serious infection because the hospital refused to even talk to her about the possibility of an abortion. Her baby died two hours after she miscarried.

Despite this heavy mixing of theology and health care, Catholic hospitals in 2011 received $27 billion—nearly half of their revenues—from public sources, according to a new report put out today by the American Civil Liberties Union and MergerWatch, a reproductive rights advocacy group. And that figure doesn’t even include other tax subsidies the hospitals receive thanks to their nonprofit status.

The hospitals have long justified their tax status and restrictions on care by pointing to their religious mission of serving the poor and their delivery of charitable care. But the new ACLU/MergerWatch report suggests, and the chart below illustrates, Pope Francis might be on to something when he’s said that the church needs to shift its priorities to focus less on abortion and more on the poor. MergerWatch data show that Catholic hospitals, where executives often earn multimillion-dollar salaries, aren’t doing any better providing charity care than other religious non-profit hospitals that don’t restrict care. They’re barely any better than ordinary secular nonprofits.

ACLU/MergerWatch

The charitable care figures also don’t give a complete picture of how well Catholic hospitals serve the poor and uninsured because it doesn’t include patients who are covered by Medicaid, the government health care plan for the low-income and disabled. As it turns out, Catholic hospitals, which in 2011 had more than $200 billion in gross patient revenue, had the lowest percentage of revenue from Medicaid of any type of hospital. Even for-profit hospitals earned more revenue from Medicaid than Catholic hospitals.

ACLU/MergerWatch

All of these numbers suggest that as Catholic hospitals have merged and expanded into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, they’ve moved far beyond their religious mission and become like any other large corporation. Given those trends, and the hospitals’ reliance on public funding, it’s hard to see how they can continue to justify their mixing of Catholic doctrine with health care, especially when it disproportionately violates standards of care for women.

The ACLU/MergerWatch report calls on the US Department of Health and Human Services to crack down on Catholic hospitals and to insist that they follow federal law requiring all hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding to provide emergency treatment to any patient, even if that care requires an emergency abortion. Other advocacy groups have made similar requests in the past few years, but HHS thus far has refused to pick a fight with the Catholic Church, which has turned into one of the Obama administration’s biggest foes thanks to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act. The church has proven to be a powerful enemy—a wealthy special interest in a holy war—and even the new Pope seems unlikely to persuade it to give up this particular fight.

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Charts: Catholic Hospitals Don’t Do Much for the Poor

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WATCH: C-SPAN’s "Washington Journal" Visits Mother Jones’ DC Bureau

Mother Jones

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This morning C-SPAN hosted a special broadcast of “Washington Journal” by speaking to Mother Jones‘ editors and reporters, live from our Washington, DC bureau. David Corn, Stephanie Mencimer, Andy Kroll, and Lauren Williams discussed the history of Mother Jones, as well as recent news about dark money, welfare reform, and voter ID laws. They also took some calls and messages from viewers, some of which generated contentious debate. In short, it was good TV. Check it out:

David Corn:

Stephanie Mencimer:

Andy Kroll:

Lauren Williams:

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WATCH: C-SPAN’s "Washington Journal" Visits Mother Jones’ DC Bureau

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Clock is ticking for Cape Wind project

Clock is ticking for Cape Wind project

Shutterstock

The Cape Wind project, which would install 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts, is in a race against time.

It’s intended to be the first offshore wind farm in U.S. waters, and once it’s up and running, it could provide three-quarters of the electricity used at Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. But if construction doesn’t start by the end of this year, its backers stand to miss out on a federal tax credit and $200 million worth of investment promised by PensionDanmark, throwing its future into doubt.

What’s the holdup? The project has been besieged by lawsuits, most of them filed by folks who worry that the turbines would interfere with their views and boat outings.

But now Cape Wind executives say they expect to resolve the remaining suits shortly, potentially clearing the way for the project to beat the Dec. 31 deadline. From Bloomberg:

Two legal appeals remain after the company won 13 previous challenges, Vice President Dennis Duffy said [Tuesday] at the American Wind Energy Association’s Offshore Windpower 2013 conference in Providence, Rhode Island.

Cape Wind, based in Boston, has spent more than a decade pursuing the $2.6 billion project in Nantucket Sound, fighting opposition from environmental groups, local fishermen and members of the Kennedy family. …

“We are waiting for those decisions and we think we’ll have them this fall,” Duffy said. “That will give us the opportunity to get the notice to proceed to get the project really going.”

Meanwhile, William Koch, whose billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David fund so many anti-renewable campaigns, is working as hard as ever to stop the project. Koch owns three mansions with grand views of the sound. Maybe he doesn’t mind fossil fuel pollution, but he’s sure as hell not going to stand by quietly while a wind farm creates what he calls “visual pollution.”

The New York Times reports that Koch has spent about $5 million over the last decade on efforts to oppose Cape Wind. He serves as chairman of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a “nonprofit environmental organization” dedicated to blocking the wind farm’s construction:

Still, Jim Gordon, Cape Wind’s developer, who has spent $70 million of his own money on the project since 2001, vows that it will go forward. …

“This is a very sophisticated adversary,” Mr. Gordon said. “Koch has already spent a decade trying to push us off the path toward a better energy future.”

The two men have circled each other for a decade in an escalating test of wills. Mr. Gordon has tried unsuccessfully to enlist Mr. Koch, who once financed green energy plants, in his cause; Mr. Koch has successfully delayed Cape Wind for years by tying it up in court. A few lawsuits, some of them backed by the Nantucket Sound alliance, remain to be settled.

The clock is ticking: There are fewer than 70 days left until the federal tax incentives and PensionDanmark’s investment are due to evaporate.


Source
Koch Brother Wages 12-Year Fight Over Wind Farm, New York Times
Cape Wind Offshore Farm Sees Lawsuits Cleared by Year-End, Bloomberg

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Clock is ticking for Cape Wind project

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Do Solar Panels Work When It’s Not Sunny?

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Do Solar Panels Work When It’s Not Sunny?

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Yet Another Heartwarming Tale of Corporate Virtue

Mother Jones

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Suppose you were a manufacturer of OxyContin, and you had strong evidence that certain doctors were illegally selling huge quantities of your pills to all comers. Keith Humphreys asks, What Would You Do?

(A) Report these doctors to the authorities?
(B) Insulate yourself by not sending your representatives to these doctors anymore, but continue to pocket the huge profits they generate from writing countless prescriptions for your products?
(C) Keep a secret list of these doctors but publicly promote the idea that painkiller abuse is not driven by wayward doctors but by other sources, such as pharmaceutical robberies?
(D) Reveal the list of doctors to authorities years later only because at that point it could stop a competitor from introducing a new generic medication that might cut into your own sales?
(E) A combination of B, C and D, but certainly not A.

You’ve already guessed the answer, haven’t you? I can’t put anything over on you guys. Click the link if you want the gory details.

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Yet Another Heartwarming Tale of Corporate Virtue

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