Jul 15

The Real Risk of 'Another 20 Gazas'

Posted in: Today's Chili

There’s a meme out there, reinforced every time rockets launch from Gaza, that any Palestinian state will fast become a missile base against Israel. All we can say for certain, is that in the absence of a Palestinian state, Gaza remains a missile base against Israel, and no bombings or cease-fire will erase that potential. Rockets from Gaza are an excuse to avoid a Palestinian state, when they should be a reason to pursue it and to empower its Palestinian supporters.

Without a lasting peace, there will always be some provocation and a weak Palestinian leadership lacking credibility — how can a humiliated and powerless leadership ever have credibility? Israel will use the opportunity to clean house and teach lessons, and what happens in the West Bank will soon touch off violence in Gaza, or vice-versa.

Israel’s strategic assumption is that every 2-3 years, Hamas somehow forgets about Israel’s deterrent force, obligating Israel to go back in and teach Hamas a new lesson. If a lasting political and diplomatic deal could be reached, presumably Hamas would either have to adapt to the new rules of a real Palestinian state or face obscurity and elimination. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its leading Fatah faction were sworn to Israel’s destruction, and today they partner with Israel to keep the peace across the West Bank.

Gaza itself is held up as the proof of what a Palestinian state would become. Yet, Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, making only the most rudimentary arrangements with the Palestinian Authority (PA) on its way out. The parting gift was an open election in the West Bank and Gaza, at a moment when Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah was at low popularity. The result was that rejectionist Hamas won the election.

A bilateral — really, multilateral — process can transition Gaza and the West Bank to independence responsibly, with economic and political stability. I say “transition” because this cannot and should not happen overnight.

With the security barrier and long-term closures of the West Bank, and the effective embargo of Gaza, Palestinians seem increasingly foreign and different to Israelis. But Palestinians are among the most democratically minded and cosmopolitan populations in the region. If genuine democracy has any chance in the Arab world, it should be with the Palestinians.

If Israelis are worried about Palestinians launching rockets against them from a few kilometers away, then the imaginary “status quo” is guaranteed to keep them up at night.

When Palestinian leaders make some conciliatory statement toward Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu usually challenges them to repeat it in Arabic, to their own people. Last month, after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped, Palestinian Authority President Abbas addressed the Foreign Ministers’ Council of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, and told his audience — which included Arab foreign ministers — “We don’t want to go back to chaos and destruction, as did in the second [Palestinian] uprising… these youths are human beings.” Naturally, he said it in Arabic, and at some political cost back home.

Last Friday, Netanyahu used a press conference — in Hebrew — to walk back his support for a two-state solution, and to validate those using the fallout of a unilateral withdrawal to warn against a negotiated solution. In response to questions about Israel’s response to rocket attacks from Gaza, he said: “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

Having repeatedly called on Palestinians — in English — to accept a two-state solution, Netanyahu now argues against it, in Hebrew. Until recently, it had been presumed that — under any final status agreement — Israel would eventually cede its military presence to a U.S. or international force. The question had been whether Israel would remain for five years or 10. Now, Netanyahu suggests that only a permanent Israeli presence will suffice. Between settlement growth and Israeli military stewardship, there’s no way Palestinians will agree to or implement an independent and sovereign state.

Even with all that’s transpired in recent weeks, the Palestinian Authority’s security forces continue to cooperate fully with their Israeli counterparts. This is why, with no publicity, last week the Israeli government transferred to the PA $136 million in tax revenues collected on its behalf for the month of June. Netanyahu needs the PA to stay in business, but he needs it to remain weak enough so it cannot stand on its own feet, and so there’s no risk that Israel will permanently give up all but the major settlement blocs in the West Bank.

If Netanyahu had wanted, over the past five years, he could have found ways to bolster Abbas. Instead, he has negotiated ceasefires and prisoner exchanges with Hamas — with no involvement by Abbas. Every tranche of prisoners released by Israel, as part of the recent round of talks with the PA, was accompanied by an announcement of new settlement construction — framing Abbas as a fool or a traitor to his people, or as both.

Elections are supposed to take place early next year in the West Bank and/or Gaza, and Hamas has been trailing Fatah in both places. If Netanyahu wanted, he could give Abbas some deliverables and some honor, enough to suggest to Palestinians that the path of peace is better at gaining Israel’s attention than the path of rockets and suicide bombings. If Hamas wins enough votes this next time, Netanyahu won’t have to face a popular Palestinian leader who’s ready to make a deal.

Netanyahu warned last week against the West Bank becoming “another 20 Gazas.” Rather than seeing Gaza as a cautionary tale against any future West Bank state, Israelis should consider the opposite: Gaza today is what the West Bank could look like in five or 10 years, without a Palestinian state. Can Israel afford such an outcome within spitting distance of 500,000 settlers? And the number is growing. Not only is Netanyahu no longer offering a solution, he’s not even addressing the question.

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Jul 15

Mistakes Were Made

Posted in: Today's Chili

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Why do I do this again? That question came to me as I started walking for the third time in the final miles of the Marine Corps Marathon in October. It wasn’t rhetorical. I wasn’t being sly. I really meant it. Every muscle group in my lower body was either locking up or in serious pain (or both). It was mathematically impossible for me to hit the 3:24 I’d been training to run for four months. A 3:24 would qualify me for Boston, a goal I’ve been chasing for a decade. That also happens to be my PR, which I’d set nearly seven years earlier. To run a new PR at age 46, well, I knew everything would need to be close to perfect. As Tolstoy warned, “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.”

Feeling miserable and more than a little sorry for myself, I truly wondered why I didn’t quit marathons for good and stick with half-marathons. I seemed to be fine with those. In fact, I’d hit the halfway mark in 1:43, exactly as planned. I had just run the “Blue Mile,” lined with American flags and photos of servicemen and women who’d died in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and high-fived Lisa Hallett, who founded the group, Wear Blue: Run to Remember, that had set up that inspiring stretch. The 3:25 pace team was still ahead of me. I’d planned to follow them until mile 20, then reel them in en route to a negative-split finish.

But I knew deep down it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t yet understand exactly what mistakes I had made, but my splits, which I’d kept around 7:45, slipped a bit at mile 19, and again at 20. Then, while crossing the 14th Street Bridge, my momentum ceased in a way that’s familiar to anyone who’s ever driven a car into a tree. Somewhere between miles 24 and 25, the 3:35 pace team caught me. “Hey, you’re the editor of Runner’s World, right?” said the young, cheerful, spry group leader. He introduced himself as Kyle, and guiding his pack of precisely on-pace runners past me, said over his shoulder, “You have the coolest job. Lemme know if you want to switch lives!” I knew nothing about Kyle or his life. But under my breath I said, “Can we start right now?”

In hindsight, my first mistake was simple: I hadn’t trained hard enough. I had nailed two sessions of Yasso 800s and logged several 40-mile weeks, but never 50. I had done a 22-miler but cut my last 20-miler short after getting sick. I had run the last three miles of my long runs close to marathon pace, but not always at it. I knew that running a PR on a tough course would require me to run at the edge of my ability for 26.2 miles. The bottom line is that I wasn’t physically ready to do it.

My second mistake was having only one goal. Because I knew a 3:24 would take all I had, choosing a “B” goal, something short of 3:24 that I still would be happy with, felt like doubt or, worse, capitulation. Once perfection went out the window, I had nothing to fall back on. If I wasn’t going to run 3:24, I didn’t care if I ran 3:34 or 3:44. I was adrift, physically and mentally, a bad way to dig deep. Also, I had spent the entire race looking down at my watch. I must’ve done it 100 times. As a result, I barely noticed the monuments, the crowds, the marines at water stops–all the things that make Marine Corps so special.

My third mistake: not resting enough during my two-week “taper.” The weekend before Marine Corps was the RW Half & Festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Almost 6,000 runners took part, and it was terrific from start to finish. In fact, the week that began with our race and ended with Marine Corps, which I’d done with 12 RW editors and almost 300 readers as part of a Runner’s World Challenge, was a 2013 highlight. But it was also kryptonite. In Bethlehem, I’d run the Hat Trick (5-K, 10-K, and half-marathon) and spent the entire weekend bouncing from kids races to seminars to movies to book signings to keynote speeches to dinner. In Washington, I hoofed around the city for two days and poured mental energy into the motivational talk I’d been asked to give at the prerace dinner. Instead of getting to sleep at a decent hour the night before the marathon, I stayed up well past midnight to watch my beloved Red Sox in the World Series. I’m not complaining; I did it all happily. But well rested I was not.

I finally crossed the line in 3:39 and quickly regained some perspective. When a marine in fatigues hangs a medal around your neck, it’s impossible to feel sorry for yourself because of a footrace. Within an hour, I was hearing about all the PRs and first-time finishes achieved by so many of our Challengers. Within a few days, I was headed to the New York City Marathon–another annual highlight–where everything did go perfectly. No lingering bitterness from last year’s Hurricane Sandy debacle, no sign that runners (50,266 finished, a record for any marathon) or spectators stayed away because big-city races have gotten too big or, post-Boston, too dangerous. I worked on the ABC/ESPN broadcast, interviewing remarkable runners on the course after riding to the start with them on the 5:30 a.m. bus. How could I wallow in disappointment after spending time with Sarah Reinertsen, an above-the-knee amputee who holds the world record for the Ironman and the marathon? Or Rick Salewske, who lost 300 pounds (!) via running and has kept it off for 11 years? Or the Caminiti sisters, who were each running their first marathon nine months after Melissa had donated most of her liver to Jamie for a transplant that sent her cancer into remission? Or Jen Correa, who’d lost her home and nearly her husband to Sandy and was running New York to put a horrendous year behind her once and for all? (The interviews can be found here.) None of them was running for time. They all had bigger priorities.

So why do I run marathons–or at all, for that matter? There are so many answers to that. But if I have to choose one, it would be this: to get better. I like how broadly that can be applied–to my times; to my physical and emotional well-being; to my desire for intense, heightened experiences; to my roles as a father, husband, colleague, and person.

While setting new goals for the new year, I will go back to the drawing board and apply what I’ve learned–or been reminded of–the hard way. I will train harder and more wisely. I will value time off my feet as much as time out on the roads. I will pick a goal race that stands alone on the calendar, with no work commitments beyond handing out a few business cards. I will not run 22.4 miles the weekend before.

And I’ll remember how lucky I am to be able to run at all, and that the pursuit of contentment may be the best route to perfection. Not the other way around.

* * *

David Willey is the editor-in-chief of Runner’s World. Follow him on Twitter @dwilleyRW.

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Jul 15

Feds INCINERATE Innocent Giant Snails Found At Airport

Posted in: Today's Chili

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Inspectors at Los Angeles International Airport seized an unusually slimy package — 67 live giant African snails that are a popular delicacy across West Africa.

The snails — which are prohibited in the U.S. — arrived from Nigeria and were being sent to a person in San Dimas, said Lee Harty, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Customs and Border protection. The snails were confiscated July 1 and a sample was sent the next day to a federal mollusk specialist in Washington, D.C., who identified them as a prohibited species, Harty said.

The mollusks are among the largest land snails in the world and can grow to be up to 8 inches long. They are native to Africa and can live for up to 10 years.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture incinerated the snails after they were inspected, Harty said. The animals are prohibited in the U.S. because they can carry parasites that are harmful to humans, including one that can lead to meningitis.

The snails are also agricultural pests, said Maveeda Mirza, the CBP program manager for agriculture.

“These snails are seriously harmful to local plants because they will eat any kind of crop they can get to,” Mirza said.

The person the snails were destined for is not expected to face any penalties, Mirza said. She said authorities are investigating why a single person would want so many snails.

“We’re investigating what happened, but it doesn’t seem like there was smuggling involved. When someone doesn’t know a commodity is prohibited under USDA regulations there is usually no punishment,” she said.

Although the agency has found one or two snails that may have accidentally gotten into a traveler’s luggage in Los Angeles, this is the first time that they have confiscated the snails in such a large quantity, Mirza said.

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Jul 15

Mom Who Left Girl In Car Said She Didn't Want To Wake Her: Cops

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PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) — Tampa Bay-area police have arrested a woman for leaving her 19-month-old daughter in a car while she shopped.

Sgt. Adam Geissenberger says witnesses alerted Pinellas Park Police that Vita Abramenkova had left her child in a locked, running vehicle for 40 minutes Monday afternoon.

Geissenberger says the car’s air conditioning was circulating on low while the temperature in the parking lot was 92 degrees. The child was found crying inside the vehicle.

Geissenberger says Abramenkova told police her daughter was asleep when they arrived at the store and she didn’t want to rouse the child.

Abramenkova was charged with child neglect. She was released on $2,000 bond. Pinellas County jail records did not show whether she had an attorney.

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Jul 15

How to Achieve Israel's Stated Goal of Long-Term Quiet

Posted in: Today's Chili

We might be in the Holy Land, home to the holiest site in Judaism, the healings of Jesus Christ and the ascensions of the Isra and the Miraj. However, even as the Israeli military campaign enters its sixth day, the prospects of a ceasefire appear remote, even in this land that has borne witness to thousands of miracles.

As of today, over 172 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, of which 77 percent are civilians, according to the United Nations. One Israeli citizen has been seriously injured. Over 4,000 Palestinians have already sought refuge in shelters. Three Israeli teenagers and one Palestinian teenager have had their lives senselessly taken away before they even began. And even as the violence continues unabated, an Israeli official said the attacks will continue until there are prospects for a “long-term quiet.”

What’s as dispiriting as the violence has been the response of the international community, which has been muted and predictable. The UN Security Council has called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. U.S. President Barack Obama offered to broker a ceasefire between the warring parties. While Arab countries and their leadership are caught between the anvil of domestic turmoil and the hammer of external intervention, there can be no vision of regional cooperation.

For a long-term peace to truly take hold, we need to make a clean break from the past in two important ways.

First, we need to recognize that there can be no peace without justice. And so before we do anything, we have to reaffirm our commitment to follow the letter of the law.

Article Four of the Geneva Convention guarantees protections to “those who at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of persons a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.”

In addition, article 32 of the convention guarantees that protected persons shall not have anything done to them of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination.

As an occupying power Israel needs to be reminded of its obligations to the protected persons among the Palestinian people. Indeed, the international community needs to adopt a zero tolerance policy to people who harm civilian populations — be they Hamas militants firing rockets into Israel, or Israeli airplanes targeting civilian pockets of Gaza.

In addition, we need to acknowledge that the current situation is being played out against the backdrop of an historical context — a context that is steeped in illegalities that need to be addressed before the goal of a long-term peace can become a reality.

The International Court of Justice has ruled that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is occupied territory. Furthermore, the building of settlement colonies and of the wall has been declared by the Court to be in direct breach of international law. In short, the name of Palestine cannot be effaced.

There’s also the matter of proportionality, which is a fundamental principle of the law. How can one speak of proportionality when one reads of so many children being injured in the recent bombings, while seeing pictures of people on the other side swimming under the auspices of the sun and the protection of the Iron Dome?

In addition to the letter of the law set out by our courts, there’s also a universal law we all instinctively follow as humans. Families in Gaza sometimes have less than a minute to respond to the warnings that are being touted by Israeli government officials. At a moment’s notice, they often have to wake and escort children and elderly relatives out of a building that can be several stories high. How can one go to sleep in such a heightened state of anxiety, with airplane engines roaring in the sky, and dream Mr. Netanyahu’s dream of long-term quiet?

In addition to following the letter of the law, the international community has to make another clean break with the past. We have to stop focusing on bilateral agreements — and focus on bringing about regional peace.

When I recently saw an article by Yuval Diskin, former head of the Shin Bet security service in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, it gave me some hope. To deliver a lasting peace, we need to look beyond our national boundaries and focus on enabling regional solutions and sovereign intra-independence.

There are too many wounds and grievances on either side to make bilateral negotiations between Israel and Palestine a success. By calling for a pact between Israel and Hamas, the United Nations is only postponing the next inevitable round of violence to another day.

Instead, the international community should clear the path for agreements that would involve not just the two warring factions, but Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. The recent turmoil in Egypt, the regional economic situation, and shared energy and water challenges creates new opportunities for these key players to work together to find authentic regional voices for these uniquely regional challenges.

By leaving the Jordanians and the Palestinians out of the Camp David talks that brought about a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in the seventies, President Jimmy Carter squandered a golden opportunity for peace.

Today, we have that opportunity for dialogue again. Let’s ignore the words of extremists on either side who seek mutual destruction and who want to hasten the end of our times. Instead, let’s finally begin listening to the voices, who have a strong track record of moderation in the region. Listening to the Jordanian government and all those in Israel committed to waging comprehensive peace to stabilize our agonized region is as good a start as any.

When the Jordan-Israel peace treaty was signed in 1994, the Israeli media asked me: “What do you think of all this?” I said — and it has since come back to haunt me — “With all due respect to the personalities involved, peace is not only about talking heads; unless this becomes a ‘warm’ peace, a people’s peace, it cannot last.”

However, for the sake of my children, and my children’s children, I would like to remain optimistic. I would like to believe in the possibility of a long-term peace. For this to happen we need to avoid reacting to the extremist elements of our society. We need to start to listen to the more sensible voices like those of Leslie Gelb, former official at the US State and Defense Departments. Recently, he spoke of the situation in Iraq. However, his comments are equally applicable to the conflict in Gaza. Mr. Gelb said that a profound upheaval cannot be reversed by drones or fighter planes. For the problem is on the ground. It cannot be found in the sky.

In waging peace we surely move from the specter of mutually assured destruction to the hope of mutually assured survival.

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Jul 15

Savannah Guthrie Jokes About 'Today' Show Live Birth And Internet Believes It

Posted in: Today's Chili

Lesson of the day: It’s best not to joke that you are going to give birth on live television. Because everyone will believe you — and freak out.

Savannah Guthrie learned that Tuesday morning when she teased with Howard Stern that she planned to have her baby on air.

“I’m really hoping to bond with our viewers,” she said. “The only way to do that is to do a live birth on the ‘Today’ show.”

But viewers seemed to miss the joke, because moments later the Internet exploded:

Guthrie finally chimed in to put viewers at ease:

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Jul 15

Bringing the Promise of Healthy School Meals to More Children This Fall

Posted in: Today's Chili

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 enabled the U.S Department of Agriculture to make historic changes to the meals served in our nation’s schools. Breakfasts, lunches, and snacks sold during the school day are now more nutritious than ever, with less fat and sodium and more whole-grains, fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and low-fat dairy. For many kids, the meals they get at school may be the only nutritious meals they receive that day — and when children receive proper nourishment, they are not only healthier, but they also have better school attendance and perform better academically. It’s not enough, though, to make the meals healthier — we must ensure that children have access to those healthier foods.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act authorized a program, known as the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), that can help schools achieve their educational goals by ensuring that children in low-income communities have access to healthy meals at school so they are ready to learn. In this program, schools agree to offer breakfast and lunch for free to all students, and cover any costs that exceed the reimbursements from USDA. Designed to ease the burden of administering a high volume of applications for free and reduced price meals, CEP is a powerful tool to both increase child nutrition and reduce paperwork at the district, school, and household levels, which saves staff time and resources for cash-strapped school districts.

Starting this upcoming school year, the program is available to schools across the country. The decision to participate in the Community Eligibility Provision is a local one, and schools must decide for themselves whether this program is right for them. In order to give schools more time to make that decision, we recently extended the deadline to participate in School Year 2014-2015. Last month, USDA announced that schools now have until August 31 to enroll.

State educational agencies and local school districts often use data collected through the National School Lunch Program to carry out certain eligibility requirements for other programs, including Title I for schools serving students from low-income families. The Department of Education recently released guidance highlighting the range of options that schools have for implementing these requirements while also participating in CEP — and many districts already have successfully implemented Title I requirements using data that incorporate Community Eligibility. We strongly encourage schools and school districts that have not yet adopted CEP to review ED Guidance on Community Eligibility and Title I and USDA’s Resources on Community Eligibility, and carefully consider the positive impact that CEP can have for your students, schools, and communities.

This program has already been working in nearly 4,000 pilot schools across the country, some of which are already in their third year of participation and seeing tremendous results. Schools that participated in the pilot phase of this program saw increased participation and revenue from breakfast and lunch programs:

  • In Washington, D.C.’s public schools, Lindsey Palmer, school programs manager for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, outlined why CEP has worked so well for D.C.’s schools; including reduced stigma, reduction in administrative functions, better prediction of federal school meals funding amounts based on previous participation, more resources available to improve the meals and overall program, and better reach to those students who really needed the benefits of the school meal program.
  • In New York, Larry Spring, superintendent of the Schenectady City School District, also offered high praise. His district can better focus efforts on food- insecure students and provide greater access to meals with the help of CEP. According to Superintendent Spring, his schools have enjoyed an increase in attendance since adopting CEP, which generally translates into higher test scores and improved academic achievement.

We want to give every child an opportunity to learn and thrive at school. CEP has the potential to bring the promise of healthy school meals to over 3,000 school districts nationwide. The Departments of Agriculture and Education have been working together to make sure that every eligible school knows about CEP and has the information they need to determine if it is right for them. To learn more visit USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service Website.

See what others have to say about the program.

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Jul 15

Coal Miner Whose Brother Died On The Job Was Fired After Flagging Dangers

Posted in: Today's Chili

In October of 2011, Jeromy Coots helped transport the lifeless body of his older brother out of the coal mine where they’d worked together in eastern Kentucky. Richard Coots, just 23 years old, had been crushed to death by a piece of mining machinery below ground.

Now, not even three years later, the younger Coots has been fired from his job at a different mine for flagging the sort of dangers that claimed his brother, according to Labor Department filings. He was let go in May after he complained in a company meeting that safety standards weren’t being met inside the mine. He’s 22 years old, with a wife and three kids.

“It’s the Hobson’s Choice that the miner is faced with,” said Coots’ lawyer, Tony Oppegard, who represents miners in safety cases. “Either you work in unsafe conditions, or you refuse and you get fired and you can’t support your family.”

From April until May of this year, Coots worked for Lone Mountain Processing at the Clover Fork No. 1 Mine in Harlan County. He was employed as a roof bolter operator, installing roof supports underground. The job can be treacherous. Of the 377 U.S. miners injured when mine roofs or rib pillars fell in 2012, 165 of them were roof bolter operators like Coots, according to the Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration. Between 2008 and 2012, 19 miners died in such falls.

To protect workers from cave-ins, mines are supposed to employ a piece of machinery called the Automated Temporary Roof Support System, or ATRS. It basically functions as a hydraulic-powered canopy, helping to keep the roof from coming down. Mine operators are required under the law to use the ATRS with roof bolting machines. For the roof bolter operator, it’s often the one thing standing between the roof and his hard hat.

Shortly after taking the job, Coots was tasked with replacing roof bolts that had become dislodged in a particular section of the mine. After employing the ATRS, Coots was told by a manager to stop using it, an MSHA investigator found. The work needed to be done quickly, and deploying the ATRS “would take too long,” the manager said, according to the investigator’s report.

Lone Mountain is owned by Arch Coal, the second-largest coal producer in the country. As a 2011 HuffPost story detailed, Arch spent years battling a safety whistleblower named Charles Scott Howard, who was fired — and later reinstated by a judge — after repeatedly alleging unsafe conditions at his mine.

When reached for comment, Lone Mountain referred HuffPost to Arch. An Arch spokeswoman didn’t respond to an email. The company has said in the past that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Mining jobs are coveted in Harlan County, offering blue-collar workers like Coots a solid salary of $50,000 and higher. With a family to feed, Coots apparently continued working even though he believed he was being put in harm’s way. According to the investigator’s report, Coots was hit by falling rocks several times while bolting without the ATRS.

“It’s crazy to bolt without it,” Oppegard said of the ATRS. “For a company to require miners to bolt without the ATRS is really playing Russian roulette with that miner’s life.”

Though he kept working, Coots didn’t keep his concerns to himself. During a mine safety meeting on May 12, a supervisor asked if anyone wanted to raise safety issues. Coots spoke up.

Roof bolter operators should be using the ATRS, Coots said.

The mine foreman told Coots to see him after the meeting. In private, the foreman told Coots that they didn’t have time to use the ATRS, according to MSHA’s investigation. Then he sent Coots home for the day.

The next day, the foreman called Coots at home and fired him, the MSHA investigator found.

The Labor Department has filed an application to the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission to have Coots put back on the job temporarily, alleging that Lone Mountain “disciplined and discharged [him] for expressing these safety concerns.” To be reinstated temporarily, the law requires only that Coots prove his claim is not “frivolously bought.” But the bar is higher for winning permanent reinstatement.

According to Oppegard, Coots told his foreman that he couldn’t hold his tongue on safety because of the loss of his brother.

As HuffPost previously reported, Richard Coots was killed in Owlco Energy Mine No. 1, in Letcher County, on Oct. 7, 2011. He was trying to fix a broken conveyor bridge when the machinery came down on him. (Owlco is not owned by Arch.)

MSHA later faulted Owlco management for the death, saying the accident was “correctable through reasonable management controls.” Rather than use blocks that are designated for such repairs, a foreman and another miner had apparently decided during an earlier shift to prop up the broken conveyor with a large rock, MSHA found in an investigation of that case. When Coots went to work on the bridge, it slipped off the rock and pinned him, according to the report.

Jeromy Coots was nearby and came to help. According to the MSHA investigation, he performed CPR on his brother before the ambulance arrived.

“What happened to Richard Coots never should have happened,” said Oppegard, who’s representing the younger Coots alongside Wes Addington of the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center. “You can imagine the horror of seeing your brother killed … while you’re there trying to help him. And then to ride out of the mine with his body, knowing he’s dead, and you’re still trying to administer CPR. You can imagine why safety would be so important to you as you continued to work in the mines.”

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Jul 15

How Pilot Amelia Rose Earhart Is Breaking Through The Glass Ceiling Of Aviation

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Nearly 80 years after Amelia Earhart attempted to circumnavigate the globe, another Earhart is taking the reins.

Although pilot Amelia Rose Earhart isn’t related to the woman who disappeared over the Pacific Ocean, she shares the same ambition to make space for women in the world of aviation. With her successful 24,000-mile trip around the world, the 31-year-old pilot is now the youngest woman to fly around the world in a single-engine airplane.

But it hasn’t been easy. In a conversation with HuffPost Live, Earhart recalled a hearing a surprising comment while at the European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition in Geneva.

“A pilot who had no idea what we were doing walked up to me as I was standing on the steps of the plane and said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am. Would you like a pilot in your photo?’” Earhart explained to host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. “I said, ‘Sir, there is a pilot in my photo — me. I’m about to fly this thing around the world.’ And he looked at me with the biggest look of shock on his face.”

With the prevalence of such gender bias in the aviation field, Earhart is taking a stand. Although just 6 percent of pilots are women, she hopes to improve those statistics by providing scholarships for girls to attend flight school through the Fly With Amelia Foundation

Watch the full HuffPost Live interview here:

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Jul 15

Rick Perry And How The Press Loves To Treat GOP Campaign Losers Like Winners

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Thirty months after flaming out on the Republican primary campaign trail, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose aborted 2012 run logged a fifth-place finish in Iowa and a sixth-place showing in New Hampshire before being suspended, is suddenly enjoying a Beltway media resurgence. With the issue of America’s border security and the influx of unaccompanied children generating headlines, Perry has been out front criticizing President Obama, and the governor’s performance is earning raves.

“People love his ass” is what “one Republican operative close to Perry” told Buzzfeed (anonymously). On The McLaughlin Group this weekend, so many panelists sang Perry’s praise (“shrewd,” “winning,” “absolutely terrific”) that host John McLaughlin announced, “a star is born.”

Time has been in full swoon mode lately, touting Perry as “swaggering,” “handsome and folksy,” and insisting he’s “refreshed his message, retooled his workout routine and retrained his sights toward the national stage.” Meanwhile CNN’s Peter Hamby claimed Perry is “completely underrated” as a 2016 contender. Why? Because “other than Chris Christie, it’s hard to think of another Republican candidate with the kind of charm and personal affability, and frankly just good political skills, that Rick Perry has.”

Keep in mind, Perry recently compared gays to alcoholics (and then acknowledged he “stepped right in it”), and suggested that the Obama White House might somehow be “in on” the wave of immigrant refugees crossing the U.S. border. He also became something an punch line last week when a sourpuss photo of his meeting with Obama lit up Twitter.

As for the issue of border security, Fox News’ own Brit Hume noted on Sunday, Perry’s demand that the National Guard be sent to patrol the border doesn’t make much sense since, by law, Guardsmen aren’t allowed to apprehend any of the refugee children coming into the country. (Children who are turning themselves over to Border Patrol agents.)

Apparently none of that matters when the press coalesces around a preferred narrative: Perry is hot and perfectly positioned for 2016. (He won the week!)

Perry’s soft press shouldn’t surprise close observers of the Beltway press corps. It’s part of a larger media double standard where Republican campaign trail losers now routinely get treated like winners. (Think: John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Mitt Romney). The trend also extends to Republican policy failures, like the discredited architects of the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq, who have been welcomed back onto the airwaves to pontificate about Iraq, despite the fact they got almost everything wrong about the invasion eleven years ago.

And no, the same courtesy is not extended to Democrats. John Kerry did not camp out on the Sunday talk shows after losing to President Bush in 2004 and become a sort of permanent, television White House critic, the way McCain did after getting trounced by Obama in 2008.

But wait, Hillary Clinton lost in 2008 and she’s treated as a serious contender, so why shouldn’t Perry be? First, Clinton collected nearly 2,000 primary delegates during her run, whereas Perry earned exactly zero. Second, Clinton enjoys an enormous lead in Democratic nomination polling if she chooses to run. Perry barely even registers among GOP voters.

Last month the Texas Republican Party held a straw vote and among possible 2016 hopefuls, the Texas governor finished a distant fourth, among Texas Republicans. Outside of Texas, his support remains even thinner. A recent WMUR Granite State poll from New Hampshire had Perry winning a barely-there two percent of Republican support for the 2016 GOP primary.

How bad of a candidate was Perry during the 2012 push? Really, really bad. Not only did he suffer a famous brain freeze when he couldn’t remember which three government agencies he boldly promised to dismantle if he became president (“oops”), but he also called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and dined with birther Donald Trump.

Less than three years ago, Rick Perry showed himself to be an extraordinarily bad campaigner with a tin ear for retail politics. (i.e. An absent-minded quasi-birther.) Yet today, the same Rick Perry is touted by the Beltway press as a “handsome” and “underrated” campaigner who stands poised for greatness in the next presidential campaign.

Somewhere Al Gore must be shaking his head.

After he lost the 2008 election to a Supreme Court ruling, Gore was not treated to pleasing, Rick Perry-like press coverage. Rather than treating Gore as a “swaggering” star of American politics, the Beltway press basically told Gore to get lost. (The caustic coverage continued the endless media slights Gore had suffered during the campaign season.)

When the former vice president grew a beard, the catty D.C. press corps erupted in mockery:

Gore “look[s] more like an accountant on the lam from the IRS than a White House-compatible action figure” (Time); it’s “scrawny and grey-patched” (the New York Post); it “might cover up some of the added chin heft” of his rumored post-election weight gain (the Boston Herald).

And when the former vice president stepped forward in 2002 to offer a prescient warning about against with in Iraq? On CNN’s Reliable Sources, The New Republic’s Michelle Cottle described her colleagues’ reaction to Gore’s speech: “[T]he vast majority of the staff believes this was the bitter rantings of a guy who is being politically motivated and disingenuous in his arguments.”

Note that after losing an electoral landslide in 2008, Republican McCain was showered with the exact opposite type of coverage. As Media Matters noted five year ago, “[T]he media treated McCain as though his loss last November endowed him with even greater moral authority and quickly took up his crusade as their own.”

In fact, despite a wildly unsuccessful presidential campaign and his lack of senior standing inside the U.S. Senate, McCain made at least fifteen Sunday talk show appearances in 2009. (By contrast, after he lost his White House run in 2004, Sen. John Kerry appeared on just three Sunday talk shows during the first eight months of President Bush’s second term.) In 2013, the New York Times reported McCain had appeared on more than 60 Sunday talk shows in less than four years.

He wasn’t the only candidate to have their reputation weirdly burnished by losing badly to Obama in 2008. Sarah Palin was catapulted into media superstardom after she helped lead the GOP to magnanimous defeat. In 2009, as she readied her book release, the obedient Beltway press treated her like a political “phenomena.” (“It’s as if she’s like a senator or something,” marveled NBC’s David Gregory.) On the day her book arrived in stores, the Washington Post commemorated the event by publishing no less than four articles and two columns. That week, the paper also hosted nine online Palin-related Q&A sessions.

What did most of the awe-struck commentary often politely ignore at the time of the media’s Palin “phenomena”? The fact that the vast majority of American voters were united in their conviction that Palin should not run for president. That included a majority of Republicans.

While Palin likely became the first losing vice presidential candidate exulted into D.C. media celebrity status, Republican Dick Cheney probably also made history by becoming not only the least-liked vice president in modern American history, but the first veep from an utterly failed administration to be treated by the press as a sage upon leaving office.

Cheney’s media return in recent weeks, where he continually blames Obama for the troubles in Iraq that Cheney and President Bush first uncorked with their misguided war and faulty planning, was telegraphed five years ago when the D.C. press, just weeks after Cheney left office, hyped his anti-Obama utterances as news events. Keep in mind, at the time Cheney’s approval stood at a not-to-be-believed 13 percent.

But for some reason, Republican losers get treated as winners by the press.

Crossposted at Media Matters.

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