Huffington (Issue #69)

10.06.13 #69 CONTENTS

Enter POINTERS: Government Paralysis...

Obamacare Arrives JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: America’s Unplanned Babies Q&A: Hannibal Buress HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE

Voices FROM TOP: BRIAN KILLIAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR PROCTER & GAMBLE; SHUTTERSTOCK/BIBIPHOTO

KATE BARTOLOTTA: How to Rule the World in 8 Easy Steps

THE DOLLAR STORE MODEL Where everything — and everyone — comes cheap.

BY DAVE JAMIESON

JOANNA MONTGOMERY: Me and My Foobs QUOTED

Exit TECHNOLOGY: Doesn’t This Just Make You So Mad? (Now Go Like It.) THE THIRD METRIC: Train Your Mind to Do the Impossible TASTE TEST: Can Anyone Top Ritz?

DOG EARS TFU

UNDER THE ARMOR How do you sue a SWAT team when you don’t know who they are?

BY RADLEY BALKO

FROM THE EDITOR: Disposable Workers ON THE COVER: Photo Illustration

for Huffington by Troy Dunham

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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Disposable Workers N THIS WEEK’S ISSUE, we take a close look at the booming dollar-store business, where the labor comes almost as cheap as the off-brand laundry detergent. A new dollar store opens every six hours in America. Unfortunately, the jobs they bring look to be some of the worst our economy has to offer.

Dave Jamieson speaks to dollar-store workers across the country, finding that the major players in the industry — Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family

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Dollar — have grown their businesses by squeezing all they can out of their employees. The hours are brutal, the pay is low, and workers who happen to get hurt have a way of suddenly losing their jobs.

And those workers who rise to become dollar-store managers too often find their lives become even more difficult as a result.

Dawn Hughey, a former Dollar General employee, told Dave that dollar-store managers work up to 80 hours a week but aren’t eli-

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

gible for overtime pay. Many supervisors are earning close to the minimum wage, doing everything from stocking shelves to manning the cash register — at least until they happen to get injured.

That was the case with Wanda Womack, a Dollar Tree employee who was injured while lifting heavy boxes. She went on paid leave in order to have surgery, but her job came to an end shortly after she returned because the physical demands of the job were just too much.

As Hughey puts it, “We’re disposable.”

Elsewhere in the issue, Bianca Bosker examines a growing body of research that shows our tendency to favor negativity over positive — or more subtle — emotions on social media.

“Negative comments are much more memorable and much more noticed,” says Clifford Nass, a Stanford University professor of communications. “In a world where you’re trying to get noticed, going negative is the way to go.”

In a study published last month, a team at China’s Beihang University found anger to be the

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most contagious emotion online, spreading faster than sadness, disgust, and even joy.

As Bianca puts it, “I hate, therefore I ‘like.’”

In our Data section, we map out unintended pregnancies by state throughout America, which stands out in the industrialized

The hours are brutal, the pay is low, and workers who happen to get hurt have a way of losing their jobs.” world for its high rate of surprise births. Consider this: About half of the 6.7 million American pregnancies each year are unplanned.

We also introduce Dog Ears, a column spotlighting music from a range of genres and decades. And as part of our ongoing focus on the Third Metric, we present several ways to retrain your mind for more creativity, productivity and fulfillment.

ARIANNA

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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PARALYSIS

The government entered a partial shutdown on Tuesday after Congress failed to pass a short-term spending bill to keep the government funded. Most nonessential federal programs and services were suspended, and about 800,000 federal workers faced furloughs. The Senate rejected two bills Monday that had been passed by the House, because they both contained measures to delay the implementation of Obamacare. In a speech Tuesday, Obama blamed the shutdown on House Republicans: “They’ve shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health care to millions of Americans.”

Lawmakers have suggested it could continue for weeks.

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FROM TOP: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; AP PHOTO/OPCW, HENRY ARVIDSSON; JEAN-PAUL AUSSENARD/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES

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OBAMACARE IS HERE

A key feature of the Affordable Care Act took effect on Tuesday, when online insurance exchanges launched for Americans to buy health coverage.

The exchanges in each state allow people to compare options and find out if they’re eligible for more affordable plans, with the goal of making sure everyone is insured. Congressional Republicans tried to repeal the law more than 40 times, to no avail. Seven million people are expected to buy private insurance using the exchanges this year and 25 million more will have insurance by 2016 due to Obamacare, according to the CBO.

3 SYRIA MISSION BEGINS

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International inspectors began supervising the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons this week.

They have about nine months to finish getting rid of the estimated 1,000-ton arsenal. The mission was approved by a U.N. Security Council resolution following a deadly chemical attack in Damascus this summer, which sparked weeks of debates over a proper response and threats from the Obama administration of missile strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

TOM CLANCY DIES

Bestselling author Tom Clancy died on Tuesday night in a Baltimore hospital at the age of 66. He was best known for writing espionage and military science books. Four of Clancy’s books, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears, were adapted into Hollywood films. His latest book, Command Authority, is set to be published in December.

The president of Putnam Books, Clancy’s publisher, told The New York Times that Clancy “was a thrill to work with.”

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‘OFFICIALLY UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP’

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is officially the new owner of The Washington Post, after documents were signed to complete the $250 million purchase. In a memo to employees, publisher Katharine Weymouth wrote, “We are officially under new ownership, and a new era for The Washington Post begins.” At an all-staff town hall last month, Bezos said he can provide a “financial runway” for the Post and said the paper must determine how to “use gifts that the Internet gives us.”

6 BREAKING BAD

FROM TOP: T.J. KIRKPATRICK/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; URSULA COYOTE/AMC

COMES TO AN END

AMC’s hit drama Breaking Bad came to an end Sunday night, and viewers finally found out what happened to chemistry teacher-turnedmeth kingpin Walter White. The network said 10.3 million viewers tuned in to watch the finale, up from 1.5 million viewers for the show’s 2008 premiere. Critics were divided on the finale, with some saying it ended the series perfectly and others arguing it wrapped things up a bit too cleanly. Breaking Bad just won its first Emmy for best TV drama.

THAT’S VIRAL WHY THE YOUNG PEOPLE CAN’T STAND FACEBOOK NO MORE

A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories.

HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES

DON’T DO KROKODIL (NOT SAFE FOR LIFE PHOTOS)

THE COOLEST WAY TO QUIT YOUR JOB

7 THINGS WE HATE ABOUT IOS 7

SOMEONE GET THIS CHILD A PLAYDATE WITH BLUE IVY, STAT

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LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST

JASON LINKINS

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NEVER FORGET THE GREAT MODERATE REPUBLICAN REVOLT OF 2013!

ONDAY NIGHT’S bicameral back and forth between the House GOP and the Senate ended in the way everyone saw coming: a shutdown of the federal government, owing to the House Republicans’ refusal to simply send the Senate the “clean” continuing resolution that everyone knew

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would have ended the futile contretemps right then and there. As that didn’t happen, reporters instead got to watch House Republicans smack a tennis ball into a brick wall, over and over again until everyone just hung it up for the night.

But there was a brief moment where everything threatened to actually get interesting.

I speak, of course, of Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who is what passes for a “moderate” House Repub-

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., led moderate Republicans in pursuit of a “clean” continuing resolution.

Enter lican in this day and age. Days ago, King criticized the legislative meanderings of Sen. Ted Cruz (RTexas), and called Cruz a “fraud,” which ensured that King’s office would spend the rest of the day fielding calls from Cruz’s fanbase.

Their comments featured “vile, profane, obscene language,” the likes of which King had never heard, and we remind you that he represents part of Long Island.

As a result, King went on Morning Joe and told their Zoo Crew, “I’m not saying Ted Cruz is responsible for all his supporters, but he has tapped into a dark strain here in the American political psyche here, and again, the most obscene, profane stuff you can imagine all from people who say they support the Constitution.”

So King was primed to be one of those “mad as hell/not gonna take it anymore” types as Monday’s deliberations began, and as the sun set in the west, it looked for all the world like he was going to finally foment a revolt. As the National Review’s Jonathan Strong reported Monday evening, “Republican moderates have apparently had enough.” King wanted a “clean” continuing resolution, and he was going to damn well keep

LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST

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the rest of the GOP caucus from adding rules to the bill by leading a gang of moderate Republicans into the breach: In what is by far their boldest stand since the GOP took control of the House in 2010, a group of them are threatening to bring down a vote on the rule for the government-funding bill scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

Would King bring 25 votes against dirtying up the continuing resolution?

As it turns out, King overestimated the number in his band of brothers by... you know, about 23 people.

New York representative Peter King is leading the charge, and his fellow New Yorker [Representative] Michael Grimm is close behind him. The group told leadership on Saturday they have 25 members who are willing to bring down the rule.

This was a significant rump, taking this “boldest stand.”

As Politico reported, “If no Democrats vote for the rule, [Speaker

Enter of the House John] Boehner can only lose 17 Republicans to sink the plan.” And so, the battle was joined, and as night fell across the District of Columbia, everyone who wanted the insanity to end turned their hopeful eyes to the vote count in the House. Would King bring 25 votes against dirtying up the continuing resolution?

As it turns out, King overestimated the number in his band of brothers by... you know, about 23 people: The size of a bloc of GOP moderates ready to bring down a vote on the House floor over the government-funding bill shriveled from 25 lawmakers on Saturday to just two when the House voted just now to pass the rule.

New York representative Peter King and Pennsylvania representative Charlie Dent, two key moderates, voted no, while four hardline conservatives, including Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, voted no because the bill didn’t draw a hard enough line against Obamacare.

Well done, lads. Ha, ha, remember that whole “fellow New Yorker Michael Grimm is close behind

LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST

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him” part? That was really neat.

There’s not a whole lot to say about a plan that nobody should have believed was going to come to fruition anyway. But it’s worth pointing out that when the political media holds forth on the ideological landscape of Congress, and games out what they believe is possible in terms of bargains and

There aren’t a lot of “moderate Republicans” in Congress. And those who exist are very timid and nearly useless when the chips are down. compromises, just about everything in their conceptual framework is premised on the notion that a lot of moderate Republicans exist, and that the resting state of Capitol Hill is “center-right.”

As it turns out, all of those premises are wrong. There aren’t a lot of “moderate Republicans” in Congress. And those who exist are very timid and nearly useless when the chips are down. The government is shut down right now, but the notion that “moderate Republicans” were capable of steering a debate somewhere sensible went by the boards a long time ago.

Q&A

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Hannibal Buress Explains Why His Net Worth Isn’t Online “I got a lot of illegal assets...

I got this 37-percent stake in this yoga joint in Sweden that’s doing really well right now, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

Above: Hannibal Buress at the 2012 Comedy Awards. Below: Burress performs during the 2013 Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival Tour in Austin, Tx.

FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW, VISIT HUFFPOST LIVE

CALIFORNIA: $1.35 BILLION

NUMBER OF UNINTENDED PREGNANCIES (PER 1,000 WOMEN AGED 15-44)*

PHOTO ORGUTTMACHER ILLUSTRATIONINSTITUE. CREDIT TK SOURCE: *RATES FOR ARIZONA, INDIANA, KANSAS, MONTANA, NEVADA, NEW HAMPSHIRE, NORTH DAKOTA, AND SOUTH DAKOTA ESTIMATED BY MULTIPLE REGRESSION. **IN 2006

TEXAS: $1.23 BILLION

America’s Unplanned Babies About half of the 6.7 million

pregnancies in the U.S. each year are unplanned, according to a recent state-level analysis by the Guttmacher Institute. The unintended pregnancy rate is a standout in the industrialized world, and has remained nearly flat since the 1980s despite advances in birth control technology and availability.

As family planning budgets are slashed across the nation, unintended pregnancy remains the main reason for abortion, a procedure three in 10 American women have by 45. — Katy Hall

31-42 43-49 50-56 57-62 63-70

STATES WHERE PUBLIC SPENDING ON UNINTENDED BIRTHS EXCEEDS $1 BILLION. 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

UNPLANNED PREGNANCIES & INCOME (RATE PER 1,000 WOMEN 15-44)

INCOME BELOW POVERTY LINE ALL WOMEN

INCOME EXCEEDS 200% OF POVERTY LINE 1981

1987

1994

5% % 66%

Nearly half of pregnancies are unintended

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Spending on public family planning centers...

1.9B

... resulted in $7 billion in gross savings from helping women avoid unintended pregnancies and births in 2008.

2001

2006

The percent of those conceived by women who used birth control regularly The percent of those paid for by public insurance programs**

7B

AP PHOTO/CBS NEWS, CHRIS USHER (SHUTDOWN); MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES (SPEAKER CRUZ?); AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE (THE KOOL-AID CAUCUS); NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (NO END IN SIGHT)

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HEADLINES

10.01.13 09.28.13

09.30.13

10.02.13

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The Week That Was TAP IMAGE TO ENLARGE, TAP EACH DATE FOR FULL ARTICLE ON THE HUFFINGTON POST

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Sangarejo, Georgia 09.25.2013

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A man loads a mountain of grapes into a truck near the Georgian town of Sagarejo in the Kakheti region.

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Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 09.27.2013 Street vendor Hassan Massoud sells freshly cooked octopus and squid at the Kivukoni fish market in downtown Dar es Salaam. The fishmarket hosts fishermen, auctioneers and buyers with items like octopus going for approximately 8000 Tanzanian shillings ($5).

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Arromanches, France 09.27.2013 Artists Jamie Woldey and Andy Moss sketch 9,000 silhouettes on a Normandy beach to represent the number of military and civilian deaths during D-Day. The art piece, known simply as “The Fallen” or “Fallen 9000,” makes no distinction of the nationality of those who died during the Normandy landings of World War II on June 6, 1944.

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Khartoum, Sudan 09.28.2013 Members of Sudan Change Now protest outside the Sudanese embassy in London during a demonstration about the NCP regime and its brutal attacks on Sudanese anti-corruption protestors. The demonstrations were sparked by fuel price hikes.

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Latacunga, Ecuador 09.23.2013 A child dressed up during the La Santisima Tragedia — or the Blessed Tragedy — festivities. The festival gives thanks to Virgen de las Mercedes, or Virgin of Mercy, and is usually celebrated with elaborate costumes.

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Masham, England 09.28.2013 Lucy Steele of Withernsea (left) and David Holt of Pickering pose with their first and second place Oxford Down Glimmer Lambs, respectively, during the sheep fair in Masham. The fair celebrates its 25th year with other sheep categories including sheep racing, sheepdog demonstrations and fleece stalls.

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Nairobi, Kenya 09.29.2013 A Kenyan girl prays at a church service held for the victims of the Westgate Shopping Center attack.

The four-day siege started by the Somali militant group Al Shabaab killed at least 67 civilians and police.

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London, England 09.28.2013 Gamers wear high-def virtual reality headsets while playing Gaijin Entertainment’s “War Thunder” video game during Eurogamer Expo 2013.

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Peshawar, Pakistan 09.29.2013

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A Pakistani man carries his child away from the site of a car-bomb blast. The bomb exploded on a crowded street and is the third to hit Peshawar in one week.

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Tehran, Iran 09.25.2013 An Iranian woman passes a huge poster depicting a scene from the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in the 80s. Many Iranians are optimistic that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s Western outreach will result in international cooperations that will lift painful sanctions and ease Iran’s isolation.

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Yangon, Myanmar 09.25.2013 A woman stands on her verandah behind an iron-grill decorated with small Christmas trees.

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Madrid, Spain 09.26.2013 Efren Rodriquez Gonzalez, 68, covers his 8-year-old granddaughter, Maria Isabel Ferrer Rodriguez, after the family was evicted. The family had been living on state disability benefits in the State City Hall Housing Company’s apartment for 24 years. The company evicted them despite the protests of the Victims’ Mortgage Platform, and they are now forced to sleep outside.

Tap here for a more extensive look at the week on The Huffington Post.

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Voices

KATE BARTOLOTTA

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JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

How to Get Flat Abs, Have Amazing Sex and Rule the World in 8 Easy Steps THE COVERS OF most men’s and women’s magazines have similar headlines: “Get Great Abs” and “Have Amazing Sex.” From the looks of it, these two issues have been recycled over and over (with some other stereotypically gender-relevant ar-

ticles thrown in) on every Men’s Health, Maxim, Cosmopolitan and Glamour cover since the dawn of time. In fact, I’d bet that if we could get a better translation of cave drawings, they would read something like “Grok get flat belly. Make girl Grok moan with joy.”

And we keep buying them. We keep buying this lie that these

Voices things will make us happy. I’ve had washboard abs (past tense) and I’ve had some pretty phenomenal sex. Neither one made me a better person. Neither one completed me or made my life more fulfilling.

We chase this idea of “I will be happy when... “ I will be happy when I have a new car. I will be happy when I get married. I will be happy when I get a better job. I will be happy when I lose five pounds.

What if instead we choose to be happy — right now?

If you can read this, your life is pretty awesome.

Setting aside our first-world problems and pettiness, if you are online reading this, you have both electricity and WiFi or access to them. Odds are you are in a shelter of some sort, or on a smartphone (and then kudos to you for reading this on the go).

Life might bump and bruise us, it may not always go the way we plan and I know I get frustrated with mine, but here’s the thing: You are alive.

Because you are alive, everything is possible. So about those eight tips...

KATE BARTOLOTTA

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1. STOP BELIEVING YOUR BULLSHIT. All that stuff you tell yourself about how you are a commitment phobe or a coward or lazy or not creative or unlucky? Stop it. It’s bullshit, and deep down you know it. We are all insecure 14 year olds at heart. We’re all scared. We all have dreams inside of us that we’ve tucked away because somewhere along the line we tacked on those ideas about who we are

I’ve had washboard abs (past tense) and I’ve had some pretty phenomenal sex. Neither one made me a better person.” that buried that essential brilliant, childlike sense of wonder.

The more we stick to these scripts about who we are, the longer we live a fraction of the life we could be living. Let it go. Be who you are beneath the bullshit.

2. BE HAPPY NOW. Not because The Secret says so.

Not because of some shiny happy Oprah crap. But because we can choose to appreciate what is in our lives instead of being angry

Voices or regretful about what we lack.

It’s a small, significant shift in perspective. It’s easier to look at what’s wrong or missing in our lives and believe that is the big picture — but it isn’t. We can choose to let the beautiful parts set the tone.

3. LOOK AT THE STARS. It won’t fix the economy. It won’t stop wars. It won’t give you flat abs, or better sex or even help you figure out your relationship and what you want to do with your life. But it’s important. It helps you remember that you and your problems are both infinitesimally small and conversely, that you are a piece of an amazing and vast universe. I do it daily — it helps.

4. LET PEOPLE IN. Truly. Tell people that you trust when you need help, or you’re depressed — or you’re happy and you want to share it with them.

Acknowledge that you care about them and let yourself feel it. Instead of doing that other thing we sometimes do, which is to play it cool and pretend we only care as much as the other person has admitted to caring, and only open up half way. Go all in — it’s worth it.

KATE BARTOLOTTA

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5. STOP WITH THE CRAZY MAKING. I got to a friend’s doorstep the other day, slightly breathless and nearly in tears after getting a little lost, physically and existentially. She asked what was wrong and I started to explain and then stopped myself and admitted, “I’m being stupid and have decided to invent lots of problems in my head.” Life is full of ob-

I will be happy when I have a new car. I will be happy when I get married.

I will be happy when I get a better job. I will be happy when I lose five pounds. What if instead we choose to be happy — right now?” stacles; we don’t need to create extra ones. A great corollary to this one is from The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz: Don’t take things personally. Most of the time, other people’s choices and attitudes have absolutely nothing to do with you. Unless you’ve been behaving like a jerk, in which case...

Voices 6. LEARN TO APOLOGIZE. Not the ridiculous, self-deprecating apologizing for who you are and for existing that some people seem to do (what’s up with that, anyway?). The ability to sincerely apologize — without ever interjecting the word “but” — is an essential skill for living around other human beings. If you are going to be around other people, eventually you will need to apologize. It’s an important practice.

7. PRACTICE GRATITUDE. Practice it out loud to the people around you. Practice it silently when you bless your food. Practice it often. Gratitude is not a firstworld-only virtue. I saw a photo recently, of a girl in abject poverty, surrounded by filth and destruction. Her face was completely lit up with joy and gratitude as she played with a hula hoop she’d been given. Gratitude is what makes what we have enough.

Gratitude is the most basic way to connect with that sense of being an integral part of the vastness of the universe; as I mentioned with looking up at the stars, it’s that sense of wonder and humility, contrasted with celebrating our connection to all of life.

KATE BARTOLOTTA

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8. BE KIND. Kurt Vonnegut said it best (though admittedly, and somewhat ashamedly — I am not a Vonnegut fan): “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”

Kindness costs us nothing and pays exponential dividends. I can’t save the whole world. I can’t bring peace to Syria. I can’t fix the environment or the health care

The more we stick to these scripts about who we are, the longer we live a fraction of the life we could be living. Let it go. Be who you are beneath the bullshit.” system, and from the looks of it, I may end up burning my dinner.

But I can be kind.

If the biggest thing we do in life is to extend love and kindness to even one other human being, we have changed the world for the better.That’s a hell of a lot more important than flat abs in my book.

Kate Bartolotta is the owner and founder of Be You Media Group.

JOANNA MONTGOMERY

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MARK MONTGOMERY

Me and My Foobs

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EFORE MY SURGERY, I spoke openly about my decision to undergo a prophylactic bi-lateral mastectomy in the wake of a BRCA-1 diagnosis. I’m now about six weeks post-surgery, the (proud?) owner of two brand spanking new “foobs” (fake boobs), and I’ve had some time to process the new additions. ¶ First, I believe there’s a huge misconception among the general populace about what it means to have one’s breasts removed and replaced with artificial ones (if they are replaced at all).

When speaking about my upcoming surgery, I had many well-meaning people say things like, “Well at least you get new boobs!” and, “Your husband must be so excited... has he picked ‘em out yet?”

Joanna Montgomery’s replacement breasts six weeks after her prophylactic bilateral mastectomy.

Voices Yeah, well, it’s not quite like that. Not at all, in fact.

It seems that those not in the know tend to equate postmastectomy reconstructed breasts with augmented breasts or “boob jobs.” Nothing could be further from the truth. You see, augmented breasts are actually real live breasts with nipples and healthy breast tissue behind which silicone or saline implants have been placed, either under or above the muscle, thereby pushing them up and out. We all know what augmented breasts look like; some of them look very real, and many of them look stunningly beautiful. If augmented breasts didn’t look damn good, breast augmentation surgeries would not be so, ahem, popular.

So even though augmented boobs are often called “fake boobs,” they’re really not. I, on the other hand, do have fake boobs (or “foobs,” as I have become prone to calling them).

What is attached to my chest right now are a pair of silicone implants with no breast tissue in front of them. I am essentially sporting implants covered with skin. There are no real breasts

JOANNA MONTGOMERY

there to hide the fact that my “breasts” are just implants — man-made, silicone-filled implants which feel like gelfilled bags and ripple when I move certain ways.

And right now, I have no nipples either. Because leaving enough breast tissue behind the nipple to spare it can cre-

When speaking about my upcoming surgery, I had many well-meaning people say things like, ‘Well at least you get new boobs!’ and, ‘Your husband must be so excited... has he picked ‘em out yet?’” ate more risk, in that cancer can still occur in the tissue left behind. Also, if the surgeon failed to leave enough tissue attached to the nipple, the nipple could become necrotic and die. As in, turn black and fall off.

No thank you. I wasn’t that attached to my nipples.

So I opted against nipplesparing surgery, and currently

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Voices have long incisions where my nipples used to be. To put it graphically — but not so graphically that it would require a “warning” tag when published — I went from looking like this:

JOANNA MONTGOMERY

spite my crude pencil sketches.)

And the view from above right now is even weirder for me. I went from seeing this:

To this:

JOANNA MONTGOMERY

To looking like this: (Hopefully you get the idea, de-

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no regrets about my decision to have preventative surgery. None, whatsoever. I sleep better knowing that I just shaved about 77 percent off of my 87 percent risk of contracting breast cancer in my lifetime. Nor am I unhappy with my results. I had excellent surgeons and my reconstructed breasts look just like they’re supposed to look at this stage. I will have skin-graft-

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BROOKE KELLY/COURTESTY OF JOANNA MONTGOMERY

Voices ed, man-made nipples attached in the next few months, and later have color tattooed on them for good measure. The new nipples (“fips”) will hide some of the existing scars, and hopefully will be nice and round and perky. But they’ll have no feeling. They’ll just be there as accessories.

Like earrings.

And while I still look cute in a sexy bra, I no longer walk around topless, and now tend to sleep in camisoles rather than in the buff. I’m also somewhat shy around my husband, and am still shocked at times when I look in the mirror. It’s an adjustment, for all of us, even my toddler who gently pats the boo-boos she now sees on my chest.

For me, the psychological impact of losing my breasts was much greater than the physical impact. I am healing rapidly and know that the physical scars will fade. I also know that I made the right decision for me and my family. But those of us who either opted to have mastectomies as a preventative measure, or had mastectomies as a life-saving measure, aren’t excited about our “new boobs.” In truth, we’ll never be the same. We see ourselves dif-

JOANNA MONTGOMERY

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

What is attached to my chest right now are a pair of silicone implants with no breast tissue in front of them.

I am essentially sporting implants covered with skin.” ferently now when we look in the mirror, because we are different, inside as well as outside.

But at least we’re here, stronger and wiser for the experience.

Joanna Montgomery is a mother and breast cancer survivor.

Montgomery in 2012, after she had started treatment for Stage IIIC Fallopian tube cancer.

Voices

QUOTED

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

“ They really had to do a study for something that any Black American could have told them years ago for nothing.”

— HuffPost commenter Beatlearl

[Our] relationship with Iran can change dramatically for the better and it can change fast.

on “Racism In The South Shows Slavery’s Lingering Legacy, Study Suggests”

— John Kerry,

AP PHOTO/MARY ALTAFFER (KERRY); GETTY IMAGES/AMERICA 24-7 (FLAG)

on the possibility of a nuclear deal with Iran, in an interview with 60 Minutes

“ It’s really exciting to talk to you, especially right in the middle in your public meltdown.”

— Zach Galifianakis

to Justin Bieber, on an episode of Between Two Ferns

“ I’ve never understood this...an attractive fifty-year old woman is always sexier than a twenty year old.”

—HuffPost commenter libertysanders

on “The Counselor’ Posters Remind Us That Women Still Aren’t Allowed To Age”

Voices

QUOTED

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

“ It was a mistake.”

— Bill Gates

on using Control-Alt-Delete on Windows as opposed to a single key

“ As a physician, I have to say that everyone I have spoken to who is worried about Obamacare hasn’t got a clue what it involves.”

—HuffPost commenter prudencehall

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: RAMIN TALAIE/GETTY IMAGES; MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; JASON KEMPIN/GETTY IMAGES FOR CLEAR CHANNEL; LESTER COHEN/WIREIMAGE

on “Some Of Obamacare’s Biggest Winners Know Little About The Law”

“ I’ll probably turn into more of a Joni Mitchell.”

— Katy Perry

on how she imagines her career will progress as she gets older, to Billboard

“ Why do people stand in line for days to buy a phone but they won’t stand in line for 1 hour to vote? Shame.”

— HuffPost commenter Margery_Bagley_Welch

on “Gold iPhone Sells Out, Crushing Dreams Of Apple Fans Around The World”

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10.06.13 #69 FEATURES

JOIN THE BOOMING DOLLAR-STORE ECONOMY! NAMELESS & SHAMELESS

JOIN THE BOOMING DOLLARSTORE ECONOMY! LOW PAY, LONG HOURS, MAY WORK WHILE INJURED

BY DAVE JAMIESON

PREVIOUS PAGE: DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; THIS PAGE: BRIAN KILLIAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR PROCTER & GAMBLE

Dawn Hughey had worked at Dollar General for just four months

when she was named manager of a store in the Detroit suburbs in 2009. Having recently moved home after a stint in California, Hughey hoped the new honorific — and its attendant annual salary — would help her start a new life in Michigan.

But like other managers in America’s booming dollar store industry, Hughey quickly came to believe she was a manager in name only. The major dollar store chains — Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar — have thrived by offering customers rock-bottom prices that rival Walmart’s, a business model that requires shaving labor costs wherever possible. For a manager like Hughey, that meant working far beyond a 40-hour week.

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Each week, the company allotted Hughey around 125 hours to assign to the four workers in her charge, most of whom were earning close to minimum wage, she said. But according to Hughey, as well as recent lawsuits against Dollar General and its competitors, the hours that dollar-store managers are allowed to assign rarely cover the work that needs

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

by having Hughey do much of the grunt work. As a salaried manager, she was exempt from overtime protections and didn’t get paid for extra work. Given that she often worked 70 hours a week, at an annual salary of $34,700, her pay sometimes broke down to less than $10 per hour — hardly a managerial haul.

She and her fellow store man-

“ Employees would say, ‘You’re the boss, you get the big bucks.’ But, really, you’re making [as much as] I am.”

COURTESY OF DAWN HUGHEY

— Dawn Hughey

to be done. The stores operate on something close to a skeleton staff, workers say.

Pressured to keep payroll down, Hughey spent most of her time unloading trucks, stocking shelves and manning the cash register, often logging 12-hour days, six days a week, to keep the store operating. She said she felt less like a manager than a manual laborer.

Dollar General saved a bundle

agers didn’t like thinking about the math, she said. After all, these were supposed to be the good, middle-class jobs in the low-paying retail world.

“It was always depressing,” Hughey, 49, said. “We didn’t want to know what it broke down to. Employees would say, ‘You’re the boss, you get the big bucks.’ But, really, you’re making [as much as] I am.”

The physical demands of the job took their toll. As Hughey was loading 25-pound boxes of books off a cart one day in July 2011, she

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felt a pinch in her neck, and “an immediate stabbing pain,” she recalled. The strain would eventually lead to X-rays, MRIs, physical therapy and recommendations to see a neurosurgeon, according to Hughey’s medical records. Hughey was put on work restrictions by her doctor, but continued clocking in.

As the pain got worse, her doctor told her to take two weeks off.

On her third day back on the job, she was called into a meeting with her district manager, according to Hughey. “He told me we were going to part ways,” Hughey recalled. The manager said Hughey was being let go due to productivity problems that predated her injury. Hughey then began what would turn out to be a two-year battle over workers’ compensation due to her health problems.

Recent strikes by workers at fast food restaurants and at Walmart have helped spark a national discussion about pay and working conditions in the retail sector.

Dollar stores like Hughey’s are a growing piece of that world, as companies like Dollar General have managed to take on Walmart in the discount retail game. The New York Times Magazine wrote that the influx of more affluent shoppers

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

at these stores has helped create a “dollar-store economy” in the wake of the Great Recession.

But the stingy payroll required by the dollar-store business model leaves many employees overworked, underpaid and even injured, according to workers and litigation filed over labor practices. While further promotions await some managers, for many the leadership job they longed for isn’t a road to the middle class so much as a glorified manual labor gig that quickly burns them out.

In interviews and court documents, former and current store managers claim major dollar-store companies classify them as managers merely to evade overtime obligations and to pay them less money. Those managers’ employees, in turn, have accused the companies of illegally shorting them on pay and forcing them to work off the clock due to payroll constraints.

Several workers told The Huffington Post that they lost their jobs or their hours once they got hurt or encountered health problems, leading to bitter feelings and long legal battles.

“We’re disposable,” Hughey said.

A NEW STORE EVERY SIX HOURS The number of dollar stores in the U.S. has roughly doubled over the past decade, the full tally

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now approaching 25,000 nationally, according to the brokerage firm Sterne Agee. Such stores are much smaller than a Walmart — about 8,000 square feet, compared with the 182,000 of a typical Supercenter — but they’re also becoming far more accessible to U.S. shoppers than the nation’s top retailer. There are now approximately five dollar stores in

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

Much of the industry’s growth has come courtesy of the Great Recession. As the worst downturn in a generation settled in, shoppers increasingly looked for bargain bins close to home, steering them to the discount detergent, toilet paper and other so-called consumables that Dollar General and its competitors thrive on.

Many of the new shoppers

“ Psychologically, they get you to believe that you are actually a manager... But we’re stock people.” the U.S. for every Walmart.

Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree are on pace to open one new store every six hours this year, according to Sterne Agee’s analysis, and they now employ more than 220,000 full-time and part-time U.S. workers, according to the companies’ annual reports. Dollar General alone has 90,000 employees.

Unlike with Walmart’s employees, dollar-store workers are siloed in small stores with few coworkers, leading to little workforce identity and no labor union presence.

at dollar stores are people who wouldn’t have stepped foot in one a decade ago. The big chains bore a reputation for operating dingy stores in run-down, high-crime neighborhoods, selling 99-cent items mostly to the poor. Sensing an opportunity to poach shoppers from big retailers and grocers, the main dollar-store chains have spruced up their shops and broadened their inventory to make them more inviting to middle-class customers.

“People have migrated there and stayed there,” said Joan Storms, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.

Storms said the chains have improved stores to make them pleas-

AP PHOTO/TOBY TALBOT

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ant places to shop and to work.

“When you shopped those stores before, you really felt poor,” Storms said. “Over the last few years they’ve really upgraded the shopping experience and the working experience by reformatting stores, cleaning them up and adding better merchandise.”

Retail is one of the lowestpaying jobs in the economy, with a median annual salary of about $25,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s well below what a family needs to support itself in most parts of the country. Retail workers are also unlikely to have employer health insurance, either because it isn’t offered or it’s prohibitively expensive. (As full-time employees, most dollar-store managers do have health care coverage and other basic benefits.)

This low compensation — driven in large part by the cheap prices consumers demand — has been an essential ingredient in retail growth, including dollar stores.

In the case of Dollar General, the company’s success has helped make it a poster child for the private equity industry. As private equity was assailed as “vulture capitalism” during last year’s

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

presidential election, a trade group for the industry boasted that Dollar General had added more than 20,000 jobs since the firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts acquired it in 2007. (The company went public again in 2009.)

But the growth of dollar stores has come with a boom in litigation from employees on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

Since just 2010, more than 30 federal wage-and-hour lawsuits

Dollar Tree stores, such as this one in Barre, Vt., offer cheap prices at the cost of low compensation for workers.

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HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

EMILE WAMSTEKER/ BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

“ When you shopped those stores before, you really felt poor. Over the last few years they’ve really upgraded the shopping experience.” have been filed against the three primary dollar-store chains, according to court records. Such lawsuits are now common across industries, as workers sue employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act. But the dollarstore world in particular has become a breeding ground for alle-

gations by workers that they were shorted on pay.

For the dollar-store chains, worker lawsuits have simply become a cost of doing business.

Earlier this year, 6,000 Dollar Tree workers joined a lawsuit against that company. They claimed they were forced to clock out for breaks, but had to continue working unpaid anyway.

“The number of employment-

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related class actions filed each year has continued to increase,” Dollar General, which had sales of $16 billion last year, wrote in its 2010 annual report. In addition to litigation under the Fair Labor Standards Act, female managers sued the company in a class action alleging the company systematically underpaid them compared with male counterparts. The case was settled for $19 million last year.

Wanda Womack, the lead plaintiff in the sex discrimination case, worked as a manager for 11 years at different stores in Alabama.

Like other longtime managers, Womack said the heavy workload at her store led to wear and tear on her body. She eventually got hurt lifting heavy boxes and required a series of rotator cuff surgeries, she said.

She went on a leave of absence with workers’ comp, but her job came to an end when it was apparent she could no longer lift 40 pounds, according to court filings.

Womack filed her lawsuit after she was let go.

“It really took 20 years off my life because of all the muscle pains. I have back injuries, I have neck injuries,” Womack said.

As for Dollar General, “They’re

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

popping up everywhere,” she said.

“They just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”

A SQUEEZE ON WORKERS Like other retailers, the dollarstore chains budget payroll hours to individual stores based on sales, geography and other closely watched metrics. It’s up to store managers to find a way to hit their sales goals and remain operational while coming in under their payroll ceiling.

Managers’ quarterly bonuses — a critical supplement for many, given average salaries in the midto high-$30,000s — hinge on their ability to keep stores profitable on thin margins. (According to salary data from Glassdoor. com, Walmart store managers earn well over twice the salary of dollar-store managers, likely because their stores and workforces are so much larger.)

For managers, that means being stingy with the hours given to part-time workers, and then handling whatever work gets left behind. Many managers said they feel no different from the people they supervise, except that their hours are longer. The per-hour pay rate often works out to be roughly equal.

“I’ve managed other retail stores. This was different,” said

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HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES;

Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree are on pace to open one new store every six hours this year.

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Berdie Gillis, a former Dollar General store manager. “There are not enough hours, and not enough people. The turnover was horrible.”

Dollar-store managers don’t benefit much from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Enacted in 1938, the bedrock labor law established the country’s minimum wage and overtime protections, and to this day serves as the primary governor on the 40-hour work week.

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

sor, is that the law is still predicated on the industrial economy of the mid-20th century, when the lines between managers and rank-and-file workers were clear.

The modern service economy, she said, is full of workers who may have “manager” in their title, but largely function as manual laborers and clerks.

The system “actually forces the management to squeeze peo-

“ They really worked people into the ground until they got everything they could get out of you.”

By requiring that companies pay workers time-and-a-half for overtime, the law makes bosses pay a price for making their employees work long hours. It also encourages companies to spread the work to different employees to avoid paying a premium.

Because they’re part of management and work on salary, whitecollar supervisors are exempt from the overtime law.

The problem, according to Jennifer Klein, a Yale history profes-

ple, to squeeze them and make them work hours off the clock, and for managers to pick up the slack,” said Klein.

“The model was based on fulltime employment in an industrial enterprise, where there was a clear recognition of who was the boss and who was the employee,” Klein continued. “Employers obviously have a lot of incentive to exploit the ambiguities and continue to manipulate the meaning of ‘employee.’”

The number of lawsuits alleging misclassification and wage violations in all industries has

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skyrocketed over the past decade, hitting record highs. According to an analysis from the Federal Judicial Center, nearly 8,000 such lawsuits were filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act in the last reporting year, after hovering around 1,500 a year in the 1990s and early-2000s.

Businesses often say this boom in litigation comes courtesy of moneyhungry lawyers seeking big-dollar settlements. But worker advocates say the rise in lawsuits is because employers game the system and workers aren’t being paid what they’re owed. Workers may also be more sensitive to getting shorted on their pay these days, given that a lot of paychecks in low-wage industries like retail haven’t kept up with the cost of living.

In a statement to HuffPost, Dollar General said that its managers have played “a critical role” in the company’s success, and that their status as salaried, “exempt” employees is appropriate. (The company declined to address individual workers’ claims, citing litigation.)

“Based on the nature and importance of store manager responsibilities, Dollar General classifies its store managers as full-time, salaried employees who are eligi-

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

ble for company-supported health care coverage and a competitive bonus system for the retail industry,” the company said.

Dollar General added that off-the-clock work is “absolutely” prohibited.

“Store managers are responsible for staffing and scheduling at their stores,” the company said.

“They are provided with the tools and training to ensure that their stores’ business needs are met and employees are paid in accordance with company policy and the law.”

Dollar Tree didn’t respond to a request for comment. In an email to HuffPost, Family Dollar spokeswoman Bryn Winburn said the company believes its managers are “properly classified as exempt” from the Fair Labor Standards Act. “The number of hours worked

by Family Dollar store managers varies due to many factors, including the skill and experience of the specific manager,” Winburn wrote. “Because store managers are responsible for the entire operation of their stores, they are also responsible for setting the weekly schedule for the employees in that store, including their own, and in assuring that all employees in their stores receive the appropriate breaks.”

Winburn noted that Family Dol-

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lar was “not alone” in believing its managers should be exempt from overtime and minimum wage laws, noting the company’s many victories in federal court. A North Carolina federal court “has ruled 46 times in the past few years that individual Family Dollar store managers are classified properly,” she said.

Andrew Frisch, a lawyer who’s sued Chesapeake, Va.-based Dol-

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

lar Tree on behalf of assistant managers, said it’s the companies’ taut payroll that lead to lawsuits.

Many workers end up working through legally mandated unpaid breaks or doing other off-theclock work, he said.

“It’s an untenable amount of work,” Frisch said.

In addition to working through unpaid breaks, Frisch said there are other, smaller ways in which dollar-store employees get shorted. “At virtually every dollar-store

Shoppers wait in line at a Family Dollar store in Belleville, NJ.

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chain, there are people responsible for bringing bank deposits,” Frisch said. “The people at the end of the day get screwed. They clock out and leave, and then have to do the deposit.”

John Nicoletti is familiar with the dollar-store labor model.

In early 2012, Nicoletti took a manager’s job at a Dollar General store in Martin, Tenn., he said.

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

working 60 or 70 hours per week, often putting in 12-hour days or longer, doing nearly everything on his own because his staff was short-handed. Nicoletti said he believes many managers take the job believing they’ve attained a supervisory role with some cachet, only to be disappointed.

“Psychologically, they get you to believe that you are actually a

... the influx of more affluent shoppers at these stores has helped create a “dollar-store economy” in the wake of the Great Recession.

He’d put together a long career in retail, managing gas stations for years before starting the new job.

He’d heard stories of brutal hours at dollar stores, but a supervisor told him when he started that he’d be working about 45 hours per week. Nicoletti couldn’t work much more than that because of neuropathy, a painful form of nerve damage caused by his diabetes that limited how long he could be on his feet each day.

Nicoletti said he was quickly

manager... But we’re stock people,” Nicoletti said. “They want you to continuously work. There’s no stop. It’s just a continuous productivity thing with them. They really worked people into the ground until they got everything they could get out of you.”

Nicoletti said he soon found himself pleading with a regional manager for more hours to give employees. He said his own workers were shifted to other, similarly understaffed stores nearby. As the stress of the job mounted, Nicoletti’s doctor informed him he’d developed hypertension.

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“I never had a blood pressure problem until October,” Nicoletti said. “It was only caused by the fact that they were taking people from my store and bringing them to another.”

Eventually, the stress was so bad

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

that Nicoletti developed muscle spasms, he said. He left in the fall, having lasted about seven months.

Nicoletti said he couldn’t help but do the salary math that bothered Hughey so much. He said his pay often broke down to a little more than $8 per hour, less than minimum wage in some states.

Store Manager Sharon Dixon restocks shelves at a Family Dollar store in Norcross, Ga., in 2009.

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‘THE ONLY THING IN TOWN’ Dollar stores may have lured middle-class customers in recent years, but they still predominate in low-income areas. A “dollarstore belt” stretches from Indiana and Ohio south to the Gulf Coast.

It’s no accident that West Virginia and Mississippi — two of the poorest U.S. states — are also the two states with the greatest num-

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

worked in a Dollar General store in Montcalm County, Mich. The unemployment rate there was above 17 percent in 2010. It’s dropped since then, but remains a stubborn 10.2 percent.

After about five years on the job, Sheneman said she was making $8.65 per hour as a “keyholder” — a low-level store management position. She and her husband car-

“ It really took 20 years off my life because of all the muscle pains. I have back injuries, I have neck injuries.” ber of dollar stores per capita, according to an analysis by the Martin Prosperity Institute.

“Retail salesperson” has become the most common occupation in America, with 4.3 million people working the country’s sales floors and registers. In down-and-out areas, particularly where manufacturing or energy jobs have vanished, dollar stores now hold some of the only work that’s available.

“It’s the only thing in town,” said Sheila Sheneman.

Until late last year, Sheneman

ried debt, and the modest paycheck helped them tread water. But she said it was “impossible to try and live on those wages,” especially when full-time hours are elusive for non-managers.

If dollar stores are to hold good, middle-class jobs, Sheneman said, the companies need to provide managers with enough payroll to run their stores safely, even if that means taking less profit or passing some of the cost on to customers.

The current labor model comes with its own unseen costs, like high turnover and stress for employees, she said.

There’s also the intangible fac-

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tor of employee morale.

One day in 2010, Sheneman woke up with a wrenched back, nearly unable to get out of bed.

She was all but certain the injury was due to moving the store’s “rolltainers” — massive cages that hold hundreds of pounds of products. She went to the doctor and ultimately worked despite the pain, but she filed a workers’ compensation claim to help cover her copays and medicines.

The company challenged the claim, arguing that Sheneman’s injury wasn’t due to work. Once Sheneman fought back, she said the company’s lawyers quickly capitulated in a conference call with her and her lawyer. According to workers’ comp records, Sheneman got a check for $250 to cover her out-of-pocket costs, but she said the experience was dispiriting.

Then, last September, Sheneman broke her left arm in a motorcycle accident. She claimed she was soon taken off the schedule.

“If they said I could come back, I would probably swallow my pride and go back, just to have some income coming in,” Sheneman said.

Dollar General disputed her unemployment claim, according to records with Michigan’s un-

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

employment agency. Sheneman said she was fired; her employer questioned her ability to work.

The state’s unemployment agency sided with Sheneman.

Dawn Hughey, the Dollar General manager from Michigan who hurt her neck, agreed to a preliminary settlement with the company for an undisclosed sum in August.

Hughey’s unemployment insurance ran out a few months ago, and she’s been relying on food stamps to get by. She even looked into selling blood. She was recently evicted from her apartment and moved in with a cousin.

“Sometimes my neck is in a lot of pain, and I have to lay down and get the pillows just right to get it to stop,” she said.

While she had viewed her job at Dollar General four years ago as the start of a new life, Hughey said she’s now hoping the workers’ compensation settlement will help her get back on her feet and settle some debts. When she finally ran out of money, the minister at her church helped her make the final payments on her car so that it wouldn’t be repossessed.

“I’m going to pay her back when it’s all said and done,” Hughey said.

Dave Jamieson is The Huffington Post’s labor reporter.

NAMELESS & SHAMELESS THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK OF UNMASKING A SWAT TEAM

BY RADLEY BALKO

PREVIOUS PAGE: OLEG ZABIELIN//SHUTTERSTOCK\

O OVER A THREE-DAY PERIOD in June 2007, heavily armed SWAT teams, supported by tanks and helicopters, descended on Detroit’s Eight Mile Road. The massive operation involved police and agents from 21 different local, state and federal branches of law enforcement, and was intended to rid the notoriously crime-ridden area of drug houses, prostitutes and wanted fugitives.

After conducting hundreds of raids, the authorities made 122 arrests, according to The Detroit News, and seized about 50 ounces of marijuana, 6.5 ounces of cocaine and 19 guns.

When Caroline Burley, 51, first heard the boom around 5:30 on the evening of June 13, it sounded like it had come from outside her bedroom window. She rushed to investigate, and as she came out of the room, a man with a gun confronted her, threw her into a wall and then hurled her to the floor. A SWAT team had burst through her front door. Wearing only her nightgown, she asked for mercy. She recently had back surgery, she explained. Instead, one officer, then

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

another kept her close to the floor by putting a boot in her back, according to court filings.

Caroline’s mother, Geraldine Burley, was sitting at her computer in the basement when she heard a loud thud overhead, followed by a scream from her daughter and a man’s voice ordering Caroline Burley to the floor. When she ascended the stairs, she too found a gun pointed at her head, and a man ordered her to get on the floor as well.

She thought at first that she was being robbed.

Geraldine, 70, pleaded with the man to let her move to the floor slowly, explaining to him that she’d had both of her knees replaced. Instead, another officer approached, grabbed her by the face, demanded that she “get the fuck on the floor,” then threw her into a table. She tumbled to the ground.

At that point, she said later in a deposition, everything turned to “a fire, white and ringing in my ear.”

Another officer came up from the basement with her grandson, stepping on her knees in the process.

She cried out again in pain.

The officers searched the home but found no drugs, weapons or any other contraband. (They arrested Geraldine’s grandson on an

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NAMELESS AND SHAMELESS

unrelated misdemeanor warrant.)

Since the 1980s, SWAT teams have become an increasingly common tool in the war on crime.

By one estimate, more than 100 times per day in America, police teams break down doors to serve search warrants on people suspected of drug crimes. Innocent citizens like the Burleys often become the victims of violent law enforcement tactics.

In the wake of the raid on their home, the two women have tried to navigate a disorienting labyrinth of police bureaucracies and court filings to secure damages for

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

the injuries they sustained during the raid and for violations of their Fourth Amendment rights. More than six years later, however, the government agencies involved still won’t tell the women the names of the officers and agents who raided their home — a key piece of information necessary in lawsuits like this one. It isn’t enough merely to show that the government violated the plaintiffs’ rights; by federal law, the victims must be able to show that a specific officer or group of officers was responsible. This burden is something of a double standard, given that individual officers are rarely required to pay damages. The government pays the award.

As the drug war continues to

Detroit’s Eight Mile Road — where a SWAT team burst through the Burleys’ front door in 2007 — was known for crime-ridden drug houses, prostitutes and wanted fugitives.

NAMELESS AND SHAMELESS

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

MORE THAN SIX YEARS LATER, HOWEVER, THE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES INVOLVED STILL WON’T TELL THE WOMEN THE NAMES OF THE OFFICERS AND AGENTS WHO RAIDED THEIR HOME — A KEY PIECE OF INFORMATION NECESSARY IN LAWSUITS LIKE THIS ONE. encourage the use of aggressive police tactics, the Burleys’ frustrations with the court system punctuate just how difficult it can be for innocent victims, who become collateral damage in the war against drugs, to get redress for the harm done to them.

ACCORDING TO THE BURLEYS’ accounts, the officers who raided their home were clad in black.

Some wore balaclava masks or face shields that hid all but their eyes.

Others pulled their hats down low to shield their identities. They had also obscured their names and badge numbers. Once the Burleys’ house had been thoroughly searched, both women asked the officers for their names. After holding an impromptu meeting, the officers told the Burleys that they wouldn’t divulge any infor-

mation that could identify them individually. Instead, they told the women that they had just been raided by “Team 11.” The women weren’t given a search warrant.

“Team 11 appears to have been a name given just for that operation,” Stanley Okoli, an attorney for the Burleys, told The Huffington Post. “Or just a name to confuse them. It wasn’t a designation that gave them any meaningful way to obtain the officers’ identities.”

Joe Key, a retired police officer with 24 years of experience, founded the SWAT team in Baltimore, and now consults for police agencies and testifies as an expert witness. He criticized the idea of officers refusing to identify themselves. “Accountability of the police officer to the public is absolute,” he told The Huffington Post.

“If there are undercover officers whose identities need to be protected — and I don’t know that that was the case here — then you

ALAMY

NAMELESS AND SHAMELESS

send different officers in to conduct the raid. If this is really what happened, there’s no excuse for it.”

According to press accounts, Operation Eight Mile was coordinated by the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, but in response to the Burleys’ initial requests for information, Wayne County claimed to have no record of the raid. Instead, the county directed the women to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

That, too, proved fruitless. The DEA told the Burleys that the agency was “experiencing a transition,” and promised to provide information on the raid at a later date. That never happened. It wasn’t until the Burleys filed a lawsuit in state court that Wayne County finally released documents related to the raid, which included a DEA report with the names of the agents.

Neither the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, nor the DEA, would comment for this article.

According to the report, the agents who conducted the raid at the Burleys belonged to a DEA team called Group 6. For Operation Eight Mile, members of Group 6 were paired with officers from state and local agencies, and renamed Team 11, the name the

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officers gave the Burleys.

In response to questionnaires from the Burleys’ attorneys, the officers involved in the raid denied violating the Burleys’ civil rights. But none of them at the time denied being on the team that raided the house.

During depositions of the defendants, however, attorneys for the Burleys were in for a surprise.

The DEA agents denied they were ever in the Burley home. They claimed that Group 6 had been split in two, with half the agents raiding the Burleys’ house, and the other half raiding a nearby house at the same time.

Each of the agents named in the DEA report claimed that they were in the other home, not the Burleys’.

Each told a story about one officer’s erroneous deployment of an explosive distraction device during that raid. The vivid memory,

Six years later, the courts have still not required the identification of the masked, unnamed agents involved in “Operation Eight Mile.”

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TEAM 11 APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN A NAME GIVEN JUST FOR THAT OPERATION. OR JUST A NAME TO CONFUSE THEM. IT WASN’T A DESIGNATION THAT GAVE THEM ANY MEANINGFUL WAY TO OBTAIN THE OFFICERS’ IDENTITIES. each of them claimed, explained why they were able to recall their whereabouts so specifically. They testified that the fact that they were named in the DEA report must have been a clerical error.

Attorneys for the Burleys then deposed other members of Group 6 not named in the DEA report. If indeed the raids had been conducted simultaneously, and a clerical error had misidentified which team went where, then these other members of the team must have been the ones in the Burleys’ home. But they too denied ever being there.

There’s no question that the Burleys were raided. But every officer who could have plausibly been involved claimed to be somewhere else at the time. Deputies from Wayne County were also part of the raid team, but each of them claimed to have been outside of the house, guarding the perim-

eter. None could recall which agents were with them, however, or where their fellow officers were when the raid took place.

“It’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen,” Okoli said.

“I asked, ‘which amongst you went to one address?’ and they said they couldn’t remember. So I asked, ‘which amongst you went to the other address?’ and they said they couldn’t remember.”

BECAUSE THEY WAITED until they gave depositions to deny their presence at the raid, the DEA agents made things difficult for the Burleys. Assuming the agents were telling the truth, the Burleys would need to start all over in identifying the agents who raided their house.

And that’s assuming they could get a waiver on the statute of limitations, which had by then expired.

In June 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman first dismissed the Burleys’ claims against Wayne County, then pre-

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NAMELESS AND SHAMELESS

empted a jury verdict in the trial against the federal agents. He ruled that, given the evidence, no reasonable jury could find in the plaintiffs’ favor, and in addition ordered the Burleys to pay the DEA agents $5,000 to compensate them for court costs.

“These women are destitute,” Okoli told HuffPost. “That was completely discretionary. He didn’t have to do that.” Because the women couldn’t pay, the government moved to garnish their Social Security disability checks to cover the fine.

The Burleys appealed, and last month, a panel from the U.S. Court

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of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the dismissal of Wayne County officials from the lawsuit, but reinstated the suit against the federal agents. The court found that “the agents’ intent to conceal contributed to the plaintiffs’ impaired ability to identify them.” The court also vacated the order for the Burleys to pay court costs.

But the court still stopped short of ordering the government to produce the names of the agents who conducted the raid. The Burleys and their attorneys will need to fight the government’s lawyers and Friedman, who will preside over the new trial as well.

Okoli welcomes the Sixth Circuit’s decision. But he said that, in addition to having to go before

According to one estimate, more than 100 times per day in America, police teams break down doors to serve search warrants on those suspected of drug crimes.

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I F THERE ARE UNDERCOVER OFFICERS WHOSE IDENTITIES NEED TO BE PROTECTED — AND I DON’T KNOW THAT THAT WAS THE CASE HERE — THEN YOU SEND DIFFERENT OFFICERS IN TO CONDUCT THE RAID. Friedman — who appeared hostile to his clients’ case — again, the Burleys are at even more of a disadvantage than they were in the first trial. The agents and their attorneys are now aware of inconsistencies the first trial exposed in their stories, and can attempt to explain them away. “We lost that element of surprise,” Okoli said.

The Burleys’ failure to win compensation for the raid on their home is hardly unusual.

And while this case may be particularly egregious, the tendency of police agencies to be stingy with information following a mistaken raid is also common.

Police officers enjoy qualified immunity, so it isn’t enough to show that police made a clear mistake, or even that they were negligent, no matter how much harm has been done.

But wading into the legal weeds about what police agencies can and can’t do in these cases

overlooks the fact that what they can do isn’t necessarily what they ought to do. When confronted with these cases, political leaders and police officials could choose one of two routes. They can show some contrition, admit they made mistakes, move to make the victims whole again and look to ensure that the same mistakes don’t happen again. Or they can hunker down, cut off the flow of information and engage in every bit of bureaucratic chicanery and legal maneuvering they can in order to escape accountability.

“What happened in the house, whether the women were violated or whether their account is overblown, that’s up to a jury to decide,” Joe Key says. “But the government must make itself accountable and transparent. This kind of stonewalling goes against everything the Fourth Amendment is supposed to represent.”

Radley Balko is a senior writer and investigative reporter for The Huffington Post.

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Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, is crowned Miss America 2014, a decision that stirred anger among some on social media.

Doesn’t This Just Make You So Mad? (Now Go Like It.)

BY BIANCA BOSKER

Exit T WAS THE STORY people couldn’t stop sharing. Nina Davuluri’s victory at the 2014 Miss America contest set off an explosion of racist tweets, which news sites quickly bundled into stories that immediately seemed everywhere online. One group’s rage sparked another’s: On Facebook and Twitter, a cacophony of irate individuals expressed outrage at other people’s anger. A single Buzzfeed story about the racist posts, “A Lot Of People Are Very Upset That An Indian-American Woman Won The Miss America Pageant,” was shared by more than 62,000 people and has been viewed over 5.3 million times.

The racist tweets, as well as the outrage they produced online, underscore an important but often ignored truth about the kind of conversation that social media encourages: The wisdom of crowds is no match for the rage of crowds.

Madison Avenue taught the world that “sex sells.” But that motto needs an update in the social media age, where information travels in new ways and is carried along by different people. Online, rage rules. I hate, therefore I “like.”

(And since everyone wants a “like,”

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people aim to provoke.)

“Negative comments are much more memorable and much more noticed,” observed Stanford University professor of communication Clifford Nass in an interview earlier this year. “In a world where you’re trying to get noticed, going negative is the way to go.”

As a growing body of research shows, subtlety isn’t what succeeds on social networks. Anger-induc-

Negative comments are much more memorable and much more noticed.

In a world where you’re trying to get noticed, going negative is the way to go.” ing, emotionally-charged content spreads best, and the success of those posts may in turn be shaping the way we think and communicate with one another — lending an almost feverish pitch to our interactions online. Although social media sites claim they’re about kumbaya social connection, their design actually makes them extremely wellsuited to arousing our emotions.

Many have argued precisely the opposite, saying that Facebook,

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Exit Twitter and even email are some of the most effective mechanisms ever devised for spreading happy stories. And there is some research to support this: We’re incentivized to share helpful, heartwarming and hilarious things, since these make us look good to our friends. The language of Facebook and Twitter, with “likes” and “favorites,” also gives happy stuff a boost. “[N]euroscientists and psychologists have found that good news can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories,” wrote The New York Times’ John Tierney earlier this year. The title of his piece declared, “Good News Beats Bad on Social Networks.”

That sounds nice, only it’s not entirely true. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Research published last month by a team at China’s Beihang University concluded that anger was more contagious than other emotions, spreading faster and more widely online than sadness, disgust and even joy. The scholars examined 70 million posts from China’s Weibo, a Twitter-like service used by more than 500 million people, and tracked how people who interacted frequently with one another influenced the emotional tone of

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each other’s posts. Did certain sentiments spread more quickly than others? Would an angry message posted by one person be more likely to prompt another angry post, than, say, a depressing or happy one? Absolutely, they concluded.

“We find the correlation of anger among users is significantly higher than that of joy, which indicates that angry emotion could spread more quickly and broadly in the network,” the researchers wrote. The title of their paper says it all: “Anger Is More Influential Than Joy.” A 2011 study that examined the diffusion of sentiment across Twitter reached a similar conclusion, albeit with an exception. The researchers found that in the domain of news, bad news is viral news, or

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The “like” button on Facebook seems to encourage the sharing of positive stories, but researchers have found that negativity may be more contagious than joy.

Exit “negative news is more retweeted than positive news.” But nonnewsy tweets, such as social updates, were shared more when they were positive. The authors advised people seeking out more followers to “sweet talk your friends or serve bad news to the public.”

Those who maintain that cheerful trumps dreadful online frequently cite the research of Wharton School professor Jonah Berger, the author of “Contagion: Why Things Catch On.” In one study, Berger and his co-author Katherine Milkman analyzed nearly 7,000 stories that made it to The New York Times’ most-emailed list to figure out if they could decode a pattern to the articles’ popularity. They found uplifting stories (i.e. “Wide-Eyed New Arrivals Falling in Love with the City”) were more viral than depressing ones. But “highly arousing content,” like articles that induced anxiety or anger, did best of all.

“Online content that evoked high-arousal emotions was more viral, regardless of whether those emotions were of a positive (i.e. awe) or negative (i.e. anger or anxiety) nature,” the researchers noted — a conclusion echoed by a slew of other studies. When emotionally charged content gets readers agitat-

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ed, their instinct is to hit “share.”

These findings have major implications for our experience online, far beyond how to win more followers. They suggest that social media can actually reward — through its currency of shares, retweets and “likes” — outbursts of rage and anything that make us agitated. Hype wins, nuance loses.

The problem with the viral nature of extreme emotions is that

Social media can actually reward... outbursts of rage and anything that make us agitated. we both ingest that content and emulate it. If that’s what we share then that’s what we’ll see, which in turn will shape how we act. It’s not a leap to suggest heated emotions breed more heated emotions online, or rage more rage. A study by Facebook’s data science team found that if people used negative words, such as “petty” or “lame,” in their status updates, their friends became more likely to include negative words in their own posts. The bump in usage persisted even three days after the initial post, and the effect also applied to positive terms.

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Exit Just as we act differently at frat houses and family reunions, we adjust our behavior online according to what we see around us. Instagram got people to share gorgeous photographs by initially seeding the app with a small community of artists and designers. If we reward people posting nasty things with our attention — and we do — that becomes the acceptable standard.

Pundits have raised concerns that the Internet’s hyper-personalization might lead to a “filter bubble,” where people see only content that reinforces their existing interests and views. This, they argue, could lead to more polarized political views and stronger biases, while decreasing curiosity and creativity. But we should be just as concerned about the tone of what we see as its topic. Pandering to emotion might get us to read and share something, but it won’t make us more thoughtful people. And the research suggests hysteria may be winning the web.

But the success of anger online isn’t always a problem, either. In fact, the viral nature of rage has proven a powerful force that can bring attention to issues — especially in countries lacking a free press. The Beihang Univer-

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sity study of Chinese social media found two prime events were most likely to set off angry posts, both of them political: diplomatic disputes with other countries, and domestic ills, such as corruption, bribery and food safety scandals.

Weibo, they wrote, “is a convenient and ubiquitous channel for Chinese to share their concern about the continuous social problems and diplomatic issues.”

Even the disparaging tweets about the new Miss America could have some function, beyond their unfortunate intention to just spew hate: They force people to acknowledge persistent racism and misunderstanding. If we see the problem, and the anger, perhaps it’s easier to address it.

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A sampling of outraged tweets posted after Nina Davuluri won Miss America.

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THE THIRD METRIC

Train Your Mind to Do the Impossible

GETTY IMAGES/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP

BY CAROLYN GREGOIRE

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Exit E KNOW THAT the human brain is a powerful organ, but many of us aren’t aware of how much the mind is truly capable of — and how much more powerful it can become through deliberate training. By exercising the brain (yes, you can use repetition and habit as you do when you exercise the body), we can achieve what may have previously seemed nearly impossible.

A multitude of studies have linked meditation with both physical and mental health benefits, from reduced depression and anxiety to improved immune system functioning. And thanks to a line of research that looks at the brain power of of Buddhist monks — who have devoted their lives to the practice of meditation, compassion and non-attachment — we now know that the brain changes that result from years of mindfulness practices can be staggering.

“Meditation research, particularly in the last 10 years or so, has shown to be very promising because it points to an ability of the brain to change and optimize in a way we didn’t know previously was possible,” NYU researcher Zoran Josipovic told the BBC in 2011. Jo-

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sipovic, himself a Buddhist monk, has conducted research putting the brains of prominent Buddhist monks under fMRI machines to track the blood flow to their brains while they are meditating.

The monks who are part of Josipovic’s research (and the research projects of several other neuroscientists) have accomplished extraordinary feats of mind and, in some cases, have

The findings from studies in this unusual sample... suggest that, over the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the longterm practitioners had actually altered the structure and function of their brains.” managed to rewire the brain.

“What we found is that the longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before,” neuroscientist and meditation researcher, Richard J. Davidson told The Washington Post. “Their mental practice is having an effect on the brain in the same way golf or tennis practice will enhance performance.”

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Here are some incredible findings from brain imaging studies on Buddhist monks that shed light on the astounding power of the human mind.

GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR RF

YOU CAN CHANGE THE BRAIN’S STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONING. Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson’s groundbreaking research on Tibetan Buddhist monks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has found that years of meditative practice can dramatically increase neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to use new experiences or environments to create structural changes. For example, it can help reorganizing itself by creating new neural connections.

“The findings from studies in this unusual sample... suggest that, over the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the long-term practitioners had actually altered the structure and function of their brains,” Davidson wrote in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine in 2008.

YOU CAN ALTER VISUAL PERCEPTION AND ATTENTION. In 2005, researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia and University of California

at Berkeley traveled to India to study 76 Tibetan Buddhist monks, in order to gain insight into how mental states can affect conscious visual experiences — and how we might be able to gain more control over the regular fluctuations in our conscious state.

Their data indicated that years of meditation training can profoundly affect a phenomenon known as “perceptual rivalry,” which takes place when two different images are presented to each eye — the brain fluctuates, in a matter of seconds, in the dominant image that is perceived. It is thought to be related to brain mechanisms that underly attention and awareness. When the

Research on Tibetan Buddhist monks has revealed that years of meditative practice can dramatically increase the brain’s ability to change.

Exit monks practiced meditating on a single object or thought, significant increases in the duration of perceptual dominance occurred.

One monk was able to maintain constant visual perception for 723 seconds — compared to the average of 2.6 seconds in non-meditative control subjects.

The researchers concluded that the study highlights “the synergistic potential for further exchange between practitioners of meditation and neuroscience in the common goal of understanding consciousness.”

YOU CAN EXPAND YOUR CAPACITY FOR HAPPINESS. Brain scans revealed that because of meditation, 66-year-old French monk Matthieu Ricard, an aide to the Dalai Lama, has the largest capacity for happiness ever recorded.

University of Wisconsin researchers, led by Davidson, hooked up 256 sensors to his head, and found that Ricard had an unusually large propensity for happiness and reduced tendency toward negativity, due to neuroplasticity.

“It’s a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely

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changes your brain and therefore changes what you are,” Ricard told the New York Daily News.

Davidson also found that when Ricard was meditating on compassion, his brain produced gamma waves “never reported before in the neuroscience literature.”

YOU CAN INCREASE YOUR EMPATHY. Research at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education made

One monk was able to maintain constant visual perception for 723 seconds — compared to the average of 2.6 seconds in nonmeditative control subjects.” some incredible findings last year.

Neuroeconomist Brian Knutson hooked up several monks’ brains to MRI scanners to examine their risk and reward systems. Ordinarily, the brain’s nucleus accumbens experiences a dopamine rush when you experience something pleasant — like having sex, eating a slice of chocolate cake, or finding a $20 bill in your pocket. But Knutson’s research, still in the

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Exit early stages, is showing that in Tibetan Buddhist monks, this area of the brain may be able to light up for altruistic reasons.

“There are many neuroscientists out there looking at mindfulness, but not a lot who are studying compassion,” Knutson told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The Buddhist view of the world can provide some potentially interesting information about the subcortical reward circuits involved in motivation.”

Davidson’s research on Ricard and other monks also found that meditation on compassion can produce powerful changes in the brain. When the monks were asked to meditate on “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion,” their brains generated powerful gamma waves that may have indicated a compassionate state of mind, Wired reported in 2006.

This suggests, then, that empathy may be able to be cultivated by “exercising” the brain through loving-kindness meditation.

YOU CAN ACHIEVE A STATE OF ONENESS — LITERALLY. Buddhist monks can achieve a harmony between themselves and the world around them by break-

THE THIRD METRIC

ing the psychological wall of self/ other, expressed as by particular changes in the neural networks of experienced meditation practitioners, the BBC reported.

While a normal brain switches between the extrinsic network (which is used when people are focused on tasks outside themselves) and the intrinsic network, which involves self-reflection and emotion — the networks rarely act together. But Josipovic found something startling in the brains of some monks and experienced meditators: They’re able to keep both networks active at the same time during meditation, allowing them to feel a sense of “nonduality,” or oneness.

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TASTE TEST

HUFFINGTON 10.06.13

Can AnyoneTop Ritz?

BY KRISTEN AIKEN

RACKERS AREN’T the most exciting food in the world — you’ll rarely crave crackers the way you’d lust after a burger or chocolate. But they’re absolutely necessary at parties, serving as a vehicle for your favorite cheeses and dips. And once you bite into those flaky, buttery little vessels, it’s pretty hard to stop eating them.

C

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TASTE TEST

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So what’s the best butter cracker on the market? Our editors blind-tasted nine popular brands to see which is best. We judged them based on texture, saltiness, butteriness, and their ability to hold toppings. Of course, we were expecting the classic Ritz cracker to out-perform the rest — but check out our taste test below, and you may be surprised by some of the results.

As always, this taste test is in no way sponsored or influenced by the brands involved.

TAP ON EACH BOX FOR THE TASTERS’ VERDICTS

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365 EVERYDAY VALUE

BACK TO NATURE

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMON DAHLEN

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MUSIC

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Dog Ears

In which we spotlight music from a diversity of genres and decades, lending an insider’s ear to what deserves to be heard.

BY THE EVERLASTING PHIL RAMONE AND DANIELLE EVIN

ÓLAFUR ARNALDS

KEVIN COYNE

ALICE COLTRANE

Modern electro-classical composer Ólafur Arnalds was born in 1987 in Mosfellsbaer, Iceland, just north of Reykjavik. Arnalds makes the classical genre rock, while taking rock ’n’ roll to finishing school.

You can’t take your ears off him.

Highlights of this youngblood maestro’s career include techno project Kiasmos with Janus Rasmussen, work with Sigur Rós, scoring Brit-TV’s Broadchurch, and a film track for Bruce Willis vehicle Looper. Rediscover Arnalds’ whiphanded virtuosity with “Haust,” from his 2008 EP Variations of Static.

Renaissance man/rocker Kevin Coyne was born in Derby, England, near the end of WWII. His early education included graphics and painting. After graduating university, he became a social worker. In 1968, Coyne moved to London and became a drug counselor, which inspired his burgeoning musical career. Coyne signed his first record deal in the early ’70s and was offered to front the then-leaderless The Doors, which he turned down.

Nearly four decades later, and just shy of 40 releases, Coyne generates the gravity of something great. Collaborations include Andy Summers, Carla Bley, and Gary Lucas. Discover Kevin Coyne with “Eastbourne Ladies,” from his 1973 Virgin Records release Marjory Razorblade.

Jazz harpist, pianist, organist, and composer Alice Coltrane was born Alice McLeod in Detroit in 1937 and became one of the very few female jazz instrumentalists to emerge in the ’60s. In 1965, she married sax legend John Coltrane. The spiritually inclined Mrs. Coltrane (a.k.a. Swamini Turiyasangitananda) released a score of albums in her illustrious catalog. Collaborations include Joe Henderson, Ron Carter, Rashied Ali, Pharoah Sanders and Charlie Haden. The jazz doyenne passed away in 2007. Add some greatness to your music collection with Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidananda,” from her 1970 album Journey in Satchidananda.

TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Electronic/Classical ARTIST: Ólafur Arnalds SONG: Haust ALBUM: Variations of Static (EP)

TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Rock ARTIST: Kevin Coyne SONG: Eastbourne Ladies ALBUM: Marjory Razorblade

TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Jazz ARTIST: Alice Coltrane SONG: Journey in Satchidananda ALBUM: Journey in Satchidananda

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MUSIC

CLARA ROCKMORE

JOE MEEK

THOMAS DOLBY

Genius thereminist Clara Rockmore (née Reisenberg) was born in Lithuania’s capital in 1911. Her family settled in New York City in the early ’20s. Young Clara was a violin prodigy, eventually picking up and mastering the theremin, which she said gave her “terrific freedom,” and by the mid-’20s, she became a driving force in the electronic-music movement. Soviet musician/inventor and alleged spy Léon Theremin personally taught the very beautiful Clara and fell madly in love, proposing marriage several times. Providentially, she declined (marrying lawyer Robert Rockmore instead), as Mr. Theremin disappeared (either kidnapped or hightailed it) behind the Iron Curtain in 1938. Rockmore’s version of Gershwin’s “Summertime,” from Clara Rockmore’s Lost Theremin Album, recorded in 1975 with sister Nadia Reisenberg on piano, is a sublime and mystifying introduction to an extraordinary artist.

Producer, engineer, composer and eccentric sound innovator Joe Meek was born in 1929 in South West England. His childhood was fraught, with his mum raising him as a girl until the age of 4, setting the stage for a lifelong identity crisis.

By the age of 7, he fell in love with his first gramophone and became an eminent tinkerer, burrowing into the safety of sound. Working out of a gadget-packed home studio and using a raft of newfangled recording techniques, Meek produced and wrote the U.S. No. 1 hit “Telstar” for British pop band The Tornados in 1962. He continued to push the technological envelope with tracks for Les Paul and Mary Ford, David Bowie, Tom Jones, The Honeycombs, Screaming Lord Sutch, actor/singer John Leyton, Heinz, Glenda Collins, and Ritchie Blackmore, among many others. Emotional and financial turmoil, including an obsession with the occult and drug abuse, pushed Meek beyond the edge in 1967, when he killed his landlady and then himself at the age of 38 — notably on the anniversary of the day his hero Buddy Holly had died. The Ivor Novello Award winner leaves behind a catalog of groundbreaking sonic renown. Remember Joe Meek with “I Hear a New World.”

Synth-pop icon and producer/artist/ film composer/inventor Thomas Dolby was born Thomas Morgan Robertson in Egypt, when his parents, British academics, were on an archeological dig in 1958.

Initially a student of meteorology at college, Thomas turned his interests to electronics and music gear. By 18, Dolby started to design and construct his own synthesizers, program computers, and learn guitar and piano. Some of his collaborations include Lene Lovich, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, Dusty Springfield, Joni Mitchell and Ofra Haza. Dolby, founder of web-music software outfits Headspace and Beatnik, Inc., was recognized for his efforts with a Yahoo Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. He’s also received several Grammy nominations and exhibited his work at the Guggenheim Soho.

“Screen Kiss,” from Thomas Dolby’s 1984 release The Flat Earth, still sounds like magic.

TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Classical ARTIST: Clara Rockmore SONG: Summertime ALBUM: Clara Rockmore’s Lost Theremin Album

TAP HERE TO BUY: Amazon.com GENRE: Pop/Experimental ARTIST: Joe Meek SONG: I Hear a New World ALBUM: I Hear a New World

TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Pop ARTIST: Thomas Dolby SONG: Screen Kiss ALBUM: The Flat Earth

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Model: I’ve Seen Girls Pull Out Their Own Teeth to Look Skinnier

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Radio Host Tells Joke Suggesting Hillary Clinton Should Be Shot

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World Cup ‘Slaves’ Dying at Shocking Rate as They Toil to Build Stadium

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Barilla Chairman Says He Would Never Feature a Gay Family in an Ad Because His Brand Touts a ‘Perfect Family’

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Poll Reveals Divide on Affordable Care Act and Obamacare... Even Though They’re the Same Thing

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EVERY SINGLE MOM TED CRUZ HAS EVER MET APPARENTLY WORKS AT A DINER

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Guardian Article Seriously Claims You Shouldn’t Report Sexual Harassment at Work

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One Woman Is Making 300 Sandwiches to Convince Her Boyfriend to Marry Her

Editor-in-Chief:

Arianna Huffington Editor: John Montorio Managing Editor: Gazelle Emami Senior Editor: Adam J. Rose Editor-at-Large: Katy Hall Senior Politics Editor: Sasha Belenky Senior Food Editor: Kristen Aiken Senior Voices Editor: Stuart Whatley Pointers Editor: Marla Friedman Quoted Editor: Gina Ryder Viral Editor: Dean Praetorius Creative Director: Josh Klenert Design Director: Andrea Nasca Photography Director: Anna Dickson Associate Photo Editor: Wendy George Senior Designer: Martin Gee Infographics Art Director: Troy Dunham Production Director: Peter Niceberg AOL MagCore Head of UX and Design: Jeremy LaCroix Product Manager: Gabriel Giordani Architect: Scott Tury Developers: Mike Levine, Sudheer Agrawal QA: Joyce Wang, Amy Golliver Sales: Mandar Shinde AOL, Inc. Chairman & CEO:

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