Last Call For Silly Conned Valley

Looks like the same game of musical chairs that dot.com era tech companies played fifteen years ago when I was a college puke haven't changed a bit in the age of the "sharing economy". Meet the suckers employees of Good Technology, a mobile security tech firm bought out by Blackberry. While the founders and investors made millions, the employees paid in common stock were destroyed, because after all, some games are just that old.

What Good’s employees experienced is an example of who loses out when a company backed by venture capital goes south. While plenty of people — including founders, top executives and investors — are involved in the rise of a start-up, those hit the hardest during a company’s fall are the rank-and-file employees. 

Investors and executives generally get protections in a start-up that employees do not. Many investors have preferred stock, a class of shares that can come with a guaranteed payout. Executives frequently get special bonuses so they will not leave during deal talks. 

In Good’s case, the six investors on the board had preferred shares worth a combined $125 million. After the sale to BlackBerry, Ms. Wyatt, who has since left the company, took home $4 million, as well as a $1.9 million severance payment, according to investor documents. 

In contrast, start-up employees generally own common stock, whose payout comes only after those who hold preferred shares get their money. In Good’s case, the board’s preferred stock was worth almost the same as all 227 million common shares outstanding. 

Missing out on the upside of the sale was bad enough, but that wasn’t the half of it. Some Good employees actually lost money when BlackBerry bought the company. Good was a “unicorn,” that is, a private company with a valuation of more than $1 billion. The high valuation increased the paper value of employee shares — and thus the income tax bills levied on their stock when they received the stock grants, or when they bought and sold shares. To pay those taxes, some employees emptied savings accounts and borrowed money. 

Some of Good’s common shareholders have sued most of the board for a breach of fiduciary duty, asserting that directors looked only after the interests of preferred shareholders. 

“It’s not unusual for employees to be wiped out while venture capitalists make money,” said Dennis J. White, a partner in Boston at the law firm Verrill Dana, who has studied deals like Good’s.

So yes, the rules were that they paid capital gains taxes for shares that were at the time valued at ten times what they ended up being worth when the company was bought out, and since these were the little peons, they didn't have the loopholes and tax shelters.

Imagine paying taxes on 100,000 common shares being valued at $4 a share. That's $400,000 in stock value, automatically putting you at the top 15% capital gains tax rate for a healthy chunk of it.  No big deal, so you pay $60,000 in taxes now on $400,000 worth of stock that will go up up up when the company goes public.  Even if the stock only goes from $4 to $5, you've more than made that money back and you're pretty well off.  Should the stock shoot up to $20, $40 or more, you're a tech multi-millionaire.

But the employees at Good paid 15% taxes on $4 a share and the company was sold out from under them for a tenth of that price, meaning basically everyone lost money.

And in some cases, they lost tens of thousands of bucks or more.  Imagine you actually owed 20 cents in taxes for every share you had.  Now imagine you had a million shares.  $200,000 in the hole, bam.

Saw a lot of that 15 years ago.  People didn't learn then.  They know even less now.

Merry Christmas, right?

White America, Black President, Green Lantern

Isaac Bailey is a black columnist for the Myrtle Beach Sun-Times, and he takes to Politico Magazine to give us yet another hot take on why Obama is the one who has to fix racism of Trumpmerica.

This task can’t be left to pundits, academic experts or even preachers, rabbis and imams—particularly as long as Trump continues to tap into the darkest recesses of people’s souls. Destructive groupthink can overcome even the most sincere efforts of community leaders. It cannot be left up to other 2016 presidential candidates, either. They’re far too busy trying to win the White House to be healers. 

There is only one person who can unite the country again, and he works in the White House. Yes, President Barack Obama—ironically, the man who is the personification of the fear Trump is exploiting—is the one in the best position to quell the anger being stirred up. 

This is not something the president can do from the Oval Office, or from a stage. What he needs to do is use the power of the office in a different way, one that matches the ruthless effectiveness of a demagogue with a private jet. Obama needs to go on a listening tour of white America—to connect, in person, with Americans he has either been unable or unwilling to reach during his seven years in office. 

I know the difficulties of such outreach, and also its unique payoff. I‘m a black man who has spent the past decade listening to white Southern conservatives—people who many assume would hate me. Because of that, I’ve been able to get through to people others wouldn’t dare try to reach. I have the battle scars and rare friendships to prove it, including one with a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who may help me in a criminal-justice reform push. 

The conventional wisdom might say the current U.S. president should visit places like Chicago and Ferguson, where decades-long racial disparities are at the heart of recent bouts of unrest. Or that he should visit San Bernardino and offer condolences in person (which he did before going on vacation), as he’s done so many times after so many mass shootings. Or maybe Detroit, a city still struggling even after a massive bailout saved the domestic auto industry. 

I say, instead, he should first go to places like Conway, South Carolina, where a Democratic president has nothing to gain, a place whose residents daily drive by an electric plant that is now empty in part because of environmental policies that may indeed be necessary to save the planet but hurt real people in real time, nonetheless. 

Or maybe he can map out a path along the Appalachian Trail and visit cities and small towns full of people who believe they’ve been left out of the American dream and forced into a nightmare they are convinced they can survive only by clinging to their God and their guns, which is why they balk at the emergence of legalized same-sex marriage and talk of gun control, not because they hate—even if the words they sometimes use sound hateful—but because they still need something to call their own. 

Let them see their president. Let them speak directly to their president. Let them shout, cuss, fuss and unload if that’s what they need to do. Because no matter how you slice it, the country they’ve long known is dying, and a new one is taking shape. Obama’s presence in the White House, while heartening to many, is the tip of the spear to those fretful about what’s to come.

To Mr. Bailey, who no doubt has good intentions, and in a perfect world would have a point, I say this:

After seven years of this, what on God's green Earth makes you think angry white America wants to listen to our President?

You say the President needs to go places where he has nothing to gain.  I say that if there was something to gain, to educate people, to assure people, to help people, these folks would not accept any of that.  All they know is hatred, anger and fear, and pablum like this enables that hatred, anger and fear.

Worse, it blames this conscious decision by racist assholes on the President, and absolves them of the responsibility of their actions.  It's infantile and stupid.  These folks don't like same-sex marriage being the law of the land?  I can understand that, but guess what?  They still have to follow it.

What these people want is to bully, threaten, and even kill their way into having "their" country back.  I got news for them, it's our country collectively, not yours alone.

No, we don't have to listen to racist cracker assholes.  The country has moved past them.  They're sad and angry and hateful they've been left behind?

Screw em.  I have better things to do than worry about the tender feelings of racist idiots.

Look, here in Kentucky, we just had an election where these same people rejected health care for their families for tens of thousands of people. Our governor just disenfranchised tens of thousands more voters and made sure thousands more would continue to earn just $7.25 an hour.  They voted against Obama, plain and simple.

They actively harm themselves and others just to not listen to Obama.  That is how deep their hatred goes.

And you want Obama to reach out to them?

Go to hell.

Naming The Elephant

Slate's Jamelle Bouie asks the obvious question about Donald Trump: is he benefiting from the Republican's massive racist backlash against President Obama directly, or is the media narrative of "working-class populism" the truth?

There is no question that Trump has run the most unapologetically racist and nativist campaign since George Wallace made his first national play in 1964. And, like Wallace before him, it’s been successful, drawing tens of thousands of people to massive rallies across the country. Trump probes their fears, excites their passions, and gives them voice in a way they love and understand. “We have losers. We have people that are morally corrupt. We have people that are selling this country down the drain,” Trump declares.

These voters may feel anxious about their economic status. But they also hold racial and cultural resentments. They’re worried about their futures and they dislike immigrants, Muslims, and blacks.

On Monday, the Washington Post looked at the white supremacists and white nationalists who cheer Trump as an asset to their movement. Trump has opened “a door to conversation” and “electrified” some members of the movement, says one leader in the Ku Klux Klan. “I think a lot of what he says resonates with me,” says David Duke, a “Grand Wizard” in the Klan and former Louisiana politician.

In a similar piece for the New Yorker, writer Evan Osnos spoke to Jared Taylor, a prominent white nationalist who described the situation as such. “I’m sure he would repudiate any association with people like me,” said Taylor, “but his support comes from people who are more like me than he might like to admit.”

These voices are self-serving, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Trump has shot to the top, fueled by vicious rhetoric against Latino immigrants and Syriain refugees. He has shared racist memes about black Americans and called for a ban on Muslim travel to the United States. And each time, his support ticks higher.

Economic anxiety plays a part here. But maybe Trump has discovered something we all like to deny: That in the 21st century, the racist vote is larger, louder, and more influential than we ever thought.

Not racist, the joke goes, just number one with racists.

And after years of racism and bigotry being directed at Barack Obama, of course whoever wins the GOP nomination in 2016 would be the heir to this 50-state Southern Strategy.  Romney wasn't able to dog whistle his way into it, being too cute by half got him into trouble with his campaign-ending "47 percent" remark.

Donald Trump does not have this problem.  He's outright racist, overtly disgusting, loudly and proudly bigoted, and he knows our media will bend over backwards showcasing him as a regular guy, they have no choice. He knows the game better than they do.

But yes, the last remnants of the Confederacy have long been with us and always will be.  Trump tapped into them on purpose and by some measures he's above 40% in the crowded GOP field, and every awful weekly tirade only adds another two or 3 points to his total.

If you're suddenly expecting "undecided" Republicans to stand up to him after he starts winning primaries, you're deluded.  Trump is looking more and more like the GOP pick, and he will absolutely get 45% of the vote, minimum, against any Democrat next November.

Watch.

StupidiNews!

• At least three people were killed by tornadoes in northern Mississippi overnight as powerful storms slammed through parts of the South and Midwest.
• A new study finds that American Christmas lights account for more energy use by themselves than some of the poorest countries use in electricity all year.
• Illinois has become the third state to classify daily fantasy football leagues as illegal gambling, both FanDuel and DraftKings are expected to appeal.
• Cable television bills are expected to rise on average by 4% in 2016 as cable providers are blaming the increase on broadcast and sports network contracts.
• "Merry Beatlesmas" as the iconic band's full catalog will finally come to streaming music services for the first time today.

Last Call For We Don't Need No Education

The failure of the Democrats at the local and state government level during the Obama years in America has given us a unique breed of lawmaker: the embarrassingly unqualified Republican nutjob in a state legislature leadership position. Today's example is in Arizona.

An Arizona lawmaker who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old and that the U.S. government regularly sprays its citizens with mind-controlling chemtrails has been selected to lead an Arizona legislative committee overseeing education.

Sen. Sylvia Allen (R-Snowflake), was selected by fellow Republican and Senate president Andy Biggs to chair of the Arizona Senate Education Committee, according to 12News. The committee acts as a gatekeeper for education-related laws, including Common Core and spending.

“She understands what Arizona students and parents need in our education system,” Biggs told reporters in a prepared statement. “She is a very experienced legislator and I know she will do a wonderful job.”

According to AZCentral, Allen attended high school but did not go to college. She helped found a charter school in her home town of Snowflake.

In March, Allen made national news when she derailed a discussion about gun legislation to suggest a law that forces Americans to go to church on Sundays.

In March 2013, she wrote an addled Facebook post about her belief the government was purposely poisoning its citizens with chemicals sprayed by airplanes, confusing white contrails left by aircraft with chemical trails.

“Ok, I do not want to get into a debate about weather. However, I know what I see weekly up here on the flat where I live outside of Snowflake. The planes usely (sic), three or four, fly a grid across the sky and leave long white trails streaming behind them. I have watched the chem-trails move out until the entire sky is covered with flimsy, thin cloud cover,” she wrote. “Things are happening all around us that we see everyday and just don’t get what it is. I think we throw the ‘conspiracy theory’ at people when we don’t understand or have the information they have so we try and explain it that way.”

This woman should not only be disqualified from this committee, but public office as well and should probably seek a mental health professional. Yet, a Young Earth Creationist who believes the government is poisoning its citizens has been elected and re-elected by people who clearly have no problem with that, and is now in charge of Arizona's educational legislation.

It used to be people this staggeringly ignorant were relegated to a trailer out in the middle of nowhere and ignored at family holiday gatherings.  Now they make state laws for schools.

We have to get more Democrats running for local and state government in all 50 states, or we're going to lose the place to these assholes.

Dead To Rights In Missouri

You know what they say, "Guns don't kill people..."

Of course, making it much easier to obtain a gun as Missouri did in 2007 means that the state now has a significantly higher rate of people using guns to kill people, so there's that.

In the past decade, Missouri has been a natural experiment in what happens when a state relaxes its gun control laws. For decades, it had one of the nation’s strongest measures to keep guns from dangerous people: a requirement that all handgun buyers get a gun permit by undergoing a background check in person at a sheriff’s office.

But the legislature repealed that in 2007 and approved a flurry of other changes, including, last year, lowering the legal age to carry a concealed gun to 19. What has followed may help answer a central question of the gun control debate: Does allowing people to more easily obtain guns make society safer or more dangerous?

We now have a pretty clear and tragic answer in Missouri.

Research by Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, found that in the first six years after the state repealed the requirement for comprehensive background checks and purchase permits, the gun homicide rate was 16 percent higher than it was the six years before. During the same period, the national rate declined by 11 percent. After Professor Webster controlled for poverty and other factors that could influence the homicide rate, and took into account homicide rates in other states, the result was slightly higher, rising by 18 percent in Missouri. 

Federal death data released this month for 2014 showed a continuation of the trend, he said. Before the repeal, from 1999 to 2006, Missouri’s gun homicide rate was 13.8 percent higher than the national rate. From 2008 to 2014, it was 47 percent higher. (The new data also showed that the national death rate from guns was equal to that from motor vehicle crashes for the first time since the government began systematically tracking it.) 

Other measures suggested that criminals had easier access to guns after the permit law was repealed. Professor Webster analyzed data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and found that the share of guns that were linked to crimes soon after they were bought doubled in the state from 2006 to 2010. The portion of guns confiscated by the police in Missouri that had been originally bought in the state — ordinarily a very stable statistic — rose to 74 percent last year, from 56 percent before the law changed.

The firearms industry would like you to believe that this is a case where correlation has nothing to do with causation, but the statistics are difficult to reconcile otherwise.

Missouri made it much easier to get a gun.  As a result, more people used them for their intended purpose.  There's now several years of data backing this up...but remember, according to Republicans, science is all a lie, so why bother?

This Week In Dispatches From Bevinstan, Con't

Somehow, I think I'm going to be writing a Stupid Shit My Governor Does column enough so that I should just make it a weekly "all in one place" kinda thing.

Anyway. now that ol' Matt has had a few weeks in house, he's starting to warm up to this whole "executive order" thing when it comes to those pesky same-sex mariage licenses that cause trouble over the fall.

To ensure that the sincerely held religious beliefs of all Kentuckians are honored, Executive Order 2015-048 directs the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives to issue a revised marriage license form to the offices of all Kentucky County Clerks. The name of the County Clerk is no longer required to appear on the form.

So a win for Kim Davis.  Who else can Bevin make happy?  You remember Steve Beshear signing an order to restore voting rights to felons?

GONE.

While Governor Bevin has been a strong advocate for the reinstatement of non-violent felony offenders’ voting and civil rights, Executive Order 2015-052 suspends the provisions of Executive Order 2015-871 as that order is contrary to the Kentucky Constitution and undermines the very right it seeks to restore by circumventing elected representatives in the state legislature and the voice of the people at the ballot box. The Office of the Governor will continue to utilize the processes and procedures under current law in the same manner as the previous administration pending further study and consideration by the Kentucky General Assembly. This Executive Order does not affect anyone whose rights have already been restored by the previous Executive Order.

Also gone, higher minimum wages for state employees and vendors

Executive Order 2015-049 relieves executive branch agencies and vendors of the obligation to comply with the higher minimum wage established by Executive Order 2015-370, except as to classified employees with status who have already received increases as a result of the Executive Order. Their remuneration will not be affected.

...and a new permanent hiring freeze on state positions.

Executive Order 2015-050 prioritizes effective and efficient management of state government operations by implementing a new moratorium on hiring. This order removes all oversight of the merit system hiring from the Governor’s Office. Unlike Gov. Beshear’s Executive Order, which had the Secretary of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet approve all personnel actions regarding merit employees, this Executive Order transfers that responsibility to the Personnel Secretary. Approval of non-merit employees will remain the duty of the Secretary of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet. Furthermore, effective immediately, all vacant positions in any agency will be reviewed to determine if they are necessary to the maintenance of essential government services.

Going to be real fun when Bevin determines that current employees are no longer essential to government services and fires tens of thousands of state workers.

The fun's just beginning here in Bevinstan, folks!

StupidiNews!

• NASA is sending a faulty instrument discovered in its upcoming InSight Mars mission back to Lockheed Martin for repairs, meaning a scheduled March launch is suspended until 2018.
• Greece's parliament has passes a same-sex civil union bill, but critics say the bill still denies several rights to same-sex couples and could lead to more EU legal action.
• Iraqi Army forces say they expect routed Islamic State forces to be removed from the captured city of Ramadi within days, but that still leaves a third of Iraq under ISIS control.
• Low oil prices continue to take a toll on Alberta's economy as provincial unemployment is on the rise above Canada's national average for the first time in more than a decade.
• A New Zealand judge has ordered Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom to be extradited to the US to face criminal copyright infringement charges.

Last Call For Liar, Liar

I know I've long sworn off Politifact's "fact checking" as a source for viable research, but I will note that Donald Trump told so many ridiculous whoppers on the campaign trail this year that the outfit couldn't pick just one as its infamous "Lie of the Year".

Remember, this is a group that once called Obama's "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" the biggest lie in 2013 when somehow, former Bush press secretary Dee Dee Myers wrote a book on Benghazi claiming that Ambasaador Chris Stevens's body had been dragged through the streets and in 2011 ripped Democrats for daring to attack Paul Ryan's Medicare block grant scheme as the biggest political whopper of that year when in May 2011 Romney called Obamacare a government takeover of healthcare.

So take their determination of Trump with an entire salt mine.  No doubt in 2016, a Democrat will be found as liar of the year so Republicans ca tell whatever whoppers they want starting in January.

Helping Those People Again

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you want to know why Republicans are so eager to sabotage Obamacare, there's a method to the madness.

Whatever Obamacare's shortcomings, a new paper shows one place where the law has been a clear success: narrowing the race gap in health insurance. So why aren't more Democrats shouting that from the rooftops? 

In 2013, the year before most of the law's provisions for subsidized insurance took effect, non-elderly blacks were 47 percent more likely than whites to be uninsured. For American Indians, that figure was 93 percent; for Hispanics, 120 percent. 

In 2014, not only did the share of whites without insurance fall; the share of blacks and Asian Americans fell by more. The difference between whites and Hispanics shrank, from 14 percentage points to 11.8 percentage points.

So yes, Obamacare is helping minorities.  If you want to know why Democrats aren't saying more about that, well, ask Kentucky Governor Jack Conway sometime.

The point of the paper, written by Algernon Austin at the Center for Global Policy Solutions, isn't just to celebrate those gains, but also to show how much room remains for improvement. One of the biggest obstacles to reducing the number of uninsured blacks is the refusal of many states with large black populations to accept federal money to expand their Medicaid programs. Some of those states may come around eventually, but don't hold your breath. 

What's odd about the race gap isn't its persistence, but that its narrowing isn't more celebrated as one of the law's accomplishments. When asked why he thought the gap doesn't get more attention, Austin noted that Obama has spent less time than his predecessors talking about race. "It's been a stance of the administration to really emphasize that President Obama is the president for all Americans," Austin said. 

Perhaps the administration worries that emphasizing the benefits of Obamacare for minorities might make whites think the law isn't so much about them, jeopardizing already tepid public support. In that sense, not harping on race might be good strategy: Maybe the country's fraught relationship with race means the only way to close the gap in health insurance is, in effect, by stealth.

It's okay, Republicans are making the emphasis that Medicaid expansion would help those people more than it would help white Americans for the President and Democrats, which is exactly why red states and Republicans are doing everything they can to stop Medicaid expansion.

Funny how that works.

Trump's Rump, Con't

So where do Donald Trump supporters live, and where does he have the strongest support?  He does well in rural and Christian conservative counties, for sure...but his strongest support comes from Republicans who live in counties with large black and/or Hispanic populations.

The celebrity businessman does particularly well in counties that the American Communities Project calls Minority Centers. Data from the last three polls show Mr. Trump has the support of 34% of Republican primary voters who live in those communities, the highest share seen in any of the seven county types that the communities project is studying for the 2016 campaign. 

You can see a map of all the 2016 county types as designed by the communities project here. Note the green Minority Center counties running through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. Many of those states vote on March 1; South Carolina votes even earlier. March 5 brings Kentucky and Louisiana. On March 8 is Mississippi. 

With polling scarce in most of the Southern states, Mr. Trump’s strength in the Minority Center counties is one of the few available signals of how he might perform in the region. 

Moreover, the analysis suggests that Mr. Trump has pockets of strength that could prove valuable in states, some of them beyond the South, that award delegates to the top vote-winner in each congressional district. Districts with a large minority population may not include large numbers of Republicans, but they award delegates, nonetheless. Winning those districts could yield Mr. Trump a sizeable cache of delegates in states such as South Carolina and California.

Trump is doing the best among Republicans who live in counties in the South with a lot of non-white people?

You don't say.  WHOCUDDANODE?

I never would have imagined.

StupidiNews!

• Commercial spaceflight company SpaceX successfully launched and landed its reusable Falcon 9 space rocket at Cave Canaveral on Monday, a major milestone for CEO Elon Musk.
• A Pennsylvania state Supreme Court Justice faces suspension after sending racist joke emails at work, the state is considering judicial misconduct charges. 
• Iraqi army troops have made a final push to recapture the city of Ramadi from Islamic State forces after losing the city in November.
• After cost overruns in the original design topped $2 billion, Japan has gone with a redesign of the main Tokyo Olympic Stadium for the 2020 Summer Games.
• Google will be teaming up with auto giant Ford for a self-driving car project to be announced at the 2016 CES, the two will form a joint venture.

Last Call For Trump's Rump

Fellow liberals, we should be ashamed of thinking Trump supporters are anything other than working-class real Americans who are simply tired of a broken political system and an increasingly difficult economic future for those without college degrees, I mean it's not like they're listening to Trump's rhetoric and trying to blow up Muslims as a result or anything.

A Donald Trump supporter was arrested after police detonated an explosive device they believe he planned to use against Muslims. 

Police received a tip Thursday that 55-year-old William Celli, of Richmond, California, was making explosive devices and threatening to harm Muslims, reported KPIX-TV.
Officers evacuated his neighborhood Sunday morning and detonated a suspicious device found in Celli’s home. 

Police have not yet determined if the homemade device was inert or active, but they said the reported threats greatly concerned law enforcement officers. 

Celli posts frequently on his Facebook account, where he complains about Syrian refugees, Democrats and insufficiently conservative Republicans. 

He appears to be a strong admirer of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump — who has been fanning the flames of anti-Muslim hysteria in the wake of mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, California. 

“Donald trumps on again I’m happy leaders okay but this guys a great point man I’ll follow this MAN to the end of the world,”Celli posted Oct. 21.

Yep, rock-ribbed, salt-of-the-earth conservatives here.  Nothing to worry about.

Domestic terrorism?  What's that?

Huckleberry Hounded Out

Sen. Lindsey Graham is smart enough to take his Christmas vacation early, it seems.

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is dropping out of the presidential race. 

“While we have run a campaign that has made a real difference, I have concluded this is not my time,” he said in a statement Monday 

Graham, who first told CNN of his decision in an interview, faced the deadline Monday to be removed from the ballot in his home state of South Carolina. Graham has been mired at the bottom of polls - both nationally and in his home state - and could have faced an embarrassing showing in the state’s February primary. 

The hawkish South Carolina senator had been the Republican field’s most vociferous early critic of Donald Trump.

Which is true, and being the "Hey guys, Trump is goddamn crazy on immigration and Muslims but let's send tens of thousands of US troops into Syria" candidate got him a whopping 0% at the polls and seriously threatening to break the crucial 1% mark.

I'm thinking since we're in effectively in election news dump mode until January, we're going to see a few folks drop out over the next week or two anyway.

Time to catch up on your Netflix queue, man.

The New Gunmerican Workplace

More and more companies in the US are responding to the Age of the Active Shooter not with lockdown and shelter-in-place procedures, but by training employees to team up and fight back to overwhelm and incapacitate.

The paradigm shift in response — from passive to active — has been endorsed and promoted by the Department of Homeland Security. Last month, it recommended that federal workplaces adopt the training program “Run, Hide, Fight,” which it helped develop. D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier used the same phrase on a recent episode of “60 Minutes.”

“Your options are run, hide or fight,” Lanier said last month. “I always say, if you can get out, getting out’s your first option, your best option. If you’re in a position to try and take the gunman down, to take the gunman out, it’s the best option for saving lives before police can get there.”

Gun rights proponents have a much different view of what works. They say that if more law-abiding citizens were armed, more mass shootings could be prevented. But most employers ban guns from the workplace, even in states that embrace concealed-carry permits.

At NeighborWorks, almost three dozen employees were taught to throw things at a shooter — chairs, books, purses, pens, phones, anything — and swarm. Those items don’t seem all that threatening compared with an AR-15, but that’s not the point.

“If you can move him from offense to defense, you have changed the outcome of the event,” said Greg Crane, a former SWAT officer whose company, the ALICE Training Institute, trained workers at NeighborWorks as well as at Facebook and Apple. “He’s thinking about what you are doing to him, not what he’s doing to you. Mentally, he’s going through a whole different process.”

ALICE, based near Cleveland, has been teaching these methods since about 2001. But in the past few years, as mass shootings have killed moviegoers, congressional constituents, first-graders, Navy Yard workers, TV journalists and college students, hundreds of competitors have sprung up, charging thousands of dollars for classroom lectures and intense simulations. 

In other words, the new cost of Second Amendment "freedom" is paying experts to teach your employees how to disorient a somebody armed with an AR-15 with a thrown object.  Lots of money for training they will almost certainly never have to use, but why should gun manufacturers and ammo makers be the only folks profiting from Gunmerica?

Call it the cost of doing business in the US.  Part of me is upset that corporate America has resigned themselves to a workplace that will at some point include an armed employee on campus willing to kill.  The other part is impressed that the American way is to find a way to make money off of tragedy, and this looks like a solid growth industry for the economy, right?