Author Archives: Bart Jameson

"Markets" Weren’t Rattled Yesterday. It Was Just the Usual Few Morons Overreading the Tea Leaves.

by Bart Jameson Posted on March 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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James Pethokoukis summarizes the conventional wisdom about Janet Yellen’s first run-in with the media yesterday:

A “market rattling” press-conference performance from Janet Yellen, and Wall Street is suddenly thick with Ben Bernanke nostalgia. “The more experienced Bernanke knew to avoid clarifying deliberately vague statement language,” wrote JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli in a research note. Feroli was referencing Yellen’s squishy, off-the-cuff remark that interest rate hikes might start earlier rather than later next year, or “about six months” after the end of the central bank’s bond buying program. A “rookie gaffe” is how economist Paul Edelstein of IHS Global Insight put it.

You can find about a million stories like this. But as much as I like to mock the panicky nature of Wall Street traders, I think everyone needs to take a deep breath here. As you can see in the chart above, the S&P 500 lost a whopping 1 percent of its value for a grand total of about 24 hours. By 1 pm today it was right back where it had been for the two days prior to the Fed meeting.

The numbers tell the tale: It’s pretty obvious that Yellen, in fact, had only a tiny, transient effect on the market—exactly the same kind of effect Bernanke used to have whenever analysts trained their Wittgensteinian microscopes on, say, the precise linguistic difference between “extended” and “protracted.” In the end, a few morons lost money by overreacting to Yellen’s comments, and that’s about it. This is not exactly a rare event in global high finance.

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"Markets" Weren’t Rattled Yesterday. It Was Just the Usual Few Morons Overreading the Tea Leaves.

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The Pentagon’s Phony Budget War

by Bart Jameson Posted on March 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Washington is pushing the panic button, claiming austerity is hollowing out our armed forces and our national security is at risk. That was the message Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel delivered last week when he announced that the Army would shrink to levels not seen since before World War II. Headlines about this crisis followed in papers like the New York Times and members of Congress issued statements swearing that they would never allow our security to be held hostage to the budget-cutting process.

Yet a careful look at budget figures for the US military—a bureaucratic juggernaut accounting for 57 percent of the federal discretionary budget and nearly 40 percent of all military spending on this planet—shows that such claims have been largely fictional. Despite cries of doom since the across-the-board cuts known as sequestration surfaced in Washington in 2011, the Pentagon has seen few actual reductions, and there is no indication that will change any time soon.

This piece of potentially explosive news has, however, gone missing in action—and the “news” that replaced it could prove to be one of the great bait-and-switch stories of our time.

The Pentagon Cries Wolf, Round One

As sequestration first approached, the Pentagon issued deafening cries of despair. Looming cuts would “inflict lasting damage on our national defense and hurt the very men and women who protect this country,” said Secretary Hagel in December 2012.

Sequestration went into effect in March 2013 and was slated to slice $54.6 billion from the Pentagon’s $550 billion larger-than-the-economy-of-Sweden budget. But Congress didn’t have the stomach for it, so lawmakers knocked the cuts down to $37 billion. (Domestic programs like Head Start and cancer research received no such special dispensation.)

By law, the cuts were to be applied across the board. But that, too, didn’t go as planned. The Pentagon was able to do something hardly recognizable as a cut at all. Having the luxury of unspent funds from previous budgets—known obscurely as “prior year unobligated balances”—officials reallocated some of the cuts to those funds instead.

In the end, the Pentagon shaved about 5.7 percent, or $31 billion, from its 2013 budget. And just how painful did that turn out to be? Frank Kendall, who serves as the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, has acknowledged that the Pentagon “cried wolf.” Those cuts caused no substantial damage, he admitted.

And that’s not where the story ends—it’s where it begins.

Sequestration, the Phony Budget War, Round Two

A $54.6 billion slice was supposed to come out of the Pentagon budget in 2014. If that had actually happened, it would have amounted to around 10 percent of its budget. But after the hubbub over the supposedly devastating cuts of 2013, lawmakers set about softening the blow.

And this time they did a much better job.

In December 2013, a budget deal was brokered by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray. In it they agreed to reduce sequestration. Cuts for the Pentagon soon shrank to $34 billion for 2014.

And that was just a start.

All the cuts discussed so far pertain to what’s called the Pentagon’s “base” budget—its regular peacetime budget. That, however, doesn’t represent all of its funding. It gets a whole different budget for making war, and for the 13th year, the US is making war in Afghanistan. For that part of the budget, which falls into the Washington category of “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO), the Pentagon is getting an additional $85 billion in 2014.

And this is where something funny happens.

That war funding isn’t subject to caps or cuts or any restrictions at all. So imagine for a moment that you’re an official at the Pentagon—or the White House—and you’re committed to sparing the military from downsizing. Your budget has two parts: one that’s subject to caps and cuts, and one that isn’t. What do you do? When you hit a ceiling in the former, you stuff extra cash into the latter.

It takes a fine-toothed comb to discover how this is done. Todd Harrison, senior fellow for defense studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, found that the Pentagon was stashing an estimated extra $20 billion worth of non-war funding in the “operation and maintenance” accounts of its proposed 2014 war budget. And since all federal agencies work in concert with the White House to craft their budget proposals, it’s safe to say that the Obama administration was in on the game.

Add the December budget deal to this $20 billion switcheroo and the sequester cuts for 2014 were now down to $14 billion, hardly a devastating sum given the roughly $550 billion in previously projected funding.

And the story’s still not over.

When it was time to write the Pentagon budget into law, appropriators in Congress wanted in on the fun. As Winslow Wheeler of the Project on Government Oversight discovered, lawmakers added a $10.8 billion slush fund to the war budget.

All told, that leaves $3.4 billion—a cut of less than 1 percent from Pentagon funding this year. It’s hard to imagine that anyone in the sprawling bureaucracy of the Defense Department will even notice. Nonetheless, last week Secretary Hagel insisted that “sequestration requires cuts so deep, so abrupt, so quickly that…the only way to implement them is to sharply reduce spending on our readiness and modernization, which would almost certainly result in a hollow force.”

Yet this less than 1 percent cut comes from a budget that, at last count, was the size of the next 10 largest military budgets on the planet combined. If you can find a threat to our national security in this story, your sleuthing powers are greater than mine. Meanwhile, in the non-military part of the budget, sequestration has brought cuts that actually matter to everything from public education to the justice system.

Cashing in on the “Cuts,” Round Three and Beyond

After two years of uproar over mostly phantom cuts, 2015 isn’t likely to bring austerity to the Pentagon either. Last December’s budget deal already reduced the cuts projected for 2015, and President Obama is now asking for something he’s calling the “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative.” It would deliver an extra $26 billion to the Pentagon next year. And that still leaves the war budget for officials to use as a cash cow.

And the president is proposing significant growth in military spending further down the road. In his 2015 budget plan, he’s asking Congress to approve an additional $115 billion in extra Pentagon funds for the years 2016-2019.

My guess is he’ll claim that our national security requires it after the years of austerity.

Mattea Kramer is a TomDispatch regular and Research Director at National Priorities Project, which is a 2014 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is also the lead author of the book A People’s Guide to the Federal Budget.To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

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The Pentagon’s Phony Budget War

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Medicaid Enrollment Has Soared Under Obamacare

by Bart Jameson Posted on January 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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The New York Times reports that Medicaid expansion has been a huge success in West Virginia:

Enrollment in private insurance plans has been sluggish, but sign-ups for Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor, have surged in many states. Here in West Virginia, which has some of the shortest life spans and highest poverty rates in the country, the strength of the demand has surprised officials, with more than 75,000 people enrolling in Medicaid….In West Virginia, where the Democratic governor agreed to expand Medicaid eligibility, the number of uninsured people in the state has been reduced by about a third.

It’s not just West Virginia, either. Probably not, anyway. Charles Gaba, who is basically the Nate Silver of Obamacare numbers, writes today that he’s now pretty sure the total number of enrollments in Medicaid since October 1st isn’t the 4 million or so that we previously thought, but more likely 6.2 million. We still don’t know for sure how many of these represent new enrollments vs. re-enrollments, but the higher number makes it pretty likely that a very large chunk of this 6.2 million are new enrollees. Anecdotal evidence backs this up, and preliminary figures from the states that break out new enrollees separately suggest that roughly two-thirds of total signups are new enrollees.

If that’s true, it means that about 4 million new people have signed up for Medicaid since October 1st. That’s 4 million people who feel like this:

Waitresses, fast food workers, security guards and cleaners described feeling intense relief that they are now protected from the punishing medical bills that have punched holes in their family budgets. They spoke in interviews of reclaiming the dignity they had lost over years of being turned away from doctors’ offices because they did not have insurance.

“You see it in their faces,” said Janie Hovatter, a patient advocate at Cabin Creek Health Systems, a health clinic in southern West Virginia. “They just kind of relax.”

We’re the richest country in the world. We can afford this.

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Medicaid Enrollment Has Soared Under Obamacare

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Are Cuts to Virginia’s Mental Health Programs Implicated in Creigh Deeds’ Son’s Attempted Murder/Suicide?

by Bart Jameson Posted on November 20, 2013

Mother Jones

Update (11/20/13): Despite initial reports that there were no hospital beds available for Austin Deeds, the Washington Post reported that at least three facilities did have room. This post has been updated to reflect this.

Austin “Gus” Deeds underwent a psychiatric evaluation Monday at the Rockbridge County Community Services Board in Virginia. While at least three hospitals had beds available, hospital officials told the Washington Post, Deeds was still turned away.

The next day he likely stabbed his father, Sen. Creigh Deeds (D-Va.), in the face and chest before shooting himself, police said. The elder Deeds is currently listed in good condition.

Between April 1, 2010 and March 31, 2011, about 200 people in Virginia met the criteria for a Temporary Detention Order—meaning a physician of clinical psychologist saw a substantial risk of them causing harm to themselves or to others, or that they was unable to defend themselves—but were put back on the streets, according to a report from the state Office of the Inspector General. The Commonwealth isn’t the only state dealing with such problems. States cut $1.8 billion from their mental health budgets from 2009-2011, according to a 2012 report from National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Also see our state-by-state interactive map of cuts to services for the mentally ill.

In a Mother Jones cover story six months ago, Mac McClelland wrote the harrowing story of her cousin Houston, who murdered his father after “a classic onset of schizophrenia.” When Houston’s violent outbursts started, his parents were told that calling the police was their only option—even though the local cops had killed two mentally ill men in the past six years.

It’s also part of a pattern of exchanging one kind of institution—state mental hospitals—for another: jails. “In the 1950s, more than a half million people lived in US mental institutions—1 in 300 Americans. By the late ’70s, only 160,000 did, due to a concerted effort on the part of psychiatrists, philanthropists, and politicians to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill. Today there’s one psychiatric bed per 7,100 Americans,” Mac writes. But there’s been a corresponding rise of incarcerated inmates who are mentally ill. Between 1998 and 2006, the number of mentally ill people incarcerated in federal, state, and local prisons and jails more than quadrupled to 1,264,300. Those numbers have only gone up in the face of cuts to mental health programs due to the recession and austerity programs. See our timeline on the politics of deinstitutionalization here.

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Are Cuts to Virginia’s Mental Health Programs Implicated in Creigh Deeds’ Son’s Attempted Murder/Suicide?

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The Quality of American Teachers Seems to be Getting Better

by Bart Jameson Posted on November 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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In the current issue of Education Next, Dan Goldhaber and Joe Walch report that the quality of new teachers has improved over the past decade:

We find that more academically competent individuals are being drawn into the teaching profession….driven mainly by the proportion of teachers with SAT scores that fall in the top quartile of the distribution. This finding of increasing academic competence for newer entrants to the teacher labor market also shows up when we use undergraduate GPA as our indicator of academic competency, though research by Cory Koedel indicates that inconsistent grading standards across academic majors may render this measure less meaningful.

G&W’s research suggests that schools are drawing fewer teachers from the bottom quartile of SAT scores and more teachers from the top quartile. You can see this in the thick red line in the chart on the right (taken from the original paper), which shows the number of teachers from the class of 2008 with different SAT scores: compared to 1993 and 2000, there are fewer from the lower ranks, about the same number from the middle ranks, and more from the higher ranks. Megan McArdle suggests this is mainly due to the Great Recession:

As insecurity in the private-sector labor market increases, the value of public-sector job protections effectively increases, meaning that candidates will be willing to accept lower pay in exchange for the guarantee that it will be nearly impossible to fire them….It’s also possible that a lot of college students suddenly and for no apparent reason decided they wanted to be teachers around the same time that the job market became massively more insecure. But I’m betting it’s no coincidence. Bad news for the graduating seniors, but good news for the nation’s schools.

This is reasonable sounding. However, the most recent data is for teachers hired in 2008, which predates the big spike in unemployment starting in 2009. So I’m not quite convinced. I’d like to see data through 2013 to confirm what’s going on. Given the steep rise in private-sector unemployment and the preciptous decline in private-sector job security over the past five years, we should expect to see schools becoming even more selective about who they’re willing to hire. If the recession story is true, the data should show at least another 5 percentile point increase in the SAT scores of new teachers.

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The Quality of American Teachers Seems to be Getting Better

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A Gorgeous Video of a Devastating Fire in Colorado

by Bart Jameson Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Slate website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Over and again, I am struck by the paradox of the beauty inherent in some terror. Usually, this comes in the form of weather. Hurricanes from space are stately and serene, completely belying the destruction below. A mesocyclone swirls, dark and foreboding and gorgeous, over a Texas plain. Rapidly-forming storm-cells create tornadoes which devastate Oklahoma, but are delicate and soft when seen from space.

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A Gorgeous Video of a Devastating Fire in Colorado

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Who’s to Blame for Climate Change?

by Bart Jameson Posted on August 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Atlantic website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.


A Brief Backgrounder on US Energy


Video: How We Use Energy


Video: How Much Energy We Use


A Very Short History of How Americans Use Energy at Home


Who’s to Blame for Climate Change?

Global warming is a global problem, but some nations get the lion’s share of the blame. Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic‘s senior technology editor, takes a look at the damage in the short video above. Animated by Lindsey Testolin, this clip is part of a six-part video series in The User’s Guide to Energy special report. Don’t miss Kyle Thetford’s related look at the issue, “The Complexities of Climate Change.”

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Who’s to Blame for Climate Change?

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Will Congress and Darrell Issa Kill DC’s Living Wage Bill?

by Bart Jameson Posted on July 16, 2013

Mother Jones

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Last week, the DC Council passed a bill that would force large retailers in the city to pay their workers a living wage—specifically $12.50 an hour, a bill widely seen as targeted specifically at Walmart, which has been planning to open no fewer than five stores in the city. Walmart has been playing hardball, and shortly before the vote on the bill, it threatened to pull out of deals to put three of its stores in poor neighborhoods in DC. But the council didn’t cave, and now the bill is sitting on the desk of DC Mayor Vincent Gray, who hasn’t said what he’s going to do with it.

Walmart is furiously lobbying the mayor to veto the bill, and Walmart haters and unions are furiously lobbying him to let the bill pass. Gray lives in one of the neighborhoods with a decrepit shopping center destined for a new Walmart and hopefully a new lease on life, so he is somewhat sympathetic to the retailer. On the other hand, Walmart isn’t very popular in DC, and Gray is up for reelection next year and facing a slew of challengers. DC residents are watching the fight closely to see if DC might become the first major metro area to win such a confrontation with Walmart. Sadly for those of us who live here, we will probably lose no matter what the mayor decides to do.

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Will Congress and Darrell Issa Kill DC’s Living Wage Bill?

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Turn Dried-Out Markers into Watercolor Paints

by Bart Jameson Posted on June 3, 2013

earth911

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Turn Dried-Out Markers into Watercolor Paints

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Minimize The Time To Find A Quality Solar Panel Contractor

by Bart Jameson Posted on May 27, 2013

How can you tell if a solar panel installation contractor is genuine or full of empty promises? Is he or she simply saying what you want to hear? Charm is as dangerous as it is convincing. Read over the following information to better understand how to distinguish one contractor from the next as you search for the perfect match.

The bids presented to you from the solar panel installation contractors should last for at least 30 days. If a contractor tries to convince that their bid is only good for a shorter amount of time, they are simply trying to pressure you in to choosing them. If this happens, it might be best to choose someone else for your project.

Have the solar panel installation contractor detail the bid according to materials costs and labor costs. This will help you differentiate between the types of costs and help you compare different bids amongst different contractors. Sometimes contractors will mark up the costs of materials just to make a profit.

Taking a look at contracts is a great way to ensure that you understand what you are signing before entering negotiations. You do not want to be taken advantage of just because you don’t know all the terminology. Knowing this terminology will ensure that everything will work out during your project.

As far as possible, try and use the services of local solar panel installation contractors. Those contractors coming from far are more likely to be frauds. Furthermore, even if they are genuine, your work might be delayed as they would spend a lot of time commuting to and from your place.

Only consider solar panel installation contractors who are readily agreeable to a background check. You do not want to inadvertently hire a felon to manage your project. These background checks can be easy and inexpensive to conduct online.

If you are hiring a solar panel installation contractor to clean up a messy job, you should ensure transparency and let the contractor know what mess the project site is in so that they know what they are bidding for. If the contractor finds out later on about the problems, he could almost double his fees for all the work.

Finding a great solar panel installation contractor can be as easy as contacting your trade association directory and community center to see if they have any recommendations. Contact the references and ask for a background check and agree for an in-person interview. Go with your gut feeling during the interview. Ask them detailed questions about the cost and length of time the project will take.

Including the cost for clean-up into your contract will prevent an unexpected loss of money after the project is finished. Many solar panel installation contractors can leave big messes, if you are not willing to handle clean-up, designate who will be responsible for it.

Did these ideas spark an interest about tucson solar? Why not go to your favorite search engine and start typing in solar tucson? We promise you might learn helpful solutions.

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