Author Archives: Anatoleia3

Chart of the Day: American Cars Are Getting Older

Mother Jones

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Americans are keeping their cars longer than ever before. In 2007, the average age of cars on the road was a little over 10 years. Today it’s a little over 11 years.

The proximate cause of this is the Great Recession. If you don’t have enough money to buy a new car, you’re going to keep your car longer. But I wonder how much is the result of cars being more reliable than in the past? My car is nearly 13 years old, and it basically still runs fine. A couple of decades ago, even a Toyota would have been getting a little long in the tooth at that age.

This mainly matters because it has an impact on what happens over the next few years as the recovery (hopefully) picks up steam. New car sales are a prime driver of economic recoveries, and if the aging of the US fleet is producing pent-up demand for new cars, this will help the economy. But if consumers are keeping their cars a little longer because they still run fine, then there might not be as much pent-up demand as we think.

We’ll have to wait and see, because current data is inconclusive. Automakers had a pretty good year in 2013, but they finished up with a tepid December. And the existing fleet continued to age in 2013 despite those strong sales. Considering the higher reliability of modern cars and the weakness of the recovery, I wouldn’t be surprised if car sales in 2014 are OK but not great, and the fleet continues to age a bit.

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Chart of the Day: American Cars Are Getting Older

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Starting Salaries for Attorneys Are Pretty Weird

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Via Tyler Cowen, here’s a chart of starting salaries for attorneys from Peter Turchin. It shows what’s now a fairly familiar bimodal distribution: there’s a relatively normal spread of salaries on the left centered at $50K and declining close to zero at $100K. And then there’s a second peak on the right.

This bimodal distribution didn’t exist 20 years ago, and there are several theories to explain how it evolved. But that’s not what I’m interested in for the moment. What I’m curious about is how sharp the second peak is. It’s not really a second distribution at all. Nearly 20 percent of starting attorneys belong to the super-elite group that gets high pay, but they all get exactly the same high pay: $160,000. Why is that? Can it really be the case that all of these super elites are precisely as elite as each other? Is there really not even a whit of sub-competition for this lucky 20 percent that would produce a few of them getting $180,000 or $200,000?

Why is the second peak so sharp? Normally, I’d toss out a few ideas, but I can’t really think of any aside from some kind of weird cultural collusion among top law firms. But that doesn’t really sound right. So what’s going on?

UPDATE: Based on comments, the answer seems, indeed, to be “weird cultural collusion among top law firms.” Except that it’s not really all that weird. It’s like one gas station lowering its price and suddenly all the other gas stations on the same corner start charging the exact same price. There are only a few dozen super-elite law firms, and they pretty much all offer the exact same super-elite starting salaries. From comments:

The Commentor: The primary reason for the spike is that large law firms have a herd mentality. No one wants to be below the market when recruiting from the 14 or so schools we all recruit from. There is close to perfect information about the salaries at the firms on the Internet and if the market leaders pay 160K for a kid from one of these schools, then the other top 50 or so firms will all largely pay the same too….Truth be told a very small percentage of graduates get into top law firms. We are hiring far fewer than we used to. They have next to no chance to make partner, and most try to stay long enough to pay off their 200K+ of student debt before we fire them or they leave.

Mannahatta: There are multiple outlets (websites, magazines, directories) that publish starting salaries for big law firms. So, there absolutely is a level of implicit collusion that goes on between law firms. For the most part these firms are difficult to distinguish for law students, and it’s difficult for firms to make fine distinctions between someone with a certain GPA from one law school or another. So firms tend to compete for graduates on the basis of potential bonuses, what the firm has to offer in terms of specialties, training, etc., rather than starting salaries.

Read the full comments for more details. Via email, a couple of folks who work in Big Law say that Cravath has traditionally been the first mover in this super-elite competition. “But, during the real estate bubble that led to a biglaw bubble, Simpson Thacher, another top firm, started offering $160k in an attempt to jump Cravath. To stay competitive, everyone had to follow suit.”

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Starting Salaries for Attorneys Are Pretty Weird

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Will Voters Punish Congressional Republicans for the Shutdown?

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It’s no secret that the government shutdown has been catastrophic for Republicans. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released earlier this week found that just 24 percent of Americans hold a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, the lowest rate in the poll’s two-decade-plus history. But how will GOP’s plummeting popularity affect its chances at the ballot box? Another poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP), which was released Wednesday, offers some clues.

PPP polled voters in six key states, which will likely determine control of the Senate after the 2014 election. It found that the majority opposed the shutdown and wanted to punish the politicians responsible. As a results, Republicans are trailing in five of the six races—even though most respondents voted for Republican Mitt Romney in last year’s presidential election.

Among data geeks, PPP methods are somewhat controversial. The New Republic’s Nate Cohn recently took the firm to task, saying it has “withheld controversial elements of its methodology, to the extent it even has one, and treated its data inconsistently.” Nevertheless, even critics admit its projections have been pretty much on target.

The new PPP report cites several races where the shutdown has apparently given Democratic candidates a leg up:

-In Michigan’s open seat race Democrat Gary Peters leads Republican Terri Lynn Land 43/36. Voters are opposed to the shutdown by a 65/27 margin, and when voters are informed that Peters stood against the shutdown in the House his lead expands to 50/36.

-It’s a similar story in Iowa’s open seat race- there Democrat Bruce Braley leads a generic Republican opponent 45/41. Voters are against the shutdown 64/27, and when voters are informed of Braley’s opposition his lead goes up to 7 points at 46/39.

-In Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu leads Republican challenger Bill Cassidy 48/41 for reelection. Voters oppose the shutdown 60/30, and 47% say they’re less likely to vote for Cassidy for the Senate next year because he supported it compared to only 32% who are more likely to.

PPP’s findings also suggest that the shutdown could play a role in the closely watched race for the seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). The two top Republican contenders, Reps. Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey, favored the shutdown like most of their colleagues in the House Republican caucus. As a result, PPP found, 47 percent of the state’s voters were less likely to support Broun or Gingrey in a general election. This is good news for the Democratic candidate, Michelle Nunn. After being informed that her most likely opponents were House Republicans who supported the shutdown, 48 percent of those polled said they would back Nunn, versus 42 percent for whichever Republican survives the primaries.

The sinking poll numbers haven’t deterred Nunn’s would-be challengers. In an interview with CQ Roll Call on Tuesday, Gingrey insisted House Republicans are “not posturing” when they say they’re willing to breach the debt ceiling to win concessions from Democrats. He added that he saw the standoff as an “opportunity for a ‘Braveheart’ moment” and that he and his colleagues would not necessarily back down “for fear of losing the House and not gaining control of the Senate.”

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Will Voters Punish Congressional Republicans for the Shutdown?

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Halloween Comes Early on Agnes Obel’s “Aventine”

Mother Jones

Agnes Obel
Aventine
Play It Again Sam

To get those spooky vibes going in advance of Halloween, check out Aventine, the sophomore effort from melancholy Dane Agnes Obel. Restrained yet melodically lush, her elegant chamber pop intertwines haunted vocals, sometimes overdubbed to heavenly choir dimensions, and moonlit, introspective piano, with spare, brooding strings underscoring the sense of downcast beauty.

Such dreamy understatement might verge on New Age blandness in lesser hands, but Obel maintains an arresting undercurrent of dread in deceptively forceful tunes like “Fuel to Fire” and “Words Are Dead.” While Aventine is the perfect 2 a.m. record, its atmospheric haze will bring a little late-night mystery to any time of day.

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Halloween Comes Early on Agnes Obel’s “Aventine”

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Here’s the anti-Keystone ad one NBC station doesn’t want you to see

Here’s the anti-Keystone ad one NBC station doesn’t want you to see

NextGen Climate Action, the group founded by billionaire climate-action booster Tom Steyer, had submitted the ad to run on D.C.-area NBC affiliate WRC-TV during Obama’s Tuesday appearance on The Tonight Show, with the aim of reaching the influential inside-the-Beltway crowd. But at the last minute Tuesday evening, the station informed NextGen that the ad wouldn’t run after all, because it violated guidelines as “an attack of a personal nature.”

The ad does feature an actor playing TransCanada CEO Russ Girling as a disingenuous, over-the-top oil baron at his, well, oiliest. But rather than defaming him as a serial sexter or making another such “personal” attack, it skewers farfetched claims Girling and his company have put forward about the Keystone XL pipeline’s economic benefits.

The Hill published a story about the ad Tuesday afternoon, before it was scrapped, that included criticism from Oil Sands Fact Check, a group that supports the pipeline. Now, according to Politico’s Morning Energy , NextGen wants NBC to sign an affidavit swearing it didn’t drop the ad as a result of industry pressure.

This doesn’t mean NBC is staying out of the pipeline fight altogether. The network ran a pro-Keystone ad this past Sunday during Meet the Press. And it’s not like TransCanada’s voice is being drowned out by anti-pipeline advertising; the company launched a multi-platform ad campaign in the capital and around the country a couple weeks ago, and is even sponsoring Politico Playbook this week. And don’t forget that the Canadian government itself is shelling out millions for its own pro-pipeline campaign aimed at the D.C. bubble.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Here’s the anti-Keystone ad one NBC station doesn’t want you to see

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Watching the Watchmen, NSA Edition

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Dan Drezner has a generally good take today on the NSA surveillance programs that have dominated the news for the past week. It’s worth a read. In particular, here’s his response to Tom Friedman’s conclusion that the programs don’t “appear” to have been abused:

Friedman allows that these surveillance programs are vulnerable to abuse but says that, “so far, it does not appear to have happened.” Here’s my question: how the f**k would Friedman know if abuse did occur? We’re dealing with super-secret programs here. Exactly what investigative or oversight body would detect such abuse? What I worry about is that we have no idea whether national security bureaucracies abuse their privilege.

The last time I trusted intelligence bureaucracies and political leaders that the system was working was the run-up to the Iraq war. Never again.

The traditional method of oversight is via congressional committees and the court system. But even if you assume that intelligence organizations are reporting their activities honestly, those don’t really work anymore. Once a program is in place, courts end up rubber stamping virtually every application and congressional committees do pretty much the same. They simply become too accustomed to what’s going on to truly pay attention. And in the case of Congress, even if some members do have issues, they’re all but gagged from speaking out about them.

In some way, it strikes me that the answer needs to lie somewhere else. Someplace where the faces change more often and there’s less institutional pressure to automatically approve of whatever’s going on. Someplace that has, at the very least, a certain amount of authority to explain publicly the broad outlines of what the surveillance state is doing. But where?

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Watching the Watchmen, NSA Edition

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Why the Producer of "The Hangover Part III" Has Spent So Much Time in Prison

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The past few weeks have been particularly busy ones for Scott Budnick, the 36-year-old executive producer of the hilarious, cringe-inducing, and incredibly lucrative Hangover film franchise. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is opening weekend for The Hangover Part III, starring Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms. It is almost certain to kick ass at the box office—so least so long as they didn’t let Mike Tyson sing again.

Yet even as Budnick prepared for his big premiere, the ink was still drying on the incorporation papers of his other major launch this month. Unlike the comedies he produces—Starsky & Hutch, Project X and Due Date are also among his babies—the Anti-Recidivism Coalition is serious business. It’s a nonprofit whose task is neither glamorous nor lucrative, and whose payoff will be measured not in ticket sales and licensing deals, but in bills passed, lives saved, futures salvaged, and families reunited.

ARC is just the latest of Budnick’s efforts to ensure a second chance for young California prisoners who have shown the will and the desire to make something of their lives. It’s partly a support network for high-achieving former prisoners—many of whom have Budnick to thank for the education they managed to get behind bars. But it’s also an advocacy group that uses the kids’ turnaround stories to convince jaded state legislators that rehabilitation is possible, if only they would enable it. His kids have already managed to restore $1.8 million in state cuts to prison college programs. In recent weeks, they have been rallying behind SB 260, a bill that guarantees a sentencing review after 10 years for prisoners who committed their crimes as minors. If they have taken serious steps toward rehabilitation, the judge could reconsider their sentence.

“I was very skeptical when I first met him,” recalls Julio Marcial, who oversees violence-prevention programs for the California Wellness Foundation, one of Budnick’s primary funders. That introduction took place at the Sylmar branch of LA County’s juvenile hall, circa 2003. Budnick was volunteering at the time (and still does) with InsideOUT Writers, a Hollywood nonprofit that brings journalists and creative types into juvie to help incarcerated kids find positive ways to express themselves. “I’ve seen Hollywood folks come and go. I’ve seen people do this to make themselves feel better,” Marcial says. “But when I asked the kids why this program was so important to them, they said Scott was the consistent adult in their lives. He became a father-like figure to them.”

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Why the Producer of "The Hangover Part III" Has Spent So Much Time in Prison

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Is This Big Tea Party Group Really an Innocent Victim of the IRS?

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Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin has been all over the airwaves since the IRS story broke, talking about how her group was among those whose applications for nonprofit status were unfairly targeted for extra scrutiny. She has called the IRS’ actions a “disturbing, illegal, and outrageous abuse of government power.” She told Fox News that Tea Party Patriots wants the agency repay it for expenses it incurred as a result of the “intrusive” questions it asked, including requests for “every single post on Facebook” and “every comment that any person who’s a fan of ours on Facebook had ever made.” On Friday, lawyers for her group sent a letter to the IRS alerting the agency to coming lawsuits over its “illegal” conduct.

But while the IRS has admitted to unfairly targeting some conservative groups, Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella organization for the grassroots movement, may not have been one of them. As I reported last week, although IRS officials engaged in misconduct, they also may have had good reason in some cases to scrutinize groups whose financial and tax histories raised questions, including Tea Party Patriots. The group engaged in a type of creative accounting that the IRS said it specifically planned to crack down on, and TPP drew criticism from some of its own constituents for a lack of financial transparency. Moreover, the IRS received a formal complaint about TPP—when I filed one in 2011 after the group refused to provide me with a financial disclosure required by law.

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Is This Big Tea Party Group Really an Innocent Victim of the IRS?

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All U.S. nuclear reactors are too dangerous, says former nuke-safety chief

All U.S. nuclear reactors are too dangerous, says former nuke-safety chief

Thomas Anderson

Beware.

Right on the heels of troubling news from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, here comes troubling news about nuke plants in the U.S.

From The New York Times:

All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday. Shutting them all down at once is not practical, he said, but he supports phasing them out rather than trying to extend their lives.

The position of the former chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, is not unusual in that various anti-nuclear groups take the same stance. But it is highly unusual for a former head of the nuclear commission to so bluntly criticize an industry whose safety he was previously in charge of ensuring.

Asked why he did not make these points when he was chairman, Dr. Jaczko said in an interview after his remarks, “I didn’t really come to it until recently.”

“I was just thinking about the issues more, and watching as the industry and the regulators and the whole nuclear safety community continues to try to figure out how to address these very, very difficult problems,” which were made more evident by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, he said. “Continuing to put Band-Aid on Band-Aid is not going to fix the problem.”

The nuclear power industry, you won’t be surprised to hear, disagrees with Jaczko’s assessment.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Watch: Crack-Up of Sea Ice in the Arctic Ocean

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As I reported last week, sea ice in the Arctic Ocean reached its maximum growth for the winter on about 13 March and is now losing more ice than it’s gaining. The National Snow and Ice Data Center initially reported that 2013 was the sixth lowest sea ice extent on record. NASA has revised that to an even more dismal fifth-lowest sea ice extent on record.

In the image above—and even more so in the video time-lapse below—you can see the tremendous dynamism at work in this frozen ocean. Jostled by monster winds and ocean currents, sea ice sheets constantly shift, crack, and grind against one another.

And that’s what’s happening on the left side of the video (above) in late January, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. A high-pressure weather system parked over the region produced warmer temperatures and winds flowing in a southwesterly direction. Those winds drove the Beaufort Gyre clockwise. And that gyre pulled pieces of sea ice west past Point Barrow, Alaska’s northwestern-most point.

â&#128;&#139;The crack-up began in late-January and spread west toward Banks Island throughout February and March 2013. A series of February storms passing over central Alaska exacerbated the fracturing. By the end of February large pieces of ice had borken all the way to the western coast of Banks Island, a distance of ~600 miles (1,000 kilometers).

It’s fascinating for me to see this area of the Arctic Ocean—particularly the Beaufort Sea part of the Arctic Ocean—which I sailed through in its entirety last October (more on that here) and saw not one speck of sea ice then. So all of the ice cap breaking up here is likely young, first-year ice.

Here’s NASA’s two-minute explainer on the Arctic winter of 2013, amid the mega-changes underway so far this century. Chilling.

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Watch: Crack-Up of Sea Ice in the Arctic Ocean

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