Author Archives: Arkady549e

Crime Is Down in Los Angeles (And Everywhere Else Too)

by Arkady549e Posted on April 6, 2013

Mother Jones

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Hey, guess what?

With the first quarter of 2013 in the books, crime in Los Angeles has so far continued its decade-long decline, according to statistics released Friday.

OK, first off: can we please stop talking about LA’s “decade-long” crime drop? I know I’ve mentioned this often enough that I sound like a crank on the subject, but it’s important. If crime started declining in 2003, it might well be due to improved policing techniques introduced by Bill Bratton in 2002. But if it started declining in 1991—which it did—then the cause has to be something else, unless Bratton invented not just CompStat, but time travel as well. Moving on:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Charlie Beck announced the early but notable improvement at a press conference that served as a swan song for the mayor, who will leave office this summer after being termed out….Beck highlighted the significant declines in gang-related killings and other crimes — a result, he said, of close cooperation between his department and the city’s aggressive anti-gang programs that.

….”There is no other big city in America that can make these claims. I invite any of you to go to Chicago, go to New York, go to Houston … and see if you can find a replication of this effort. You cannot,” Beck said.

Look: the crime decline in Los Angeles has been impressive. More cops on the street have probably been effective. Beck’s gang initiatives have probably been effective—maybe even more effective than in other places. But no other city can make these claims? It’s exactly the opposite: nearly every big city can make these claims. The violent crime rate in Phoenix is down 52 percent from its peak. Washington DC is down 58 percent. Chicago is down 66 percent. Dallas is down 70 percent. New York is down 75 percent.

In California, San Jose is down 58 percent. San Francisco is down 61 percent. San Diego is down 67 percent.

We should all applaud anti-crime initiatives that seem to be effective. But we should also rigorously question whether they’re effective. And we shouldn’t mindlessly repeat claims that just flatly aren’t true, no matter who or where they come from. The public deserves to hear the full story about crime in America, not just the part that’s convenient for politicians singing their swan songs or police chiefs who want funding for more cops.

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Crime Is Down in Los Angeles (And Everywhere Else Too)

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The Taxman Turns the Screws on Dark-Money Nonprofits

by Arkady549e Posted on April 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Internal Revenue Service is taking a closer look at the finances of some 1,300 nonprofit organizations, including unions, trade associations, and the type of dark-money groups that controversially spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2012 elections. That includes Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the pro-Obama outfit Priorities USA, all of which keep their donors secret.

The IRS’ is asking these groups to answer a questionnaire (PDF) explaining how they spent their money, how their top staffers were paid, if they flew first-class or charter, any perks they received, and more. The taxman’s request for more information comes as campaign finance reformers, disclosure advocates, and at least one angry lawmaker, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), pressure the IRS to crack down on big-spending nonprofits like Crossroads GPS, which spent at least $67 million on politics during the 2012 campaign. Levin, who is retiring after his current term, said that a priority of his remaining time in Congress is investigating “the failure of the IRS to enforce our tax laws and stem the flood of hundreds of millions of secret dollars flowing into our elections, eroding public confidence in our democracy.”

Here’s more from NPR on the IRS’ latest move on dark money:

The IRS calls the move a “compliance check.” It asks a wide range of questions about a group’s finances and internal structure. Some of the information will turn up, eventually, in a group’s tax return on the Form 990. But other intriguing information will not. For instance, how did the group set the compensation for its most highly paid officers? Did it give them first-class or charter travel? How about country-club memberships? Any other perks?

The agency has targeted groups that are “self-declared.” That is, they claim they qualify for 501(c) tax-exempt status, but they’ve never filed the application with the IRS. That lets them avoid the application form asking the group to describe its proposed tax-exempt activities.

The IRS says the questionnaire is meant “to help us understand” the self-declared groups and to learn “how they satisfy their exemption requirements.”

But the IRS may be weighing other factors, too. The questionnaire’s most explicit questions are about 501(c)(4) political activity, and the document follows months of critics’ complaints that the IRS has treated 501(c)(4) groups too gently.

Unfortunately, the IRS won’t disclose respondents’ answers to the questionnaire. But with this questionnaire—and with one IRS official’s pledge last fall that the agency would scrutinize dark-money nonprofits—it’s obvious that the agency is digging into the issue of dark money.

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The Taxman Turns the Screws on Dark-Money Nonprofits

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Environmentalists and gas companies sing Kumbaya, create voluntary fracking standards

by Arkady549e Posted on March 22, 2013

Environmentalists and gas companies sing Kumbaya, create voluntary fracking standards

By John Upton

Shutterstock

/ Alexander IshchenkoEnergy companies and enviros are totally holding hands and singing around a campfire in Pennsylvania.

Environmentalists struck a rare accord with oil and gas companies this week, agreeing on fracking standards that aim to protect air and water quality and the climate as the Marcellus Shale formation in the northeastern U.S. is mined.

The new and oxymoronically named Center for Sustainable Shale Development was created through an agreement struck by energy companies, the Environmental Defense Fund and other green groups, and Pennsylvania philanthropies. The center will provide certification for oil and gas companies that follow the new standards while fracking the expansive shale formation, which is centered in Pennsylvania and stretches from New York to Kentucky.

Oil and gas companies have no binding requirement to achieve certification from the new center, and environmentalists say it is no substitute for regulations. That said, both camps think its neat.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The center, which was developed over two years of sometimes contentious negotiations, hopes to address the widespread health and environmental concerns about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, by holding companies to standards that exceed federal and state rules.

For instance, federal law currently permits companies to use diesel fuel as part of the fracking fluid they inject deep underground to break open shale formations and unlock the gas. The standards would require that companies certified by the center would not use diesel and would demand more detailed disclosure of other substances than called for in many states.

The center also would push companies to conform to new federal emissions standards at wellheads faster than established by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“These ideas didn’t come from left field,” said Andrew Place, the center’s interim executive director. “You look at the suite of good ideas out there in industry, federal agencies and the states and you adopt” the best of them.

Certification under the 15 standards [PDF] will be available to fracking companies beginning later this year. Areas addressed by the standards include:

Air and climate protection:
• Limitations on flaring
• Reduced emissions, including from storage tanks and engines

Surface and ground water protection:
• Maximizing water recycling
• Groundwater protection plans
• Well casing design
• Groundwater monitoring
• Wastewater disposal
• Reduced toxicity of fracking fluid

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Environmentalists and gas companies sing Kumbaya, create voluntary fracking standards

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