Author Archives: bibw6a

Dropping Shoe Watch: "Every Day He Looks More and More Like a Complete Moron"

by bibw6a Posted on May 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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The Daily Beast has talked to a bunch of folks close to Donald Trump, and as usual they can’t help themselves:

“Okay, he fired Comey,” the official conceded. “With a semi-competent comms operation, that would blow over in 24 hours. And that’s the worst part: he has a competent comms staff. But they can’t do their jobs because he keeps running his mouth.”

….Trump’s repeated media missteps have frustrated even longtime supporters. “Every day he looks more and more like a complete moron,” said one senior administration official who also worked on Trump’s campaign. “I can’t see Trump resigning or even being impeached, but at this point I wish he’d grow a brain and be the man that he sold himself as on the campaign.”

Asked whether an administration staff change-up would ameliorate this latest crisis, a Republican source formerly involved with a pro-Trump political group told The Daily Beast, “yes, if it comes with a frontal lobotomy for Trump.”

Remember, these are people who are on Team Trump. Elsewhere, Reuters reports that Trump is already working on ways to sabotage its own special counsel:

The Trump administration is exploring whether it can use an obscure ethics rule to undermine the special counsel investigation into ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russia, two people familiar with White House thinking said on Friday.

….Within hours of Mueller’s appointment on Wednesday, the White House began reviewing the Code of Federal Regulations, which restricts newly hired government lawyers from investigating their prior law firm’s clients for one year after their hiring, the sources said….Mueller’s former law firm, WilmerHale, represents Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who met with a Russian bank executive in December, and the president’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is a subject of a federal investigation.

Hmmm. Preventing the special counsel from investigating Manafort hardly seems worth the trouble. He’s not close enough to the White House to cause too many problems even if he does turn out to be involved in something fishy. So that leaves Kushner. Is he the guy the Trumpies are trying to protect?

On the bright side of all this, if you have some embarrassing news you’ve been waiting to release, now would be a good time. It’s almost sure to be forgotten as soon as the next Trump shoe drops, which will probably take no more than a few hours.

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Dropping Shoe Watch: "Every Day He Looks More and More Like a Complete Moron"

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CEO Pay Down in 2015, But Still Higher Than Its Bubble Heights

by bibw6a Posted on April 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Sad news today from the Wall Street Journal. Among CEOs of big companies, stock-based pay was up 7 percent last year and cash pay was up 2 percent. But thanks to slower growth of CEO pensions, overall compensation was down 4 percent.

But perhaps CEOs will be mollified by the broader picture, which you can see in the chart on the right. CEO pay is up about 44 percent since 2007 in nominal terms, and up about 38 percent when you account for inflation. For ordinary workers, pay has decreased 5 percent since 2007 when you account for inflation.

For anyone wondering why Bernie Sanders has struck such a chord with the electorate, this pretty much tells the story. The Great Recession sure didn’t affect everyone equally, did it? Ordinary schlubs paid a high price, but the folks with the most lavish pay to begin with just shrugged it off like it never happened. If the rich wonder why calls to tax high incomes at 90 percent sound pretty good to a lot of people, this should clue them in.

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CEO Pay Down in 2015, But Still Higher Than Its Bubble Heights

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Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

by bibw6a Posted on December 5, 2013

Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

By

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When a promising cap-and-trade bill failed in the Senate in 2010, oil and coal companies everywhere must have breathed a sigh of relief, then probably wiped the sheen from their collective brow with a spare Benjamin and got back to work.

It now looks like some of that work involved planning for a time when they would actually lose the battle over their climate sins.

In a report [PDF] released by the UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), 29 companies — including the five biggest oil-producers, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP, and Shell (not that we’re keeping track) — report that they are using carbon pricing estimates to plan for hypothetical future regulation in the U.S. This generally means that an estimated carbon price is applied to a corporation’s big-investment projects — new drilling rigs, for example — which will likely be subject to some kind of emissions tax in ten or twenty years.

For climate hawks and economists disappointed by the failure of carbon tax schemes in the real world, this may sound hopeful: At least SOMEONE believes that carbon-pricing stands a chance, and soon, too. But it’s also just good business: With California’s fledgling cap-and trade market getting under way, and public opinion on climate change swinging back toward sanity, carbon tax is looking less and less utopian and more like a plausible business expense.

The CDP claims that the usage of internal carbon prices demonstrates the “assumption that addressing climate change will be both a business cost and a possible business opportunity.” Basically, if companies start planning now, maybe our global economy won’t go into a tailspin when we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Plus, lots of international companies, especially ones operating in regulated Europe or Australia, are already dealing with carbon taxes in some form. Australia prices all consumer fossil fuels at about $21 per ton of carbon; for European countries it falls somewhere between $5 and $80.

ExxonMobil, king of the big five, is no stranger to the carbon debate. Despite a sordid history of funding huge anti-climate-science campaigns to widen the consensus gap between scientists and the general public, the company publicly supported a carbon tax in 2009 (while lobbying against the actual bill in Congress). In the CDP’s report, ExxonMobil had the highest reported cost — $60 per ton of carbon, by 2030 — while BP and Shell were more tentative with $40 a ton. (The U.S. government, by comparison, has set a tentative “social cost” price between $37 and $57 for 2015 [PDF].)

Even companies like Google and Disney got in on the carbon-pricing action, using auction prices from California’s cap-and-trade scheme to help set the bar. Not everyone is as committed: Walmart claimed only that their estimated price is set “flexibly,” whatever that means.

One conspicuous absence (drumroll, please): everyone’s favorite climate-denying multinational conglomerate, Koch Industries! The multibillion dollar corporation, with its history of campaigning against all things climate-science-y, has not joined the herd of oil companies in budgeting for carbon tax. The Koch-funded American Energy Alliance has spent $1.2 billion this year alone in attacking candidates who allegedly support a carbon price.

Of course, no one can guarantee that any of the companies reporting internal carbon prices aren’t engaging in other forms of shenanigans, hanky-panky, or mustache-twirling in this and other environmental areas. Xcel Energy, one of the 29 companies, was recently embroiled in an attempt to restrict access to local, renewable energy in Boulder, Colo. ExxonMobil, with all its pinkie-promises to be more sustainable, has started investing in natural gas — which is a smart move if carbon starts being taxed, but still lets them get away with plenty of other environmental shenanigans. And planning for a future carbon tax is a long way from actually supporting one. Color us cynical, but we have a hard time believing any energy company is that gung ho to undermine its business model.

“It’s climate change as a line item,” Tom Rivett-Carnac, the CDP’s North American director, told the New York Times. “They’re looking at it from a rational perspective, making a profit. It drives internal decision-making.”

I guess it’s good that someone is looking at it from a rational perspective. Maybe U.S. lawmakers will follow suit.

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

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Walmart’s carbon emissions soar despite all that green talk

by bibw6a Posted on November 14, 2013

Walmart’s carbon emissions soar despite all that green talk

By

Heather Ingram

Walmart’s flagrant labor abuses have been well-documented, as have the effects of its sprawling big-box stores on town centers and small retailers. But less well-known is how much the mega-retailer is doing to wreak havoc with the world’s climate.

In greenwashing on an epic scale, the company has been making a lot of noise in the press over its pledges and occasional projects to reduce carbon emissions. The company’s chief executive proclaimed in 2005 that “every company has a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gases as quickly as it can.”

Which is nice rhetoric. But apparently Walmart doesn’t think it falls into the same bucket as “every company.”

Eight years into the retailer’s self-professed love affair with the environment, a new report [PDF] by the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance lays bare its hypocrisy: Walmart is significantly growing its carbon footprint, even as it claims to be reducing it.

“Walmart is failing on climate exactly like it is failing on worker’s rights,” Michael Marx, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil Campaign, said in a statement [PDF] that coincided with publication of the report. “The company’s carbon pollution is up 14 percent while it pours millions of dollars into a misleading PR campaign around sustainability and anti-environmental public officials who obstruct solutions to climate disruption.”

From the report:

Today Walmart ranks as one of the biggest and fastest growing climate polluters in the country. If it were included in the Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index, a list that is limited to heavy industrial firms, such as oil companies and power plants, Walmart would take the 33rd spot, just a hair behind Chevron, America’s second largest oil company. …

Since 2005, Walmart’s reported greenhouse gas emissions have risen 14 percent, reaching 21 million metric tons per year, according to data the company has filed with CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. What’s more, this figure only accounts for a fraction of the company’s total emissions, as Walmart does not include large segments of its greenhouse gas pollution in these disclosures. …

Walmart reports emissions from its stores, distribution centers, and trucks, but does not report emissions from other sources, such as international shipping, land development, store construction, and manufacturing of store-brand products.

Here’s a chart from the report that compares Walmart’s use of renewable energy with that of other large retailers:

ILSRClick to embiggen.

That’s right — the company has been promising since 2005 to switch over to clean energy, but it still gets 96 percent of its electricity from dirty sources. Why? “It has sometimes been difficult to find and fund low-carbon technologies that meet our ROI [return-on-investment] requirements,” the company has stated. In other words: We will only go green if it’s cheaper than not going green.

And here’s another chart from the new report, showing how Walmart funds political candidates who block all things green and support all things polluting:

ISLRClick to embiggen.

Publication of the report coincided with an open letter sent to Walmart by environmental groups demanding that the company live up to its promises and quit with the whole destroying-the-planet thing. From the letter, which was signed by Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, and six other groups and coalitions:

We call on Walmart to implement a publicly verifiable, accurate tracking of all of their climate change emissions, commit to an overall 20% reduction in emissions by 2020, and end reliance on environmentally destructive energy sources and industries, including dirty coal, fracking and the tar sands. This reduction in emissions could be achieved by investing in a faster shift to renewable power and energy efficiency, phasing out construction of auto-oriented store formats built on greenfields, and shifting to more local and regional sourcing of goods. In addition, we call on Walmart to hold its suppliers and business partners to these same standards or sever its relationships with them.

The letter comes just days after 54 protesters were arrested in downtown Los Angeles during a march that coincided with strikes over low wages and working conditions at Walmart stores. Strikes and protests continue throughout the country over the retailer’s egregious treatment of its workers, and those actions are expected to culminate with shuttered stores on Black Friday when workers walk off the job.


Source
Walmart’s Assault on the Climate, Institute for Local Self-Reliance

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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One in 20 American kids is extremely obese

by bibw6a Posted on September 10, 2013

One in 20 American kids is extremely obese

By

Stéfan

Fast food

seems

fun …

The proportion of American kids suffering from obesity has more than doubled since 1980, but obesity rates appear to have plateaued recently and maybe even started to decline.

The saddest and most troubling category of overweight American child, however, continues to expand: the extremely obese.

There’s no hard-and-fast definition for “extreme obesity.” But in a paper published Monday by the American Heart Association in the journal Circulation, researchers propose a standard measure — and warn that one out of every 20 American kids meets it.

(The proposed definition is a technical mouthful, but we’ll quote it for those with an interest in such things: “Having a [body mass index] ≥120% of the 95th percentile or an absolute BMI ≥35 kg/m2, whichever is lower based on age and sex.”)

Not only are 4 to 6 percent of American kids extremely obese, but the researchers say that percentage is rising. Black, Hispanic, and poor children are the worst affected.

Severely obese kids face even more serious health dangers than do their merely obese peers. From the American Heart Association’s blog:

“Severe obesity in young people has grave health consequences,” said Aaron Kelly, Ph.D., lead author of the statement and a researcher at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. “It’s a much more serious childhood disease than obesity.” …

Severely obese children have higher rates of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular issues at younger ages, including high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol and early signs of atherosclerosis — the disease process that clogs arteries.

Treatment options for children with this level of obesity are limited, as most standard approaches to weight loss are insufficient for them.

Mighty depressing. And appalling concoctions like spaghetti ice cream aren’t going to help matters.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food

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One in 20 American kids is extremely obese

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Fracking industry says fracking made you $1,200 richer last year

by bibw6a Posted on September 6, 2013

Fracking industry says fracking made you $1,200 richer last year

By

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Want to get rich? Just take from the environment.

If you keep a close eye on energy news, you probably know by now that fracking for oil and natural gas is injecting $1,200 a year into the bank accounts of American households.

Fricking awesome, right? Go on out right now and buy that 65-inch plasma TV on credit — you’re good for it. Because of fracking.

Or maybe not.

A new report [PDF] from consulting firm IHS CERA claims that fracking increased household disposable income in the U.S. by more than $1,200 last year, and that the industry supports 2.1 million jobs. Reuters, CNBC, Forbes.com, and the Los Angeles Times reported the study’s key findings.

But as Media Matters for America notes, “These figures are much larger than the findings of many previous economic studies.” Media Matters also points out that the aforementioned media outlets didn’t bother reporting who paid for the study. It’s all there at the bottom of the report’s third page:

This research was supported by the American Chemistry Council, America’s Natural Gas Alliance, the American Petroleum Institute, the Fertilizer Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce – Institute for 21st Century Energy, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Natural Gas Supply Association, Rio Tinto, and the Society of the Plastics Industry.

Well, golly, if the industries that frack and use much of the fracked gas and oil say fracking is great, then who are we to argue?

Bloomberg tries to inject a small dose of ecological reality into the conversation, noting that the report “didn’t account for the potential environmental impacts of fracking.”

Environmental impacts? Pffft, industry bodies that represent massive corporations don’t care about environmental impacts, so why should we? Free hypothetical money for everybody!


Source
What The Media Left Out: Pro-Fracking Report Was Funded By Gas Industry, Media Matters for America

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Fracking industry says fracking made you $1,200 richer last year

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Do Solar Panels Use More Energy Than They Generate?

by bibw6a Posted on August 29, 2013

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Do Solar Panels Use More Energy Than They Generate?

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Open Season on Black Voting Has Officially Started

by bibw6a Posted on July 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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Josh Marshall:

It is simply amazing to watch how Southern states, ruled by Republicans, have moved so quickly, after the Supreme Court’s VRA decision to push through a series of new laws the only aim of which is to limit black voting: voter ID laws, ends to same day registration, early voting, weekend voting. Here’s yet another example from North Carolina. But we noted numerous other examples within a day of the decision coming down.

Okay, sure, what did I expect? I’ve been writing about this for years. Everything I’ve written and so many other better than I could has predicted this. But still, to see it, it’s another thing again. This is supposed to be the 21st century. And yet, in a broad swath of the society we’re in an ersatz version of the late 19th century.

It is—and always has been—unclear to me how much of this is driven by straight-up anti-black animus and how much is purely partisan, with blacks as collateral damage. Probably some of both. But really, how much does it matter? Is outright racism really any worse than simply not giving a damn if your only route to harming Democratic Party interests happens to require making it more burdensome for blacks to vote?

I suppose, yes, it is worse. But not by all that much.

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Open Season on Black Voting Has Officially Started

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Barack Obama and the Anti-Neustadt Presidency

by bibw6a Posted on June 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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Jamelle Bouie is dismayed that President Obama decided this morning to announce that he supports the Gang of Eight immigration bill:

In no way is it an exaggeration to say that President Obama’s speech came at the worst possible time. Later this afternoon, the Senate will take a procedural vote that will determine whether or not chamber decides to begin debate on the Gang of Eight bill.

Insofar that Rubio, Jeff Flake, Lindsay Graham and others were having a hard time bringing conservatives to their side, it’s now even more difficult. And if House Republicans take this as a cue to reflexively oppose reform, it puts Boehner in a tight spot—does he try to build a GOP majority for the bill? Does he abandon the “Hastert rule” and pass a bill with Democratic support! Or does he leave the effort altogether?

If this sounds dramatic, then you are drastically underestimating the anti-Obama furor of the Republican base, which has ended political careers for the sin of being friendly with the president. If Obama wants comprehensive immigration reform to pass, he needs to stay completely out of the way. If he wants to claim some credit, he can do so at the signing.

I don’t disagree with Bouie, quite. It’s not that. But his post made me wonder if this has now congealed into firm conventional wisdom on both sides: Obama needs to stay aloof from any issue he actually cares about, because his public support is always and everywhere unhelpful. Democrats don’t care and Republicans will go running for the exits at the mere prospect of being insufficiently hostile to him.

Is that what we’ve come to? I guess so, but I still can hardly believe it when I see it actually set down in black and white.

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Barack Obama and the Anti-Neustadt Presidency

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Report: Mansions Getting Bigger, Rental Apartments Getting Smaller

by bibw6a Posted on June 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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It’s a metaphor for the lopsided economic recovery: Data out from the Census bureau Tuesday shows that new single-family homes are getting bigger, while new rental apartments are shrinking.

Construction of new homes plummeted as the 2007 financial crisis hit. Residential housing construction is barely coming back to life, but as the New York Times‘ Economix blog reports in a post titled “The Return of the McMansions,” the new homes being built are ballooning in size. Think the 90,000 square foot manse timeshare billionaire David Seagal and his wife Jackie designed pre-crisis, with 30 bathrooms, ten kitchens, and an ice rink. Ok, they’re not all that big. The average size of new single-family homes climbed to 2,306 square feet last year, the largest average home size since the government started keeping track in 1973. The Times has this graph:

The average number of bedrooms and bathrooms per home is also at record levels. Last year, 41 percent of new homes had at least four bedrooms, and 30 percent had at least three bathrooms.

When it comes to new rental units, the opposite is true. The average square footage of new units in multi-family buildings decreased between 2011 and 2012. In 2011, 62 percent of new rental units were under 1,200 square feet, and 17 percent were 1,400 square feet or larger. In 2012, those numbers had changed to 64 percent under 1,200 square feet, and 16 percent above 1,400 square feet. (The percentage of apartments in the mid-range, remained steady.) See here:

The divergence in square footage aligns with the nature of the economic recovery. A new report released by the Federal Reserve earlier this week shows that most of the wealth recovered since the recession has gone to well-off white people. The Fed says that about 62 percent of the wealth Americans have regained since the economy bottomed out has been through the recovery of the stock market. And 80 percent of stock wealth is held by the rich—people with income in the top 10 percent.

Many younger and minority Americans have not experienced any recovery at all, and some are still losing wealth. Hence the need for more shoebox apartments.

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Report: Mansions Getting Bigger, Rental Apartments Getting Smaller

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