Author Archives: lqr8rg5rr

The GOP Is Running on Fear — And I’m Here to Help

by lqr8rg5rr Posted on January 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Oh man, I’m sure glad I don’t live in Iowa. Or New Hampshire or South Carolina or Nevada or Alabama or Minnesota or Oklahoma or Alaska or Vermont or Arkansas or Tennessee or Colorado or Georgia or Massachusetts or Texas or Virginia:

Scenes of masked men toting guns and waving black Islamic State flags. Refugees scrambling across the border. Fires and explosions.

It’s not just a Donald Trump ad. Most of the Republican presidential contenders and their allies are now waging campaigns focused on fear….Former Florida governor Jeb Bush delivers a similar message in a new spot that begins airing in New Hampshire this week. “We are at war with radical Islamic terrorism,” he declares….And in Iowa, a new ad by a super PAC supporting Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas features a frightening montage of Islamic State militants, refugees on the run and rolling tanks before mocking Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as a lightweight.

So that’s what we’re getting? A multi-month campaign to see who can out-fear the rest of the field? Well, good luck with that. I’ll even help out. Remember Ebola? That was a great bit of fearmongering. A true classic. But now we have something even better: Zika. Here’s the dope:

The Zika virus, a rare tropical disease that’s causing a panic in Brazil — because it may lead to babies being born with abnormally small heads — has now made its way to Puerto Rico….”It’s spreading really fast,” said Scott Weaver, the director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “I think the Zika virus is going to be knocking on the doorstep in places like Florida and Texas probably in the spring or summer.”

Zika is sort of an invisible virus: if you contract it, you’ll either feel nothing or, at most, flu-like symptoms that shortly go away. But it might cause birth defects. Maybe. There’s no need to include that qualifier, though. This is an unseen but implacable menace making its way across our borders and threatening our unborn babies. And what is Obama doing about it? Nothing, I’ll bet—and I really don’t think there’s any need to check on that. So let’s get those ads cranking, guys!

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The GOP Is Running on Fear — And I’m Here to Help

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Hillary Clinton in 1993: Individual Mandate Is a "Much Harder Sell"

by lqr8rg5rr Posted on February 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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The individual mandate has been one of the most controversial aspects of Obamacare since Congress passed the law in 2009. Conservatives have railed against the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance or face tax penalties. And the 2012 Supreme Court case that decided the fate of Obamacare centered around Republicans’ objections to the mandate.

But the individual mandate originated as a conservative goal—first proposed by the Heritage Foundation, later adopted by Senate Republicans as an alternative approach to President Bill Clinton’s efforts to reform in the health care system during his first term.

New documents unsealed Friday by the Bill Clinton’s presidential library show that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton wasn’t a fan of the individual mandate back when it was a Republican idea. In September 1993, Hillary traveled to Capitol Hill and explained White House’s health care plan to a gathering of Democratic leaders from the House and Senate. During Clinton’s remarks, which spelled out the details of the proposal before they were released to the public, she dismissed the concept of the mandate with a prescient knowledge of how tricky it would be to sell to the public:

But if the Republican alternative, as it appears now to be shaping up, at least among the moderate Republicans in the Senate, is an individual mandate, we have looked at that in every way we know to to (inaudible). That is politically and substantively a much harder sell than the one we’ve got—a much harder sell.

Because not only will you be saying that the individual bears the full responsibility; you will be sending shock waves through the currently insured population that if there is no requirement that employers continue to insure, then they, too, may bear the individual responsibility.

Unfortunately for Clinton, if she runs for president in 2016 (as widely predicted) she’ll likely have to defend Obama’s implementation of that mandate.

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Hillary Clinton in 1993: Individual Mandate Is a "Much Harder Sell"

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Teachers Striking in the Town Where Mother Jones Is Buried

by lqr8rg5rr Posted on December 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, after whom Mother Jones is named, was a prominent labor leader in the late 1800s and early 1900s. When her long life came to an end, Mother Jones—”grandmother of all agitators”—was buried in Mt. Olive, Illinois, alongside miners whose rights she fought for. This week, teachers in Mt. Olive are striking, too. Tuesday marked the second day of their strike for higher salaries and better benefits.

The Mt. Olive board of education offered the 39 teachers in the district a 2 percent increase in their salaries this year, as well as an increase of 2 percent per year during their last four years to help them prepare for retirement, according to the local Fox news station, KTVI. The teachers want a 4.5 percent pay hike now, and a 6 percent annual increase for their final four years. Teachers told KTVI that they agreed to forgo raises in their last contract in exchange for larger salary increases this time around, but the town didn’t keep its promise. “We feel that when you make a promise you need to keep it,” Marcia Schulte, a kindergarten teacher who runs the teachers’ union, told KTVI Monday. “That’s what we need to teach the kids.” She added that last year, the administration and support staff got a six percent raise, while teachers haven’t gotten a salary bump since 2009.

The teachers are also upset that the board wants to subject new hires to a different pay raise scale that would make their salaries increase more slowly. The teachers’ last contract expired in August, and ongoing union contract negotiations since then have left issues unresolved.

The school district superintendant Patrick Murphy told KTVI that reduced aid from the state and lower school enrollment means that the district has to shrink its budget.

All 39 teachers went on strike Monday morning. On Monday night, union members and administrators negotiated until 1:00 a.m., but no progress was made.

The teachers will not meet again with the administration until next week, and they’ll likely continue striking until then. Meanwhile, they have Mother Jones‘ words to keep them company. “Pray for the dead,” she was known to say, “and fight like hell for the living.”

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Teachers Striking in the Town Where Mother Jones Is Buried

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Surprise! Obamacare is Actually Fairly Popular

by lqr8rg5rr Posted on October 21, 2013

Mother Jones

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CNN has a new poll out today, and it shows that people are pretty unhappy with congressional Republicans right now. We already knew this, and I doubt that public irritation will last long, so I’m not all that interested. However, there’s something else in the poll that mindful readers have known for a while but that has never gotten as much attention as it deserves: Opinions about Obamacare are less hostile than most polls suggest.

In one sense, I don’t want to make too much of this. Only 41 percent of respondents favor Obamacare as it is, and that’s a pretty feeble number. At the same time, when we talk about “opposition” to Obamacare, we’re almost always talking about conservative opposition. And the plain fact is that conservative opposition is mostly limited to….conservatives. Everyone else either likes Obamacare or wants even more. (Or doesn’t care.)

Add to this the well-known fact that nearly all the specific features of Obamacare (except the individual mandate) poll pretty strongly, and the picture that emerges is that most of the country favors Obamacare as either a good idea or a good first step. This explains why repeal of Obamacare generally polls poorly: many of the people who “oppose” Obamacare want to build on it, not repeal it. They’re just disappointed that it’s not a genuine single-payer program.

This means, of course, that tea partiers are right: once Obamacare is up and running, it will almost certainly become popular pretty quickly and will become impossible to repeal. That’s why they were so desperate to take one last crack at defunding it. It’s also why it’s so important for Team Obama to fix their website problems ASAP. The truth is that Obamacare is reasonably popular and most people are willing to give it a chance to succeed. But that tolerance won’t last forever.

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Surprise! Obamacare is Actually Fairly Popular

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Forget solar panels, here come building-integrated photovoltaics

by lqr8rg5rr Posted on July 24, 2013

Forget solar panels, here come building-integrated photovoltaics

By John Upton

Ben West

This roof doesn’t have solar panels — it has solar shingles.

Solar panels are becoming passé. Why put solar panels on top of building construction materials when you could just tap the power of the sun directly through the construction materials themselves?

Bloomberg reports on the rapid growth in building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPV. These are solar power–harvesting cells that are incorporated into the walls, roofs, and windows of buildings — integrated seamlessly instead of being bolted onto a finished building as an apparent afterthought:

From stadiums in Brazil to a bank headquarters in Britain, architects led by Norman Foster are integrating solar cells into the skin of buildings, helping the market for the technology triple within two years. …

The market for solar laid onto buildings and into building materials is expected to grow to $7.5 billion by 2015 from about $2.1 billion, according to Accenture Plc, citing research from NanoMarkets. Sales of solar glass are expected to reach as much as $4.2 billion by 2015, with walls integrating solar cells at $830 million. About $1.5 billion is expected to be generated from solar tiles and shingles.

The technology provides a respite for solar manufacturers, opening the way for them to charge a premium for products. Traditional solar panel prices have fallen 90 percent since 2008 due to oversupply, cutting margins and pushing more than 30 companies including Q-Cells SE and a unit of Suntech Power Holdings Co. into bankruptcy.

The industry is already well established in the U.S., where Dow Chemical Co. (DOW), the country’s largest chemical maker by sales, is selling in more than a dozen states solar shingles that look like regular roofing material.

Expect green buildings of the future to look a lot more blue.

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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Forget solar panels, here come building-integrated photovoltaics

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