Author Archives: Lubao2pzs

Pundits, Start Your Engines!

by Lubao2pzs Posted on July 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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So what’s the next step in the border crisis? President Obama has introduced an emergency proposal; he’s traveled to Texas to discuss it with his political opponents; and in order to stem the tide of immigrants he’s declined to engage in photo-ops at the border that might encourage the tide to continue.

Republicans, for their part, appear at the moment to be completely unwilling to do anything at all.

So here’s the next step: a barrage of columns from our nation’s pundits acknowledging Republican intransigence but then insisting that, ultimately, the lack of action is Obama’s fault. Because leadership. Because LBJ. Because schmoozing. Because lecturing. Because relationships. Because political capital. Because great presidents somehow figure out a way to get things done. Rinse and repeat.

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Pundits, Start Your Engines!

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Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs for December

by Lubao2pzs Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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The American economy added 74,000 new jobs in December, but about 90,000 of those jobs were needed just to keep up with population growth, so net job growth clocked in at minus 16,000. There’s no way to sugar coat this: it’s pretty dismal news. Last night was obviously a bad time to predict that the economy might be getting back on track.

The headline unemployment rate dropped to 6.7 percent, but that’s mainly because a huge number of people dropped out of the labor force, causing the labor force participation rate to decline from 63.0 percent to 62.8 percent. At the same time, the number of discouraged workers dropped. This suggests that in addition to the usual exodus of workers due to retirement, a fair number of people simply gave up and quit looking for work, dropping out of the official numbers entirely.

It’s only one month, and it might not mean much. Maybe it was just bad weather. Maybe. But it’s a lousy start to the year.

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Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs for December

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Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, and the Importance of Comedy

by Lubao2pzs Posted on December 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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This essay will appear in “Comedy,” the Winter 2014 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly. This slightly adapted version story first appeared on the TomDispatch website with the kind permission of that magazine.

Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. —Mark Twain

Twain for as long as I’ve known him has been true to his word, and so I’m careful never to find myself too far out of his reach. The Library of America volumes of his Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays (1852-1910) stand behind my desk on a shelf with the dictionaries and the atlas. On days when the news both foreign and domestic is moving briskly from bad to worse, I look to one or another of Twain’s jests to spring the trap or lower a rope, to summon, as he is in the habit of doing, a blast of laughter to blow away the “peacock shams” of the world’s “colossal humbug.”

Laughter was Twain’s stock in trade, and for 30 years as bestselling author and star attraction on America’s late-nineteenth-century lecture stage, he produced it in sufficient quantity to make bearable the acquaintance with grief that he knew to be generously distributed among all present in the Boston Lyceum or a Tennessee saloon, in a Newport drawing room as in a Nevada brothel. Whether the audience was sober or drunk, topped with top hats or snared in snakebitten boots, Twain understood it likely in need of a remedy to cover its losses.

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Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, and the Importance of Comedy

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Dallas — yes, Dallas — bans fracking in most of the city

by Lubao2pzs Posted on December 12, 2013

Dallas — yes, Dallas — bans fracking in most of the city

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The growing wave of local fracking bans is sweeping into Texas, where the state’s third largest city has put a near-total kibosh on the practice.

The Dallas City Council adopted new rules on Wednesday that bar hydraulic fracturing within 1,500 feet of a home, school, church, or well. Dallas is now the largest of five Texan cities and towns that have imposed local restrictions on fracking. The city, which sits at the edge of the gas-rich Barnett Shale area, had previously imposed a safety buffer of 300 feet and banned fracking in parks and flood plains.

Because Dallas contains more than a half million homes, the new rule effectively outlaws fracking through most of the city. “[W]e might as well save a lot of paper and write a one-line ordinance that says there will be no gas drilling in the city of Dallas,” quipped a council member who voted against the new rules. “That would be a much easier ordinance to have.”

A gas company representative agreed: “You just can’t drill under these conditions,” he said. Naturally, industry folks are warning that economic woe will ravage Dallas in the wake of the vote.

The Dallas Morning News points out that drilling in the city seemed inevitable in 2007:

Six years later, the city still has no wells because of changing market conditions and disputes among drillers, the city and drilling opponents.

Drilling in the Barnett Shale has cooled off, and companies have shipped most well rigs elsewhere. But that could change if gas prices rise — an economic possibility that underscored the questions before the council.

While drillers cry foul, environmentalists are praising the council’s vote. “The ordinance that passed today was not perfect,” said Zach Trahan of the Texas Campaign for the Environment. “It has weaknesses. But it’s a huge, huge step in the right direction and we’re very pleased the mayor and council voted to approve the ordinance.”

J.R. Ewing must be rolling in his grave. But it’s not like the old days anymore — and awesome hairstyles aside, that’s a good thing:


Source
Dallas Council Passes Gas Drilling Ordinance With Restrictions, CBS
Dallas OKs gas drilling rules that are among nation’s tightest, The Dallas Morning News
Dallas City Council Approves More Restrictive Gas Drilling Ordinance, StateImpact

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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Dallas — yes, Dallas — bans fracking in most of the city

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Shutdown Update: Obama, Reid Offer to Talk

by Lubao2pzs Posted on October 2, 2013

Mother Jones

Here’s the latest shutdown news: President Obama has called everyone to the White House to talk things over, and Harry Reid has sent a letter to John Boehner suggesting a “sensible, reasonable compromise.” Reid says that although he deeply opposed the Iraq War, he never threatened to shut down the government over it, and likewise shutdown shouldn’t be on the table over Republican opposition to Obamacare. So his offer is to go ahead and pass a clean CR, and then he’ll agree to a conference committee to discuss “the important fiscal issues facing our nation.”

That is indeed sensible and reasonable. It’s also something that Democrats have been willing to do for months. Republicans have resolutely refused, so it’s not clear what would change their minds at this point. But I guess we’ll see.

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Shutdown Update: Obama, Reid Offer to Talk

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America’s kids eating healthier, getting fitter

by Lubao2pzs Posted on September 17, 2013

America’s kids eating healthier, getting fitter

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Yay for exercise and healthy food.

Here’s news as sweet as a fistful of blueberries: American kids aged 11 to 16 were eating more fruit and vegetables in 2009 than those who came before them just eight years earlier, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Kids are also cutting back on sweets and sugary drinks, eating breakfast more regularly, spending more time exercising, and spending less time in front of the television, the study found:

PediatricsClick to embiggen.

The following graph shows the modest rise in the number of days per week that American kids engaged in physical activity (PA) and the decline in the hours per day that they sat in front of the television:

PediatricsClick to embiggen.

These healthier habits have begun making a difference.

The average body mass index of thousands of kids studied increased between 2001 and 2005, then started falling between 2005 and 2009. That’s in line with the results of other studies, which have shown a plateau in childhood obesity rates. (Though as we told you last week, America’s most obese kids, primarily children of poor black and Hispanic parents, continue to get fatter.)

“Over the previous decades, the pattern had been that kids were getting less physical activity, and it’s been very hard to increase their fruit and vegetable consumption,” Ronald Iannotti, coauthor of the study and chairman of the department of exercise and health sciences at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, told USA Today. “We’ve got a long way to go, but the good news is that those are increasing.”

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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America’s kids eating healthier, getting fitter

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Mooncakes Are China’s Fruit Cake—Traditional Holiday Gifts No One Actually Wants

by Lubao2pzs Posted on September 10, 2013

Image: Franz&P

Last year, China threw away 2 million mooncakes—the little cakes eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. According to the Wall Street Journal, the country has 10,000 mooncake makers, who last year produced more than 300,000 tons of the sweets. And many of them, along with their elaborate packaging, ended up in landfills. So many, in fact, that this year the Chinese government has issued guidelines to cut down on the mooncake waste.

The guidelines lay out rules about packaging, urge manufacturers to reduce, reuse and recycle and to choose materials that are easier on the environment, should the cakes be tossed in the trash. Mooncake disposal isn’t a new problem, either. In the past, the government has issued rules that the cost of packaging the little cakes cannot exceed the cost of making the treats by more than 25 percent.

According to Green Power, a Hong Kong–based environmental group, the number of mooncake casualties hasn’t really gone down. They say that the average household purchases 2.4 boxes of mooncakes—often intended as gifts. Multiply that by the number of people celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, and you’re at 4.6 million units of cake.

The Journal‘s Te-Ping Chen says that the best way to cut the mooncake craze might not be regulation, at all, but rather painting mooncakes as an evil excess:

But in the end, the most effective catalyst for trimming Mid-Autumn waste may be China’s anti-corruption drive, with the Communist Party recently making mooncakes the latest casualty of its quest to keep officials clean. Last month, the state-run People’s Daily announced a drive for more mooncake austerity, saying that “polite reciprocity, when overdone, becomes a kind of squandering of cash.” According to a People’s Daily report last week, sales of luxury mooncakes this year have dropped by as much as 12% in certain locations.

So, it seems that, in China, the new orders are: “Let them not eat cake.”

Smithsonian.com:

The Mooncake: A Treat, a Bribe or a Tradition Whose Time Has Passed?

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Mooncakes Are China’s Fruit Cake—Traditional Holiday Gifts No One Actually Wants

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