Author Archives: Obeey99

Republicans Are Furious at Obama for Prosecuting an Alleged Terrorist

by Obeey99 Posted on March 8, 2013

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When the Obama administration is killing alleged terrorists with deadly flying robots, Republicans complain that too many of them are being killed rather than captured. When the Obama administration captures alleged terrorists, Republicans complain that they’re being given inappropriate trials instead of being locked away for life.

On Thursday, Suleiman Abu Gaith, identified by US officials as Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and a spokesperson for Al Qaeda, was indicted in federal court in New York City on charges of conspiracy after reportedly being handed over to the US by Jordanian authorities. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) promptly went ballistic, saying military detention was imperative. “By processing terrorists like Sulaiman Abu Ghayth through civilian courts, the Administration risks missing important opportunities to gather intelligence to prevent future attacks and save lives.” They added that Obama’s “lack of a war-time detention policy for foreign members of Al Qaeda, as well as its refusal to detain and interrogate these individuals at Guantanamo, makes our nation less safe.”

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Pollution spurs more Chinese protests than any other issue

by Obeey99 Posted on March 8, 2013

Pollution spurs more Chinese protests than any other issue

By John Upton

Shutterstock

/ Hung Chung ChihThe Chinese are fed up with pollution.

The people of China are pissed. On the long list of injustices they endure, from internet censorship to having their homelands flooded by reservoirs, nothing is inspiring more uprisings than the abuse of their environment.

Retired Communist Party official Chen Jiping said that there were as many as 50,000 riots and protests in the country last year, and that pollution has replaced land disputes as the main cause of unrest. From Bloomberg:

“The major reason for mass incidents is the environment, and everyone cares about it now,” Chen told reporters at a meeting of the Chinese People’s Political and Consultative Conference, where he’s a member. “If you want to build a plant, and if the plant may cause cancer, how can people remain calm?”

Fear of revolt could be helping to fuel a slew of green initiatives announced recently by leaders in Beijing. But the ruling Community Party, which is in the midst of a leadership transition, also wants to quash rebellion.

From The Age newspaper last month:

China has sentenced 16 people to up to a year-and-a-half in prison for involvement in an environmental protest last July when a crowd of thousands ransacked government offices, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

A court in Qidong city, 65 km (40 miles) north of Shanghai, charged the group of demonstrators with “gathering to assault state organs, damaging property and theft” during the July 28 demonstration against a pipeline for waste from a paper factory.

The protest exemplified a growing environmental awareness and willingness of urban people to voice concern about industrial pollution. At the same time, the ruling Communist Party worries that protests can undermine social order.

Power to the Chinese people, y’all.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Pollution spurs more Chinese protests than any other issue

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Chart of the Day: Everyone Loves Foreign Trade!

by Obeey99 Posted on March 1, 2013

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Dan Drezner and I have had a friendly argument going on for several years about public attitudes toward trade. He’s a worrywart who trembles in fear whenever some pol badmouths China during a primary in Ohio. I’m a Pollyanna who thinks it’s a testament to the fundamental popularity of global trade that the Great Recession produced only a few tiny glimmerings of protectionist sympathy. Today I’m declaring victory. Dan himself links to the latest Gallup polling on trade, summarized in the chart on the right, but then tries to wiggle out with this comment:

Astute readers might argue that this disproves my oft-repeated claim that the American people are stone cold mercantilists. Yes indeed. –ed. To which I say, look at the question that’s being asked — exports good, imports bad. The mercantilism is baked into the polling question!! Essentially, what this poll reveals is enthusiasm for exports, not trade more generally.

That said, a closer look at the poll also suggests something even more promising. It would appear that public enthusiasm about trade exports is a leading indicator for rational expectations of U.S. economic growth….We’re now in the realm of pure speculation, but another source of American optimism on trade comes from some of the underlying positive trends I talked about a year ago. U.S. consumers are almost done with their necessary deleveraging; the U.S. manufacturing sector continues its small boomlet; and projections about U.S. energy production have become even more optimistic.

These are all intrinsically good trends, but the spillover effect on American attitudes towards trade is particularly promising. The spike in public enthusiasm from last year is politically significant. At a minimum, it suggests that president Obama won’t face gale-force headwinds in trying to negotiate trade deals.

Humbug. Of course people are more enthusiastic about exports than imports. But by a margin of 57-35, they see the upside of exports as a bigger deal than the downside of losing their jobs to cheap imports. That’s as close to enthusiasm for trade in general as you’re going to find outside of a Brookings seminar on comparative advantage. The economics profession should be proud of the public brainwashing it’s conducted over the past few decades on trade. It’s been remarkable successful even the face of some pretty substantial headwinds.

And, as Dan himself has suggested before, this bodes well for the future prospects of trade deals with Europe and Asia during Obama’s second term. The public is OK with them; they’d be nice capstones to Obama’s legacy; and it’s one of the few things that Republicans will probably be happy to support. I wouldn’t bet against them.

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Chart of the Day: Everyone Loves Foreign Trade!

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ICE Cold: US Citizens Getting Caught in Immigration Dragnet

by Obeey99 Posted on February 21, 2013

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The Obama administration has taken plenty of heat in the past couple of years for its record number of deportations. A new report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, though, highlights a different (albeit related) problem: US citizens are getting snagged in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement dragnet, too.

Of the nearly 1 million people for whom ICE issued detainers (a.k.a. immigration holds) from fiscal year 2008 to FY 2012, 834 were US citizens. As the above chart shows, that’s right on par with the number of Korean, Belizean, Iranian, and Thai citizens that the government asked local law enforcement to hold after arrests. Those numbers are nowhere near those of, say, Mexican citizens (No. 1 at more than 690,000 detainers), but, as the TRAC report noted: “It is illegal for DHS to detain US citizens, and to do so is a significant violation of their constitutional rights.”

Given the administration’s stated focus on criminal offenders (PDF), it seems odd that only 23 percent of those who received ICE holds had a criminal record, and that just 9 percent had committed what the agency calls Level 1 crimes—a definition broad enough to include “serious” offenses like traffic violations and marijuana possession.

ICE did change its policy (PDF) in December, restricting the use of detainers on people arrested for small-time misdemeanors, and the White House’s draft immigration bill proposes to give judges more discretion when it comes to deporting such offenders. Still, for an unpopular agency already dealing with its union members’ acrimonious lawsuit against the federal government and with a recent USA Today story that detailed desperate ICE efforts to reach deportation quotas, detaining Americans isn’t helping its image.

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Gas prices are spiking, and it’s not clear why

by Obeey99 Posted on February 21, 2013

Gas prices are spiking, and it’s not clear why

By Philip Bump

Here’s what gas prices have done over the last month:

GasBuddy

This isn’t an unprecedented rise; prices went up last February, too.

GasBuddy

What’s odd, though, is that the recent rise isn’t tied to rising crude oil prices, the traditional reason prices fluctuate.

GasBuddy

So what’s happening? The Washington Post dug into it, noting concerns over Middle East stability, lower production by OPEC, and the continuing high price of oil — though crude prices dropped significantly yesterday.

One key factor is limited refinery capacity.

[S]ome analysts … pointed to refinery issues. Several refineries have been shut down for routine maintenance, and in the eastern United States, several refineries simply went out of business in the past year.

“Atlantic Basin capacity closures have improved refining fundamentals,” the nation’s biggest refiner, Valero, said in a slide presentation at a Credit Suisse conference this month. It estimated that refineries have closed nearly 1 million barrels a day of capacity on the East Coast or in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the past two years, which Valero said allowed it to increase profit margins.

Refinery constraints were a key factor in California’s huge gas price spike last summer. Let’s go back to the law of supply and demand. Less supply means increased demand, which means more profits. Valero’s suggestion that reducing refinery capacity increased profit margins falls squarely in line with that: Less crude oil refined into gasoline means less gasoline, which means a higher price per gallon. Granted, these refineries didn’t all close this month, but combined with other factors, the closures appear to be playing a role — and may help explain why the price of gas is going up independent of the price of crude oil.

Let that be consolation to you next time you go to fill up. It’s just basic supply and demand, manipulated by oil companies. As it always has and always will, the system works.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Gas prices are spiking, and it’s not clear why

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Obama confirms: No big moves on climate in the works

by Obeey99 Posted on February 15, 2013

Obama confirms: No big moves on climate in the works

By Philip Bump

The White House

Based on conversations with senior White House officials this week, we reported that the president’s State of the Union threat to act unilaterally on climate change didn’t appear to have any force behind it. The largest weapon Obama has to that effect is the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants — something that officials suggested isn’t in the works.

Yesterday, Politico asked the president directly what he’s planning to do about climate change:

Obama said in his State of the Union address that he is prepared to take action if Congress doesn’t act, but he didn’t detail what that action might look like. He hinted during the chat Thursday that it could resemble what his administration did to require higher fuel efficiency standards in automobiles.

“The same steps that we took with respect to energy efficiency on cars, we can take on buildings, we can take on appliances, we can make sure that new power plants that are being built are more efficient than the old ones, and we can continue to put research and our support behind clean energy that is going to continue to help us transition away from dirtier fuels,” he said.

As we noted on Wednesday, the administration’s action to increase fuel-efficiency standards for cars was a good one that will have a significant effect on greenhouse-gas and particulate pollution. But it is also a very different political fight than the one over emissions from existing power plants, and far less important.

In other words: Obama himself confirms that he’s not prepared to take drastic action in the absence of Congress doing anything. His threat, as we suggested two days ago, is empty.

Source

Obama acknowledges climate-change difficulties, Politico

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New York hires seismologist with fracking industry ties to do fracking research

by Obeey99 Posted on February 6, 2013

New York hires seismologist with fracking industry ties to do fracking research

By Philip Bump

citizenactionny

New York state’s tortuous, interminable process of deciding whether or not to approve fracking continues; it slowly lifts one foot out of molasses, considers it for an hour or two, and then places it down again with a squelch one centimeter in front of the other foot. The last microstep we reported on was actually a step backward, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) moved to restart the state’s analysis of fracking’s health effects.

But now a real step: New York has hired a geologist to conduct a study of the seismological repercussions of fracking. As you may recall, drilling into shale and breaking it apart with high-pressure water has been linked to earthquakes. So the state is looking into that, since the very last thing New York wants is to be any more like California. The man hired for the job, to ensure that New York doesn’t crumble into the sea if it allows fracking? A guy who used to work for fracking companies.

From Bloomberg:

Robert Jacobi was picked by the Department of Environmental Conservation for a seismology study as part of its environmental review of the drilling process known as fracking, Lisa King, an agency spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. Jacobi is a University at Buffalo professor and has advised drillers for two decades. …

Jacobi, who has taught at the state university for more than 30 years, has advised various gas drillers since 1994, according to a resume released by the university. He has been a senior geology adviser for Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp., a natural gas drilling company, since last year.

But don’t worry, guys: “Jacobi said his EQT role doesn’t pose a conflict with the state work.”

“I was contracted by EQT to provide consulting services relating to their geology program, projects and initiatives,” Jacobi said in an e-mail. “In the same manner, I was hired as a consultant to provide services for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.”

Jacobi has also worked for opponents of fracking and, according to the DEC, is “considered the premier geologist on fault lines in New York state.” Fair enough.

This isn’t the first time the state has been criticized for selecting a consultant with ties to the industry. As Bloomberg notes, a 2011 study on the economic impacts of fracking was done by a firm that works to secure permits for gas companies.

But that was about three steps ago. Old news. In just another few months or years or decades, all of this will be behind us and we can celebrate a decision on fracking, whatever it may be, assuming that the state hasn’t already crumbled into the sea through the sheer inexorable entropy the universe.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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New York hires seismologist with fracking industry ties to do fracking research

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Paying the Bin Laden Tax

by Obeey99 Posted on February 5, 2013

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Consider Inauguration Day, more than two weeks gone and already part of our distant past. In its wake, President Obama was hailed (or reviled) for his “liberal” second inaugural address. On that day everything from his invocation of women’s rights (“Seneca Falls”), the civil rights movement (“Selma”), and the gay rights movement (“Stonewall”) to his wife’s new bangs and Beyoncé’s lip-syncing was fodder for the media extravaganza. The president was even praised (or reviled) for what he took pains not to bring up: the budget deficit. Was anything, in fact, not grist for the media mill, the hordes of talking heads, and the chattering classes?

One subject, at least, got remarkably little attention during the inaugural blitz and, when mentioned, certainly struck few as odd or worth dwelling on. Yet nothing better caught our changing American world. Washington, after all, was in a lockdown mode unmatched by any inauguration from another eraâ&#128;&#148;not even Lincoln’s second inaugural in the midst of the Civil War, or Franklin Roosevelt’s during World War II, or John F. Kennedy’s at the height of the Cold War.

Here’s how NBC Nightly News described some of the security arrangements as the day approached:

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China’s pollution reaches Japan. Next stop: California

by Obeey99 Posted on February 4, 2013

China’s pollution reaches Japan. Next stop: California

By Philip Bump

Sam_BB

Smog in China.

My wife and I used to have an annoying neighbor. There were various ways in which he was annoying — he would holler every Sunday during the Saints games and would stand outside talking on his cell phone at all hours of the night. But most annoying was the smoking. He’d stand under our bedroom windows and smoke, the smell drifting into our apartment. Of all of his infuriating tendencies, this was the worst.

But at least what wafted into our clothes and lungs while we slept wasn’t toxic smog. That’s the problem Japan is having with its neighbor to the west. From Agence France-Presse:

The suffocating smog that blanketed swathes of China is now hitting parts of Japan, sparking warnings Monday of health fears for the young and the sick.

The environment ministry’s website has been overloaded as worried users log on to try to find out what is coming their way. …

Air pollution over the west of Japan has exceeded government limits over the last few days, with tiny particulate matter a problem, said Atsushi Shimizu of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES).

Prevailing winds from the west bring airborne particles from the Asian mainland, he said.

These particulates are the same sorts of dust and soot that set records two weeks ago in Beijing. They’re deeply unhealthy, leading to asthma, other lung afflictions, and even heart attacks. While the pollution in China has inspired a cottage industry of solutions — canned air, house-sized domes, special face masks — such innovation is likely little consolation to the Japanese.

Nor is China’s pollution likely to stop in Japan. We’ve noted before that perhaps as much as a quarter of particulate pollution in California originates in China. It’s not entirely clear how much of the state’s air pollution, often detected by satellites, ends up at a breathable height. Today NASA is flying over the state’s Central Valley at various altitudes in an effort to determine how much particulate (and other) pollution is at ground level. The planes probably won’t detect China’s most recent pollution, given that it has just reached Japan, but some particulates from across the Pacific can certainly be expected.

NASA

A NASA plane flies over Fresno.

There’s actually a straightforward solution to this. I would encourage Japan and California to send a doctor’s note to their landlord (the U.N., I guess?) saying they’re allergic to China’s pollution. And, if that doesn’t work, simply move. It won’t be easy, but trust me, it works.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Richard III Stabbed in the Butt After Losing Contested Referendum of 1485

by Obeey99 Posted on February 4, 2013

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British archaeologists have confirmed that the skeleton of a man found beneath a parking lot in Leicester is King Richard III, who died in battle at Bosworth Field five centuries ago:

There was an audible intake of breath as a slide came up showing the base of his skull sliced off by one terrible blow, believed to be from a halberd, a fearsome medieval battle weapon with a razor-sharp iron axe blade weighing about two kilos, mounted on a wooden pole, which was swung at Richard at very close range.

….But many of the other injuries were after death, suggesting a gruesome ritual on the battlefield and as the king’s body was brought back to Leicester, as he was stripped, mocked and mutilated….One terrible injury, a stab through the right buttock and into his pelvis, was certainly after death, and could not have happened when his lower body was protected by armour. It suggests the story that his naked corpse was brought back slung over the pommel of a horse, mocked and abused all the way, was true. Bob Savage, a medieval arms expert from the Royal Armouries who helped identify the wounds, said it was probably not a war weapon, but the sort of sharp knife or dagger any workman might have carried.

Transitions of power were tough affairs back then. I guess that’s what comes of being a hated hunchback who murders innocent little princes.

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Richard III Stabbed in the Butt After Losing Contested Referendum of 1485

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