Category Archives: Vintage

Defying Critics, McDonald’s Shares Hit an All-Time High

by Sabrina2354 Posted on October 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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In recent years, the big red grin painted onto Ronald McDonald’s face has looked increasingly desperate. The company’s flagship burgers placed dead last among 20 national fast-food chains in a Consumer Reports poll last year. Its poverty-wage business model has inspired a successful labor movement. In March, McDonald’s sacked its CEO after the company had underperformed Wall Street’s earnings expectations in every quarter of 2014. Meanwhile, sales at “fast casual” competitors like Chipotle and Shake Shack have boomed. A recent effort to market its wares to school kids earned the company media derision (including from me). And this year, reports The New Yorker’s Michael Specter, “for the first time since 1970, McDonald’s will close more locations in the U.S. than it opens.”

And yet, after digesting the burger giant’s latest quarterly report, investors bid McDonald’s shares up to an all-time high this week. What gives?

According to the investment site The Motley Fool, the main driver appears to be renewed success in the company’s “emerging markets” segment—China and other fast-growing countries. Overall in emerging markets, sales at McDonald’s outlets open at least a year rose 8.9 percent—and in China itself, they leapt 26.8 percent. The China surge is a big deal, because the company saw sales plunge there last year after an American-owned McDonald’s supplier in Shanghai was caught selling expired meat.

Overall, international “comps” (sales at those established outlets) grew 4.6 percent, “due to solid growth in Australia, the U.K., and Canada,” The Motley Fool reports.

Here in the United States, consumers showed considerably less enthusiasm for McDonald’s—comparable-store sales rose just 0.9 percent. But that miniscule bump, too, cheered investors, because it marked the first time the fast-food titan had delivered positive quarterly comp numbers in its home market in two years, according to Motley Fool.

What’s causing this modest uptick in traffic into the Golden Arches here in the land of Chipotle, Shake Shack, and other fast-growing competition? “McDonald’s said a new Premium Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Deluxe sandwich and its decision to swap butter for margarine on its Egg McMuffins helped the division break a two-year streak of quarterly sales declines,” Reuters reports.

Whether such tweaks in the direction of “real food” can continue to take the edge off of that clown’s grin remains to be seen.

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Defying Critics, McDonald’s Shares Hit an All-Time High

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House Hostage Takers Give Up, But Promise Plenty of Hostages in Future

by NestorMcGahan69 Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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The good news today is that John Boehner is apparently making good on his promise to “clean the barn” before he leaves by cutting a budget deal with the White House. From the New York Times: “The accord would avert a potentially cataclysmic default on the government’s debt and dispense with perhaps the most divisive issue in Washington just before Speaker John A. Boehner is expected to turn over his gavel to Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin.”

Then there’s today’s schadenfreude-ish news: House super-conservatives are sad because they don’t think there’s anything they can do to halt this reckless attempt to keep the government running and pay our legal debts. Reuters: “Representatives Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and Mick Mulvaney, founders of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, told Reuters in an interview that there was not enough time for House Republicans to rally around a list of demands for raising the $18.1 trillion U.S. borrowing limit.”

Then there’s today’s bad news:

Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives’ most influential conservative group told Reuters on Monday it was too late to stop an extension of the federal debt ceiling this week, but they will not hold it against the expected next House Speaker, Paul Ryan.

….The three lawmakers said they wanted to work with Ryan on process reforms that would allow them to get a much earlier start on future fiscal deadlines to demand spending cuts and reforms to federal benefits programs such as Social Security and Medicare. This way, they would not be trying to craft a strategy at the last minute with default or government shutdowns looming in the balance.

….Mulvaney said Ryan’s first big test would be a spending bill to keep government agencies open past a current shutdown deadline of Dec. 11. This would have to produce “at least something better than we would have gotten under Mr. Boehner.”

So they’ve given up on provoking a debt limit/government shutdown crisis for now, but by God they expect Ryan to give them enough time to provoke plenty of them in the future. And that starts in six weeks, Mr. Speaker.

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House Hostage Takers Give Up, But Promise Plenty of Hostages in Future

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Disturbing Video Shows School Cop Body Slam and Drag a Black Female Student

by gerdi Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Authorities in Richland County, South Carolina, are investigating a video that surfaced Monday showing a uniformed officer aggressively confronting a high school student. Local station WIS-TV reports that county sheriff’s deputies are investigating the incident, which took place on Monday at Spring Valley High School, according to school officials. The video, which appears to have been recorded on a cellphone by a classmate, shows a white male officer standing over a black female student sitting at her desk; moments later he grabs the student and flips her on her back. After dragging her across the floor, the officer says, “Hands behind your back—give me your hands.” The video has no additional context as to what led to or followed the altercation.

“Parents are heartbroken as this is just another example of the intolerance that continues to be of issue in Richland County School District Two, particularly with families and children of color,” a local black parents group wrote in a statement responding to the video.

Also: Chokeholds, Brain Injuries, Beatings: When School Cops Go Bad

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told WIS-TV that the school resource officer (SRO) was responding to a student who was refusing to leave class. “The student was told she was under arrest for disturbing school and given instructions, which she again refused,” Lott said. “The video then shows the student resisting and being arrested by the SRO.”

The video is the latest in a series of disturbingly violent altercations involving school cops. As Mother Jones first reported in July, there have been at least 29 incidents in the United States since 2010 in which school-based police officers used questionable force against students in K-12 schools, many of which caused serious injuries, and in one case death. Data on use of force by school cops is lacking even as the number of officers on campus has ballooned over the past two decades, with little training or oversight.

Update, 6:15 p.m. EDT: Here is a statement released by the school district, via local TV reporter Megan Rivers:

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Disturbing Video Shows School Cop Body Slam and Drag a Black Female Student

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Finally, Obama Denounces America’s Standardized Testing Obsession

by Lien92Bjigz Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Read more about the overloading of standardized tests.

On Saturday, the Obama administration announced that its push towards high-stakes standardized testing had gone too far and urged schools to limit tests to those that were meaningful indicators of progress. Specifically, the administration called for a cap so that no student would spend more than two percent of classroom time on standardized tests, and called on Congress to “reduce over-testing.”

“Learning is about so much more than filling in the right bubble,” the president said in a speech posted on the White House Facebook site.

The announcement represents a significant change in course for the Obama administration, which had been facing mounting bipartisan criticism for focusing too much on tests at the expense of a focus on creativity and critical thinking. According to a report by the Council of Great City Schools which reviewed the country’s 66 largest school districts, students are required to take about 112 standardized exams between kindergarten and 12th grade.

It’s unclear how much a two percent cap on tests will truly affect students; according to the Council of Great Schools report, the tests fall most heavily on eighth graders, who spend 20 to 25 hours, or about 2.3 percent of classroom time, on standardized tests. Furthermore, the announcement didn’t address the amount of time spent preparing for tests.

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If our kids had more free time at school, what would you want them to do with it? A) Learn to play a musical…

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Still, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the announcement a victory. “The fixation on high-stakes testing hasn’t moved the needle on student achievement,” she said in a statement. “We need to get back to focusing on the whole child—teaching our kids how to build relationships, how to be resilient and how to think critically.”

Outgoing Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged that “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation.” Duncan is meeting with Obama today to discuss how to limit redundant and low-quality testing.

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Finally, Obama Denounces America’s Standardized Testing Obsession

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Women Can Boost Their Testosterone Just by Acting Like a Boss

by LurleneHollins Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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We often point to testosterone to explain the traits that make men “manly”: competitiveness, horniness, impulsiveness. People have even blamed the testosterone levels of the architects of the Great Recession for the devastatingly awful decisions that led to the financial crash.

But new research shows that the reason men have more testosterone than women may have as much to do with gender socialization as inherent biology. Scientists from the University of Michigan published a study today that found that the act of wielding power increases testosterone levels regardless of gender. The study’s authors went on to hypothesize that the reason women generally have less of the hormone than men may be, at least in part, because of gender norms that prevent women from accessing positions of power and discourage them from being competitive.

To come to this conclusion, researchers hired more than 100 actors to perform an activity during which they held power over someone else: firing a subordinate employee. The actors performed the firing both acting with stereotypically “masculine” traits (using dominant poses, taking up space, not smiling), and with stereotypically “feminine” traits (lifting their voice at the end of sentences, being hesitant, not making eye contact). Researchers also measured the levels of a control group watching a travel documentary.

What they found was fascinating.

Not only did the female subjects acting in a stereotypically masculine way see an increase in testosterone (compared with the control), but those performing in a “feminine” way saw a significant boost, as well. In other words, just the act of wielding power, regardless of whether the wielder is performing maleness, increases testosterone levels. The study found that men did not have much of a testosterone boost during the activity, which, the study’s authors guessed, could be because men’s more frequent engagement in competitions and power-wielding activities “might paradoxically lead to dampened testosterone responses.”

“Our results would support a pathway from gender to testosterone that is mediated by men engaging more frequently than women in behaviors such as wielding power that increase testosterone,” the study says.

What’s that in layman’s terms? Gender inequality, at least in part, may be part of what’s making men manly.

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Women Can Boost Their Testosterone Just by Acting Like a Boss

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The Great 1998 Chart Swindle Is Now Officially Over

by JanisUnaipon Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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One of the favorite topics in the climate change denial community is the “global warming pause.” It’s based on the fact that 1998 was an unusually warm year, so if you begin a climate chart in 1998 it will look as if nothing much has happened since. I made fun of this last week, but it occurs to me that we might genuinely have seen the last of that famous chart.

Why? Because it’s no good anymore. David Roberts tells me today that Republicans are incensed over a recent NOAA paper that suggests the “pause” is due to mismeasurements of ocean temperatures, but who even needs that anymore? Just look at the basic numbers in the chart below. Even if you start in 1998, you can see obvious evidence of warming.

Bottom line: Even the famously deceptive 1998 chart doesn’t work anymore. I suspect that we’re going to see a sudden lack of interest in 1998 charts from the denialists. They’ll have to move on to swindling the rubes with something else.

And if you’re curious, here’s an honest, plain-Jane chart of the past 50 years. The 1998 outlier is pretty obvious here, and the evidence of steady warming is pretty obvious too.

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The Great 1998 Chart Swindle Is Now Officially Over

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Ole Miss Finally Ditches State Flag from College Campus

by LashondWillison Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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The University of Mississippi permanently lowered the state flag from its campus grounds on Monday, in a historic decision to distance itself from the flag’s controversial Confederate emblem.

The flag’s removal follows a 33-15 vote with one abstention by student senate members and faculty last week. Mississippi has been the only state to fully include the Confederate symbol in its flag.

“This is one small step in the structure change we want to see at the University,” the state’s NAACP chapter president Buka Okoye said. “I’m positive for the future because of how quickly the administration acted.”

The decision comes more than four months after a gunman opened fire inside a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina killing nine people. Once law enforcement officials identified the suspected gunman, photos of him embracing the Confederate flag surfaced, sparking a national debate over the emblem and its racist roots.

Weeks after the shooting, South Carolina finally removed the battle flag from flying above the statehouse grounds—more than 50 years after it was first raised to protest the civil rights movement.

Despite calls from Mississippi lawmakers, including two Republican senators, to do away with the Confederate symbol on the Mississippi state flag in the wake of the Charleston mass shooting, the move to do so likely faces an uphill battle in a state that has flown the symbol for more than a century.

“As Mississippi’s flagship university, we have a deep love and respect for our state,” the university’s interim chancellor Morris Stocks said in a statement on Monday. “Because the flag remains Mississippi’s official banner, this was a hard decision. I understand the flag represents tradition and honor to some. But to others, the flag means that some members of the Ole Miss family are not welcomed or valued.”

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Ole Miss Finally Ditches State Flag from College Campus

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The Ben Carson Bandwagon Is Killing Trump in Iowa

by rgjkubacu Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Oh FFS:

The Monmouth University Poll of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers finds Ben Carson has taken a double digit lead over Donald Trump….When Iowa Republicans are asked who they would support in their local caucus, Ben Carson (32%) tops the list, with Donald Trump (18%) holding second.

What’s left to say? Sure, the Iowa caucuses are still three months away. I suppose Carson will fade. And historically, winning the Iowa caucuses has hardly been a reliable predictor of future success. Still. On the bright side, it gives me an excuse to quote Josh Marshall on Carson:

I’ve been a little mystified that no one seems to bring this up. But in the debates he frequently strikes me as half-lost or sedated. Gut check me here, am I really the only one who has this impression? Is it just me? Again, like Trump, I think he’s judged by a different standard because people don’t think he’ll ever be the nominee. But he seems like he’s not quite all there or thinking out loud in a way that is vaguely endearing but not at all what people look for in a head of state.

Actually, Carson’s sleepy-eyed persona has been a pretty common topic of conversation. True, I don’t think anyone has suggested he’s sedated or suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s or anything. But yeah: he’s a right-wing conspiracy-theory-loving loon and he talks as if someone just woke him up at 3 am. Even for Iowa, he’s a very strange GOP frontrunner.

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The Ben Carson Bandwagon Is Killing Trump in Iowa

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Texas Schools Are Performing Pretty Well. Surprised?

by aleidasharrington Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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David Leonhardt:

When the Education Department releases its biennial scorecard of reading and math scores for all 50 states this week, Florida and Texas are likely to look pretty mediocre. In 2013, the last time that scores were released, Florida ranked 30th on the tests, which are given to fourth and eighth graders, and Texas ranked 32nd.

But these raw scores, which receive widespread attention, almost certainly present a misleading picture — and one that gives short shrift to both Florida and Texas. In truth, schools in both states appear to be well above average at teaching their students math and reading. Florida and Texas look worse than they deserve to because they’re educating a more disadvantaged group of students than most states are.

This conclusion is based on a new report by the Urban Institute. That’s fine, but we pretty much knew this already. Texas has large black and Hispanic populations, and they tend to do worse on academic tests than whites—which makes the overall scores for Texas look weak. But if you head over to the NAEP site and look at scores for each state disaggregated by race you can get the real story in about five minutes. The chart below is for 8th grade math, but you can do the same thing for any other test. It’s sorted by black test scores, and as you can see, Texas is 3rd in the nation. (Florida is 15th.) It’s also 3rd in Hispanic scores, and 5th in white scores.

The Urban Institute controls for other factors besides race (poverty, native language, special ed), and that makes Florida look even better than the disaggregated NAEP scores suggest. But Texas looks good no matter what. If education reporters would pay attention to this stuff, it might not come as such a big surprise. Like it or not, Texas has been scoring pretty well for quite a while.

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Texas Schools Are Performing Pretty Well. Surprised?

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Stop It

by bestleanmusclesupplementwix Posted on October 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Now you guys are just messing with me. On Saturday I wrote a short post complaining that another short (and insignificant) post had become my most widely-liked post of all time. Now Saturday’s little gripe has 12,000 Facebook likes.

I hate you all.

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Stop It

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