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Chart of the Day: The Rich Live a Lot Longer Than the Poor

by AntwanGrinder Posted on April 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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This really is the chart of the day. It seems like it’s been making the rounds on about half the blogs I read:

It comes from the Health Inequality Project, and it will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog. Still, these findings are even more dramatic than usual. The difference in life expectancy between the poorest and richest is a full 15 years for men and 10 years for women. But this chart, based on HIP’s data, is important too:

In the largest coastal cities, life expectancy is four or five years longer than it is in smaller, Midwestern cities. If you take a look at the map in HIP’s report, there’s a broad swath running diagonally from Texas up through the rust belt that has the lowest life expectancies in the nation. Why? Perhaps because of this:

Much of the variation in life expectancy across areas is explained by differences in health behaviors, such as smoking and exercise. Differences in life expectancy among the poor are not strongly associated with differences in access to health care or levels of income inequality. Instead, the poor live longest in affluent cities with highly educated populations and high levels of local government expenditures, such as New York and San Francisco.

If you’re looking for policy conclusions, I can toss out two off the top of my head. First, effective public health campaigns matter. Reducing smoking and encouraging better eating and exercise can make a big difference. Second, increasing the retirement age is the worst possible way to fix Social Security’s funding problems. It’s already 67 for everyone under the age of 55. This means that among the rich, a two year increase reduces their retirement life by about two years out of 20—roughly 10 percent. But among the poor, it takes two years out of ten—roughly 20 percent. There’s no need to balance the Social Security trust fund on the backs of the poor. We have plenty of better alternatives.

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Chart of the Day: The Rich Live a Lot Longer Than the Poor

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Scientists Undervalue Meticulousness By a Lot

by AngelaJNTN Posted on April 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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According to a note in Nature, honesty and curiosity are the most highly prized traits among scientists.

That’s all well and good. I’m also happy to see perseverance and objectivity on the list. Also humility, attentiveness, skepticism, courage, and willingness to collaborate. But I’m a little dismayed that meticulousness barely even crack the top ten. Most of the greatest scientists in history were extraordinarily meticulous: Newton, Darwin, Galileo, Feynman, etc.

Meticulous attention to detail is how you turn all that curiosity and perseverance into lasting results. It’s also how you maintain your objectivity, your humility, and your skepticism. I hope that in their daily lives, scientists value meticulousness more than they do when they answer survey questions.

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Scientists Undervalue Meticulousness By a Lot

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Bill Clinton Gets Combative in Confrontation With Black Lives Matter Activists

by laurindaarmbrust Posted on April 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bill Clinton was interrupted by a group of Black Lives Matter activists as he gave a speech on behalf of his wife, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, in Philadelphia on Thursday. The exchange quickly turned combative.

As the organizers criticized Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the infamous 1994 crime bill, her husband initially responded by claiming he welcomed protesters. Then he turned more confrontational, shouting poverty statistics to defend the trends that emerged from the policies he helped enact, such as harsher criminal sentencing and the gutting of welfare programs.

“I love—look, at every campaign rally, I welcome the protesters,” the former president said. “I had a guy in South Carolina interrupt me, and the crowd started booing him, and I said, ‘No, let’s be quiet and listen to him,’ and let him say the same thing twice. I said, ‘May I answer?’ and he just kept screaming.”

Clinton pleaded with the audience to “tell the whole story.”

“I talked to a lot of African American groups, they thought black lives mattered,” he said, referring to his crime bill. “They said to take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. We have 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals. She”—he pointed to a protester in the crowd—”don’t want to hear any of that. You know what else she doesn’t want to hear? Because of that bill, we had a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in the murder rate, and listen to this, because of that and the background check law, we had a 46-year low in the deaths of people by gun violence. And who you think those lives were? That mattered. Whose lives were saved?”

Clinton’s remarks come almost a year after he renounced the very same crime bill, implying that he knew at the time that some of the sentencing provisions were too harsh, but that that concern was trumped by his desire to pass the overall bill. Clinton appeared to take the opposite stance on Thursday, asserting that the policies of his administration were worth it because of how many black lives were allegedly saved.

Amid chants of “HRC, HRC” from Hillary Clinton supporters in the crowd, Bill Clinton continued to shout statistics in an attempt to show the Philadelphia organizers that their anger was misplaced. Throughout his remarks, he repeatedly referred to some of the female protesters as “girls.”

“I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African American children,” Clinton said. “You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. Tell the truth.”

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Bill Clinton Gets Combative in Confrontation With Black Lives Matter Activists

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Environmentalists Get Bit By California’s Premier Environmental Law

by AnnetteCathcart Posted on April 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’m a pretty committed environmentalist, but it’s still hard not to feel a bit of schadenfreude over the problems that California’s premier environmental law has had on the construction of bike lanes:

The California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, has stymied bike lanes up and down the state for more than a decade….“The environmental law is hugely frustrating,” said Dave Campbell, advocacy director for Bike East Bay, which has pushed for the Fulton Street bike lane. “It’s a law that allows you to say no. It’s not a law that lets you say yes.”

….The issue has festered for a long time. A decade ago, a lawsuit against San Francisco’s citywide bike plan stalled the city’s plans to add more than 30 miles of bike lanes for several years….Even without the threat of litigation, the environmental law can stop bike lanes in their tracks. When city of Oakland officials wanted to narrow a wide road near a major transit station and add two bike lanes, they realized it would be difficult to comply with the environmental law’s rules and didn’t proceed, said Jason Patton, Oakland’s bike program manager. About a decade later, the road remains a six-lane highway.

“CEQA is an incredible burden to doing work in urban areas,” Patton said. “And I say that as a committed environmentalist.”

The environmental law requires proponents of new projects — including bike lanes — to measure the effect the project would have on car congestion. When a traffic lane is taken out in favor of a bike lane, more congestion could result along that road. That result can put proposed bike lanes in peril. And traffic studies to show whether installing a bike lane would lead to greater congestion can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oftentimes, cities won’t bother with the effort.

Needless to say, this is the same complaint that developers have long had with CEQA: It allows NIMBYs to hold up construction of new projects endlessly with faux environmental objections. Go ahead and just try to build a dense development in LA. Plenty of folks would love to do it. But you’d better be prepared for years or more of grinding lawsuits from every nearby resident who doesn’t want more traffic.

I’m no expert on CEQA, so I won’t try to offer any detailed criticism here. Generally speaking, though, I’d like to see the law reformed so that genuine environmental concerns get the hearings they deserve, but no more. There needs to be some kind of stopping point or reasonableness test in there. A $100,000 bike lane shouldn’t require $200,000 in environmental impact reports and another $200,000 defending lawsuits from bike lane haters. Likewise, a proposed apartment building should be required to acknowledge genuine environmental impacts—on traffic, on sewage, on air quality—but there needs to be a limit to how detailed this needs to be. Bike lanes are great, but so are apartment buildings.

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Environmentalists Get Bit By California’s Premier Environmental Law

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Quote of the Day: Photo ID Will Help Republicans Beat Hillary

by ShanonAkhtar Posted on April 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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From Wisconsin Rep. Glenn Grothman on how Republicans can win his state this November:

I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up. And now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.

Shhh! You’re not supposed to admit publicly that this is the point of photo ID laws. But Grothman is a freshman, so I guess he can be excused. He’ll learn.

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Quote of the Day: Photo ID Will Help Republicans Beat Hillary

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Brokers No Longer Allowed to Scam You on Your IRA Investments

by Lovie9666thwo Posted on April 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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After six years, a new rule requiring brokers to act in their clients’ best interests has finally gone into effect:

The fiduciary rule is aimed at curbing billions of dollars in fees paid annually by small savers who transfer money out of 401(k)s, which are required to operate in their best interests—and into individual retirement accounts, which aren’t currently bound by such protections. There, savers may be working with financial-product salespeople who earn more selling certain products and don’t have to put their clients’ interests before their own.

Administration officials intend it as a direct attack on what they consider “a business model that rests on bilking hard-working Americans out of their retirement money,” Jeff Zients, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters Tuesday.

….“Unless we see fundamental changes, this rule will remain unworkable, and we will consider every approach to address our concerns,” David Hirschmann, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s capital-markets division, said in a statement Tuesday. The chamber has said it was considering a lawsuit to block the regulation.

Unworkable! Sure, brokers have been following this rule for years with 401(k) plans, but extending that to IRAs will bring Wall Street to its knees. That’s despite a wide range of concessions from the administration after it received comments on the proposed rule:

Mr. Perez said, for example, that an employee of MetLife Inc. wouldn’t be obligated to advise clients about offerings from a competitor, like New York Life….To cut down on paperwork that industry officials said would be too burdensome, the new version of the rule only requires that firms sign one “best interest contract” with clients when they open an account.

….The latest rule also clarifies that brokers and others can continue offering a wide range of guidance without having to clear the “fiduciary” bar for “advice.” It specifies that investor education isn’t considered advice, allowing companies to continue providing general education on retirement savings. Also excluded from the advice category are general circulation newsletters, media talk shows and commentaries as well as general marketing materials.

Hmmm. “General education.” I have a feeling these are going to be boom times for general education. Stay tuned.

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Brokers No Longer Allowed to Scam You on Your IRA Investments

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White Teachers Think Pretty Poorly of Their Black Students

by NatalieHilton6 Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bob Somerby draws my attention to a new study about the effect of race on teacher evaluations of students. The authors took advantage of a large dataset that included evaluations of students from two teachers each. They then compared the teacher evaluations of each student based on differences in the teachers’ races.

The chart on the right tells the story. White students didn’t suffer from having a teacher of another race. Expectations of dropping out were the same and expectations of getting a college degree were actually higher. Hispanic students were modestly affected. Teachers of other races thought Hispanic students had a slightly higher chance of dropping out and the same chance of completing college.

But black students were enormously affected. Compared to black teachers, teachers of other races thought their black students had a far higher chance of dropping out and a far lower chance of completing college. Since the baseline expectation of dropping out was 31 percent for black students, a change of 12 percentage points represents a whopping 39 percent increase. Likewise, the baseline expectation of a college degree was 37 percent for black students, so a change of 9 percentage points represents 24 percent decrease.

The authors conclude with this:

The general finding of systematic biases in teachers’ expectations for student attainment indicates that the topic of teacher expectations is ripe for future research. Particularly policy relevant areas for future inquiry include how teachers form expectations, what types of interventions can eliminate biases from teacher expectations, and how teacher expectations affect the long-run student outcomes of ultimate import. To the extent that teacher expectations affect student outcomes, the results presented in the current study provide additional support for the hiring of a more diverse and representative teaching force, as nonwhite teachers are underrepresented in U.S. public schools.

Let’s ask all our presidential candidate what, if anything, they think we should do about this.

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White Teachers Think Pretty Poorly of Their Black Students

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Obamacare Notches Another Win. Are You Tired of Winning Yet?

by Maurici0519 Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’ve mentioned before that one of the reasons Obamacare signup rates are below projections is because employer coverage is above projections. Back in 2010, analysts assumed that employers would steadily drop health coverage and simply pay their employees to buy insurance on the exchanges. But that hasn’t happened—and that’s a good thing.

Now the New York Times has joined the party, so maybe everyone else will start to get this too:

The surprise turnaround adds to an emerging consensus about the contentious health law: It has not upturned the core of the country’s health insurance system, even while insuring millions of low-income people.

….About 155 million Americans have employer-based health insurance coverage in 2016, according to an analysis released by the Congressional Budget Office last month. The number will fall to 152 million people in 2019, the C.B.O. estimates, but will remain stable through 2026. Slightly more than half of people under 65 will be enrolled in employment-based coverage.

Employers seem to be staying the course even more strongly than they did before the law. The percentage of adults under 65 with employer-based insurance held firm for the last five years after steadily declining since 1999, according to an analysis of federal data released last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which closely tracks the health insurance market.

The CDC has been tracking health coverage for years, and their numbers show that private coverage (not including exchanges) has gone up since Obamacare went live. These numbers include both employer coverage and private coverage purchased off-exchange, but employer coverage is by far the biggest component and there’s no special reason to think that off-exchange individual coverage has increased much. This provides a very strong indication that the employer market has stayed healthy, and the CBO report confirms this.

If you want to know how Obamacare is doing, don’t look at Obamacare enrollments compared to early projections. Instead, look at the total uninsured rate compared to early projections. That’s the only number that provides a comprehensive look at all forms of health insurance and how they’ve done compared to predictions. When you do that, you’ll find that Obamacare is actually doing a little better than anyone thought it would.

To paraphrase a prominent politician, I wonder if Obamacare’s critics are tired of losing all the time? If so, come on over to the side of light and goodness. You’ll win so much you’ll get tired of winning.

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Obamacare Notches Another Win. Are You Tired of Winning Yet?

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Donald Trump Apparently Wants a Cold War With Mexico

by FaustoMacansh Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has finally explained how he would force Mexico to pay for a border wall, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Basically, the idea is to threaten Mexico with financial ruin unless they pay up:

Trump would also threaten to raise tariffs, cancel visas, and raise visa fees. But if Mexico writes us a big check, all the threats go away and we can be friends again.

Trump didn’t threaten to send troops over the border, but otherwise this is a very Roman Empire approach to foreign affairs. In that sense, it’s reminiscent of his threat to pull out troops from other countries unless they pony up big bags of tribute to pay for protection. Trump really does believe that the biggest, richest, most militarily dominant country in the history of the world is just a poor little waif being taken advantage of by everyone else.

Needless to say, anyone with a handful of working brain cells knows that Mexico would never pay this extortion money. Their voters wouldn’t put up with it any more than ours would. If Trump actually went through with this—which is questionable since it would end up in court on day 2—he’d create a permanent enemy on our Southern border. Just what we need. And Mexico would probably retaliate by encouraging even greater illegal immigration into the US.

What a fuckwit. I really don’t know what we did to deserve this.

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Donald Trump Apparently Wants a Cold War With Mexico

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It Sure Sounds Like Donald Trump Has Paid for an Abortion or Two in His Life

by DawnBradley74 Posted on April 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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I don’t usually have much use for Maureen Dowd, but credit where it’s due. Today she asked Donald Trump the question all of us have been dying to ask him:

In an MSNBC interview with Chris Matthews, the formerly pro-choice Trump somehow managed to end up to the right of the National Right to Life Committee when he said that for women, but not men, “there has to be some form of punishment” if a President Trump makes abortion illegal.

….Given his draconian comment, sending women back to back alleys, I had to ask: When he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan, was he ever involved with anyone who had an abortion?

“Such an interesting question,” he said. “So what’s your next question?”

I think we can take that as a yes. I wonder what his evangelical fans will think of this?

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It Sure Sounds Like Donald Trump Has Paid for an Abortion or Two in His Life

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