Tag Archives: aids

The Gender Pay Gap Is Still About 21 Cents Per Dollar

by ChassidyX94 Posted on April 12, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Today is Equal Pay Day, so let’s break down the numbers for the gender pay gap. According to an up-to-date study by Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, the current wage gap for annual earnings is 21 cents: On average, women earn 79 cents for every dollar a man earns.

So that’s the headline number. But what are the causes of the gap in men’s and women’s earnings? Blau and Kahn break it down into seven buckets:

You can look at this two ways. The first is to say that the pay gap due to discrimination (the most likely cause of the “unexplained” part of the chart above) is about 10 cents per dollar, since roughly 11 cents is explained by other factors, such as experience in the job, occupation, industry, etc.

The second way—which is my take—is that it’s true that some of the gap goes away when you account for the fact that women tend to work in different jobs than men and take more time off to have children. But that’s all part of the story. When you look at the whole picture, women are punished financially in three different ways: because “women’s jobs” have historically paid less than jobs dominated by men; because women are expected to take time off when they have children, which reduces their seniority; and because even when they’re in the same job with the same amount of experience, they get paid less than men. All of these things are part of the pay gap. Whether you call all three of them “discrimination” is more a matter of taste than anything else.

But however you choose to approach it, the gender pay gap still exists. It’s at least 10 cents per dollar, and more like 21 cents if you accept that most of the mitigating factors are gender-based as well.

Read the article: 

The Gender Pay Gap Is Still About 21 Cents Per Dollar

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Gender Pay Gap Is Still About 21 Cents Per Dollar

Paul Ryan Does Not Want to Be Your Next President

by SarahBaskervill Posted on April 12, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Paul Ryan will apparently be making a Shermanesque statement about an hour from now:

Ryan…has arranged a hastily called 3:15 p.m. press conference inside the Republican National Committee. Advisers say he will insist — in his clearest terms yet — to the GOP’s big donor and lobbyist class that he will not attempt to claim the nomination at the July convention in Cleveland.

“He’s going to rule himself out and put this to rest once and for all,” a Ryan aide said, requesting anonymity to discuss the planned speech.

Stay tuned. Presumably this is good news for Ted Cruz.

UPDATE: And the press conference is now over:

“Let me be clear,” Mr. Ryan said. “I do not want nor will I accept the nomination of our party.” He added that he had a message for convention delegates: “If no candidate has the majority on the first ballot, I believe you should only turn to a person who has participated in the primary. Count me out.”

That seems suitably blunt.

See original – 

Paul Ryan Does Not Want to Be Your Next President

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Paul Ryan Does Not Want to Be Your Next President

Ted Cruz Is Almost as Popular as Donald Trump

by RichardHxg Posted on April 12, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In case you haven’t been playing close attention, the Republican primary race has become quite the nail biter. Ted Cruz still has a lot of ground to make up, but as you can see in the Pollster chart below, over the last month he’s nearly caught up to Donald Trump in overall popularity. The Pollster chart also makes it clear why so many people are annoyed with John Kasich: he has no chance of winning, but he’s probably helping Trump stay alive. If he pulled out of the race, it’s likely that most of his followers would switch to Cruz, giving him a considerable poll lead over Trump, which in turn would help him win more primaries. Instead, Trump is hanging on for grim life.

FWIW, the same dynamic—sans Trump and sans a Kasich-esque spoiler—is visible on the Democratic side, where Bernie Sanders is now within a couple of points of Hillary Clinton in national polling. This is quite a primary cycle we’re having this year.

Original article – 

Ted Cruz Is Almost as Popular as Donald Trump

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ted Cruz Is Almost as Popular as Donald Trump

Donald Trump, Skinflint

by LydiaHeiman205 Posted on April 11, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

While I was busy over the weekend renovating the hub of my blogging empire, Donald Trump made his first-ever visit to the September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City. While there, he donated $100,000 to the museum:

Reporters who were invited late on Friday to join Mr. Trump for the museum visit, which was not on his schedule, were kept in a media van as he entered the museum. An aide said he would speak with reporters afterward, but Mr. Trump then decided against it. His aides sent out a photo of the Trumps inside the museum about 90 minutes later, along with a statement saying that the rebuilding of ground zero was “what ‘New York values’ are really about.”

The donation check was from Mr. Trump’s foundation, not from him personally. He had been approached over the years by people trying to raise money for the museum, but he never did, until Saturday.

Goodness. When did Trump become so media shy? Maybe it was because he knew the Washington Post was going to drop a story the next day about his repeated claim that he’s given over $100 million to charity in the past five years:

To back up that claim, Trump’s campaign compiled a list of his contributions—4,844 of them, filling 93 pages. But, in that massive list, one thing was missing. Not a single one of those donations was actually a personal gift of Trump’s own money.

Instead, according to a Washington Post analysis, many of the gifts that Trump cited to prove his generosity were free rounds of golf, given away by his courses for charity auctions and raffles.

…Many of the gifts on the list came from the charity that bears his name, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which didn’t receive a personal check from Trump from 2009 through 2014, according to the most recent public tax filings. Its work is largely funded by others, although Trump decides where the gifts go.

…The most expensive charitable contributions on Trump’s list, by contrast, dealt with transactions related to real estate.
For one, Trump counted $63.8 million of unspecified “conservation easements.”…In California, for example, Trump agreed to an easement that prevented him from building homes on a plot of land near a golf course.

Generally speaking, I’m not keen on judging politicians by how much of their income they devote to charity. But Trump is in a different class. He claims to be worth $10 billion, and he claims to be an extremely generous guy. In fact, he’s a skinflint. His company’s CFO—who seems to double as Trump’s personal financial advisor—says that Trump really has made a lot of personal charitable contributions, but “we want to keep them quiet. He doesn’t want other charities to see it. Then it becomes like a feeding frenzy.”

Uh huh. I will leave the credibility of that statement as an exercise for the reader. Speaking for myself, I think it’s no coincidence that Trump’s two primary residences are near the Brooklyn Bridge and the Florida swamps.

Link – 

Donald Trump, Skinflint

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump, Skinflint

Objectivity in Journalism Has Some Serious Pitfalls

by ReneAyk4899 Posted on April 11, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I’ve been a little chart heavy this morning, and now I’ve got one more. This comes from a paper written a few months ago by Jesse Shapiro of Brown University, and it presents a model of how journalism can fail when special interests are involved. The model itself is pretty simple: if journalists present both sides of an argument at face value, then special interests are highly motivated to invent plausible-sounding evidence for their side of the argument—regardless of whether it’s anywhere close to true. As long as they get quoted, the public will be suitably confused even if the journalists themselves know that it’s mostly hogwash.

No surprise there. But this works only if journalists abide by a convention which demands that both sides are treated as equally credible. What happens if that’s not true? The chart below tells an interesting story on climate change:

In the United States, journalists tend to simply present both sides of an argument without taking sides. In other countries, where that norm is less strict, reporters often tell their readers which side has the better argument. When that happens, the public is more likely to believe in climate change.

Now, there are obviously pitfalls to reporters deciding which side has the better argument. You can end up being better informed by this, or you can end up like Fox News. Still, it’s an interesting comment on the American style of journalism.

Taken from: 

Objectivity in Journalism Has Some Serious Pitfalls

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Objectivity in Journalism Has Some Serious Pitfalls

Scientists Undervalue Meticulousness By a Lot

by AngelaJNTN Posted on April 11, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

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.

Original article: 

Scientists Undervalue Meticulousness By a Lot

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Scientists Undervalue Meticulousness By a Lot

Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)

by BrockBroadbent9 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I’m not sure what brought this on—oh, who am I kidding? I know exactly what brought this on. Anyway, I was thinking about recent public panics and started listing a few of them in my mind. This is just off the top of my head:

Crack babies
Super predators
Lehmann/AIG/Countrywide etc.
Mad cow
Deepstar Horizon
Daycare child molesters
Ebola
ISIS/Syrian refugees

I’m not saying that none of these were justified. Big oil spills are no joke. Ebola was certainly a big deal in Africa. The financial collapse of 2008 wasn’t mere panic.

And yet, generally speaking it seems as if public panics are either completely unjustified or else wildly overwrought. Am I missing any recent examples where there was a huge panic and it turned out to be wholly justified? HIV would have been justified in the early 80s, but of course we famously didn’t panic over that—other than to worry about getting AIDS from toilet seats. Help me out here, hive mind.

POSTSCRIPT: I should mention that despite my choice of illustration, I’ve never really blamed anyone for the tulip panic. Personally, I think tulips are worth going crazy over.

Source – 

Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)

Posted in alternative energy, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)

Southern White Women Are Apparently in Pretty Bad Shape These Days

by DanialLeverett Posted on January 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Since I happened to mention the famous Case/Deaton mortality study in the previous post, here’s the latest from Andrew Gelman. As you may recall, Case and Deaton concluded that mortality among middle-aged whites from suicide, alcohol, and drug poisoning had skyrocketed over the past two decades. This set pundits afire with theories about what was going on, but Gelman has done some age adjustment to the cohorts that Case and Deaton used, and then broken up the data by gender, and then by geographic area. Here’s what he gets:

After 2005, there’s no effect on middle-aged men at all. It’s all women. And if you break it down further, nearly the entire effect is concentrated among women in the South. But why? Gelman punts:

I don’t have any explanations for this. As I told a reporter the other day, I believe in the division of labor: I try to figure out what’s happening, and I’ll let other people explain why.

I think that’s wise. For one thing, if you slice the data in a different way, you might get a different result. What’s more, as I’ve mentioned several times, the increased mortality affects the young too, not just the middle aged. So if you spun some brilliant theories about why middle-aged whites are so damn depressed these days, you might want to rethink things. Your new theory needs to explain why the young and the middle-aged are dying in greater numbers, and you also need to explain why it’s affecting primarily women in the South. Good luck.

Visit site:  

Southern White Women Are Apparently in Pretty Bad Shape These Days

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Southern White Women Are Apparently in Pretty Bad Shape These Days

George Washington’s Cakemaker Gets the Boot

by TeddyChinn5 Posted on January 18, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

From the New York Times:

Scholastic Publishing said on Sunday that it would halt distribution of a children’s picture book about George Washington and his enslaved household cook amid an outcry over its visual depiction of the former president’s slaves as happy, smiling workers.

….“We do not believe this title meets the standards of appropriate presentation of information to younger children, despite the positive intentions and beliefs of the author, editor and illustrator,” it said in a statement. While defending the team that produced the book, the publisher said that without more historical background, “the book may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves and therefore should be withdrawn.”

I find this whole episode pretty astonishing. How did Scholastic not realize that a whole lot of people were going to find this inappropriate and offensive? It took me about two seconds, and I’m not notably steeped in sensitivity toward racial portrayals.

More generally, is it ever appropriate to depict American slaves in children’s books like this? I doubt it. Presenting the reality of slavery is a bit much for 7-year-olds. But sanding down the reality is wrong too. All it does is provide a vague misconception that has to be unlearned later. I’m not really sure there’s a middle ground that works well for very young readers.

Maybe some of the parents and schoolteachers reading this will have other opinions. Is there any reasonable way to present slavery in books for young children? And what’s the age when you can start to present something at least modestly realistic? Comments are open.

See original:

George Washington’s Cakemaker Gets the Boot

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on George Washington’s Cakemaker Gets the Boot

A Second Look at BernieCare

by ReganBobb049309 Posted on January 18, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Last night I wrote that Bernie Sanders’ universal health care plan was “pretty good.” Over at Vox, Ezra Klein says it’s vague and unrealistic. Who’s right?

Both of us, I’d say. The Sanders plan is mostly a sketch of how he’d fund universal health care, and at that level I’d say it was pretty good if you evaluate it as a campaign document rather than a Brookings white paper. His numbers mostly added up, and from my point of view, his funding sources were roughly appropriate. Half or more of the funding comes from the middle class, with the rest coming from the rich. I’m OK with that.

But how about the actual mechanics of providing health care? Klein is pretty scathing about Sanders’ promise that his plan will cover everything with no copays or deductibles:

The implication to most people, I think, is that claim denials will be a thing of the past….What makes that so irresponsible is that it stands in flagrant contradiction to the way single-payer plans actually work….The real way single-payer systems save money isn’t through cutting administrative costs. It’s through cutting reimbursements to doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and device companies.

….But to get those savings, the government needs to be willing to say no when doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and device companies refuse to meet their prices, and that means the government needs to be willing to say no to people who want those treatments. If the government can’t do that — if Sanders is going to stick to the spirit of “no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges” — then it won’t be able to control costs.

The issue of how often the government says no leads to all sorts of other key questions — questions Sanders is silent on. For instance, who decides when the government says no? Will there be a cost-effectiveness council, like Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence? Or will the government basically have to cover every treatment that can be proven beneficial, as is true for Medicare now? What will the appeals process be like?

This might sound technical, but it’s absolutely critical.

Klein is right that the mechanics of the plan are critical, and I probably should have done more than shrug that off as something that we’d get to later. Still, I think his criticism goes way too far. This is a campaign document. It’s obviously aspirational, and asking a presidential candidate to go into deep detail about the drawbacks of his policy is a little much. I can’t recall ever seeing that in my life. In a campaign, you sell the high points and then let critics take their shots.

That’s not to say that Sanders couldn’t have done more than he did. He could have and probably should have. In particular, he should have provided at least an outline of how his plan would work: who it covers, who employs doctors, what drives the cost savings, and so forth.

But my take is that Sanders was trying to accomplish something specific: he wanted to show that universal health care was affordable, and he wanted to stake out a position that Democrats should at least be dedicated to the idea of universal health care. I’d say he accomplished that in credible style. It’s fine to hold Sanders to a high standard, but it’s unfair to hold him to an Olympian standard that no presidential candidate in history has ever met. We health care wonks may be disappointed not to have more to chew on, but that’s life. We’ll get it eventually.

More:

A Second Look at BernieCare

Posted in Brita, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Second Look at BernieCare