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Sorry, Hillary Clinton, Nevada Is Actually a Diverse State

by TheoHowes665163 Posted on February 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Stinging from its lopsided defeat in New Hampshire and bracing for a tougher-than-expected primary fight against Bernie Sanders, the Hillary Clinton campaign has sought to lower expectations for the next contest, this Saturday’s Nevada caucuses. To do so, the campaign has been subtly pushing a curious line: Don’t read too much into the results of the Nevada caucuses because the state is disproportionately white, just like New Hampshire and Iowa.

As I explained last week, Nevada should be a firewall state for Clinton, and that’s how the Clinton campaign long painted it. But last Tuesday, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tried to dash those impressions during an appearance on MSNBC. As recounted by BuzzFeed‘s Ruby Cramer, Fallon tried to suggest that Sanders had an edge in the caucuses thanks to the makeup of the state.

“There’s an important Hispanic element to the Democratic caucus in Nevada,” Fallon said. “But it’s still a state that is 80 percent white voters. You have a caucus-style format, and he’ll have the momentum coming out of New Hampshire presumably, so there’s a lot of reasons he should do well.”

Campaign manager Robby Mook, who ran Clinton’s 2008 campaign in the state, made a similar argument the next day when talking with congressional Democrats:

Is Nevada as lacking in diversity as Iowa and New Hampshire? Not even close. It’s actually one of the more diverse states in the country. The population is 9 percent African American, just a few points below the national average of 13 percent. It’s also 9 percent Asian American or Pacific Islander, above the national 5.6 percent average. And Nevada boasts a far larger Latino population than the country writ large: 27.8 percent, versus 17.4 percent nationally.

Where does the Clinton campaign come up with the idea that Nevada is so overwhelming white? It all comes down to the difficult terminology of race and ethnicity. Technically, the state is 76 percent white, but that’s because most people who identify as Latino or Hispanic are included in that category. Separate them out, and the state is just 51.5 percent non-Hispanic white.

Compare that to Iowa and New Hampshire, which are, respectively, 87 percent and 91 percent non-Hispanic white.

It’s possible that Nevada’s minority populations won’t show up to caucus in large numbers. But that doesn’t seem too likely, at least based on the 2008 caucuses, when 35 percent of caucus voters were racial or ethnic minorities, according to exit polls. The state’s minority population has only grown since 2008, so there’s little reason to expect the caucus-going population to look that much whiter than in 2008.

With Sanders having captured the momentum after his big New Hampshire win, Clinton really may have a more difficult time in Nevada than she anticipated. But she can’t blame it on demographics.

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Sorry, Hillary Clinton, Nevada Is Actually a Diverse State

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Almonds Are Getting Cheaper, But Here’s the Catch

by SalvadoJ36 Posted on January 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ye almond-loving hipsters, rejoice! The revered—and lately quite expensive—nut is likely to get cheaper soon. The wholesale price for almonds—the one paid by supermarkets to stock their bulk bins, or by processors to make their trail mixes—has fallen from a high of $4.70 last August down to $2.60, reports the Financial Times.

And the reason has nothing to do with a viral screed against almond milk penned by a certain wag in 2014. Rather, it’s the same set of forces that triggered California’s massive almond boom in the first place: the vagaries of global demand.

The state’s growers, who churn out 99 percent of almonds grown in the United States, have rapidly expanded their almond groves over the past decade and a half.

But that expansion didn’t happen just to satisfy your trendy almond-milk latte habit. California farmers are almond growers to the world: They supply about 80 percent of the almonds consumed globally, and export demand has risen steadily for most of the past 15 years. About 70 percent of California’s almonds are exported. According to the Almond Board of California, the great bulk of this massive outflow goes to Asia, the destination of 44 percent of California’s almond exports, and Western Europe, which gets about 40 percent.

As a result of that booming global demand, the price farmers get for almonds has risen dramatically despite the big acreage expansion.

But in recent months, the global appetite for almonds has plunged. Here’s the Financial Times:

Last year’s surge in prices depressed demand, and buyers in China, the Middle East and India, who have led consumption over the past three to four years, have disappeared. Trading has ground to a halt as prices continue to decline and the number of rejected containers by buyers refusing to honor contracts has jumped.

“It’s a bloodbath,” one California-based nut trader told the Financial Times. What happened was that California’s multiyear drought took a bite out of crop yields, making almonds more scarce and pushing up their price. And then, in 2014, the US dollar began to rise in value against major Asian currencies and the euro, making US exports, including almonds, even more expensive in those regions.

To make matters worse, the European economy stagnated, and China—the globe’s biggest almond importer—saw its economic growth slow and its stock market tumble. Snack makers in Asia and Europe began to balk at pricey almonds, putting fewer in nut mixes and reducing the portion size of almond offerings, the FT reports. In 2015, almond exports to Asia and Western Europe fell 12 percent and 7 percent, respectively, according to the Almond Board of California.

And now, with a historic El Niño triggering a wet and snowy winter in California, the market expects a big harvest in 2016. Econ 101 tells us that abundant supply and weak demand means lower prices going forward. That likely means you’ll soon be getting at least a slight break on that bag of salty roasted almonds you keep at your desk. But what does it mean for California’s almond boom?

In previous posts, I’ve questioned whether the state has the water resources—or access to sufficient bee hives for pollination—to continue devoting ever more land to the crunchy treat. Unlike, say, vegetables or cotton, which can be fallowed during dry years, planting an almond grove requires farmers to commit to finding a steady water source for about 20 years, or risk losing a very expensive investment. (According to the Almond Board of California, establishing an almond grove—paying for land, saplings, an irrigation system, etc.—costs about $8,700 per acre, or about $2.6 million for a new 300-acre grove.)

During the drought, water from California’s massive irrigation projects, which deliver melted Sierra Nevada snow to the state’s farms, was largely cut off. Farmers responded by fallowing a portion of annual crops like cotton and vegetables and irrigating the rest—including their ever-expanding almond groves—with water drawn from finite underground aquifers. While the current El Niño might spell the end of a drought that has haunted California since 2012, California agriculture has gotten so ravenous for water that aquifers in its largest (and most almond-centered) growing region, the Central Valley, have been declining steadily for decades.

For my deep dive into the almond boom last year, I asked David Doll, an orchard adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension, how long growers could keep devoting ever more land to almonds despite the long-term water crunch. He told me it would only stop “when the crop stops making money.”

I checked back in with him to see what he thought about the current price drop. He said under normal conditions, when water is flowing from the state’s irrigation projects, the break-even farmer price for almonds is about $1.45 per pound—at that price, farmers neither lose nor make money. But when water is scarce, farmers face higher irrigation costs, and the break-even price rises to somewhere between $2.60 and $2.85—roughly where prices are now. So even with the current price drop, most almond growers are breaking even. But if we get another wet winter this year, water prices could drop by 2017 and almond farmers will be right back to profitability.

If the Asian and European appetite for almonds returns to normal growth rates, Doll added, the almond expansion will likely continue unabated, which will in turn limit large upward price swings as supply rises to meet demand. The limiting factor, of course, is water. Back in 2014, California shook off a history of Wild West aquifer stewardship and passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires that by 2025, the state’s aquifers can’t be drawn down faster than they’re recharged—a dramatic reversal of the status quo. “From my observations, there are many almond operations that are not planning for this policy,” Doll said, meaning they’re not prepared for a future when aquifers can’t be tapped at will.

But 2025 is nearly a decade away. Enjoy those relatively inexpensive almonds, you ignorant hipsters.

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Almonds Are Getting Cheaper, But Here’s the Catch

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It’s a Coder! It’s a Teacher! It’s a Kick-Ass Graphic Novelist!

by CliftonBisdee Posted on September 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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One sunny morning after the kids had split for the summer, I sat down with Gene Luen Yang in an iMac-filled classroom at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California, where he was training his replacement after 17 years as a computer science teacher. I was kind of surprised he had a day job. In 2006, Yang’s American Born Chinese became the first graphic novel ever named a National Book Award finalist—it also won an Eisner (the Oscar of comics) and the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award, bestowed by the American Library Association on the best book for teens “based entirely on literary merit.”

He repeated the feat in 2013 after landing on the bestseller lists for a matched pair called Boxers & Saints—character-driven takes on the Boxer Rebellion from opposing perspectives. Yang kept teaching, he told me, because (a) he likes kids—and has four of his own to support, and (b) “I was really worried that sitting at home by myself in front of a computer was going to make me crazy.” Among his other notable extracurriculars are Prime Baby (a hilarious serial comic for the New York Times Magazine) and 2014’s The Shadow Hero, wherein Yang and illustrator Sonny Liew revive the Green Turtle, a 1940s character they believe may have been the first Asian American superhero. Yang also writes the Avatar: The Last Airbender comic book series and recently signed with DC Comics to author the new iteration of Superman.

The latter, as it happens, was Yang’s first comic book—purchased by his mom when he was in fifth grade. (“It was a trustworthy brand,” he explains.) Who’d have guessed that the Man of Steel’s fate would one day lie in the hands of a son of Chinese immigrants? Certainly not Yang, who (like his protagonist in American Born Chinese) struggled with his ethnicity after moving to a white suburb going into first grade. He endured teasing in elementary school, and later at his middle school, where a gang of kids (“the stoners”) would yell racist taunts in the hallways. “I began to wonder if this group was voicing things that everybody thought, but they were the only ones brave enough to say it,” Yang told me. “That’s when I started to feel uncomfortable hanging out with non-Asian friends.”

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It’s a Coder! It’s a Teacher! It’s a Kick-Ass Graphic Novelist!

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Jeb Bush Gives Away the Game on "Anchor Babies"

by JennyLumpkins Posted on August 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush wants us all to chill out about his use of the term “anchor babies”:

What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed. Frankly it’s more related to Asian people coming into our country, having children, and….taking advantage of a noble concept, which is birthright citizenship.

Um….no. Bush initially used the term in a radio interview with Bill Bennett. The conversation was entirely about Donald Trump’s immigration plan, securing our southern border, and dealing with our third-largest trading partner. In other words, it was all about Mexico. Bush was very definitely not talking about Asians.

And if he was, there’s already a perfectly good term to use: birth tourism. It’s well known, well documented, and clearly a growing phenomenon. There’s no need to describe it using a term that many people find offensive, since there’s already one available.

Basically, Bush is tap dancing here. But he’s also doing us a favor. In my tedious discussion of “anchor babies” on Saturday, I concluded that its offensiveness depended on whether it was an actual problem in the first place. Bush is pretty much conceding that it’s not—at least as it refers to illegal immigration from Mexico. But if it’s rare or nonexistent, then you’re imputing offensive behavior to immigrant mothers for something they don’t do. And that does indeed make it offensive.

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Jeb Bush Gives Away the Game on "Anchor Babies"

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This Chart Shows the Staggering Human Cost of Staging a World Cup in Qatar

by QuyenJjhbolkh Posted on May 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice dropped the hammer on FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, indicting nine senior FIFA officials and five sports marketing execs on charges of corruption, wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering.

Allegations of bribery have long plagued FIFA, especially since its controversial decision to grant Qatar the 2022 World Cup. But much worse is the plight of South Asian migrant workers brought in to build the stadium infrastructure there: Since 2010, more than 1,200 migrant workers have died in Qatar under hazardous working conditions, and a 2013 Guardian investigation found that at least 4,000 total are projected to die before the 2022 World Cup even starts. And as we reported yesterday, Nepalese workers weren’t even allowed to return home after the country’s recent devastating earthquake.

Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post put that toll in perspective in a striking infographic. He compared the number of workers who died in the run-up to several Olympics and World Cups with the number of those who have died in Qatar so far. It’s horrifying:

Christopher Ingraham/Washington Post

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This Chart Shows the Staggering Human Cost of Staging a World Cup in Qatar

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People of color suffer through extra long commutes

by PorfiriHaddon Posted on May 18, 2015

People of color suffer through extra long commutes

By on 18 May 2015commentsShare

Now for the next injustice: If you live in Minneapolis or St. Paul and you’re not white, it takes longer for you to get to work. A new study put together by four Minnesota nonprofits found a pretty astonishing “transit time penalty”: Asian Americans, African Americans, and Latinos living in the Twin Cities spend anywhere from 11 to 46 more hours a year commuting on public transit than whites do.

And if you compare those numbers to white drivers, nonwhite transit riders are spending way more time commuting. Here’s the breakdown, from the study:

Translation: Black and Asian transit users lose the equivalent of 3.5 weeks of work each year because of their long commute-times alone. For Latino transit users, it is nearly 4.5 weeks.

Combine that with the fact that significantly more nonwhites are commuting via public transit – in Minnesota and across the country — and you’ll see that this is just stitched through with all kinds of messed up urban policies and socioeconomic injustices.

In Minnesota, this study finds, 8 percent of Latinos, 10 percent of African Americans, and 29 percent of Native Americans commute to work on public transit, versus just 5 percent of whites and Asian Americans. But thanks in large part to ongoing patterns of development and displacement, low-income communities of color experience not just longer commute times than whites, but shittier service, too:

Infrequent service, indirect routes, delays, overcrowded vehicles, and insufficient shelter at bus stops contribute to the transit time penalty both quantitatively (adding minutes to a trip) and qualitatively (increasing the stress of the experience).

And thanks to a national car-loving ethos that puts roads and freeways above buses and trains, public transportation sucks – across the board! Nationwide, public transit commutes take twice as long as car commutes.

That’s not the only reason just 5.2 percent of U.S. commuters take public transit to work and more than 75 percent drive alone in their cars. But still. As long as there’s a dearth of quick and reliable transit options, it’s going to continue to encourage car ownership. This study points out, for instance, that just 15 percent of jobs in the Twin Cities region have good public transit connections, “resulting in working families in the Twin Cities spending more on transportation than on housing.”

And that is a huge deal when it comes to racial and economic equity. Research shows that access to adequate transportation has an enormous impact on the odds of escaping poverty. Makes sense: an unreliable bus takes a huge toll on your chances of keeping a job. But as one Harvard study suggests, it’s actually commute length that has the biggest impact – beyond crime rates, test scores, or the percentage of two-parent families in a community. According to an article on the study and its implications in the New York Times, “The longer an average commute in a given county, the worse the chances of low-income families there moving up the ladder.”

So there’s another very good reason to adequately fund public transit, America: Not only will it help the planet, it will seriously improve the lives of lots and lots of low-income Americans.

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Twin Cities Commute Times Show Sizable Racial Gap

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You Won’t Find Many White Dudes at This Tech Startup Competition

by BHWJeannabk Posted on May 8, 2015

Mother Jones

The tech startup world is notorious for its lack of women and non-Asian minorities, as anyone who has attended the TechCrunch Disrupt pitch-a-thon (or seen Mike Judge’s spoof of it) can attest. But it’s not like the best concepts are always invented by tech bros.

There are plenty of great startups led by women, blacks, and Latinos—they just don’t get as much attention from investors and the press, diversity advocates say. To prove it, on Wednesday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. held his own San Francisco tech conference, PUSHTech 2020, in which none of the 10 startups competing for a $10,000 prize was led by a white guy.

“This gonna be real hard to man-in-the-middle this device,” proclaimed contestant Marcus Eagan, cofounder of Nodal Industries, referring to a common hacker exploit. A panel of judges from Cisco Ventures, Google for Entrepreneurs, Intel Capital, and other VC firms listened intently as he flipped through slides detailing his invention: a secure way to connect home computers with corporate networks.

Eagan, a 25-year-old black dude with wireless glasses and a fanny pack, came up with his idea after consulting for Target in the wake of a $160 million data breach. “Target wishes they were using Nodal,” said Eagan, who says he’s already sold versions to employees of the US Army Cyber Brigade, HP, and IBM. “The home network poses the greatest threat to the corporate network in 2015. Everybody works from home—or they don’t have a job.”

Few of the contenders pitched products aimed exclusively at minority groups—though several put a more inclusive flavor in the mix. Take the black-owned startup Oneva, an online referral site for background-checked nannies and babysitters. For her presentation, CEO Anita Darden Gardyne used a photo of Claire Huxtable from The Cosby Show as an example of a busy professional mom and a photo of Alice, the white nanny from The Brady Bunch, as a caregiver; the Oakland-based company’s other marketing materials use a similar approach. “That’s the world in which we live,” Gardyne told me. “So for me, those images just came naturally.”

The 10 contestants were chosen from a pool of 80 applicants by several groups that incubate diverse tech talent. Many minority-led startups have the requisite business savvy and tech chops but lack the angel-investor connections young companies need to get off the ground, says Wayne Sutton, the co-founder of BuildUp, which promotes “underrepresented entrepreneurs.” By bringing these businesses into the fold, he hopes to sustain and expand upon Silicon Valley’s culture of innovation. “Why do we keep seeing chat apps or photo share apps or emoji apps? Because the people working on those don’t have the same problems,” he told me. “That’s why we need funding for the people who solve problems and come from different backgrounds.”

Illustrating Sutton’s case for diversity was the competition’s winner: eHarvestHub, a website that uses sophisticated product tracking technology to help small farmers sell directly to large grocers and other retail outlets without a middlemen. Founder Alvaro Ramirez grew up in Nicaragua, where his father lost his small coffee farm to larger competitors. “It was like, nobody helps the little guy,” he says. eHarvestHub is already working with eight small farms, including the Bay Area’s well-known Frog Hollow Farm, and projects $200 million in revenue within five years.

I ran into Ramirez at the end of the conference during a drinks-and-soul-food reception at Yelp headquarters. We were standing next to a Sony PlayStation and several large bouncy balls covered in crocheted yarn. He was excited by all the money and advice that seemed to be pouring in—and just to be in the digs of such a well-known tech company. “This is what you know your future needs to look like,” he said. “So it’s cool to come out here and experience that.”

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Obama’s trade agenda is a disaster for the environment, greens warn

by Earnest54I Posted on January 23, 2015

Obama’s trade agenda is a disaster for the environment, greens warn

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In a State of the Union address that hit most of the right notes on the environment and other progressive issues, Obama pushed one policy that has green groups up in arms: fast-tracking of trade deals. In a letter sent this week to every member of Congress, environmental advocates warned that two particularly far-reaching deals that are in the works could “significantly weaken public health and environmental protections.” The letter was signed by nearly 50 groups.

They warned that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a deal with Asian and Pacific nations, not including China, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a deal with Europe, contain “rules that would grant foreign corporations the right to sue governments, in private tribunals, over environmental, public health, and other laws and policies that corporations allege reduce the value of their investment.” These agreements also contain “rules that would require the United States Department of Energy to automatically approve exports of liquefied natural gas to countries in the pacts with no analysis to determine whether exporting natural gas is in the public interest.”

That all sounds pretty bad. Obama, though, presented things in a different light in the State of the Union. He claimed that his trade policy will “level the playing field” for American workers as Asian economies grow. “I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free but are also fair,” he said. Labor groups disagree with about “leveling the playing field”; they say the deals might generate more income for American companies, but would do little to protect American workers’ jobs.

Negotiations on both deals have been going on for years, more or less in secret. Advocates and even members of Congress still don’t know exactly what’s in them. As details leak out, partisans are finding themselves with odd bedfellows. In a twist on the usual, mainline Republicans are on board with this Obama initiative. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pledged to push for the fast-track authority the president wants, which would prevent Congress from amending any trade deal he presents — legislators would simply vote “yes” or “no.” Opposing Obama and McConnell are many Democrats, environmentalists, unions, civil libertarians, and a handful Tea Party Republicans who don’t want to give Obama any more power.

But, as Carter Dougherty reports at Bloomberg, the administration is successfully rallying the business lobby to get behind the deals — the same lobby that, 20 years ago, supplied the push needed to make NAFTA a thing. Caterpillar, of bulldozer fame, got its employees to write 17,500 letters to members of Congress supporting fast track. IBM has executives from all 50 states inviting members of Congress to tour plants that produce products that could be sold abroad.

For awhile, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was standing in the way of fast-track authority going anywhere. But Republicans control the Senate now, and enough of them seem inclined to follow the lead of McConnell and the business lobby. “I’ve got a lot of members who believe that international trade agreements are a winner for America,” McConnell said after the midterms. “And the president and I discussed that right before I came over here, and I think he’s interested in moving forward. I said, ‘Send us trade agreements. We’re anxious to take a look at them.’”

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) plans to introduce some legislation to give the president expanded trade powers next week. So, unless environmental groups and their motley assortment of allies can raise a loud enough alarm, the TPP — the president’s top trade priority — might get pushed through this year.

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China Is Building a New Silk Road to Europe, And It’s Leaving America Behind

by CarmeloUBYX Posted on December 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th.

Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain.

You may not have the faintest idea where Yiwu is, but businessmen plying their trades across Eurasia, especially from the Arab world, are already hooked on the city “where amazing happens!” We’re talking about the largest wholesale center for small-sized consumer goods—from clothes to toys—possibly anywhere on Earth.

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China Is Building a New Silk Road to Europe, And It’s Leaving America Behind

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Chart of the Day: Oil Prices Are Plunging Thanks to OPEC

by MosesPolley Posted on November 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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OPEC finished up its winter meeting yesterday and decided not to cut oil production. This came as a surprise to those who still think of OPEC as the maniacal oil hawks who roiled global petroleum markets in the 70s, but less so to those who know that cartels are notoriously difficult to hold together—especially when it’s a leaky cartel that’s missing some key producers. In any case, OPEC members couldn’t agree on just who would pay the price of cutting production, and the Saudis, for reasons still unclear, were unwilling to shoulder the burden themselves this time around. So OPEC oil production will remain unchanged.

The result? After six months of declining oil prices, we suddenly got plunging oil prices. Why? Not so much because of the shale oil revolution in the US. For all the attention it gets, fracking has increased global oil production by only a few percent and would normally have only a moderate effect on prices. Unfortunately, these aren’t normal times: in addition to a small increase in the oil supply, the global economic slowdown has depressed demand. That’s a bigger factor than fracking, and with European and Asian economies looking increasingly fragile, not one that seems likely to be corrected anytime soon.

How low will oil go? No one knows. When will it turn up again? Probably not until the global economy starts to grow at a decent pace. And no one knows when that will happen either.

For more, check out Brad Plumer, who has a much more detailed explanation of the both the politics and the economics of the oil scene here.

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Chart of the Day: Oil Prices Are Plunging Thanks to OPEC

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