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Griping About NBC’s Coverage of the Olympics Is a White-Collar Privilege

by ClarissaBlackman Posted on August 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Let’s get back to the Olympics. In particular, the seemingly endless griping about NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. I’m tired of it.

Why? Because it emanates from a place of—what? White-collar privilege? Creative-class privilege? Or maybe just plain old class privilege. Basically, it comes from people who assume that we all have jobs that allow us to keep a TV on in the background all the time. And for people like that, it makes sense to want the Olympics live and unedited.

But most people don’t have jobs like that. They get up, they go to work, they come home, and the only chance they have to watch the Olympics starts around 6 or 7 at night. So what do they want? Whatever random stuff happens to be live at the time? Of course not. They want to see all the stuff that’s happened throughout the day.

And no, they’re not equally fascinated by any old sport, just for the sheer thrill of watching the best of the best compete against each other. Nor are they devotees of the hammer throw or epee—the more obscure the better for the hipsters of Olympic viewing. They only watch this stuff every four years or so, and they mostly want to see swimming and gymnastics and track. They don’t know any of the athletes, so they like the little mini-docs that get them up to speed on who they are and what they’ve been through—even if those segments do promote gauzy narratives aimed mostly at women. And they’re Americans, so they mostly like to see events where Americans are favored.

Does that make them a bunch of rubes? I don’t think so, though your mileage may vary. They’re just ordinary people. And they’re the ones that NBC televises the games for. Not for the one or two million of you who swear you want the games live so you can watch the hammer throw at 10 in the morning.

In other words, give it a rest. We all know how smart and sophisticated you are. We all know you have nice desk jobs where no one minds if you keep a streaming feed going all day long in a corner of your computer display. We all know you’re a big, big fan of the hammer throw.

That’s all fine. But keep it to yourself. Most of the country just doesn’t have the opportunity to follow your lead. They’ve got jobs, dinners to make, and kids to put to bed. Give them a break.

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Griping About NBC’s Coverage of the Olympics Is a White-Collar Privilege

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Donald Trump Reveals His Economic Plan for the Really Rich

by RitaCameron Posted on August 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump just finished reading his big economic policy speech from a teleprompter. He’s really bad at reading from a teleprompter, looking alternately bored and outraged. Here are the pieces that caught my eye:

Huge tax cut for the rich.
But no spending cuts that he’s willing to admit to.
End of estate taxes.
Cut corporate tax rate to 15 percent.
Allow corporations to repatriate foreign earnings at a special 10 percent rate.
Declare China a currency manipulator, even though their currency is currently overvalued, not undervalued. A market rate for the renminbi would make Chinese imports even cheaper.
Slash regulations on corporations.
Pretend global warming doesn’t exist.
Ban all new financial regulation.
Repeal Obamacare.
Implement a childcare tax deduction instead of a tax credit.
He will work with Ivanka on a childcare plan. Because, I guess, Ivanka has kids, so she’s an expert on the problems that low-income workers have with childcare.

This is not exhaustive, and most of the speech was just the usual tired Republican orthodoxy. Mitt Romney could have given 90 percent of it. There was also a lot of random guff about how disastrous the economy is; how the unemployment rate is a hoax; and how American energy, planes, cars, steel, and so forth will employ way more American workers once Trump becomes president.

You bet. As near as I can tell, literally every single one of his proposals above would benefit the rich and do virtually nothing for the working and middle classes. But he sure knows how to put a populist spin on giveaways to the rich, doesn’t he?

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Donald Trump Reveals His Economic Plan for the Really Rich

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Republicans Talk a Better Game on the Economy Than Democrats

by ElisabethFulker Posted on July 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over the weekend Brad DeLong wrote a post about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and how his disastrous tax cuts have decimated the state’s economy. It prompted several of the usual comments, and DeLong highlights this one in particular:

The process Brownback has put the state on isn’t something he regrets. And obviously over the next several years, Kansas will recover in that it won’t get worse and will have growth that more or less tracks national growth. And at that point the state will declare Brownback’s policies to be a “success.”

This reminds me of something I’ve meant to point out for a while: economies always recover eventually.1 Conservatives take advantage of this fact by loudly and clearly insisting that their proposed tax cuts will supercharge economic growth. They know that eventually there will be growth, and when it happens they can then loudly and clearly insist that their tax cuts were responsible. Since they’ve been loudly and clearly saying this all along, ordinary citizens conclude that they’re right.

Democrats don’t really do this. When Barack Obama put together his various economic initiatives in 2009, for example, he was pretty circumspect about what they’d accomplish. Ditto for Bill Clinton in 1993. When they ran for reelection, both of them touted their economic achievements, but only in fairly broad terms. Obama didn’t insist that his stimulus bill was a magic bullet and Clinton didn’t claim that tax hikes and deficit reductions were always and everywhere the key to economic growth. Because of this, ordinary citizens never strongly associated the policies of either man with economic growth.2

Why is this? Stimulus programs and deficit reductions have about as much to do with economic growth as tax cuts: some, but not a lot. And none of them can truthfully claim to be the secret sauce for all economic woes at all times.

But that doesn’t bother Republicans. They’ve been focused like a laser beam on tax cuts as economic miracle workers for more than 30 years now. The fact that virtually no evidence supports this claim doesn’t matter. Democrats, conversely, can’t quite bring themselves to make the same unequivocal claim. Are they too embarrassed to just flatly lie about it? Too disorganized to agree on any one thing? Too muddled to make their points loudly and clearly? It is a mystery.

1Except maybe for Greece. We’ll see.

2Until much later, that is. Bill Clinton is now generally associated with the strong economy of the 90s, but it took a decade of weak economic growth to make him look so good.

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Republicans Talk a Better Game on the Economy Than Democrats

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Nobody knows if climate change sunk these islands or not

by WillisBrenner1 Posted on May 10, 2016

Nobody knows if climate change sunk these islands or not

By on May 10, 2016Share

If you’ve been paying attention to environmental news over the past 24 hours — and you’ve ended up on Grist, so we have to assume that’s the case — you’ll have noticed that five Pacific islands have apparently disappeared into the sea.

Quartz: “Five Pacific islands have been drowned by climate change, and more are sinking fast”

Gizmodo: “Because of climate change, five Pacific islands have vanished”

The Guardian: “Five Pacific islands lost to rising seas as climate change hits”

You get the picture. But here’s one more, also from The Guardian: “Headlines ‘exaggerated’ climate link to sinking of Pacific islands.” Ruh-roh.

According to The Guardian’s Karl Mathiesen, some writers didn’t bother to check in with the study’s authors to make sure their reporting accurately captured the research. The headlines in particular went overboard. When Mathiesen contacted lead author Simon Albert, he said he’d have preferred “slightly more moderate titles that focus on sea-level rise being the driver rather than simply ‘climate change.’”

“The major misunderstanding stems from the conflation of sea-level rise with climate change,” writes Mathiesen. “As a scientifically robust and potentially destructive articulation of climate change, sea-level rise has become almost synonymous with the warming of the planet.”

The focus on climate change could be confusing to readers, since sea-level rise has been a factor for the islands in question because of a shift in trade winds. Global warming is indeed a cause of rising seas. But for these islands, trade wind changes can also be attributed to natural climate cycles, and more research is needed to understand the relative contributions of each factor.

The flub demonstrates the importance of accurate environmental reporting. When journalists get it wrong, it’s only more fuel for science deniers’ favorite accusation that climate-change rhetoric is alarmist.

Climate Feedback, a climate journalism watchdog, recently launched a crowdfunding campaign with the aim of beefing up their fact-checking capacity. With any luck, efforts like these will help ensure reporters get the nuances right.

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Nobody knows if climate change sunk these islands or not

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The Big Problem With Electric Cars: They’re Too Reliable

by Larissaiyb Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Matt Richtel has an intriguing article today in the New York Times about electric cars. The question is: why aren’t they selling better? Is it because they have weak performance? Because they can only go a hundred miles on a charge? Because they’re expensive?

Those are all issues.1 But it turns out that people who want to buy an electric car anyway have a hard time getting dealerships to sell them one:

Kyle Gray, a BMW salesman, said he was personally enthusiastic about the technology, but…the sales process takes more time because the technology is new, cutting into commissions….Marc Detsch, Nissan’s business development manager for electric vehicles said some salespeople just can’t rationalize the time it takes to sell the cars. A salesperson “can sell two gas burners in less than it takes to sell a Leaf,” he said. “It’s a lot of work for a little pay.”

He also pointed to the potential loss of service revenue. “There’s nothing much to go wrong,” Mr. Deutsch said of electric cars. “There’s no transmission to go bad.”….Jared Allen, a spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association, said there wasn’t sufficient data to prove that electric cars would require less maintenance. But he acknowledged that service was crucial to dealer profits and that dealers didn’t want to push consumers into electric cars that might make them less inclined to return for service.

I suppose this makes sense. And to all this, you can add the fact that none of these cars can fly. There are so many hurdles to overcome before we make it into the Jetson’s future we were all promised.

1We are, of course, talking about the non-Tesla market here.

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The Big Problem With Electric Cars: They’re Too Reliable

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Are We About to Say Goodbye to Fish Sticks?

by ElbaAudetqiabp Posted on October 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Many people think of climate change as something happening in the atmosphere, but in fact a lot of the most important changes are taking place under the ocean.

In fact, up to one-third of the greenhouse gases humans release, and up to 90 percent of the global warming caused by those gases, ends up sunk in the sea. That has a lot of scary impacts: Rising sea level threatens coastal communities; rising seawater acidity kills off coral and shellfish; changing conditions are forcing dozens of species from whales to puffins into unfamiliar regions of the globe. We’ve even got cannibal lobsters, for crying out loud.

Those impacts can also devastate vital US industries, as a peer-reviewed study published today in Nature illustrates. The research found that warming waters are to blame for a recent collapse of the cod fishery in New England. Although a smaller industry than major commercial fish like salmon and mackerel, cod, commonly used for fish sticks and other processed foods, is a multimillion dollar business in New England.

But the fish have become increasingly rare. Last year, federal regulators slapped tight limits on cod fishing after they discovered that the population was at only 4 percent of the level needed to be sustainable. That was the lowest point in a nosedive that has played out over the last decade. In 2014, the commercial catch of cod in New England—about 5 million pounds—was 67 percent less than it was in 2004; the net value of the fishery was correspondingly cut by more than half, to about $9.3 million.

Researchers at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute wanted to know whether climate change played in role in that collapse. Indeed, they found that sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine have risen 99 percent faster than those in the rest of the ocean, rising especially quickly over the same decade-long decline of the cod fishery. The correlation is clear when you look at the two trend lines side-by-side, as in this chart from the study:

Pershing, et al

Higher temperatures make it harder for the fish to metabolize food, leaving them with less energy, especially at their prime reproductive age of about four years. That leads to fewer fish being born. Those that are born may have a harder time finding food, as the plankton they survive on move into deeper water in search of cooler temperatures. Deep water is home to more cod predators.

These problems have all been compounded by a lack of climate-savvy policy by fishing officials, the study found. Because the officials have largely overlooked the impact of ocean warming, they’ve consistently set quotas for commercial fishers far too high, giving the cod population no opportunity to rebound even in cooler years. In other words, overfishing has been rampant even when the overall catch comes in below the legally prescribed limit.

For that reason, the key solution that the researchers advocate is better integration of climate modeling in decision about where, when, and how cod fishing should be allowed. In Canada, extreme limitations on cod fishing seen to have been remarkably successful in revitalizing the population. Still, those management choices aren’t getting any easier to make, as warming continues to rise; the only true fix for New England’s fishing industry is to slow the warming. Bear that in mind the next time you hear a politician complain about job-killing climate action policies.

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Are We About to Say Goodbye to Fish Sticks?

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New Unemployment Claims Drop to Modern Low

by IssacWessel Posted on October 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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A friend writes to point out that initial unemployment claims have continued dropping, and are now at their lowest level in 40 years. In fact, if you look at unemployment claims as a percentage of total employment, they’re at their lowest level in forever:

I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Unemployment claims have been steadily dropping since the mid-80s, and didn’t spike during the Great Recession nearly as much as they did during the recessions of the 70s and 80s. Is this because the rules have gotten tougher? Because employers aren’t laying off as many people as they used to during recessions? Or is it just an artifact of the drop in workforce participation, which means fewer marginally attached workers are getting permanent jobs in the first place?

I’m not sure. But initial claims are now below 0.2 percent of the workforce, a modern record.

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New Unemployment Claims Drop to Modern Low

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California Is About to Ban Those Little Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste and Face Scrub

by FlorrieQHY Posted on September 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the California Senate passed legislation that will ban the sale of microbeads—â&#128;&#139;those colorful bits of plastic that you find in face scrub, body wash, and toothpaste—in personal care products by 2020.

Though a handful of other states â&#128;&#139;have already passed microbead bans, California’s is by far the most stringent, as it doesn’t provide exemptions for “biodegradeable” plastics. (No plastics have proven to break down in marine environments so far.) Because California makes up roughly one-eighth of the American market for personal care products, the legislation will likely change the way the products are designed throughout the United States.

Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble lobbied against the bill, which is expected to pass the State Assembly next week and be signed into law within the month.

Environmental advocates have expressed concern over microbeads for years, as the particles are so small that they aren’t caught in wastewater treatment plants and end up in waterways and oceans, where they don’t biodegrade and are frequently mistaken for food by fish and other marine animals. There are an estimated 300,000 microbeads in a single tube of face wash; collectively, roughly 300 tons of the plastic ends up in US waterways each year.

“Toxic microbeads are accumulating in our rivers, lakes and oceans at alarmingly high levels. We can and must act now,” said assembly member Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), who authored the bill. “Continuing to use these harmful and unnecessary plastics when natural alternatives are widely available is simply irresponsible and will only result in significant cleanups costs to taxpayers who will have to foot the bill to restore our already limited water resources and ocean health.”

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California Is About to Ban Those Little Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste and Face Scrub

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These lovely, innocent wildflowers are slowly dying. Thanks, climate change!

by MarquisHNUE Posted on June 25, 2015

These lovely, innocent wildflowers are slowly dying. Thanks, climate change!

By on 25 Jun 2015commentsShare

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by climate change news, don’t — I repeat, DO NOT — stop to smell the roses. Because they are probably more overwhelmed than you: Scientists in California can see the effects of climate change in fields of flowers, which are losing species diversity as winters get warmer and drier, according to one new study.  Flowers are pretty, colorful dabs of joy that never hurt anyone, and climate change is killing them — welcome back to Spoiler Alerts.

Here’s the story from the LA Times:

Over time, the researchers noticed that the big, intense blooms of wildflowers that used to appear in the spring were becoming less and less frequent. So they decided to analyze changes in plant species over time.

They picked 80 different sites from all over the reserve and counted all of the species growing in five small plots at each site. They also estimated how much area each plant species covered within each plot.

The research team correlated changes in plant growth with changes in rainfall patterns, temperature, cloud cover and humidity.

Across all 80 sites, clusters of native wildflower species became increasingly less diverse from 1999 to 2014, the researchers found. In particular, the species that were disappearing fastest were those with broad leaves, which are most susceptible to drought.

The 15% decline in wildflower species diversity was correlated with about 50% less rain in midwinter, about 20% more sun in fall and winter, and a 20% drop in winter humidity.

You know comes next, right? “Correlation is not causation,” yeah yeah — but this study offers powerful evidence of changes in ecosystem makeup at the local level. What, do you think this is these scientists’ first science rodeo? (Go ahead and picture those lab-coated rodeo clowns anyway.) More from the LA Times:

To take account of other factors that might affect plant diversity, the researchers made sure about half of the sites were in areas with fertile soils, no grazing and no recent history of fire. The other sites had inhospitable soils, occasional grazing and had burned in 1999. Even when these variables were considered in their model, the link between climate change and wildflower growth held up.

Hope you guys like wild grasses, because it looks like that’s what we’ll have left.

Source:
Scientists see climate change in action in California wildflower fields

, LA Times.

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These lovely, innocent wildflowers are slowly dying. Thanks, climate change!

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The Science of Why New York’s Bagels Taste So Damn Good

by CarynKunkle Posted on May 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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MANHATTAN—New York City has the best bagels in America. This is a truth handed down from generation to generation. Why are the bagels here better than the bagels in Boston, Boise, Birmingham, or even cities that begin with letters other than B? Legend has it that it has something to do with the water that’s piped down here from upstate. That’s never really felt right. I’m not a water scientist but it just seems like some nonsense that sounds like it could be true so what the hell, sure, it’s true! Doctor Oz probably credits NY bagels to the water.

So, anyway, some cats from the American Chemical Society got together and ran some tests and spoke to some chefs and concluded that indeed it’s not the magical properties of the Empire State’s water supply that makes NYC bagels unique, but rather the unique competence of NYC bakers. Yes, the softness of the water plays a role but not an integral one. The baking method used in New York is just better than the baking method bakers in other cities use—but there is no reason why those bakers couldn’t start using the NYC method (with some slight modifications), or so sayeth the video.

Is this video accurate? I have no idea. I am not a professor of baked goods. It sounds maybe reasonable to me. It sort of makes sense, right? Because, yeah, New York has the best bagels but I’ve certainly had good bagels other places. But those bagels are normally the exception to the bagel culture of the area. I’ve definitely had one or two okay bagels in LA. Maybe those bakers are using the NY method? I don’t know. What do you think?

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The Science of Why New York’s Bagels Taste So Damn Good

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