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We’ve only explored 0.0001 percent of the ocean, but that’s about to change.

drop in the bucket

We’ve only explored 0.0001 percent of the ocean, but that’s about to change.

By on Aug 18, 2016Share

Off the coast of Bermuda, tiny vessels are diving 1,000 feet to research something we know surprisingly little about: the ocean itself. Though the ocean makes up 95 percent of the planet’s habitable area, we’ve explored 0.0001 percent of it.

Nekton, a U.K.-based NGO, launched its first mission in mid-July to finally give us an understanding of the deep sea, using tiny research pods that are reminiscent of goldfish bowls — bowls with robot arms that grab samples from corals and sponges. The Guardian reports that the mission has uncovered new species, large black coral forests, and fossilized beaches.

Nekton Mission

There’s one thing we do know about the deep sea: We’re already changing it. Higher temperatures and ocean acidification are starving the deep sea of oxygen and changing how food circulates. That’s worrisome, because the deep ocean performs important functions: absorbing heat, regulating carbon, and terrifying us with alien-like creatures (Exhibit A: the blobfish).

Once the Nekton mission is complete, the pods will turn their grabby little arms to the Mediterranean Sea.

Until then, the goings-on of the deep sea remains one of life’s greatest mysteries — like how life originated or where your socks disappeared to after that last load of laundry.

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We’ve only explored 0.0001 percent of the ocean, but that’s about to change.

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What We Still Don’t Know About Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns

Mother Jones

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If Mitt Romney runs for president in 2016, he may have to confront a ghost that haunted him in 2012: his tax returns. Romney was hounded with requests to release detailed tax filings that would disclose the details of his fortune—which is at least in the hundreds of millions. Ultimately, he only revealed two years of information, and was roundly criticized for his lack of transparency. Jeb Bush reportedly plans to avoid a “Romney problem” by releasing 10 years of tax returns. If he runs, Romney will be under heavy pressure to do the same.

In 2012, Mother Jones pointed out that based on his two years of reports, the taxes Romney paid on his adjusted gross income didn’t fully cover all his wealth. Two years later, what do we still not know?

How much does he actually make? In 2010 and 2011, tax filings revealed that Romney made around $22 million each year. The vast majority of his income came from Romney’s capital gains and investment interests, and this amount presumably covered the reported total of $374,000 in speaking fees he received in 2010 and 2011. (The two years of tax filings he released did not specify exact sources of income.) Two years after the election, it’s unclear how much Romney earns annually, and it’s unknown exactly how much sits in his various accounts.

What does he actually pay? During the 2012 election, Romney was criticized for paying a relatively low tax rate: In 2010, he paid a rate of 13.9 percent, and in 2011, 15.3 percent. Those rates are far less than the 30 percent that the top 1 percent of earners pay, and his 2010 rate was even lower than the 14.2 percent a household making $64,500 per year pays. The gap between what Romney paid and earned is far greater than that of previous presidents.

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Romney paid such a low rate mainly because the tax code is more generous with investment income than it is with income earned from working. However, Romney intentionally took fewer deductions to pay a higher rate in 2011 than he had to—presumably to provide less ammo to those who assailed him as a plutocrat. (Good news: He’s able to reclaim those deductions and get money back if he wishes.) Nevertheless, if Romney still pays around the same rate he did in 2010-11, it could pose a political problem for him if he mounts a third presidential bid. In 2012, Obama used Romney as an example of the unfairness of the tax code.

How much did he pay in taxes before 2010? The issue of what Romney paid in the years before 2010 was never settled. Sen. Harry Reid’s assertion that Romney paid “no taxes” for 10 years is likely inaccurate. But instead of releasing detailed pre-2010 tax returns, Romney’s camp offered an “average annual effective federal tax rate” of 20.20 percent for the years 1990-2009. That’s a little more in line with what top earners are meant to pay, but as the Washington Post pointed out, the method used to calculate that rate was fishy: It’s possible that, in some years, Romney earned more but paid a lower rate, which means the 20 percent figure may not be an accurate rendering of his tax burden.

How do offshore accounts fit into all of this? If Romney was hiding something by not releasing his tax returns, as the Obama campaign and plenty of others suggested, what might it have been? Some observers speculated it was the role of offshore tax havens in building and protecting his fortune. Romney’s limited filings did reveal that he had accounts in Switzerland, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands—all well-known havens where the enterprising rich have protected their money from US taxes for decades. And then there was Romney’s massive IRA: By using a Cayman device called a “blocker corporation” to protect his $100 million retirement fund, Romney would have been able to avoid the 35 percent tax on IRAs held in the United States.

Romney strongly denied using any kind of tricky instruments during the campaign, saying, “There was no reduction, not one dollar of reduction in taxes, by virtue of having an account in Switzerland or a Cayman Islands investment.” There is no proof that Romney’s offshore accounts are a smoking gun. But former George H.W. Bush Treasury Department official Michael Graetz called Romney an “Olympic-level athlete at the tax avoidance game.”

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What We Still Don’t Know About Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns

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Why Did the Media Devote So Much Attention to the Missing Malaysian Airplane?

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Isn’t there something strangely reassuring when your eyeballs are gripped by a “mystery” on the news that has no greater meaning and yet sweeps all else away? This, of course, is the essence of the ongoing tale of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Except to the relatives of those on board, it never really mattered what happened in the cockpit that day. To the extent that the plane’s disappearance was solvable, the mystery could only end in one of two ways: it landed somewhere (somehow unnoticed, a deep unlikelihood) or it crashed somewhere, probably in an ocean. End of story. It was, however, a tale with thrilling upsides when it came to filling airtime, especially on cable news. The fact that there was no there there allowed for the raising of every possible disappearance trope—from Star Trekkian black holes to the Bermuda Triangle to Muslim terrorists—and it had the added benefit of instantly evoking a popular TV show. It was a formula too good to waste, and wasted it wasn’t.

The same has been true of the story that, in the US, came to vie with it for the top news spot: the devastating mudslide in Washington State. An act of nature, sweeping out of nowhere, buries part of a tiny community, leaving an unknown but possibly large number of people dead. Was anyone still alive under all that mud? (Such potential “miracles” are like manna from heaven for the TV news.) How many died? These questions mattered locally and to desperate relatives of those who had disappeared, but otherwise had little import. Yes, unbridled growth, lack of attention to expected disasters, and even possibly climate change were topics that might have been attached to the mudslide horror. As a gruesome incident, it could have stood in for a lot, but in the end it stood in for nothing except itself and that was undoubtedly its abiding appeal.

Both stories had the added benefit (for TV) of an endless stream of distraught relatives: teary or weeping or stoic or angry faces in desperately tight close-ups making heartfelt pleas for more information. For the media, it was like the weather before climate change came along.

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Why Did the Media Devote So Much Attention to the Missing Malaysian Airplane?

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