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Obama Unveils Smart New Transportation Plan, But Not How to Pay For It

by ClarenceWiederm Posted on February 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The problems all started with Newt Gingrich. For decades, federal transportation funding had been a bastion of bipartisanship: The gasoline tax served as a user fee for our roads, 20 percent of the revenue went to mass transit and the rest to highways, and everyone kept the system running so their districts could get what they needed. Then, in 1994, Gingrich led the right-wing Republican insurgency that took over the House of Representatives. They did not want to raise the gas tax, even to keep pace with inflation. They actually tried to repeal the previous gas-tax increase, from 1993. Hatred of the gas tax, like hatred of all taxes, soon calcified into Republican orthodoxy. Rather than increase the gas tax, President George W. Bush presided over a growing gap between our transportation needs and the revenue the tax generated.

And the problem has not been fixed under Obama. With Republicans currently controlling the House, Congress cannot pass a reauthorization of the surface transportation law that would address our nation’s growing transportation investment needs. Instead, they have retained the status quo through a series of short-term extensions and then, in 2012, a two-year authorization (normally the law is extended for six years) that maintained current funding levels by using general revenues to patch a shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund, which is supposed to be fully supported by the gas tax. That authorization expires this year, so some kind of transportation deal will have to be worked out in the coming months.

On Wednesday, Obama went ahead and laid out a progressive vision for a four-year transportation bill, despite the fact that Republicans will never go for it. It would boost transportation spending to a total of $302 billion over four years and reorient that spending in smart ways.

Historically, transportation funding has been doled out by the Department of Transportation to states according to formulas. But under the 2009 Recovery Act, the Obama administration pioneered the use of competitive grant-making with a program called TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery). Like Obama’s famous Race to the Top education initiative, which incentivizes states to make education policy reforms, TIGER incentivizes local governments to make more efficient investments in transportation, such as building a transit hub near an affordable housing development.

Obama’s new transportation bill would invest $600 million over four years in the TIGER program, and more broadly prioritize spending on projects with the most potential to improve environmental efficiency, create jobs, or link transportation to housing. Similarly, road spending would be doled out on a “fix-it-first” basis, focusing on repairing existing roads rather than building new ones. Obama would also spend a combined $91 billion over the four years on mass transit and inter-city passenger rail. That’s a roughly 30 percent share. Environmentalists and smart-growth advocates are praising the proposal.

And yet Obama has neglected to offer a solution to the single biggest transportation policy problem of all: how to pay for it.

In his speech Wednesday, the president said he will augment the Highway Trust Fund, which is once again suffering a significant shortfall, with $150 billion over the four years by closing tax loopholes. But he has not even identified which loopholes he would close, and still House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared the proposal dead on arrival in his chamber.

Obama and the congressional Democrats, never ones to capitalize on an opportunity when they could just blow it instead, failed to pass a reauthorization of the overdue transportation bill when they controlled Congress in 2009 and 2010. They spent some money on transportation infrastructure via the Recovery Act, but not enough, and they tossed around great ideas for how to spend a lot more money on a surface transportation reauthorization. But they were so scared of the public’s aversion to paying more at the pump that they did not suggest any gas-tax increases, or specific alternatives, to pay for it. And Obama’s new plan doesn’t either.

Even if Obama could get another temporary cash infusion for the Highway Trust Fund, it would be inadequate. Our transportation system has big problems, and to fix them we need a reliable revenue stream. Here are three growing transportation problems, in descending order of long-term importance, and ascending order of short-term urgency:

1. After decades of spending much more on roads than mass transit, we have a transportation infrastructure that’s totally at odds with what we actually need. It encourages driving and thus increases auto emissions, which worsen local air quality and climate change. It’s out of sync with trends in demographics and public preferences, which are leaning toward walkable urbanism and transit use, especially with an aging population. It’s also predicated on the availability of cheap oil, and thus is increasingly unaffordable as surging global demand boosts gasoline prices.

2. We have crumbling infrastructure. Many of our highways built in the middle of the 20th century are nearing the end of their natural lifespans, and our transit systems are dilapidated too. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives D grades to our highways and transit, and a C+ to our rail infrastructure. It notes, “Deficient and deteriorating transit systems cost the US economy $90 billion in 2010, as many transit agencies are struggling to maintain aging and obsolete fleets and facilities amid an economic downturn that has reduced their funding, forcing service cuts and fare increases.” And regarding highways, it says that while “federal, state, and local capital investments increased in 2013 to $91 billion annually, that level of investment is insufficient and still projected to result in a decline in conditions and performance in the long term. Currently, the Federal Highway Administration estimates that $170 billion in capital investment would be needed on an annual basis to significantly improve conditions and performance.”

3. We have a big Highway Trust Fund shortfall. We haven’t raised the gasoline tax from its 18.4-cents-per-gallon rate since 1993, so in inflation-adjusted dollars, it has fallen by 40 percent since then. And as Americans drive less and their cars become more efficient, they consume less gasoline. The current surface transportation law calls for spending more money than the Highway Trust Fund is actually bringing in, because it is based on outdated estimates of gas consumption. This year there is a more than $16 billion gap between authorized spending and gas-tax revenues. That means the fund will be dry in August. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) warned on Wednesday that without an infusion of cash, “obligations for new projects in 2015 would need to be reduced to zero.”

Even Boehner recognizes there is a problem. “We’ve got to find a funding mechanism to fund our infrastructure needs,” he told reporters Wednesday morning. “I wish I could report to you that we’ve found it, but we haven’t.”

We have! It’s called raising the gas tax.

Gasoline taxes are higher in every other developed country than they are in the US Obama complained in his speech on Wednesday that our international competitors spend more on transportation infrastructure than we do. These two phenomena are clearly connected, even though Obama refuses to draw that connection for the public. Why shouldn’t drivers be required to pay their fair share to maintain roads? Transit users pay fares to ride the buses and subways, in order to help cover the costs of building, maintaining, and operating those systems. Amtrak tickets, at least on the Northeast corridor, are obscenely expensive.

There are alternatives to raising the gas tax, of course. We could tax a related negative externality — like, say, carbon pollution — to pay for our infrastructure needs. But in order to do that, you need to accept the science of global warming and the necessity of taxation, and Republicans don’t accept either. When Boehner says they haven’t found a funding mechanism, what he means is that he hasn’t found a funding mechanism that he can corral his recalcitrant caucus to support.

If Republicans are going to reflexively block whatever Obama puts forward anyway, he should go ahead and propose an intelligent funding mechanism — a higher gas tax, a carbon tax, what have you — that will provide enough income over the long term to build the kind of modern transportation system the country needs. If you can’t pass good legislation, at least promote good ideas.

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Obama Unveils Smart New Transportation Plan, But Not How to Pay For It

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Jury Finds Tea Party Senate Candidate Who Rand Paul Endorsed Misled Investors to the Tune of $250,000

by 4q4cv8v Posted on February 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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On the stump, Greg Brannon, the tea party candidate in North Carolina’s competitive Senate race, preaches personal responsibility and rails against out-of-control government spending.

So a recent jury verdict that held Brannon responsible for misleading two investors who gave him a quarter million dollars is quite a blow to the image Brannon has tried to craft of a crusader for better financial decisions in government.

Brannon, a full-time OB-GYN, is best distinguished from the rest of the GOP primary candidates vying to replace Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan by his extreme beliefs: He has said public education “does nothing…other than dehumanize” students and that food stamps are “slavery.” Recent GOP primary polls have Brannon trailing the front-runner, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, by single digits. Endorsements from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and conservative leaders such as RedState editor Erick Erickson have given Brannon a significant fundraising boost.

His legal troubles are linked to Neogence Enterprises, a defunct technology company Brannon cofounded several years ago. The company tried to develop a smartphone application which Brannon pitched as a “social augmented reality network connecting people, places and things” and a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity. Last week, a civil jury concluded that Brannon had led two investors to believe that Verizon was considering preinstalling the application on certain smartphones. (The Raleigh News & Observer first reported the verdict.) Although Neogence pitched Verizon, the cellphone carrier never, in fact, made that offer.

The jury cleared Robert Rice, Neogence’s former CEO, of similar wrongdoing. Brannon’s case defense probably foundered due to emails he sent bragging of Neogence’s potential partnership with Verizon. “I know all of you are BUSY!!!” Brannon wrote in one email. “I need you to give a few minutes to look at this potential. THANK YOU for your TRUST!! Greg.”

The two investors who brought the suit are a former classmate of Brannon’s from medical school, Larry Piazza, and the husband of one of Brannon’s patients, Sam Lampuri. In court, Lampuri, a Raleigh plumber who gave Brannon $100,000, testified that Brannon “pretty much spoke about Neogence every time my wife was in stirrups.” Brannon must now repay Piazza and Lampuri a total of $250,000 plus interest.

Brannon has boasted about his personal connection with his patients before. In a fall 2013 fundraiser for Hand of Hope, his nonprofit crisis pregnancy center, Brannon said, “When I see little girls that come here, boyfriends that do show up are my favorites. Then I can whoop on them with love. How many people have we got married over the last 20 years just by riding that boy’s rear end?”

Brannon’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment last week. In the run-up to the trial, Brannon told the News & Observer, “I can’t wait for my day in court.” After the verdict, he said, “I cannot wait to go to the appeal process.”

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Jury Finds Tea Party Senate Candidate Who Rand Paul Endorsed Misled Investors to the Tune of $250,000

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Will McDonald’s Stop Serving Big Macs With a Side of Antibiotics?

by q9v9lw Posted on February 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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This month, McDonald’s announced that it plans to start transitioning to sustainable beef by 2016, with the goal of eventually making all of its burgers from sustainable meat. But the fast food chain has yet to specify what, exactly, it means by “sustainable.” The company is working with the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, a stakeholder group that includes Walmart and the World Wildlife Fund, to come up with a definition, and expects to announce further details of its plans in the spring. But food experts say that unless McDonald’s stops purchasing cows that are fed antibiotics to ward off disease in overcrowded feed lots, the promise will be an empty one. It’s not an unattainable goal—other chains that buy antibiotic-free beef, including Chipotle and Shake Shack, say they’ve been able to do so without significantly raising costs. But McDonald’s isn’t on board yet.

When Mother Jones asked McDonald’s whether it plans to cease using antibiotic-fed beef, a spokesman said, “McDonald’s will continue to rely on the sound science derived from this group of expert advisors including academia, suppliers, animal health and welfare experts and the FDA, as we continue to review our policyâ&#128;&#139;.” According to Hal Hamilton, founder of the Sustainable Food Laboratory, who is helping McDonalds develop its sustainability plan, the company “definitely cares about antibiotics and other feed additives, and they would like to achieve a system that avoids things that worry consumers, but I don’t think they’ve made any specific policies.”

Food experts say that could be a problem. “You can’t have sustainable production if you’re using antibiotics other than very, very occasionally, and only when there’s a diagnosed clinical disease,” says David Wallinga, M.D., the founder of Healthy Food Action, a network of health professionals. “In the case of cattle, they shouldn’t be in feed at all.” McDonalds has a written policy that aims to reduce antibiotic use, but the policy has been criticized for having major loopholes—such as allowing farmers to feed cows antibiotics for disease prevention, rather than merely treatment. (The McDonald’s spokesman says, “We take seriously our ethical responsibility to treat sick animals, using antibiotics to treat, prevent and control disease in food producing animals.”)

Last December, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that “it is important to use these drugs only when medically necessary,” given that 80 percent of antibiotics in the United States go to livestock farms, and overuse of these drugs poses a demonstrated threat to public health. For example, some women have been afflicted by antibiotic-resistant urinary tract infections that have been linked to overuse of antibiotics in poultry. But sustainability experts say the FDA’s new guidance is weak, since not only does it allow antibiotics to be used for prevention, but the recommendations are voluntary.

“The government kind of punted on this issue, when it announced voluntary standards,” says Michael Pollan, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, noting that it’s hard for the government to tackle two big industries at the same time—Big Agriculture and Big Pharma. “But if McDonald’s committed to getting rid of antibiotics, that would be a huge deal, it would change the industry.”

Industry experts say that it’s definitely possible for McDonalds to make this change. When Chipotle switched to sustainable, antibiotic-free beef, in increased prices by only about 25 to 50 cents per burrito (the price of antibiotic-free pork is a bit higher.) “Our customers are willing to pay a little more for food they recognize as being better,” says Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold. He notes that Chipotle does have some trouble getting the antibiotic-free supply to meet its demand, but adds: “Having more companies use this kind of meat would likely result in faster changes within the supply system, and that could be a good thing.” Shake Shack, which has been serving antibiotic-free beef since the chain opened, says it only costs 15 to 20 percent more than regular beef. The costs are higher, spokesman Edwin Bragg says, but notes that McDonalds could change that. “If a restaurant company of McDonalds’ size could do this on a large scale, it could change the paradigm.”

And Pollan says that this change needs to come sooner, rather than later: “I think it’s just hitting us. We’re now dealing with infectious microbes that are resistant to most antibiotics we have. We’re already paying a price and it’s going to get worse.”

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Will McDonald’s Stop Serving Big Macs With a Side of Antibiotics?

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These Beautiful "Place-Hacking" Photos Will Give You an Adrenaline Rush

by surfikdon Posted on November 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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They call themselves “place hackers”—urban adventurers who get a thrill (and bragging rights) from exploring forbidden spaces: old military bases, sewer systems, decommissioned hospitals, power stations—even the odd skyscraper under construction. Just like backpackers, they have an ethical code: no vandalism or theft, take only photographs, leave only footprints. “The idea behind urban exploration is revealing what’s hidden,” explains Bradley Garrett, author of the recent book Explore Everything: Place Hacking the City. “It’s about going into places that are essentially off limits and, because they are off limits, have been relatively forgotten.” The goal is not just to explore, he adds, but to document and share as well. To wit: Check out these 12 amazing photos from Garrett’s book.

Effra Sewer, South London

Saint Sulpice Church, Paris

King’s Reach Tower, London

New Court Building, London

Ritz-Carlton Residences, Chicago

Legacy Tower, Chicago

Temple Court Building, London

Legacy Tower, Chicago

Lost Kingdom Water Park, Riverside, California

GLC Pipe Subways, London

Skyscraper Crane, Aldgate East, London

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These Beautiful "Place-Hacking" Photos Will Give You an Adrenaline Rush

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6 Things You Might Not Know About Bill de Blasio, New York’s Mayor-in-Waiting

by pa98grv Posted on November 5, 2013

Mother Jones

Come Tuesday night, Bill de Blasio will likely be the first Democratic mayor-elect of New York City in two decades. De Blasio is expected to crush his Republican rival Joe Lhota. Most national attention has focused on the implications of de Blasio’s win for the future of big-city liberalism, contrasting the humble Park Slope public advocate with Wall Street-friendly billionaire Michael Bloomberg. The city’s rich denizens are supposedly quivering with fear that the new Democratic mayor will hit them with a small tax increase to fund universal pre-K, though Gov. Andrew Cuomo is poised to squash any tax hikes from NYC.

Here are several fun facts about de Blasio that you might have missed amid the class warfare.

He was born Warren Wilhelm, Jr.:

De Blasio has a fraught relationship with his deceased father. A navy vet who lost his left leg in World War II, Warren Wilhelm fell prey to McCarthyism in the 1950s. His career as an economist at the Commerce Department derailed when he and his wife were questioned about their views on communism. Wilhelm Sr. later became an alcoholic and de Blasio’s parents divorced. “The pain he caused people, even if he didn’t mean to, just so many people were badly affected,” de Blasio said in an interview with The New York Times. “I think I really was angered by that.” By the end of high school the he had ditched his given name and opted for his childhood nickname Bill and his mother’s maiden name.

He worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign:

De Blasio managed Hillary Clinton’s first run for office, but it ended poorly as the Clintons came to view him as weak and indecisive. Longtime Clinton pal Patti Solis Doyle was brought in from Washington to spearhead the final months of the campaign. Per The New York Times:

Despite having the title, Mr. de Blasio hardly fit the profile of a traditional campaign manager.

While he had a say on all sorts of matters, including finance and personnel, he did not have signoff power on many key issues, and did not enjoy the same access to Mrs. Clinton as other advisers, according to more than two dozen people involved in the race. Then still the first lady, she often relied on a team of White House aides she had known for years.

It doesn’t seem like there are too many hurt feelings, though. Both Hillary and Bill endorsed de Blasio, but not until he’d already secured the Democratic nomination. Hillary also headlined a million-dollar fundraiser for de Blasio in late October.

His was a lefty activist in his 20s:

De Blasio got his start in progressive politics by supporting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua during the 1980s:

Mr. de Blasio became an ardent supporter of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries. He helped raise funds for the Sandinistas in New York and subscribed to the party’s newspaper, Barricada, or Barricade. When he was asked at a meeting in 1990 about his goals for society, he said he was an advocate of “democratic socialism.”

He worked as a political organizer at the Quixote Center in Maryland for his first job out of grad school, soliciting donations to send to Nicaragua.

He worked out at his local YMCA during the campaign:

Hard to imagine Bloomberg working up a sweat at the local gym. From New York magazine:

If I needed any further indication that the city is on the verge of a radical change in mayoral style from Bloomberg, who seems as if he were born in a pin-striped suit, there’s the 52-year-old De Blasio himself: He’s just back from his daily workout at the 9th Street Y and wearing a frayed, sweat-soaked blue T-shirt and baggy gray sweatpants.

He was evicted from his first New York apartment:

He moved to SoHo in 1983 but couldn’t stay there since the apartment was an illegal sublet. Perhaps that experience will make him more sympathetic to those city residents who lack affordable housing than New York’s current mayor.

He’s not a Yankees fan:

In fact, he roots for the Bronx Bombers’ despised rival, the Boston Red Sox. De Blasio must be feeling confident heading into the election, since he couldn’t help himself from bragging about the Red Sox’s World Series success, even when he campaigned in the Bronx.

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6 Things You Might Not Know About Bill de Blasio, New York’s Mayor-in-Waiting

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It Takes 6 CDs, a DVD, a Book, and a 78 rpm Record to Capture Woody Guthrie

by d2wk58 Posted on October 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Woody Guthrie
American Radical Patriot
Rounder

With six CDs, a DVD, a 60-page book (plus a 258-page PDF), and a 78 rpm vinyl record—who can even play such a thing these days?—the elaborate American Radical Patriot might seem to miss the point of folksinger Woody Guthrie’s no-nonsense populism. Still, if you know him only as the guy who inspired Bob Dylan, or the impetus for the Billy Bragg-Wilco project Mermaid Avenue, it’s a revelation to hear the source firsthand.

Four of the CDs offer Guthrie’s complete Library of Congress recordings from 1940, featuring five hours of interviews and songs with folklorist Alan Lomax. The entertaining spoken-word segments merit one play, but the music, with its blunt wisdom, flinty wit, and exuberant spirit, bears repeated hearing. There also are songs recorded for the Bonneville Power Administration in the Pacific Northwest, music for an anti-venereal disease campaign, and a radio drama. The 78 backs a Guthrie performance with an oft-bootlegged Dylan cover of his “VD City” from 1961. More than a historical curiosity, American Radical Patriot is essential fare for upstarts of all ages.

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It Takes 6 CDs, a DVD, a Book, and a 78 rpm Record to Capture Woody Guthrie

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Eight Exceptional(ly Dumb) American Military Missteps So Far This Century

by LeannqOsborn Posted on September 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

“But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.”

—Barack Obama, address to the nation on Syria, September 10, 2013

Let’s be Americans, which means being exceptional, which also means being honest in ways inconceivable to the rest of humanity. So here’s the truth of it: the American exceptionalism sweepstakes really do matter. Here. A lot.

Barack Obama is only the latest in a jostling crowd of presidential candidates, presidential wannabes, major politicians, and minor figures of every sort, not to speak of a raging horde of neocons and pundits galore, who have felt compelled in recent years to tell us and the world just how exceptional the last superpower really is. They tend to emphasize our ability to use this country’s overwhelming power, especially the military variety, for the global good—to save children and other deserving innocents. This particularly American aptitude for doing good forcibly, by killing others, is considered an incontestable fact of earthly life needing no proof. It is well known, especially among our leading politicians, that Washington has the ability to wield its military strength in ways that are unimaginably superior to any other power on the planet.

The well-deserved bragging rights to American exceptionalism are no small matter in this country. It should hardly be surprising, then, how visceral is the distaste when any foreigner—say, Russian President Vladimir Putin—decides to appropriate the term and use it to criticize us. How visceral? Well, the sort of visceral that, as Democratic Senator Bob Menendez put it recently, leaves us barely repressing the urge to “vomit.”

Now, it’s not that we can’t take a little self-criticism. If you imagine an over-muscled, over-armed guy walking into a room and promptly telling you and anyone else in earshot how exceptionally good he is when it comes to targeting his weapons, and you notice a certain threatening quality about him, and maybe a hectoring, lecturing tone in his voice, it’s just possible that you might be intimidated or irritated by him. You might think: narcissist, braggart, or blowhard. If you were the president of Russia, you might say, “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”

Yes, if you’re a foreigner, this country is easy enough to misunderstand, make fun of, or belittle. Still, that didn’t stop the president from proudly bringing up our exceptionalism two weeks ago in his address on the Syrian crisis. In that speech, he plugged the need for a US military response to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian military. He recommended launching a “limited strike,” assumedly Tomahawk missiles heading Damascus-wards, to save Syria’s children, and he made sure the world knew that such an attack would be no passing thing. (“Let me make something clear: the United States military doesn’t do pinpricks.”)

Then, in mid-speech, in a fashion that was nothing short of exceptional (if you were considering the internal logic of the address), he suddenly cast that option aside for another approach entirely. But just because of that, don’t let first impressions or foreign criticism blind you to the power of the president’s imagery. In this century, as he suggested then and in an address to the U.N. two weeks later, American exceptionalism has always had to do with Washington’s ability to use its power for the greater planetary good. Since, in the last decade-plus, power and military power have come to be essentially synonymous in Washington, the pure goodness of firing missiles or dropping bombs has been deified.

On that basis, it’s indisputable that the bragging rights to American exceptionalism are Washington’s. For those who need proof, what follows are just eight ways (among so many more) that you can proudly make the case for our exceptional status, should you happen to stumble across, say, President Putin, still blathering on about how unexceptional we are.

1. What other country could have invaded Iraq, hardly knowing the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite, and still managed to successfully set off a brutal sectarian civil war and ethnic cleansing campaigns between the two sects that would subsequently go regional, whose casualty counts have tipped into the hundreds of thousands, and which is now bouncing back on Iraq? What other great power would have launched its invasion with plans to garrison that country for decades and with the larger goal of subduing neighboring Iran (“Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran”), only to slink away eight years later leaving behind a Shiite government in Baghdad that was a firm ally of Iran? And in what other country, could leaders, viewing these events, and knowing our part in them, have been so imbued with goodness as to draw further “red lines” and contemplate sending in the missiles and bombers again, this time on Syria and possibly Iran? Who in the world would dare claim that this isn’t an unmatchable record?

2. What other country could magnanimously spend $4-6 trillion on two “good wars“ in Afghanistan and Iraq against lightly armed minority insurgencies without winning or accomplishing a thing? And that’s not even counting the funds sunk into the Global War on Terror and sideshows in places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, or the staggering sums that, since 9/11, have been poured directly into the national security state. How many countries, possessing “the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” could have engaged in endless armed conflicts and interventions from the 1960s on and, except in unresisting Panama and tiny Grenada, never managed to definitively win anything?

3. And talking about exceptional records, what other military could have brought an estimated 3.1 million pieces of equipment—ranging from tanks and Humvees to porta-potties, coffee makers, and computers—with it into Iraq, and then transported most of them out again (while destroying the rest or turning them over to the Iraqis)? Similarly, in an Afghanistan where the US military is now drawing down its forces and has already destroyed “more than 170 million pounds worth of vehicles and other military equipment,” what other force would have decided ahead of time to shred, dismantle, or simply discard $7 billion worth of equipment (about 20% of what it had brought into the country)? The general in charge proudly calls this “the largest retrograde mission in history.” To put that in context: What other military would be capable of carrying a total consumer society right down to PXs, massage parlors, boardwalks, Internet cafes, and food courts to war? Let’s give credit where it’s due: we’re not just talking retrograde here, we’re talking exceptionally retrograde!

4. What other military could, in a bare few years in Iraq, have built a staggering 505 bases, ranging from combat outposts to ones the size of small American towns with their own electricity generators, water purifiers, fire departments, fast-food restaurants, and even miniature golf courses at a cost of unknown billions of dollars and then, only a few years later, abandoned all of them, dismantling some, turning others over to the Iraqi military or into ghost towns, and leaving yet others to be looted and stripped? And what other military, in the same time period thousands of miles away in Afghanistan, could have built more than 450 bases, sometimes even hauling in the building materials, and now be dismantling them in the same fashion? If those aren’t exceptional feats, what are?

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Eight Exceptional(ly Dumb) American Military Missteps So Far This Century

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After Bachmann, Who’s America’s Next Top Wacky Right-Winger?

by Fredrick Wise Posted on May 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Facing a mounting investigation into her presidential campaign’s alleged campaign finance improprieties, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) announced Wednesday morning that she won’t seek reelection in 2014. Here’s a quick guide to the people jockeying for Bachmann’s place as the far right’s biggest star in Congress.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas)

Is he crazy? Once caught with 30 mg of Valium in his underwear. Lived in a Fort Worth park for a year with a homeless man he compared to Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Warned that sex ed classes were teaching kids the virtues of bestiality. Started an AR-15 sweepstakes for his constituents. Actual campaign bumper sticker: “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted.”
Put it in granite: “The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.”
Do people care? Stockman has had no discernible impact on public policy and Democrats have written off his seat—he won his last race by 44 points.

Joe Miller, Alaska Senate candidate

Is he crazy? Hired private security guards who handcuffed a reporter during failed 2010 Senate run. Argued that unemployment benefits, Social Security, and Medicare are unconstitutional. Wrote a column for birther site WorldNetDaily alleging that President Obama should be impeached for secretly giving away American islands to Russia.
Put it in granite: “Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin.”
Do people care? Only if he wins.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.)

Is he crazy? Compared the Affordable Care Act to the “war of Yankee aggression.” Pointed out alarming similarities between Obama and Hitler. Worries that the federal government will force people to eat fruits and vegetables. Believes Southerners will die of hyperthermia if clean energy laws are passed.
Put it in granite: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell.”
Do people care? An outspoken critic of science, Broun’s position on the House Science Committee has alarmed such high-profile scientists as Bill Nye.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah)

Is he crazy? World-record holder for fastest flight around the world. Described as a “certified nutcase” by a former Utah Republican politician and “Glenn Beck on steroids” by a former Utah Democratic politician. Wrote end-times novels that have been endorsed by Glenn Beck. Expressed concern that protecting species from extinction, while noble, “harms people” too much.
Put it in granite: “My true worldview is just the opposite of the apocalyptic. Look, I know we’re going to have challenges and, who knows, maybe there will be a zombie apocalypse or something like that.”
Do people care? Stewart hails from a safely Republican district, but Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed concerns about his fringe views. He’s also skeptical about climate change and chairs a House subcommittee on the issue.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)

Is he crazy? Opposed gun control by comparing gay marriage to bestiality. Supported Alaska oil drilling so that caribou would have more sex. Cosponsored a birther bill. Wanted Congress to investigate the threat of Shariah law in America. Sounded alarm about terrorists who “are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanics.” Sounded alarm about terrorists who are babies.
Put it in granite: “The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus.”
Do people care? Gohmert represents an overwhelmingly conservative district and is better known for his outrageous statements than his impact on public policy.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.)

Is she crazy? Compared Obama to “Louis XIV, the Sun King.” Said Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act “simply to control our lives.” Supported defunding the Justice Department to stop Attorney General Eric Holder’s lawsuit against an Arizona immigration bill that allows racial profiling. Insinuated that terrorists were behind the proposal to build an Islamic community center in Manhattan a few blocks from ground zero.
Put it in granite: “The terrorists haven’t won, and we should tell them in plain English, ‘No, there will never be a mosque at ground zero.'”
Do people care? After Republicans won control of North Carolina’s state Legislature in 2010 and redrew congressional district lines in the state, Ellmers moved from a competitive district to a safe seat. She’s only serving her second term in the House but is already considering a Senate bid against Democrat Kay Hagan.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)

Is he crazy? Believes George Soros masterminded a plot to ban golf and force Americans into “hobbit homes.” Said that “Shariah law is an enormous problem” in the United States. Thinks states have the constitutional right to disregard federal law. Bragged that he helped nullify a gay divorce. Thinks Harvard Law School has been overrun by communists.
Put it in granite: “I think President Obama is the most radical president we’ve ever seen.”
Do people care? Called the “next great conservative hope” by the National Review, Cruz may have presidential aspirations. But his Senate obstructionism has annoyed more compromise-minded Republican colleagues, including John McCain, whom Cruz said he doesn’t trust.

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After Bachmann, Who’s America’s Next Top Wacky Right-Winger?

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How Far-Right Activists Like E.W. Jackson Took Over the Virginia GOP

by 0df53x21 Posted on May 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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After dropping the last two presidential elections and the last three US Senate races, Virginia Republicans had good reason for optimism heading into this fall’s elections: Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chair who bragged about nearly missing his child’s birth so he could party with a gossip columnist, is at the top of the Democratic ticket. Things should be looking up for the Virginia GOP. Instead, the party’s activists have resisted calls for moderation and swerved hard to the right quicker than you can say transvaginal ultrasound.

Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican party’s nominee for governor, once cited Martin Luther King Jr. as justification for his argument that sexual relations between two people of the same gender should be illegal. E.W. Jackson, the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, believes that gays are “degenerate” and “spiritually darkened” and will eventually destroy America. Mark Obenshain, the party’s nominee for attorney general, recently attempted to require women to contact the police within 24 hours of a miscarriage.

The immediate cause is obvious. Virginia Republicans don’t select their executive ticket via primary. Instead, they chose their slate last Saturday at a one-day nominating convention packed with grassroots activists. Jackson, a Baptist preacher who finished in the low single digits in last year’s US Senate primary, was able to win on the first ballot by virtue of well-received speech typified by lines like, “I am not an African-American, I am an American!”

“Conventions are not representative of the party,” says Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Northern Virginia, referring to Jackson’s nomination. “When you get a convention, this is what you get.”

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How Far-Right Activists Like E.W. Jackson Took Over the Virginia GOP

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Taxpayer Dollars Are Helping Monsanto Sell Seeds Abroad

by gwm6zjf3 Posted on May 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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Nearly two decades after their mid-’90s debut in US farm fields, GMO seeds are looking less and less promising. Do the industry’s products ramp up crop yields? The Union of Concerned Scientists looked at that question in detail for a 2009 study. Short answer: marginally, if at all. Do they lead to reduced pesticide use? No; in fact, the opposite.

And why would they, when the handful of companies that dominate GMO seeds—Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow—are also among the globe’s largest pesticide makers? Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds have given rise to an upsurge of herbicide-resistant superweeds and a torrent of herbicides, while insects are showing resistance to its pesticide-containing Bt crops and causing farmers to boost insecticide use. What about wonder crops that would be genetically engineered to withstand drought or require less nitrogen fertilizer? So far, they haven’t panned out—and there’s little evidence they ever will.

Yet despite all of these problems, the US State Department has been essentially acting as of de facto global-marketing arm of the ag-biotech industry, complete with figures as high-ranking as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mouthing industry talking points as if they were gospel, a new Food & Water Watch analysis of internal documents finds.

The FWW report is based on an analysis of diplomatic cables, written between 2005 and 2009 and released in the big Wikileaks document dump of 2010. FWW sums it up: “a concerted strategy to promote agricultural biotechnology overseas, compel countries to import biotech crops and foods that they do not want, and lobby foreign governments—especially in the developing world—to adopt policies to pave the way to cultivate biotech crops.”

The report brims with examples of the US government promoting the biotech industry abroad. Here are a few:

The State Department encouraged embassies to bring visitors—especially reporters—to the United States, which has “proven to be effective ways of dispelling concerns about biotech crops.” The State Department organized or sponsored 28 junkets from 17 countries between 2005 and 2009. In 2008, when the US embassy was trying to prevent Poland from adopting a ban on biotech livestock feed, the State Department brought a delegation of high-level Polish government agriculture officials to meet with the USDA in Washington, tour Michigan State University and visit the Chicago Board of Trade. The USDA sponsored a trip for El Salvador’s Minister of Agriculture and Livestock to visit Pioneer Hi-Bred’s Iowa facilities and to meet with USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack that was expected to “pay rich dividends by helping the Minister clearly advocate policy positions in our mutual bilateral interests.”

Another example: this 2009 cable, referenced in the FWW report, shows a State Department functionary casually requesting US taxpayer funds to to combat a popular effort to require labeling of GMO foods in Hong Kong—and boasting about successfully having done so in the past. Why focus on the GMO policy of a quasi-independent city? Hong Kong’s rejection of a mandatory labeling policy “could have influential spillover effects in the region, including Taiwan, mainland China and Southeast Asia,” the functionary writes, adding that her consulate had “intentionally designed anti-labeling programs other embassies and consulates” could use.

The report also shows how the State Department hotly pushed GMOs in low-income African nations—in the face of popular opposition. In a 2009 cable, FWW shows, the US embassy in Nigeria bragged that “U.S. government support in drafting pro-biotech legislation as well as sensitizing key stakeholders through a public outreach program” helped pass and industry-friendly law. Working with USAID—an independent US government agency that operates under the State Department’s authority—the State Department pushed similar efforts in Kenya and Ghana, FWW shows.

Yet, as FWW points out, in so aggressively pushing biotech solutions abroad, State is bucking against the global consensus of ag-development experts as expressed by the 2009 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), a three-year project, convened by the World Bank and the United Nations and completed in 2008, to assess what forms of agriculture would best meet the world’s needs in a time of rapid climate change. The IAASTD took such a skeptical view of deregulated biotech as a panacea for the globe’s food challenges that Croplife America, the industry’s main industry lobbying group, saw fit to denounce it. The US government backed up the biotech lobby on this one—just three of the 61 governments that participated refused to sign the IAASTD: the Bush II-led United States, Canada, and Australia.

So why why are our corps of diplomats behaving as if they answered to Monsanto’s shareholders with regard to ag policy? My guess is GMO seed technology, dominated by Monsanto, as well as our towering crops corn and soy crops (which are at this point almost completely from GM seeds) are two of the few areas of global trade wherein the US still generates a trade surplus. The website of the State Department’s Biotechnology and Textile Trade Policy Division puts it like this:

In 2013, the United States is forecasted to export $145 billion in agricultural products, which is $9.2 billion above fiscal 2012 exports, and have a trade surplus of $30 billion in our agricultural sector.

I guess US presidents, Democratic and Republican alike, are bent on preserving and expanding that surplus. President Obama altered much about US foreign policy when he took over for President Bush in 2009; but he doesn’t seem to have changed a thing when it comes to pushing biotech on the global stage. And the impulse is not confined to the State Department. Back in 2009, when Obama needed to appoint someone to lead agriculture negotiations at the US Trade Office, he went straight to the ag-biotech industry, tapping the vice president for science and regulatory affairs at CropLife America, Islam A. Siddiqui, who still holds that post today.

Meanwhile, the State Department operates an Office of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Textile Trade Affairs, which exists in part to “maintain open markets for U.S. products derived from modern biotechnology” and “promote acceptance of this promising technology.” The office’s biotechnology page is larded with language that reads like boilerplate from Monsanto promo material: “Agricultural biotechnology helps farmers increase yields, enabling them to produce more food per acre while reducing the need for chemicals, pesticides, water, and tilling. This provides benefits to the environment as well as to the health and livelihood of farmers.”

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Taxpayer Dollars Are Helping Monsanto Sell Seeds Abroad

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