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Donald Trump, the Tea Party, and Political Correctness Have All Collided in 2015

by KarolinBradbury Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Aside from conservatism (duh), Alan Abramowitz says the strongest predictor of support for the Tea Party is racial hostility. Paul Krugman says he thinks Donald Trump supporters are basically just tea partiers. Put these together and you get this:

So maybe Trump’s base is angry, fairly affluent white racists — sort of like The Donald himself, only not as rich? And maybe they’re not being hoodwinked?

Now, you might ask why angry racists are busting out of the channels the GOP constructed to direct their rage. But there, surely, we have to take account of two things: the real changes in America, which is becoming more socially and culturally diverse, plus the Fox News effect, which has created an angry white guy feedback loop.

Maybe. Here’s a data point in favor of Krugman’s thesis: the rapturous response Trump gets whenever he says he has no time for political correctness. It was one of the biggest applause lines he got in Thursday’s debate. And while there are legitimate complaints to be had about some of the more extreme versions of language policing, for most people their real issue with it is that it forbids them from delivering casual slurs—that everyone knows are true—about blacks or women or Muslims or gays or whatever. They’ve been doing it all their lives, and they think it’s ridiculous that they have to watch themselves in public lest someone think they’re racists. Trump appeals to that sentiment.

I should add that this is entirely consistent with the notion that Trump’s strength comes fundamentally from his appeal to the conservative culture of grievance and resentment. After all, what are tea partiers so resentful of? Wall Street banks? Maybe, but they sure don’t seem to favor any serious action to rein them in. Corrupt politicians? Could be, but they keep electing them to Congress even if they grumble about it. Middle-class wage stagnation? Probably, but it can’t be too big a deal since they consistently vote for politicians who are dedicated to doing nothing about it.

At a gut level, the answer is that they think “normal” American culture is under attack. Straight, white, Christian men used to run this country and did a pretty good job of it. But now every minority group in the country wants a piece of the pie, and they all blame “white supremacy culture” or “rape culture” or “heteronormative culture” for their problems. And what’s worse, no one is even allowed to tell the truth about what this really means. Mexicans come pouring across the border but you get in trouble for just plainly saying what everyone knows: most of them are criminals and should be sent back. Muslims blow up the World Trade Center, but woe betide anyone who makes the common sense observation that we should keep a close eye on mosques because most of them are terrorist breeding grounds. Blacks commit violent crimes at higher levels than whites, but we all have to pretend this is only because whites have been keeping them down for so long. And if you make a harmless joke about some woman having a great body? It’s a compliment! But the feminazis will be all over you like bees in a hive.

This is what a lot of them resent. It’s even understandable: everyone is uncomfortable being told that something they’re used to doing is now considered insulting. Certainly Donald Trump understands it. When he says America no longer has the luxury of worrying about political correctness, his supporters couldn’t agree more.

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Donald Trump, the Tea Party, and Political Correctness Have All Collided in 2015

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China Finally Adopts Market-Based Value for its Currency, But We May Not Like the Results

by AdolphJanzen164 Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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For years the United States has been complaining that China artificially undervalues its currency, which makes their exports cheaper and gives them a trade advantage over American firms. In response, China has gradually let the renminbi rise. By 2015, it had roughly reached fair market value—though not all American politicians agreed about that.

But then the Chinese economy started going sour. Exports were down. The stock market crashed. Growth slowed. What to do? Answer: devalue the renminbi. But instead of doing it by fiat, pretend that you’re merely responding to market forces:

Every morning, Beijing sets a target for the trading of its currency against the U.S. dollar, then allows investors to buy and sell the currency for 2 percent more or less. Tuesday’s change relaxes the government’s control over setting that rate. The midpoint will now be set at the market’s closing rate for the previous day.

….Now, market forces could pressure the currency to depreciate rather than appreciate, making Chinese products comparatively cheaper….In China, the depreciation will be a boon for exporters and heavy industry, but bad news for companies that depend on imported goods. Shares of Chinese airlines plummeted on Tuesday, as analysts predicted that the higher cost of oil in U.S. dollars would weigh on their earnings.

It’s convenient to have a market-based policy as long as that produces a devaluation of the currency. But will Chinese authorities stick to this policy even when it means the renminbi will appreciate? Good question.

So what does it all mean? Here are a few obvious thoughts:

This is yet another vote of no confidence in the Chinese economy. When you put together everything that Chinese authorities have done over the past six months, I’d say they’re close to full-scale panic.
Investors are likely to push the renminbi even lower, and this is going to make life harder on anyone in China with dollar-denominated debt. This includes lots of local governments who have been financing the housing boom, which means this devaluation could hasten the housing bust everyone has been waiting for.
This will be a political issue in the US, but a tricky one. China is manipulating its currency to its own advantage—boo! hiss!—but has also adopted a policy that allows the renminbi’s value to be dictated by market forces—which is what we’ve been demanding all along. It will be interesting to see how all the Republican presidential candidates decide to respond to this.

Generally speaking, I think this should be taken as bad news. The world economy remains fragile, and if the Chinese economy is falling into recession—as the Chinese themselves seem to believe—it will affect all of us. And not in a good way. Stay tuned.

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China Finally Adopts Market-Based Value for its Currency, But We May Not Like the Results

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I Still Don’t Know What Scott Walker Was Talking About on Abortion

by ClevelaZQFJ Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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During Thursday’s debate, Scott Walker took the most extreme position of any candidate on abortion. Not only does he oppose exceptions for rape and incest, he even opposes an exception to save the life of the mother. “I’ve said many a time that that unborn child can be protected,” he said, “and there are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother. That’s been consistently proven.”

Huh? What was that supposed to mean? I was stumped then, and I’m stumped now. So I was happy to see Jonathan Allen’s subhead promising to explain it:

What Scott Walker was talking about when he said there are alternatives to abortion when the woman’s life is in danger

Great! So what was Walker talking about?

He essentially subscribes to the “double effect” doctrine, a well-established line of argument that governs how Catholic leaders think about the definition of abortion — and the desire to preserve the life of the mother and the viability of the fetus.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, in its “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” makes a distinction between procedures designed to terminate a pregnancy to preserve the life of the woman and those for which the termination of the pregnancy is an unintended consequence of treating the woman….That is, the bishops believe intent matters.

Well, I’m still stumped. This Catholic doctrine governs what’s allowed and what isn’t, but it doesn’t say anything about there always being a way to protect the life of both the fetus and the mother.

So I’ll open this up to the floor. Does anyone know what Walker was referring to? What are the “many alternatives” that he claims are available to protect the life of an endangered mother? And who has supposedly consistently proven this? If you know, enlighten us in comments.

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I Still Don’t Know What Scott Walker Was Talking About on Abortion

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Coca-Cola to World: Don’t Stop Swilling Sugary Drinks, Just Exercise!

by BettyTuttle Posted on August 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Stunningly, one-third of American adults have a condition called metabolic syndrome, defined as “a cluster of major cardiovascular risk factors related to overweight/obesity and insulin resistance.” People with metabolic syndrome are twice as likely to develop heart disease as people without it, and five times as likely to develop full-blown type II diabetes. Meanwhile, a growing body of research links insulin resistance with Alzheimer’s and other forms of cognitive decline.

There’s a solid consensus that two things need to happen to reverse this budding calamity: People need to eat better—less hyper-processed, sugar-laden fare—and exercise more.

Now, if you were in the business of selling sweet beverages—ones that contain about 9 teaspoons of sugar per 12-ounce serving—you’d have an interest in suggesting that maybe diet’s not that big of an issue, after all. Instead of cutting down on soda, why not just take an extra walk around the block?

According to this New York Times exposé, Coca-Cola, the globe’s biggest purveyor of sugary drinks, invested $1.5 million last year to launch the Global Energy Balance Network, which, The Times reports, “promotes the argument that weight-conscious Americans are overly fixated on how much they eat and drink while not paying enough attention to exercise.”

The beverage maker has also invested “close to $4 million in funding for various projects spearheaded by two prominent US health academics who serve on GEBN’s executive committee, The Times adds. One of them, University of South Carolina health professor Steven Blair, is featured in the above video insisting that “most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, ‘Oh they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’—blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks, and so on for rising obesity rates… And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause.”

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization recommends holding added sugar consumption to about 25 grams (six teaspoons) per day—meaning a single Coke (nine teaspoons of sugar) will take you 50 percent over its daily recommendation. My colleague Maddie Oatman has a great piece on just how easy it is to catapult over the 6 teaspoons limit in the sugar-happy US food environment.

Now, Coke’s high-dollar drumbeating about how sugary drinks don’t matter much may be nefarious, but it’s also sort of desperate. People are wising up—soda sales have fallen for ten straight years.

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Coca-Cola to World: Don’t Stop Swilling Sugary Drinks, Just Exercise!

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Is Opposition to Obamacare Finally Dying Down?

by ElkeI96cetn Posted on August 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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I missed this when it first got published the day after the Republican debate, but Sarah Kliff says out loud something that was only percolating in the back of my head at the time:

Ten Republican presidential hopefuls took to the debate stage last night to prove their conservative bona fides. They swore they’d unravel President Barack Obama’s legacy. But there was one place they barely went: repealing Obamacare.

….Last night, candidates mentioned Obamacare exactly six times during the course of a two-hour debate. Only one candidate, Scott Walker, uttered the Republican rallying cry: “Repeal Obamacare.” The near-complete absence of Obama’s health overhaul is remarkable.

The rhetorical shift shows a fundamental change in the calculus of Obamacare: It’s one thing to talk about dismantling a theoretical law. It’s another to take away insurance that tens of millions of Americans now receive. And that’s exactly where Republicans are in 2016. So while Obamacare barely made it onto the stage, it might just be the biggest winner of the night.

Kliff goes on to make the case in more detail that repealing Obamacare is fundamentally less attractive than it was four years ago. Back then, it was an abstraction. Today it’s a real live program with millions of enrollees.

Is this really why Obamacare got so little attention in the debate? Maybe. Or maybe Fox News just didn’t bother giving the candidates much of a chance. After all, if you’re looking for conflict, what’s the point of asking about something that every candidate on the stage agrees about? It’s worth noting that the only question specifically about Obamacare went to Donald Trump, and asked him why he had flip-flopped on single-payer health care. And the only question on Medicaid went to John Kasich, one of the few Republican governors to accept Obamacare funding to expand Medicaid coverage. In both cases there was some potential disagreement between the candidates. So Thursday’s debate might not be much of a bellwether about waning interest in Obamacare among Republicans.

Still, I suspect Kliff is onto something. I agree that an actual program with actual enrollees—and one that’s operating pretty successfully—is a trickier target than one that’s slated for the future. For one thing, you can predict anything you want about a program that hasn’t started up yet, but it’s harder to keep up the meme that Obamacare will destroy the economy when it’s pretty plainly not destroying the economy. For another, even a Republican candidate is going to feel a lot of pushback from constituents who are now using the program and want to know what’s going to happen if it goes away and they can’t get insured anymore.

And there’s another tidbit of evidence on this front. A couple of weeks ago CNN released a poll that asked voters what their most important issue was. Among Republicans, only 14 percent said health care. They’re far more concerned about the economy and the nexus of terrorism and foreign policy. Democrats, conversely, ranked health care very highly. This suggests that Democrats are now more committed to keeping Obamacare than Republicans are to getting rid of it.

I might be reading this wrong, and I wouldn’t want to draw any firm conclusions from a campaign that still has many months to run. Still, my sense is that Obamacare just isn’t getting as much attention from Republicans as it used to. Sure, they all want to repeal it, but their talking points are starting to sound very pro forma. Scott Walker and Jeb Bush mentioned it during the debate, for example, but only as part of a laundry list of stuff they’d do to improve the economy.

We’ll see. It will certainly get more attention during the general election, when it becomes a serious point of contention. But my guess is that it just doesn’t have the juice it used to. It’s working OK. The economy hasn’t collapsed. The budget hasn’t exploded. It’s helping actual people. And although they’ll never admit it publicly, most Republicans candidates know that repealing it takes more than the stroke of a pen. It’s a lot harder than they make it sound.

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Is Opposition to Obamacare Finally Dying Down?

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California Really Doesn’t Need to Worry About Losing Jobs to Texas

by VirginiHoltze Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Is California losing jobs to Texas, thanks to California’s stringent anti-business regulations vs. Texas’s wide-open business-friendly environment? It’s a question I have only a modest interest in, since there are lots of reasons for states to gain or lose business. California has nice weather. Texas has cheap housing. Recessions hit different states at different times and with different intensities. Business regulations might be part of the mix, but it’s all but impossible to say how much.

But now I care even less. Lyman Stone ran some numbers and confirmed that, in fact, California has been losing jobs and Texas has been gaining jobs over the past couple of decades. But by itself that isn’t very interesting. The real question is, how many jobs? Here is Stone’s chart:

Stone comments: “Net migration isn’t 1% or 2%. It’s plus or minus 0.05% in most cases. Even as a share of total change in employment, migration is massively overwhelmed by employment changes due to local startups and closures, and local expansions and contractions. The truth is, net employment changes due to firm migration are within the rounding error of total employment. Over time they may matter, but overall they’re pretty miniscule.”

What’s more, these numbers are for migration to and from every state in the union. They’re far smaller if you look solely at California-Texas migration.

Bottom line: An almost invisible number of workers are migrating from California to Texas each year, probably less than .02 percent. The share of that due to business regulation is even less, probably no more than .01 percent. That’s so small it belongs in the “Other” category of any employment analysis. No matter how you look at it, this is just not a big deal.

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California Really Doesn’t Need to Worry About Losing Jobs to Texas

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What Poverty Does to Kids’ Brains

by MairaSavoy Posted on July 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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A new study suggests that growing up poor affects brain development at an early age, and those brain changes can have huge effects on academic achievement.

Researchers from Duke University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison tracked nearly 400 children and young adults in a longitudinal study over the course of six years, between 2001 and 2007. Every two years, the researchers met with the participants, whose socioeconomic backgrounds ranged from far below the poverty line to far above it.

At each meeting, the participants would undergo a brain scan, which measured the amount of gray matter in parts of the brain that are key to academic achievement: the frontal lobe (which helps with executive functioning and emotion regulation), the temporal lobe (memory and language comprehension) and the hippocampus (long-term memory). The participants also took tests designed to evaluate skills necessary to perform well academically, like visual processing, math computation, visual motor coordination, concept formation, and more.

The results, published today in JAMA Pediatrics, were striking: Kids who came from families below the poverty line exhibited “systematic structural differences” in their brains, with 7-10 percent less gray matter in the three tested areas than those children living above the poverty line. The participants below the poverty line also scored significantly lower on the academic achievement tests; the researchers estimate that 15 to 20 percent of this difference can be attributed to the differences in brain development.

The developmental changes likely come from the “environmental circumstances of poverty,” says Seth Pollak, a study co-author. He describes the problem as two-pronged: There’s a lack of things that help stimulate brain growth, like people to read to you, crayons and books, a bed in which to get good sleep. And there’s too much of the stuff that delays it: stress and crowding, not knowing where the next meal is coming from, unstable housing situations, and exposure to violence. “All these things together affecting the central nervous system,” says Pollak.

One oddly hopeful takeaway is that brain development only seemed to correlate with poverty levels for the poorest kids: There wasn’t a difference in brain development between lower-middle class kids and affluent kids. This suggests that some gains could be made by developing programs for very young children in poverty that give them some of the same cognitive stimulation and stability as their middle-class peers, including preschool and parenting programs.

This isn’t the first research to show that poverty adversely affects brain development of children. Perhaps the most well-known study, by researchers at Rice University, found that by age three, poor children hear roughly 30 million less words than their more privileged counterparts. And there’s also research showing the effects of poverty on the achievement gap: Children growing up in poor families, even when allowed to go to better schools, tend to perform worse than their middle class peers.

But the study released today was the first to connect these findings. “It was stunning to see the circle closed—the delay in brain growth explains the achievement deficit in poor children,” says Pollak. Poverty, he notes, isn’t just a social problem—it’s a biomedical one.

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What Poverty Does to Kids’ Brains

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Uber Drivers in California Are Employees, Labor Commission Rules

by DrusillJnb Posted on June 17, 2015

Mother Jones

California’s Labor Commission just delivered what could potentially be a significant blow to Uber’s business model. After a former driver sued to be reimbursed for driving expenses, the commission ruled that drivers working for the popular ride-hailing app are employees, not independent contractors.

“The defendants hold themselves out as nothing more than a neutral technological platform, designed simply to enable drivers and passengers to transact the business of transportation,” the commission wrote in its ruling. “The reality, however, is that defendants are involved in every aspect of the operation.”

The ruling, which for now only applies to California drivers, is the result of a claim filed back in September by Barbara Ann Berwick, a former Uber driver. Berwick argued she was owed payment for expenses, such as mileage, incurred while working for the company, but Uber insisted that she was only an independent contractor and therefore not eligible for reimbursement. On Tuesday, the commission ordered the company to pay Berwick $4,000 in expenses.

The difference in classification is significant, as an employee status may force Uber to provide drivers benefits such as social security, health insurance, and unemployment insurance. Uber is in the process of appealing the decision.

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Uber Drivers in California Are Employees, Labor Commission Rules

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Rare-earth mining in Chile could make China look bad

by NicoleIrons Posted on June 2, 2015

Rare-earth elements, including neodymium (back center). Peggy Greb, US Department of Agriculture

Rare-earth mining in Chile could make China look bad

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Your smartphone is a little box-shaped devil that sucks up all your attention, ruins perfectly good conversations, and makes you incapable of turning a corner without first looking up where you are on your GPS. But it’s also a pretty useful tool that’s made of stuff. Ever wonder where that stuff comes from?

Turns out, the rare-earth minerals like neodymium and dysprosium used to make iPhones, cars, wind turbines, Tomahawk cruise missiles, glass, and various other consumer goods come primarily from mines in China, where environmental preservation hasn’t always been a top priority. Now, a Chilean company called Biolantánidos is looking to snatch up some of that market in a much greener way. Here’s more from Bloomberg Business:

While operations in China typically pump ammonium sulfate into the ground and wait for the chemical to seep out with the minerals, at Biolantánidos the plan is to dig out the clay, put it through a tank-leaching process with biodegradable chemicals and return it cleaned to the ground, replanting pine and eucalyptus trees. It may be laborious, but [project leader Arturo] Albornoz is hoping companies such as ThyssenKrupp AG, Apple Inc. and Tomahawk cruise missile maker Raytheon Co. will end up paying a premium, knowing their suppliers aren’t destroying the planet.

Biolantánidos plans to start operations in the city of Concepción about 250 miles south of Santiago by the end of 2016, Bloomberg reports. And with the rights to about 772 square miles of land, the company estimates that it can make about 2,500 metric tons of rare-earth concentrate per year at first and potentially 10,000 tons down the road. About 130,000 tons of rare-earth minerals are churned out globally every year, according to Bloomberg.

Unfortunately, now isn’t the greatest time to get into the rare-earth minerals biz:

Prices have declined in recent years after China said it would comply with an order from the World Trade Organization to end export quotas imposed in 2010. Yttrium for example, which is used in jet engines, has tumbled 33 percent in the past year, while neodymium oxide is down 8 percent and dysprosium oxide is down 2.2 percent, according to prices at the Shanghai Metals Market.

“It’s our big bet on green mining,” Albornoz told Bloomberg. Hopefully, that bet will pay off, and companies will be willing to pay up for a clean conscience. And hey — if they’re strapped for cash, they can always divert some funds from their mega-office park utopias.

Source:
Chileans Bet Apple Will Pay a Premium for Clean Rare Earths

, Bloomberg Business.

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These Are the Jobs Robots Will Take From Humans, According To Researchers With Jobs…For Now

by DonnaDunagan Posted on May 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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The coming robot invasion is suddenly a hot topic again. This week, Fresh Air interviewed Martin Ford, whose book Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future was just reviewed in the New York Times by Barbara Ehrenreich. The Harvard Business Review published a long article with advice for protecting your career from super-smart robots. And NPR’s Planet Money has been producing a series of stories on how machines are getting really good at doing tasks from serving food and writing news articles to reading emotions.

As MoJo‘s Kevin Drum, who’s been following this rapidly emerging trend for while, explains, by 2030 or 2040 we could see a major economic shift in which robots and computers start to make significant chunks of the human workforce obsolete: “When the robot revolution finally starts to happen, it’s going to happen fast, and it’s going to turn our world upside down.”

So just how worried should you be that a bot or app is about to force you into early retirement? Planet Money made a nifty tool that spits out the chances that your job may soon be done by robots or computers. Some selected results:

Telemarketers: 99.0% chance of being automated

Umpires and referees: 98.3%

Cooks: 96.3%

Manicurists and pedicurists: 94.5%

Roofers: 89.7%

Janitors: 66.3%

Massage therapists: 54.1%

Programmers: 48.1%

Historians: 43.9%

Judges: 40.1%

Actors: 37.4%

Dancers: 12.7%

Writers: 3.8%

Chief executives: 1.5%

Foresters: 0.8%

Preschool teachers: 0.7%

The numbers, based on a 2013 study by an economist and a machine-learning prof from Oxford, are all over the board. In general, jobs that require negotiation, creativity, and people skills tend to have a lower chance of being done by a robot. So dancers and preschool teachers can sleep easy. As can CEOs, who will no doubt find a way to provide essential oversight of the new 24-7, benefit- and bathroom break-free workforce.

Some of the findings seem to push the bounds of what we’re currently willing to let machines do. Robocalling people during dinnertime, sure. But will we really see a robot ump calling the 2040 World Series? In theory, a computer can call a strike more accurately than a person, but what’s the fun in shouting “Get your vision algorithm debugged!” at a camera behind home plate?

Only a mindless machine would read these as precise probabilities. “The researchers admit that these estimates are rough and likely to be wrong,” Planet Money concedes. Now if only there were a machine that was good at analyzing data to make reliable estimates…

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These Are the Jobs Robots Will Take From Humans, According To Researchers With Jobs…For Now

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