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Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City Is Closing

by StaciAndersen Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, once the crown jewel of Donald Trump’s sprawling casino empire, will officially close because of an ongoing strike and hemorrhaging losses, the Press of Atlantic City reported on Wednesday. The casino, which was originally owned by Trump but went bankrupt, only to be bailed out by billionaire-investor Carl Icahn, will close at the end of the summer.

Tony Rodio, president of Tropicana Entertainment, explained in a statement:

Currently the Taj is losing multi-millions a month, and now with this strike, we see no path to profitability. Our directors cannot just allow the Taj to continue burning through tens of millions of dollars when the union has single-handedly blocked any path to profitability. Unfortunately we’ve reached the point where we will have to close the Taj.

Trump, who filed for bankruptcy four times in the past three decades (one of those times with the Taj Mahal), has used his alleged business acumen as a qualification for the presidency. But as numerous reports have shown, the Republican nominee appears to have exaggerated his successes in real estate and the casino business.

In July, when Hillary Clinton took aim at her rival’s shoddy business record to make the case that a Trump presidency would destroy the American economy, she stood in front of the Taj Mahal.

The casino’s closure comes as yet another blow during one of the most chaotic weeks of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It began when Khizr Khan and his wife appeared at the Democratic National Convention to denounce Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the country. Trump responded by attacking the Khan family. Despite sharp condemnation from top Republican leaders for his remarks, the real estate magnate has remained defiant, refusing to apologize for smearing the Gold Star parents.

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Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City Is Closing

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Thanks, climate change, for all the extra mosquito bites — oh, and the Zika

by KrystleFenston Posted on July 28, 2016

This bites

Thanks, climate change, for all the extra mosquito bites — oh, and the Zika

By on Jul 28, 2016Share

If rising sea levels, worsening wildfires, and butt sweat weren’t enough to worry about, climate change is also responsible for another problem: more mosquitoes, and more of the diseases they bring with them.

Researchers from Climate Central analyzed the length of mosquito seasons in cities around the country, and what they found is Not Good — at least for humans (the mosquitoes are doing just fine). Improving conditions for mosquitoes, the researchers found, have increased the number of mosquito days in cities like Baltimore and Durham, North Carolina, by nearly 40 per year since the 1980s. More than 20 major cities now have ideal conditions for mosquitoes for at least 200 days each year. That’s over half the year to contend with mosquitoes! Over half! And, nationwide, 76 percent of major cities have seen increases in mosquito season over the past 36 years.

As mosquitoes thrive, so do mosquito-borne viruses like Zika. Already, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed more than 1,400 cases of Zika in travelers returning to the U.S. from abroad. But even if you don’t have plans to travel, that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear: When infected travelers are bit by mosquitoes here, they can then spread the virus at home.

So stock up on mosquito nets, folks. We might all be needing them soon.

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Thanks, climate change, for all the extra mosquito bites — oh, and the Zika

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Are giant suction cups the key to cheap wind power?

by bileteaviononline Posted on July 26, 2016

Suckers

Are giant suction cups the key to cheap wind power?

By on Jul 26, 2016Share

The coolest new innovation in offshore wind energy right now is, essentially, a giant toilet plunger. Put enough of these plungers together and they could help power Detroit, Chicago, and the other metropolises of the Midwest.

Lake Erie Energy Development and Fred Olsen Renewables, a European energy company, plan on building a wind installation with the help of these toilet plungers, aiming for six 50-foot high turbines in Lake Erie, seven miles off the coast of Cleveland.

Putting wind turbines in the Great Lakes instead of on Midwestern farmland makes plenty of sense. Compared to farmland, underwater land is cheap. There’s also more wind on the water, because there are no inconvenient trees or buildings in the way. The Great Lakes are freshwater, so mechanical parts won’t wear down as fast as they would in the ocean’s saltwater. And big cities surround the Great Lakes, which makes it easy to connect a new installation to a pre-existing power plant.

The toilet plunger method (more formally known as the “Mono Bucket”) is an example of how a technological game-changer can often be incredibly low tech. Imagine a bunch of giant plungers in a lake. When the plungers descend, the water trapped in the bottom is pushed out, creating a vacuum. The vacuum pulls the plunger down to the lake bed and anchors it. This provides a solid base for a wind turbine and takes much less time than the standard method of using pile drivers to push concrete-filled steel pipes into the ground. It’s also less environmentally destructive.

This “Icebreaker” project  — a nod to the ice floes that dot Lake Erie in the winter — is expected to generate 20 megawatts by the fall of 2018. But the potential for expanding this project is enormous. The Great Lakes have one-fifth of the country’s impressive but unused offshore wind energy, a mind-boggling 700 gigawatts, enough to power as many as 525 million households, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s nearly four times as much energy as U.S. households currently use.

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Are giant suction cups the key to cheap wind power?

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Bernie Sanders Can’t Figure Out Why His Supporters Don’t Like Hillary Clinton

by LatanyaSoper Posted on July 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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MoJo’s ace reporting team tells us what happened when Bernie Sanders addressed his delegates at the Democratic convention. At first, when he talked about the platform and the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, things went fine:

But when he tried to rally the delegates on behalf of Clinton, his audience became restless. “Immediately, right now, we have got to defeat Donald Trump, and we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine,” Sanders said. His delegates shouted their protests and booed, forcing Sanders to pause before continuing in his remarks. Sanders called Trump a “bully and a demagogue” who “has made bigotry the core of his campaign.” Still, the boos continued. “She does too!” delegates shouted. Others yelled, “Only you! Only you!”

Sanders declared that Trump poses a danger to the country’s future, but he could not win over the crowd. “She has ruined communities!” one woman shouted. “She has ruined countries!” Sanders pointed out that Trump “does not respect the Constitution of the United States.” Delegates kept on chanting: “Not with her!” and “We want Bernie!”

Our reporters say that Sanders “looked a bit surprised by the intensity of the Clinton opposition.” I can’t imagine why. This is one of the big problems I had with him back during the primary. It’s one thing to fight on policy grounds, as he originally said he would, but when you start promising the moon and explicitly accusing Hillary Clinton of being a corrupt shill for Wall Street—well, there are some bells that can be unrung. He convinced his followers that Hillary was a corporate warmonger more concerned with lining her own pockets than with progressive principles, and they still believe it. And why wouldn’t they? Their hero told them it was true.

Hillary is no saint. But her reputation as dishonest and untrustworthy is about 90 percent invention. Republicans have been throwing mud against the wall forever in an attempt to smear her, and the press has played along eagerly the entire time. When Bernie went down that road, he was taking advantage of decades of Republican lies in the hopes of winning an unwinnable battle. He was also playing directly into Donald Trump’s hands.

I don’t know. Maybe he never realized how seriously his young followers took him. It’s possible. But he really needs to do something about this. Tonight’s speech would be a good starting point.

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Bernie Sanders Can’t Figure Out Why His Supporters Don’t Like Hillary Clinton

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18 Great Trends of the Obama Administration—And 2 Terrible Ones

by LutherA26ixxrez Posted on July 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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So how has the country been doing during President Obama’s term in office? Here’s a scattering of indicators and how they’ve changed from 2008 (the last year of the Bush presidency) to now:

  1. Unemployment rate (U3): DOWN from 5.8 percent to 4.7 percent.
  2. Underemployment rate (U6): DOWN from 10.6 percent to 9.6 percent.
  3. Violent crime rate (per 100,000 residents): DOWN from 459 to 366.
  4. Fear of crime: DOWN from 37 percent to 35 percent.
  5. Uninsured rate: DOWN from 19.7 percent to 10.3 percent.
  6. Number of illegal immigrants: DOWN from 11.8 million to 11.3 million.
  7. Illegal immigrants from Mexico: DOWN from 6.6 million to 5.6 million.
  8. Teen pregnancy rate (per thousand females): DOWN from 40 to 25.
  9. Current account balance (trade deficit): DOWN from 4.6 percent of GDP to 2.3 percent of GDP.
  10. American war deaths: DOWN from 469 to 28.
  11. Inflation rate: DOWN from 3.8 percent to 1.1 percent.
  12. Shootings of police officers: DOWN from 149 to 120.
  13. Abortion rate (per thousand women): DOWN from 19 to 16.9 (through 2011).
  14. Federal deficit: DOWN from 3.1 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent of GDP.
  15. Drug abuse: DOWN from 22.4 million to 21.6 million (through 2013).
  16. Drug abuse among teenagers: DOWN from 7.7 million to 5.2 million (through 2013).
  17. Household debt (as percent of disposable income): DOWN from 12.8 percent to 10 percent.
  18. Public high school graduation rate: UP from 74 percent to 82 percent (through 2013).

I’m not presenting this stuff because I think it will change anyone’s mind. Nor because Obama necessarily deserves credit for all of them. You can decide that for yourself. It’s mostly just to get it on the record. And it’s worth noting that none of this may matter in the face of two other statistics that might be more important than all the rest put together:

  1. Median household income: DOWN from $55,313 to $53,657 (through (2014).
  2. Americans killed in terror attacks: UP from 14 to 50+ (so far in 2016).

If you measure household income more broadly, it looks better than the raw Census figures. And household income has finally started increasing over the past couple of years. On the terror front, the absolute number of American fatalities from terrorist attacks is obviously very small. Still, the number of brutal attacks in the US and Europe (the only ones Americans care about) has obviously spiked considerably over the past year.

Are these two things enough to outweigh everything else? Maybe. Come back in November and I’ll tell you.

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18 Great Trends of the Obama Administration—And 2 Terrible Ones

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

by NannetteUnj Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump’s big speech at the Republican convention on Thursday didn’t contain a single reference to the environment or climate change. It was vague on policy overall, focusing heavily on the primary themes of this year’s Republican National Convention: bashing Hillary Clinton’s character and fear-mongering over crime and national security, with a heavy dose of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

There was, however, one section that dealt hazily with energy policy. Unfortunately, it was filled with falsehoods. Let’s go through the four key assertions one at a time:

“Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it.”

The apparent source for this figure is the National Association of Manufacturers, a conservative business lobbying organization that is fiercely opposed to regulations. The group’s $2 trillion estimate calculates only the cost of regulatory compliance and not the cost savings that result from government rules. So the fact that environmental and workplace safety regulations prevent health-care expenses and missed work days, for example, is simply ignored in this calculation. When you do account for the benefits of regulations, they often end up saving far more money than they cost. Experts debunked NAM’s report; the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service cited the Office of Management and Budget in calling the kind of methodology used “inherently flawed.” No unbiased, empirical cost-benefit analysis would come up with anything close to the number Trump cites.

“We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.”

The source for this $20 trillion figure is the Institute for Energy Research, an organization funded by the Koch brothers. As The New York Times has previously noted, “economic reality” contradicts this projection. Additional fossil fuel production has diminishing returns because increased supply means lower prices. So, according to experts the Times interviewed, the number is wildly exaggerated.

“My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steelworkers of our country out of work—that will never happen when I am president.”

Hillary Clinton’s admission that coal workers will be put out of work in the years ahead was not a statement of what she wants; it was a statement of reality. The coal industry is shedding jobs because of mechanization, tapped-out mountains, and increasing competition from natural gas and renewables. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan would prevent backsliding toward more coal use but not seriously worsen the industry’s already grim prospects. So Trump can’t actually reverse coal’s decline just by rolling back regulations. In any case, Clinton, unlike Trump, has a plan to put laid-off workers from this dying industry back to work in growing sectors—including, but not limited to, wind and solar energy production.

“With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country. This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans—we will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions more jobs.”

Trump is right that infrastructure investment would be good for the economy. Too bad his party’s own platform explicitly rejects spending on railways and many other kinds of infrastructure. And, in reality, Trump’s insane budget plan would leave no money for such projects.

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

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Sorry, Trump: Scottish wind farm is going ahead despite you

by SamMickey557244 Posted on July 22, 2016

Blow it out your ass

Sorry, Trump: Scottish wind farm is going ahead despite you

By on Jul 22, 2016Share

Donald Trump may have gotten the Republican nomination for president, but he isn’t getting his way when it comes to his Scottish golf course.

Swedish company Vattenfall has announced a nearly $350 million investment in an offshore wind farm that Trump tried to prevent from being built, afraid it would mar the view from his luxury golf course. Now the wind farm is expected to go online in 2018.

Trump once compared the project to the 1988 plane bombing over Lockerbie, which killed 270 people. “Wind farms are a disaster for Scotland, like Pan Am 103,” Trump said. “They make people sick with the continuous noise. They’re an abomination and are only sustained with government subsidy. Scotland is in the middle of a revolution against wind farms. People don’t want them near their homes ruining property values.”

The Scottish people, however, have more love for wind farms than for Donald Trump. A 2013 newspaper poll found two-thirds of respondents disagreed with Trump about the wind project, and he hasn’t gained fans since.

“He’s not a popular person in Scotland,” Alex Salmond, a Scottish member of parliament, said last month, “but the way Trump talks you’d think he owned the country.” We know how he feels.

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Sorry, Trump: Scottish wind farm is going ahead despite you

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Republicans Just Made a Very Awkward Pitch to Conservative Latinos

by SamualDRDlzfqmb Posted on July 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Selling Donald Trump’s candidacy to Latinos—even conservative, Republican Latinos—is a tricky political dance.

A few of Trump’s top surrogates in Cleveland paid a visit on Wednesday to an event hosted by the Latino Coalition—a conservative, nonpartisan group. Their pitch for the real estate mogul wasn’t exactly inspiring.

“I want you all to understand,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said, “that I made a choice to support Donald Trump not only because he’s been my friend for 14 years, but because I am completely confident he is going to be the Republican nominee for president, and last night he became the Republican nominee for president.” Christie then asked the event’s attendees to make a similar calculation when it comes to picking between Hillary Clinton and Trump. The message was clear: Suck it up, and vote for Trump.

The next speaker, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), delivered a brief speech in which he slammed Clinton for being too liberal, praised the work of the Republican Congress, and bashed bureaucratic red tape. He never even mentioned Trump. Originally a supporter of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R), Duffy seemed more inclined to raise his own profile among the group than to tout the virtues of his party’s standard-bearer.

Sharon Day, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, stopped by to pitch party loyalty—not by invoking the GOP presidential nominee, but by quoting Rubio. “We open our arms,” she said, “and I can’t say this as eloquently as Marco Rubio may have said it, but you know what: We welcome legal immigration with wide gates and wide open arms. But again there is a rule of law in the country. There is an opportunity for everyone to come in this country legally; and we welcome all to do that.” Like Duffy, she didn’t mention Trump.

These party emissaries seemed to know their audience—most of the attendees were less than enthusiastic about Trump. Tony Quinones, a venture capitalist and registered Republican from California, is hopeful that Trump will evolve into a typical Republican nominee. “But if he starts diverting off of that”—for example, his pledge to build a wall along the US-Mexico border—”that I know makes people nervous. It makes me nervous. It makes people in my family nervous. It makes people I do business with nervous.”

“I’ve talked to at least 20 family members about politics and about how we as a family want to approach it,” Quinones said when asked how he would vote in November. “So I’m here to find out what the real policies are going to be.”

Mario Lopez, the president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a conservative group, wasn’t optimistic that conservative Latinos would rally behind Trump this year. “A lot of the data from 2012 shows that the Latinos who did not vote, who stayed home, were more likely to self-identify as politically conservative,” he said. He sees little evidence that those voters will turn out for Trump in November. “I think it’s highly unlikely,” he said, beginning to laugh. “The signs don’t point in that direction, let me put it that way.”

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Republicans Just Made a Very Awkward Pitch to Conservative Latinos

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Cruz Compares Himself to General Patton as Supporters Chant "2020"

by LeonoraVentimig Posted on July 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Just as Sen. Ted Cruz was about to launch into a tirade against Donald Trump at a rally in Cleveland on Wednesday afternoon, a sign came down from the heavens. Donald Trump’s plane descended from the sky, flying over the Cuyahoga River in a victory march at just the moment his vanquished foe was holding one last rally to thank his fans for their support.

The crowd, at a gathering hosted by the Texas delegation at a riverbank bar, booed loudly at the Trump-emblazed 757. “That was pretty well orchestrated,” Cruz shouted.

The senator from Texas is scheduled to speak during prime time at the convention Wednesday night, but he didn’t seem ready to throw his support behind the Republican nominee quite yet. “I don’t know what the future’s going to hold,” Cruz said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But what I do know, what remains, is my faith in the men and women here. What I do know is that everyone of us has an obligation to follow our conscience, to speak the truth, and truth is unchangeable.”

Cruz launched an extended metaphor comparing his presidential campaign to the opening scene from the film Patton, when the World War II general speaks before a massive flag to thank his troops. “He speaks about how in this war, every one of us, as he said, the object is not for you to die for your country,” Cruz said. “It’s to make the other fella die for his country.” He added, “Patton said, at the end of the day, everyone who was part of this, when we’re old and gray and our grandkids ask, ‘Where were you in the great one, in the great battle,’ we’ll be able to say to our grandkids, ‘I wasn’t shoveling crap in Louisiana.'”

The crowd loved it. When Cruz talked about being unsure of his own future, the assembled launched into a chant of “2020!” But before the event started, I overheard a pair of Cruz delegates worrying that Cruz might get booed by Trump delegates when he takes the convention stage.

One of the delegates comforted the other, saying, “It’ll just sound like Cruuuuuz.”

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Cruz Compares Himself to General Patton as Supporters Chant "2020"

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Don’t Let Individual Polls Fool You. Donald Trump Is Still Well Behind Hillary Clinton.

by ChelseyJenkin Posted on July 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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I get asked frequently whether I’m worried about this election. Of course I am. It’s a blot on our country that a man like Donald Trump has even won a major-party nomination, and it’s possible he could even win the presidency. Who wouldn’t be worried about that?

But am I especially worried because the national polls are within four or five points and sometimes even moving in Trump’s direction? Nope. This is an election with no incumbent running. There have been six of these in the postwar era, and the average margin of victory is about 4 percentage points. That’s just the way they go, and we shouldn’t be surprised that this one is running about the same. The fact that Trump is even closer in some polls is also entirely normal. If he’s truly four points behind, you’d expect a range of about 0-8 percentage points in different polls. And the fact that he’s sometimes closer and sometimes farther behind is also normal. External events will affect these things. Put this all together, and you’d expect individual polls to range anywhere from Trump ahead by two points to behind by ten points.

And that’s pretty much what we’re seeing right now. Trump could win, and that’s hardly cause for cheer. But he’s been steadily behind Hillary Clinton by 4-6 points for the past month, and the fact that individual polls sometimes show the race closer is nothing to get extra jittery about. Ordinary jitters are quite enough.

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Don’t Let Individual Polls Fool You. Donald Trump Is Still Well Behind Hillary Clinton.

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