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How Old Should Kids Be Before They’re Allowed to Play in the Front Yard on Their Own?

by MahaliaGruner Posted on December 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pew Research routinely comes out with long, detailed surveys of interesting things, and I usually thumb through them looking for intriguing tidbits. Today it’s “Parenting in America,” and you’ll be unsurprised to learn that middle-class parents generally have a more positive view of things than poor parents. I may have more to say about this later, but in the meantime here’s a tidbit that answers a question I’ve pondered more than once: how old should kids be before they’re allowed to do stuff on their own?

I don’t know how this has changed over time, but these figures sure seem strange. I played on my own in front of my house when I was five,1 but today’s parents think you need to be 10—and a substantial fraction think you need to be over 12 to play in front of the house unsupervised.

Ditto for the others. I suppose 12 isn’t unreasonable for staying home alone, but again, a substantial fraction think you need to be 14 or 15 or even 18.

As for public parks, holy cow. The average age for allowing kids to play in a park without adult supervision is 14, and there’s a substantial fraction who think you literally have to be an adult yourself before you should be allowed to go to a park on your own.

Unsurprisingly, Pew says that the answers are correlated with income, which is correlated with the kind of neighborhood you live in. If you live in a safe neighborhood, the average age for playing in front of the house is 9. If you live in a poor neighborhood, it’s 11. This makes sense.

Still, the overall numbers sure strike me as high. Of course, I’ve led a sheltered existence, so maybe I just don’t get it. But the world is a safer place than it was 30 years ago. Do kids really need to be ten just to play in the front yard these days?

1I called my mother to confirm this. She did.

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How Old Should Kids Be Before They’re Allowed to Play in the Front Yard on Their Own?

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Vladimir Putin Calls Donald Trump Brilliant, Flamboyant, Lively, Colorful, Outstanding….Um, What?

by SonjaDeMole Posted on December 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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The opening line of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground is “I am a sick man…a spiteful man.” Or is it? I once read a fascinating introduction to Dostoyevsky’s famous novella that began by collecting a dozen different translations of that line, all of them suggesting a slightly different meaning. So what did Dostoyevsky really mean? It may be impossible to say for sure in English.

That’s how I feel today, reading the news that Vladimir Putin praised Donald Trump at a news conference. Here are eight different translations of Putin’s remarks:

He is a brilliant and talented person without a doubt…

He is a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt…

He is a very bright person, talented without any doubt…

He’s a very colorful person. Talented, without any doubt…

He is a standout, talented person, without any doubt

He is a bright personality, a talented person, no doubt about it…

He is a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about that…

He’s a very lively man, talented without doubt…

Needless to say, these are very different things. “Outstanding” suggests that Putin thinks well of Trump. “Bright” suggests a more neutral assessment. And “flamboyant” and “lively” suggest that he thinks Trump is a blowhard.

So what did Putin really say? Beats me. But video of his remarks is above for anyone who wants to provide a deeper analysis of Putin’s word choice and what it really means in Russian.

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Vladimir Putin Calls Donald Trump Brilliant, Flamboyant, Lively, Colorful, Outstanding….Um, What?

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Strike Two For Pair of New York Times Reporters

by EdmundoGutierre Posted on December 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, FBI director James Comey said that the San Bernardino shooters never talked openly about violent jihadism on social media: “So far, in this investigation we have found no evidence of posting on social media by either of them at that period in time and thereafter reflecting their commitment to jihad or to martyrdom. I’ve seen some reporting on that, and that’s a garble.”

So where did this notion come from, anyway? The answer is a New York Times story on Sunday headlined “U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media.” It told us that Tashfeen Malik “talked openly” on social media about jihad and that, “Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country.” The story was written by Matt Apuzzo, Michael Schmidt, and Julia Preston.

Do those names sound familiar? They should. The first two were also the authors of July’s epic fail claiming that Hillary Clinton was the target of a criminal probe over the mishandling of classified information in her private email system. In the end, virtually everything about the story turned out to be wrong. Clinton was not a target. The referral was not criminal. The emails in question had not been classified at the time Clinton saw them.

Assuming Comey is telling the truth, that’s two strikes. Schmidt and Apuzzo either have some bad sources somewhere, or else they have one really bad source somewhere. And coincidentally or not, their source(s) have provided them with two dramatic but untrue scoops that make prominent Democrats look either corrupt or incompetent. For the time being, Schmidt and Apuzzo should be considered on probation. That’s at least one big mistake too many.

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Strike Two For Pair of New York Times Reporters

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Here Is the Worst Answer From Tonight’s Debate

by KaiGerowspeox Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here is Hugh Hewitt asking Donald Trump about America’s nuclear triad—missiles, subs, and bombers:

HEWITT: What’s your priority among our nuclear triad?

TRUMP: Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible; who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important. And one of the things that I’m frankly most proud of is that in 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq because you’re going to destabilize the Middle East. I called it. I called it very strongly. And it was very important.

But we have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ball game. Frankly, I would have said get out of Syria; get out — if we didn’t have the power of weaponry today. The power is so massive that we can’t just leave areas that 50 years ago or 75 years ago we wouldn’t care. It was hand-to-hand combat.

The biggest problem this world has today is not President Obama with global warming, which is inconceivable, this is what he’s saying. The biggest problem we have is nuclear — nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.

HEWITT: Of the three legs of the triad, though, do you have a priority? I want to go to Senator Rubio after that and ask him.

TRUMP: I think — I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.

I seriously want to hear anyone on the right side of the aisle defend Trump as a potential commander-in-chief after hearing this. Any conservative who still wants this guy as president has forfeited their last smidgen of credibility as anything more than a crude partisan hack.

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Here Is the Worst Answer From Tonight’s Debate

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Justice Scalia Suggests Blacks Belong at "Slower" Colleges

by ReneHGIzfeasq Posted on December 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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During oral arguments in a pivotal affirmative action case on Wednesday morning, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia raised the suggestion that African American students might belong at less rigorous schools than their white peers, and that perhaps the University of Texas should have fewer black students in its ranks.

Scalia’s comments came during arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case over whether the university’s use of race in a sliver of its admissions decisions is constitutional. The University of Texas-Austin is being challenged over its use of race in admissions decisions for about 25 percent of its freshman class. About 75 percent of the students at UT-Austin are admitted through what’s known as the Top Ten Percent program, in which any student graduating within the top 10 percent of his or her class is guaranteed admission, regardless of race. The other 25 percent are admitted via a “holistic” process that takes race, and other factors, into account. It’s the “holistic” program that Abigail Fisher—who was denied admission for the university in 2008—is challenging.

The University of Texas has determined that if it excluded race as a factor, that remaining 25 percent would be almost entirely white. During the oral arguments, former US Solicitor General Greg Garre, who is representing the university, was explaining this to the justices. At that point, Scalia jumped in, questioning whether increasing the number of African Americans at the flagship university in Austin was in the black students’ best interests. He said:

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.

He went on to say, “I’m just not impressed by the fact the University of Texas may have fewer blacks. Maybe it ought to have fewer. I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”

After a comment like this, Court watchers will really be looking forward to his opinion in the case.

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Justice Scalia Suggests Blacks Belong at "Slower" Colleges

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Can California Help the Paris Climate Talks Succeed?

by WandaMichaelis2 Posted on December 8, 2015

green4us

Plus: Tom Steyer on Bernie Sanders’ new climate plan and how global warming will impact the 2016 election. California is no stranger to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. It has the second-highest carbon footprint of any US state (after Texas). But as diplomats from nearly every country on Earth hash through the final details of an international climate change agreement in Paris this week, they’re seeing a very different side of the Golden State. Gov. Jerry Brown, his predecessor Arnold Schwarzenegger, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, and a host of other Californian political and business leaders are here in the French capital this week to tout their state’s success as a carbon-slashing powerhouse. They argue that countries around the world should look to California for guidance on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and nurture the clean energy industry—while creating jobs and growing the economy. “California can be a template of what is successful,” said California State Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), in a press briefing Monday with Steyer and a dozen clean energy entrepreneurs. “We can export our policies.” Indeed, the state does have a lot to be proud of. It ranks way down at #45 for per-capita carbon emissions. And it was among the first states to set a greenhouse gas reduction target, way back in 2006. That law, signed by Schwarzenegger, called on the state to reduce its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. In January of this year, Brown re-upped with a new set of climate goals that are the most aggressive in the nation. California broke ground on carbon trading markets. And thanks in part to a policy that requires the state’s power companies to get a third of their electricity from renewable energy by 2020, the state routinely ranks number-one on clean energy investment and has the most solar power of any state. And as de Leon pointed out several times, all those green policies don’t seem to have dragged down the state’s economy: Total GDP is rising while emissions per unit of GDP are dropping. Climate-savvy lawmakers did suffer a setback this fall, when pressure from the oil lobby led the legislature to give up on an attempt to cut gasoline consumption in half by 2030. But that hasn’t stopped Brown and his peers from becoming leading voices here at the beginning of the second week of “COP21,” as the massive climate summit in Paris is known. On Tuesday evening, de Leon led a coalition of US mayors at an event calling for President Barack Obama to bypass Congress and push to get half the country’s power from renewables by 2030. The day before, Brown took the stage at Earth to Paris, an event organized by the UN Foundation at an ornate building in the city center packed with hundreds of scientists, policy wonks, and political leaders who needed a break from the core negotiations. (Secretary of State John Kerry followed shortly after.) “This is an art and a science,” he said, of his state’s climate campaign. “You have to push business further than they want to go, but within their capacity to reach it.” That message was echoed by Tom Steyer, whose political group NextGen Climate plans to spend huge sums of cash to make climate a central theme of the 2016 presidential election. “The opposition to progressive energy policy around the world always come out as: ‘You can have healthy jobs or a healthy environment, but you can’t have both,’” Steyer said. “But in California, we can walk the walk and talk the talk.” He also said the next president, if it’s one of the Democratic candidates who aims to continue Obama’s climate legacy (all the Republicans running are committed to overturning it), will need to rally much more support from the American people in order to overcome an obstinate Congress. You can hear more of Steyer’s remarks in the video above. It remains to be seen whether any of this will make an impression on the real negotiators, huddled in a converted airport in the city’s northern suburbs. Over the next few days, they’ll be poring over hundreds of fine-grain decisions on everything from how often countries will need to revise their climate commitments, to how much wealthy countries like the United States should have to pay to help vulnerable, poorer nations adapt to climate impacts. We’re on the ground in Paris week—stay tuned for updates. Master image: Darren J. Bradley/Shutterstock

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Can California Help the Paris Climate Talks Succeed?

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Can California Help the Paris Climate Talks Succeed?

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To Protest Walmart on Black Friday, Organizers Are Seeking Food for Underpaid Workers

by RicardoUan Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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The people who organized the largest-ever Black Friday demonstrations against Walmart last year are leaving their protest signs at home this year. Instead, they’re launching a campaign to support 1,000 food drives around the country to help struggling Walmart workers.

Making Change at Walmart’s “Give Back Friday” campaign kicked off on Tuesday with the launch of a national TV ad campaign urging people “to help feed underpaid workers” and to “help us tell Walmart that in America no hard-working family should go hungry.”

Some Walmart stores have implicitly acknowledged that their “associates” don’t make enough money to feed themselves. In 2013, a Walmart store in Ohio held a Thanksgiving food drive “for associates in need”—although well intentioned, the drive became a publicity nightmare for the retail giant after photos of the food collection bin went viral.

Walmart raised its wages this year, but an entry-level associate still makes just $9 an hour—less than $16,000 a year based on Walmart’s full-time status of 34 hours a week. (The federal poverty level is $24,250 for a family of four and $11,770 for an individual.) A 2013 report by congressional Democrats found that the company’s wages and benefits are sufficiently low that many employees turn to the government for help, costing taxpayers between $900,000 and $1.75 million per store.

“This holiday season, we have set the goal of feeding 100,000 Walmart workers and families,” the union-backed group Making Change at Walmart said in a press release. “It is unconscionable that people working for one of the richest companies in this country should have to starve.”

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To Protest Walmart on Black Friday, Organizers Are Seeking Food for Underpaid Workers

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Who’s the Most Humble? We Are!

by RoseanneGourgaud Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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People For the American Way emails to highlight something from last Friday’s pre-Thanksgiving celebration of Christian virtue in Iowa. Here is Carly Fiorina:

“I do think it’s worth saying,” Fiorina declared, “that people of faith make better leaders because faith gives us humility, faith teaches us that no one of us is greater than any other one of us, that each of us are gifted by God. Faith gives us empathy; we know that all of us can fall and every one of us can be redeemed. And faith gives us optimism, it gives us the belief that there is something better, that there is someone bigger than all of us.”

PFAW is doing the Lord’s work here—so to speak—but I can’t get too worked up about this. It’s annoying, but what do you expect at a big gathering of evangelical Christians in Iowa? But then there’s this from omnipresent messaging guru Frank Luntz:

Luntz then followed up on Fiorina’s statement by declaring that “I can back that up statistically,” asserting that “every single positive factor that you can describe is directly correlated to someone’s relationship with faith, with God, and all the pathologies that you would criticize are directly related to a rejection of God.”

You know, I’ve got nothing against organized religion. It provides an important part of life for a lot of people and does a lot of good charitable work. It also does some harm, but what human organization doesn’t?

<rant volume=7>

But it sure does get tiresome to hear Christians like Fiorina constantly preening about how great they are and then in their next breath boasting about their humility. Fiorina also explicitly suggests that nonbelievers are second-rate leaders and then immediately congratulates believers like herself for their empathy. As for optimism, I have rarely come across a community more convinced that the entire country has become a grim and ghastly abomination than evangelical Christians. Generally speaking, I’d say that evangelical Christians—the ones who blather in public anyway—are among the least humble, least empathetic, and least optimistic people in the country.

Still, you can just chalk all this up to political hyperbole and let it go. But then Luntz steps in to bring the Science™. It’s not just Fiorina’s opinion that believers are better than nonbelievers. By God, Luntz can prove that every single bad thing in the world is due to unbelievers. Who needs faith when you have dial tests? So there you have it: Revel in your overwhelming superiority, Christians. What better way to win sympathy for your views?

</rant>

Have a nice Thanksgiving, everyone. Eat with a few sinners and publicans this year, OK?

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Who’s the Most Humble? We Are!

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 November 2015

by DanielaKenneall Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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This has sure been a crappy week, and Hilbert and Hopper agree. As you can see, they decided to flee upstairs to the bedroom and adopt disapproving looks. Those are for Donald Trump. They are hoping that us human types can do more than just glower, so let’s get to it.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 November 2015

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Charter Schools: Great in Cities, Ho-Hum in Suburbs?

by DaneLabynm Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Evaluating charter schools is tricky. Maybe highly motivated parents send their kids to charters and others don’t. The solution is to identify schools that are oversubscribed and track students who won and lost the lottery to get in. That way you get a random set of parents on both sides. But maybe charters kick out bad students after they’ve attended for a year or two. The solution is to tag lottery winners as charter kids forever. They count against the charter’s performance regardless of where they end up later. Fine, but maybe oversubscribed charters are different in some way. What about less popular charters where you can’t do any of this lottery-based research?

Susan Dynarski, an education professor at the University of Michigan, acknowledges all of this, but says we can draw some conclusions anyway:

A consistent pattern has emerged from this research. In urban areas, where students are overwhelmingly low-achieving, poor and nonwhite, charter schools tend to do better than other public schools in improving student achievement. By contrast, outside of urban areas, where students tend to be white and middle class, charters do no better and sometimes do worse than other public schools.

This pattern — positive results in low-income city neighborhoods, zero to negative results in relatively affluent suburbs — holds in lottery studies in Massachusetts as well in a national study of charter schools funded by the Education Department.

Interesting. But if this is really the case, why?

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Charter Schools: Great in Cities, Ho-Hum in Suburbs?

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