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Chart of the Day: Kansas Successfully Reduces Voting Rate of Blacks, Young People

by EmileWhitney Posted on October 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Hey, guess what? If you pass a photo ID law, you reduce voter turnout. The nonpartisan GAO studied the effect of photo ID laws and, after applying all the usual demographic controls, came up with this chart for Kansas and Tennessee compared to similar states without photo ID laws:

Voter turnout was reduced by 2-3 percentage points in both states. But of course there’s more to the story. Some groups were more strongly affected than others. Here are the results for Kansas:

Age. In Kansas, the turnout effect among registrants who were 18 years old in 2008 was 7.1 percentage points larger in size than the turnout effect among registrants between the ages of 44 and 53.

….Race or ethnicity. We estimate that turnout was reduced among African-American registrants by 3.7 percentage points more than among Whites in Kansas.

….Length of registration. In Kansas, the reduction in turnout for people registered to vote within 1 year prior to Election Day 2008 was 5.2 percentage points larger in size than for people registered to vote for 20 years or longer prior to Election Day 2008.

Victory! Turnout plummeted among blacks, young people, and college students. What more could an enterprising Republican legislature want?

Oh, and, um, maybe voter fraud was reduced. The Kansas Secretary of State responded to a draft of the GAO report by explaining that “if lower overall turnout occurs after implementation of a photo ID law, some of the decrease may be attributable to the prevention of fraudulent votes.” You betcha.

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Chart of the Day: Kansas Successfully Reduces Voting Rate of Blacks, Young People

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There Are No Magic Wands in Iraq

by CharliCYLL Posted on October 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Syrian border town of Kobani is the latest shiny toy for the press to latch onto in the war against ISIS:

As warplanes from the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates pounded Islamic State fighters near the Syrian city of Kobani for a third day, the U.S.-led military campaign began running up against the limits of what air power can accomplish. “Airstrikes alone are not going to save the town of Kobani,” Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

….Despite an intensifying air campaign in Fallouja and other cities not far from Baghdad, an effort that in recent days has included use of U.S. attack helicopters, the Iraqi army has continued to lose ground to the militants, U.S. officials acknowledged.

We all know what’s coming next, don’t we? Two weeks ago, everyone — absolutely everyone — was unanimous in agreeing that (a) we needed to act now now now, and (b) we should never put boots on the ground in Iraq. But now that the obvious is happening, I think we can expect an extended round of breast beating and humanitarian keening about the well-known limitations of air campaigns; the horror of watching innocent Kobanis die; and the lamentable lack of planning and leadership from the White House.

Some of this will just be partisan opportunism, but most will be perfectly sincere protests from people with the memory span of a gnat. What they want is a magic wand: some way for Obama to inspire all our allies to want exactly what the United States wants and then to sweep ISIS aside without the loss of a single American life. Anything less is unacceptable.

But guess what? The Iraqi army is still incompetent. America’s allies still have their own agendas and don’t care about ours. Air campaigns still aren’t enough on their own to stop a concerted ground attack. This is the way things are. There are no magic wands. If you want quick results against ISIS, then speak up and tell us you want to send in 100,000 troops. If you’re not willing to do that, then you have to accept that lots of innocent people are going to die without the United States being able to offer much help. Make your choice now.

Continued – 

There Are No Magic Wands in Iraq

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If You Pay Them, They Will Come

by DorothyTremblay Posted on October 9, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a news article about employers who desperately want to hire more people but just can’t find workers with the right skills. Oh wait. You do see that every day. What you don’t see are articles which make it clear that a willingness to pay higher wages is all it takes to fix this problem:

Manufacturing wages are rising at a rapid clip in some major industrial states as shortages of certain skills and gradually falling unemployment rates force more companies to pay up to attract and retain workers.

….“What we mainly need is welders,” said Terry McIver, chief executive and owner of Loadcraft Industries Ltd., a maker of parts for oil rigs in Brady, Texas….Dewayne Roy, head of the welding program at Mountain View College in Dallas, said he recently had a waiting list of about 250 people seeking to enroll. One student, Logan Porter, 22, started working for a metal-fabrication shop in the Dallas area in February and is putting in 55 to 60 hours a week. He earns $17 an hour, but with time and a half for overtime, his weekly take-home pay typically exceeds $800. “I love the work,” he said.

….Steve Van Loan, president of Sullivan Palatek Inc. in Michigan City, said job hopping is becoming more of a problem. “They get an offer for more money across town, and they’re gone,” he said. Wages on average at his firm, which makes compressors that power drills and other tools, are rising 4% to 5% this year, compared with 2% to 3% in recent years, Mr. Van Loan said.

How about that? If you pay more, you attract workers with the right skills. If you pay more, training programs start to fill up. If you pay more, you can steal folks away from your competitors.

Pay is the great equalizer. There are always going to be shortages of specific skills in specific times and places. But a long-term nationwide shortage? That just means employers aren’t willing to pay market wages. They should read their Milton Friedman. If you pay them, they will come.

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If You Pay Them, They Will Come

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Jon Stewart Would Have Been a Terrible Host of “Meet the Press”

by August5317 Posted on October 8, 2014

Mother Jones

Gabriel Sherman says that Chuck Todd wasn’t NBC’s first choice to replace David Gregory as host of Meet the Press:

Before choosing Todd, NBC News president Deborah Turness held negotiations with Jon Stewart about hosting Meet the Press, according to three senior television sources with knowledge of the talks. One source explained that NBC was prepared to offer Stewart virtually “anything” to bring him over. “They were ready to back the Brinks truck up,” the source said. A spokesperson for NBC declined to comment. James Dixon, Stewart’s agent, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

….Though not a traditional journalist, Stewart can be a devastatingly effective interrogator, and his Meet the Press might have made a worthy successor to Tim Russert’s no-bullshit interviews.

Help me out here, folks. Who’s crazy: me or NBC (and Gabriel Sherman)? This whole thing sounds nuts to me because Jon Stewart is a terrible interviewer. He’s congenitally unprepared for any serious policy discussion and frequently creates awkward moments where he literally seems to have run out of anything to say even though he’s still got a couple of minutes left before the next ad break. When he’s shooting the breeze with other comedians, his interviews can be pretty funny. But when he’s talking to serious folks? It’s almost painful to watch.

Am I wrong here? Am I missing something? Is Stewart really “devastatingly effective” and I’m just too shallow to see it?

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Jon Stewart Would Have Been a Terrible Host of “Meet the Press”

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The Great Wage Slowdown of the 21st Century Is About a Lot More Than Just Wages

by PhillipEnright Posted on October 8, 2014

Mother Jones

David Leonhardt writes about why the economy looks so bad even though unemployment has fallen below 6 percent:

American workers have been receiving meager pay increases for so long now that it’s reasonable to talk in sweeping terms about the trend. It is the great wage slowdown of the 21st century.

Yes indeed. This started around the year 2000 and hasn’t changed since. But as I’ve written before, that’s not all that changed around the year 2000. Here’s a more comprehensive list:

  1. Median income growth slowed in the mid-70s, but it stalled almost completely around 2000 and hasn’t recovered since.
  2. Real-world investment opportunities began stagnating around 2000.
  3. Labor markets slackened permanently starting around 2000.
  4. The employment-population ratio among women plateaued around 2000 and continued its long-term decline among men.
  5. The labor share of income in the nonfinancial sector dropped steeply starting in 2000 and never recovered.
  6. The number of jobs created by new businesses peaked around 2000 and has been falling ever since.
  7. State and local government output suddenly stagnated around 2000.
  8. Globally, the energy intensity of GDP stopped growing around 2000, which means world economic growth became limited by energy growth.
  9. Household debt inflected upward in 2000, and kept growing until the Great Recession put a stop to it.

I call this the Inflection Point of 2000, and it seems like too many things, all happening at about the same time, to be mere coincidence. In my piece last year about our robotic future, I suggested that much of it might be the barely visible early signs of a more automated economy, and I still suspect that may be part of what’s going on. But I don’t know for sure, and the evidence on this score is distinctly fuzzy.

And yet. It sure feels like something changed right around 2000. But what?

Link:

The Great Wage Slowdown of the 21st Century Is About a Lot More Than Just Wages

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Immigration, ISIS, and Ebola: A Perfect Right-Wing Storm

by AshlyV43nvle Posted on October 8, 2014

Mother Jones

Here is Republican congressman Tom Cotton, currently running for a Senate seat in Arkansas:

Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they’re willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism.

And here is Republican congressman Duncan Hunter, currently running for reelection in California:

At least ten ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the border in Texas.

You will be unsurprised to learn that neither of these things is true. They were just invented out of whole cloth, much like Rep. Phil Gingrey’s fear that immigrant children might be bringing Ebola across the border. And I think we can expect more of it. The confluence of immigration, ISIS, and Ebola is like catnip to the Republican base. It appeals to their deepest fears. It demonstrates how feckless President Obama is. And it confirms that we need to be far more hawkish about national security. What’s not to like?

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Immigration, ISIS, and Ebola: A Perfect Right-Wing Storm

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Chart of the Day: Overweight Teenagers Earn Less as Adults

by JBWFlynnmh Posted on October 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s a stunning chart for you. It comes from a paper by a team of Swedish researchers, and it shows the relationship between earnings and weight among men. As you can see, adult earnings reach a peak around a BMI of 23—smack in the middle of the normal range—and then steadily decline as you get more overweight. But here’s the kicker:

In particular, we contribute to the existing literature by showing that there is a large labor market weight-related penalty also for males, but only for those who were already overweight or obese in adolescence. We replicated this pattern using additional data sets from the United Kingdom and the United States, where the results were strikingly similar. The UK and U.S. estimates also confirm that the penalty is unique to those who were overweight or obese early in life.

The earnings penalty for overweight (and underweight!) men isn’t due to simple discrimination. Men who become overweight as adults face no special career penalty. It’s only a problem for men who become overweight as teenagers. The Economist summarizes the paper’s conclusions:

At first glance, a sceptic might be unconvinced by the results. After all, within countries the poorest people tend to be the fattest….But the authors get around this problem by mainly focusing on brothers….They also include important family characteristics like the parents’ income. All this statistical trickery allows the economists to isolate the effect of obesity on earnings.

So what does explain the “obesity penalty”? They reckon that discrimination in the labour market is not that important. Neither is health. Instead they emphasise what psychologists call “noncognitive factors”—motivation, popularity and the like. Having well-developed noncognitive factors is associated with success in the labour market. The authors argue that obese children pick up fewer noncognitive skills—they are less likely, say, to be members of sports teams or they may face discrimination from teachers.

In other words, social ostracism of both underweight and overweight teenagers produces lower cognitive skills and lower noncognitive (i.e., social) skills, and this in turn leads to lower earnings as adults. It may seem like harmless teenage clique behavior, but it has real consequences.

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Chart of the Day: Overweight Teenagers Earn Less as Adults

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Friday Cat Blogging – 3 October 2014

by Gina72Ebzwtxbe Posted on October 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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We have names! They have not, ahem, been met with universal acclaim, but we’re sticking with them. Our little gray-and-white girl is:

Hopper aka Gracie aka The Admiral

And our little black-and-white boy is:

Hilbert aka Davie aka The Professor aka The 24th Problem

For those of you too lazy to google things, Hopper is named after Admiral Grace Hopper, “the mother of COBOL.” Hilbert is named after David Hilbert, a famous German mathematician who has some personal resonance for me and also happens to have a name that begins with H, which makes him a nicely alliterative companion for Hopper. Among other things, Hilbert is famous for a speech in 1900 in which he laid out 23 fundamental mathematical problems, some of which remain unsolved to this day.

It turns out, by the way, that the fastest way to get Hilbert’s attention is to pay attention to Hopper. All we have to do is scratch Hopper’s chin and Hilbert, somehow, becomes aware of it and comes bounding into the room demanding that we scratch his chin. It’s really quite remarkable. He not only has a jealous streak, he apparently has ESP too.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 3 October 2014

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Is This Deep-Fried-Yam Chef the Future of Texas Politics?

by DeniseAvelar Posted on September 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Milton Whitley’s gift to Texas was called twisted yam on a stick. You take a yam, cut it into a spiral, deep fry it, cover it in butter, smother it in sugar, coat it in cinnamon, eat. Is it healthy? Of course it’s healthy—yam is a superfood. The final product was a finalist at the 2009 Texas State Fair, before losing out to the eventual winner, deep-fried butter.

A native of Dallas County, Whitley started off as a catfish cook and worked his way up the comfort food chain to an appearance on national television presenting Oprah and Gayle with a homemade sweet potato pie. He now teaches science at a public school. But last year he set his sights on something more daunting than the fried-food contest at the state fair—getting elected to the Texas Legislature as a Democrat. Whitley, who’s running in the Dallas-area 113th state House district, is one of a dozen candidates selected as part of a trial program for Battleground Texas, the Democratic organizing project launched last spring by a cast of Obama campaign veterans who are hoping to turn the nation’s largest red state blue.

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Is This Deep-Fried-Yam Chef the Future of Texas Politics?

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Stop Everything And Let This 11-Year-Old Boy Give You Hope For the Future

by DollieEFLak Posted on September 22, 2014

Mother Jones

Last month, in the midst of nightly protests over the killing of unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, an 11-year-old boy named Marquis Govan approached the podium at a meeting of the St. Louis County Council, pulled the mic down to his height, and calmly delivered an incredibly well-informed, thoughtful, and stirring set of remarks.

“The people of Ferguson, I believe, don’t need tear gas thrown at them,” he said. “I believe they need jobs. I believe the people of Ferguson, they don’t need to be hit with batons. What they need is people to be investing in their businesses.” He wasn’t reading from notes, and the clearly stunned adults in the room gave him a round of applause when he finished.

If all this sounds surprising from a sixth-grader, Govan, a politics junkie who lives with his great-grandmother in St. Louis, drops more adult-sized portions of knowledge in this interview with CBS Sunday Morning. Don’t miss it.

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Stop Everything And Let This 11-Year-Old Boy Give You Hope For the Future

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