Tag Archives: Foundation

Watch Live: Bill Nye the Science Guy Debates Ken Ham (the Creationist Guy)

by FrancePrinsep Posted on February 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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As we reported earlier, the case for evolution is a slam dunk. Nonetheless, a lot of people don’t accept it, and tonight at 7 pm ET, a mega debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ken Ham, leader of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, goes forward. The debate will be at the museum itself. It is at 7 pm ET, and can be watched live above.

For more of our coverage of evolution, see below. I will be live tweeting he debate on Twitter; follow me here.

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Watch Live: Bill Nye the Science Guy Debates Ken Ham (the Creationist Guy)

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One More Time: No, the Fort Lee Lane Closures Were Not Part of a Traffic Study

by ShadWeiland Posted on February 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Chris Christie’s radio interview about Bridgegate yesterday:

You still don’t know at this point whether there was a traffic study?

Well, what I’m saying, Eric, did this start as a traffic study that morphed into some political shenanigans, or did it start as political shenanigans that became a traffic study?

Oh come on. If this started as a legitimate traffic study, there would be two pieces of routine evidence for it. First, there would be some kind of planning document from the Port Authority engineering department. Second, there would be some kind of report on the results of the study. This is the absolute bare minimum that would accompany a genuine traffic study, especially one that involved a major lane closure.

If either of these documents exists, Christie would have produced it long ago. He hasn’t, and it’s simply not plausible for him to continue pretending that we don’t know if there was a real traffic study that prompted this affair. There wasn’t.

POSTSCRIPT: Robert Durando, general manager of the George Washington Bridge, has testified that data was collected during the days when the Fort Lee access lanes were closed. This is meaningless. It was tolls data, which is collected routinely every day. The fact that this is the only data that was collected is evidence against the the notion that there was a real traffic study being conducted, not evidence for it.

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One More Time: No, the Fort Lee Lane Closures Were Not Part of a Traffic Study

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The American Economy in a Nutshell: Flat Revenues, Great Earnings

by Cindy Lin Posted on February 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Wall Street Journal reports that American firms are struggling with falling prices due to weak consumer demand:

With about half of companies reporting year-end earnings, Thomson Reuters estimates revenue for companies in the S&P 500 stock index rose just 0.9%—capping two years of lackluster revenue growth and tying the third-weakest quarterly sales growth since the fall of 2009….The persistent weakness in revenue also prompts companies to cut back costs and plow their spare cash into share buybacks instead of investments like new factories and hiring. Fourth-quarter earnings, as a result, are expected to be up 9.4%.

There you have it. Earnings are up nearly 10 percent—because companies are cutting staff—and revenues are essentially flat—because workers have no money. This is the American economy in a nutshell. Solutions welcome.

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The American Economy in a Nutshell: Flat Revenues, Great Earnings

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Your Weekend PSA: Using Date Ranges in Google Search

by Poppy Hill Posted on February 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is a public service announcement about a feature of Google search that few people seem to know about: date ranges. This is useful in a couple of ways. First, I sometimes want only pages that are really recent, and it’s handy to be able to restrict results to the past hour or the past day. Alternatively, sometimes I’m looking for something old, which is hard to find because Google heavily prioritizes recent results. A specific date range fixes that.

In any case, it’s easy to specify a date range. After your results come up, click Search tools at the top of the page. Then click Any time and choose an option from the dropdown list. That’s it.

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Your Weekend PSA: Using Date Ranges in Google Search

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Quote of the Day: Why Immigration Reform Is Probably Going Nowhere

by ManuelXNZotpv Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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In the Republican Party, immigration reform is basically a battle between the tea party, which opposes it, and the Chamber of Commerce wing, which supports it. In a nutshell, Dave Weigel explains why this means it’s doomed:

The chamber wing does want immigration reform, badly, but not as intensely as it wants to defeat Democrats in 2014. So it’s easy for the party to fall into a holding pattern, with new rhetoric, without actually passing a bill.

I guess anything is possible, and immigration reform has always been the one big legislative priority that I give a nonzero chance of passing Congress. But Weigel is right. The business wing of the GOP just doesn’t want it badly enough to risk starting a bloody, party-rupturing fight with the social conservatives. For once, I’d say that Ted Cruz probably has the right take on this.

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Quote of the Day: Why Immigration Reform Is Probably Going Nowhere

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 31, 2014

by VetaLauqcdwznhk Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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U.S. Army Spc. Steven Hitchcock assigned to 55th Signal Company (Combat Camera), takes photographs during a mission on Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif., Jan. 22, 2014. Hitchcock’s mission was to document Task Force Training conducted by Rangers from 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. (U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Rashene Mincy/ Released)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 31, 2014

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Economy Grows Fairly Decently in Q4

by Teofilnpc Posted on January 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Economic growth slowed down a bit in Q4, but remained fairly healthy. The BEA announced today that real GDP increased 3.2 percent last quarter, due almost entirely to private sector growth. Slowdowns in federal spending actually cut GDP growth by 0.98 percent—about two-thirds due to cuts in defense spending and one-third due to cuts in domestic spending. This is the price of austerity: if federal spending were growing at a normal rate at this point in a recovery, GDP growth last quarter probably would have stood at around 4.5 percent or so.

Everything else was pretty positive:

The increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, nonresidential fixed investment, private inventory investment, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by negative contributions from federal government spending and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

Consumer spending increased decently, and inflation was extremely subdued at 1.2 percent. All in all, a decent report, if not a spectacular one. Now we all get to wait and see if it’s good enough to offset all the turmoil in emerging markets that’s got everyone so jittery.

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Economy Grows Fairly Decently in Q4

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Apparently the Denver Broncos Have Lots of Dumb Fans

by TerenceBuchholz Posted on January 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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The other day I noticed that the Broncos were favored to win the Super Bowl, and I was puzzled. I thought the Seahawks were favored. But I don’t pay a lot of attention to this stuff, so I figured I just misread something somewhere.

But no! Apparently the betting line has changed substantially over the past week or so. The New York Times explains why:

The oddsmakers know things. They know there are two kinds of money: the sharp dough of professional gamblers and the square dollars of the public. They know that betting lines are meant to be moved….They know that square money is enthralled by favorites and falls hard for teams that have done a lot for them lately. The Broncos, for instance, not only covered against New England, but looked good doing it. It’s part of the reason Denver is currently the 2 ½-point favorite even though oddsmakers opened with the Seahawks — a team they believe is better — as a 2- to 2 ½-point favorite.

That’s a big swing. Apparently the dumb money is falling hard for the Broncos. If that’s the case, the smart guys ought to make a killing. We’ll see about that.

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Apparently the Denver Broncos Have Lots of Dumb Fans

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The Gap Between Private and Public Sector Workers Can’t Keep Growing Forever

by Victoriapw5 Posted on January 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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From the New York Times:

President Obama plans to sign an executive order requiring that janitors, construction workers and others working for federal contractors be paid at least $10.10 an hour, using his own power to enact a more limited version of a policy that he has yet to push through Congress.

I wonder how this plays out politically? On the one hand, public support for a higher minimum wage is very broad. On the other hand, this reinforces the widening gap between private sector workers and those who are paid (directly or indirectly) by taxpayer dollars. One side watches its wages stagnate and its standard of living drop, while its taxes are used to fund ever higher wages for the lucky few working for the government.

It’s not clear how this is going to play out on the broader political stage. There’s already been a backlash against unionized state and local workers, who have seen their wages and pensions increase during the recession, while the taxpayers who fund them have seen their wages drop significantly during the same period. But how does this story end? With voters rebelling against higher wages for government workers? Or with voters rebelling against the miserly wages of the private sector? I don’t know. But at some point, something’s got to give.

UPDATE: I didn’t get into the comp details in this post, so let me just add a little bit here. My read of the evidence is that, as of a few years ago, government workers at low and mid-range pay levels were generally (but not universally) better compensated than similar private sector workers. The gap was small, but real, and over the past several years it’s almost certainly increased.

The story is different at higher wage levels. Executives, doctors, lawyers, scientists, and so forth are paid quite a bit better in the private sector than they are in government jobs.

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The Gap Between Private and Public Sector Workers Can’t Keep Growing Forever

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The No-Fly List Takes Another Hit

by LilianW64evhn Posted on January 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Two federal judges have recently ruled that the government’s no-fly list has some serious constitutional problems:

This follows on a federal court decision in August that travelling internationally by air involves “a constitutionally protected liberty interest.” While that case still has a way to go before it reaches a conclusion, the implications of a constitutionally protected right are that any limits on it must involve due process. Simply slapping names on a list because they’re allegedly suspected of the definition-of-terrorism-of-the-week and leaving people stranded won’t cut it.

The more recent decisions would seem to follow on that logic, recognizing that arbitrary limits on travel really do impair people’s ability to exercise their rights and such limits—especially when they involve official screw-ups—have to be fixable through some formal process.

It’s taken more than a dozen years to get to this point, and that’s a disgrace. The federal government certainly has the right to prevent foreigners from entering the country, and it doesn’t owe them due process when it makes those decisions. But preventing citizens and legal residents from flying overseas—or, even worse, allowing them to fly but not allowing them to return home—is police state territory. Ditto for the steady conversion of the Immigration Service into an extraconstitutional agency to harass and search citizens who can’t be legally harassed or searched by ordinary law enforcement.

The federal government simply doesn’t—or shouldn’t—have the right to unilaterally hound and persecute people based on the mere suspicion of a bureaucrat. Arbitrarily constraining travel is a favorite tactic of oppressive regimes, and it has no place in the United States. The faster this stuff is ended, and the faster that due process once again becomes more than just a nice idea, the better.

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The No-Fly List Takes Another Hit

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