Tag Archives: Foundation

Dinesh D’Souza Indicted for Campaign Finance Fraud

by Kailey A. Aitkin Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I see via TPM that conservative crackpot Dinesh D’Souza has been indicted for violating federal election laws. But is this real fraud, or the sort of picayune thing that anybody might get entangled in simply for not being an expert in the finicky details of campaign finance regs? Here’s the Reuters report:

According to an indictment made public on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, D’Souza around August 2012 reimbursed people who he had directed to contribute $20,000 to the candidate’s campaign. The candidate was not named in the indictment.

Hmmm. This would be the real deal. Telling other people to make contributions and then reimbursing them is an obvious no-no, something that D’Souza could hardly plead ignorance about. If this turns out to be true, he’s in trouble.1

1Alternatively, it could be a godsend, something he can milk forever as proof that he’s being hounded by Obama administration thugs determined to shut down their conservative critics.

Continued here: 

Dinesh D’Souza Indicted for Campaign Finance Fraud

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dinesh D’Souza Indicted for Campaign Finance Fraud

Raw Data: It’s Elites Who Drive Polarization, Not the Working Class

by JoanSanderz Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Who’s responsible for increasing political polarization? Andrew Gelman suggests that one of the “cleanest pieces of evidence” is public attitudes toward abortion. If you look at the polling data, what you see is that attitudes between Democrats and Republicans start to diverge markedly around 1990. If you dig a little deeper, you find that the change is almost entirely among whites. If you dig a little deeper among whites, you get this:

The biggest change in party polarization on abortion appears among those with mid to high incomes; those with college degrees; and those who are heavily tuned into politics. Among the fabled blue-collar whites, party ID doesn’t really predict attitudes on abortion very well at all.

Gelman avoids drawing any broad conclusions from this, and so will I. But it’s interesting, especially since we’ve seen lots of evidence like this before. It’s elites who have largely turned our major parties into polarized war zones, not the heartland.

Read this article: 

Raw Data: It’s Elites Who Drive Polarization, Not the Working Class

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Raw Data: It’s Elites Who Drive Polarization, Not the Working Class

Chris Christie is Losing the Invisible Primary

by 07ld5ksl Posted on January 21, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

How is Chris Christie doing in the latest presidential polling for 2016? It’s hard to care much. It’s way too early for these polls to mean anything.

However, the invisible primary for the Republican nomination will be starting in earnest within a year, and even now GOP power brokers are starting to make decisions about who to support. So it probably is worth asking how Christie is doing among Republicans. Dave Weigel answers:

Worse and worse. In the last Quinnipiac poll, 64 percent of Republicans said Christie would be a “good president.” Only 18 percent disagreed. That’s shrunk to 50 and 22 percent, respectively—a mere 4-point increase in the hard-no number, but a 12-point move from “good president” to “ask me something else.” Conservatives, more skeptical in general of Christie, had given him a 54–26 advantage on the “good president” question. That’s down to 37–24. Again, not huge movement to “no,” just a lot of sliding toward undecided.

Since I officially think Christie never had much of a chance in 2016 to begin with, I suppose these numbers shouldn’t mean much to me. But Bridgegate really does seem to be moving Christie from the “slim chance” column to the “no chance” column. You need to have a good reason to gamble on someone with Christie’s obvious downsides, and that good reason has always been his appeal to blue-collar America as an honest guy who doesn’t pull his punches. When that morphs into a reputation as a guy with control issues who revels in petty reprisals against his political foes, the jig is up. He’s got nothing left. The folks with money who are looking for a winner are going to start looking elsewhere.

Taken from: 

Chris Christie is Losing the Invisible Primary

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chris Christie is Losing the Invisible Primary

Are Breakfast Meetings a Sign of Hopeless Incompetence?

by RoxanaSaunders Posted on January 20, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

For most of my career, I was blessed with bosses who almost never insisted on holding breakfast meetings. I hated them and rarely found them very productive because half the group was still trying to rub the sleep out of their eyes. Today, Paul Krugman provides his own theory of breakfast meetings, based on his stint at the CEA in 1982:

I can understand why busy, productive people might sometimes want to meet at 7 AM. But what soon became completely clear was that the people who insisted on those early meetings were precisely the least competent and productive guys — the economics team at the NSC, which was totally hopeless in the Reagan years, the team at Agriculture (ditto), and so on. (No offense to current personnel, who I hope are in a completely different class; there were a lot of really strange people allegedly doing economics in the early Reagan period.) It was hard not to conclude that they were making a show of being incredibly busy and hard-working; they probably went back to their offices after breakfast and read Ayn Rand novels or something.

Meanwhile, people at USTR and the Fed, who really did know what they were doing, showed no similar fetish.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that for most of my career I was also blessed with bosses who were pretty competent folks.

See the article here: 

Are Breakfast Meetings a Sign of Hopeless Incompetence?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are Breakfast Meetings a Sign of Hopeless Incompetence?

Everywhere in the World, Governments Heavily Regulate the Home Mortgage Business

by s02xc3x Posted on January 17, 2014

Mother Jones

Yesterday I wrote about problems with the mortgage finance market, which are mostly due to the fact that private lenders aren’t interested in funding 30-year fixed-rate mortgages on their own. There’s just too much risk. This means that if we want the mortgage market to revive, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to start guaranteeing these mortgages again in the same volumes they used to.

One obvious response to this is that the 30-year fixed mortgage wasn’t handed down on stone tablets from Mt. Sinai. It was an invention of the New Deal. Other countries get by just fine without them, and so can we. We should just get the government out of the mortgage market entirely and let banks make whatever kinds of loans they want.

We could do that. But it’s well to keep in mind that although other countries might not have outfits like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they do have plenty of government regulation of the mortgage loan market. If you’re curious about how mortgages work outside the US, Michael Hiltzik provides a useful rundown of Canada here. Other countries work differently, but the principle is the same: there’s always supervision of some kind. Getting rid of Fannie and Freddie is a defensible option, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting rid of government regulation. You’ll just end up with different government regulation.

Read more:

Everywhere in the World, Governments Heavily Regulate the Home Mortgage Business

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Everywhere in the World, Governments Heavily Regulate the Home Mortgage Business

This Holiday Season, Brick-and-Mortar Stores Had Fewer Customers But Bigger Sales

by Hermine73K Posted on January 17, 2014

Mother Jones

The Wall Street Journal reports that foot traffic in retail outlets plummeted this holiday season:

A long-term change in shopper habits has reduced store traffic—perhaps permanently—and shifted pricing power away from malls and big-box retailers.

….Traffic to U.S. retailers was hurt during the financial crisis and recession, when job losses soared and shoppers kept a tight grip on their dollars. But nearly five years into the recovery, it appears many of those shoppers may never be coming back….Shoppers don’t seem to be using physical stores to browse as much, either. Instead, they seem to be figuring out what they want online then making targeted trips to pick it up from retailers that offer the best price.

This is actually not quite the tale of woe that it sounds like. It’s more interesting than that. In the past, brick-and-mortar outlets complained about shoppers coming to stores to check out the merchandise but then buying online. Now the tables have turned: shoppers are going online to check out prices and products, and then making a quick trip to pick up their goods instead of driving around town to a bunch of stores to do comparison shopping.

The result is that foot traffic is down, but sales are up: holiday spending increased 2.7 percent in 2013 compared to 2012. That’s not a great number, and obviously profits have taken a big hit as stores try to compete with low internet prices. Still, if sales are up 2.7 percent and foot traffic is down 14 percent, that means your staffing cost per dollar of sales is down. This is not unalloyed bad news for physical stores.

I’m not trying to be Pollyanna-ish here. Obviously brick-and-mortar stores have big challenges. Still, they might be able to thrive if they can learn to adapt to an environment in which there’s less casual browsing and more serious, targeted shopping. Anybody who’s worked in retail knows that you treat these kinds of shoppers differently, and perhaps the brick-and-mortar world needs to transition to a model in which they treat their customers by default as targeted shoppers. After all, there are still plenty of us who don’t believe everything we read online and still want to see things with our own eyes before we buy them.

Read this article – 

This Holiday Season, Brick-and-Mortar Stores Had Fewer Customers But Bigger Sales

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Holiday Season, Brick-and-Mortar Stores Had Fewer Customers But Bigger Sales

Mother Jones Goes Old School. Really Old School.

by grycjanekg Posted on January 16, 2014

Mother Jones

And now for something completely different. A friend of mine has taken up stained glass as a hobby (you can see more here), and he recently made me a stained glass version of the banner at the top of my blog. It arrived yesterday, and it’s now hanging above my desk. Are you jealous yet? He even got a discount on the raw glass when the folks in the store found out what it was for. Turns out they’re fans of Mother Jones. All I need now to go along with it is an illuminated manuscript version of the blog itself.

View the original here: 

Mother Jones Goes Old School. Really Old School.

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mother Jones Goes Old School. Really Old School.

Chart of the Day: The Job Market For College Grads is Tougher Than Ever

by TGEGreggjbxsfx Posted on January 16, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A new report from the New York Fed offers a grim take on the job prospects of recent college grads. It finds that underemployment (i.e., working at a job that doesn’t require a college degree) has averaged around 40 percent for the past two decades, going down a bit during economic expansions and up a bit during recessions.

But if the rate of underemployment itself hasn’t changed very much, the nature of underemployment sure has. It’s gotten worse. Take a look at the thick lines in the chart on the right. They show what happens to recent college grads who can’t get college-level jobs. The number who get good non-college jobs has plummeted from 50 percent to 35 percent. The number in low-wage jobs has risen from 15 percent to 20 percent. And needless to say, these grads also have quite a bit more student loan debt than grads from the early 90s.

Getting a college degree is still worth it. But there’s not much question that today’s college grads have it tougher than previous generations did. And the 40 percent who don’t find good jobs have it the toughest of all.

Original source:  

Chart of the Day: The Job Market For College Grads is Tougher Than Ever

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chart of the Day: The Job Market For College Grads is Tougher Than Ever

West Virginia Spill Exposes Disturbing Lack of Data About Hazardous Chemicals

by GlennaNVYhnbrcm Posted on January 15, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared on the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The 300,000 residents of nine West Virginia counties affected by last Thursday’s chemical spill are slowly starting to get notice that they can turn on their taps again. But many are still wondering why they didn’t have more information about the potential dangers in their own backyard.

As much as 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (also known as crude MCHM) spilled into the Elk River about a mile and a half upstream from where the West Virginia American Water utility draws its supply. The coal-cleaning chemical came from a storage facility owned by Freedom Industries and located in Charleston, the state capital.

Continue Reading »

Continued here:  

West Virginia Spill Exposes Disturbing Lack of Data About Hazardous Chemicals

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on West Virginia Spill Exposes Disturbing Lack of Data About Hazardous Chemicals

Quote of the Day: How Dare You Use Notes in My Presence!

by dla@kk2.pl Posted on January 15, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

From Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to a lawyer making his first appearance before the court:

Counsel, you are not reading this, are you?

I’ll second Josh Blackman’s reaction: this is a dick move by Justice Scalia. Maybe it’s time for him to step down and take over the Andy Rooney spot on 60 Minutes. That seems to be more his speed these days.

See original article: 

Quote of the Day: How Dare You Use Notes in My Presence!

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: How Dare You Use Notes in My Presence!