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Watch Hillary Clinton Tell an Undocumented 19-Year-Old Why She Supports Immigration Reform

by LauraFore Posted on April 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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A 19-year-old undocumented immigrant confronted Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and not-quite-presidential candidate, about immigration reform at an event hosted by the Clinton Foundation Thursday.

An hour into the panel discussion, which featured Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, the moderator, actress America Ferrera, called on a young woman at the front of the room to ask a question. “I have a very different glass ceiling than some of the girls here,” the 19-year-old woman explained, fighting back tears. “For the first time publicly I want to say that I am an undocumented immigrant.” She went on to explain that her family had illegally brought her to the US from Croatia when she was five-years-old. “It’s been very hard,” she continued, “because I don’t have the documentation to get a job, to vote—which is essential obviously to women representation—to buy an apartment, to take out a loan to go to college, so I couldn’t even go to my dream college because of that, to get no financial aid.”

Clinton immediately sympathized. “I believe strongly that we are missing a great opportunity by not welcoming people like you,” she said, “and 11 million others who have made contributions to our country, into a legal status.”

You can watch the exchange here, beginning at the hour and 20-minute mark.

Clinton continued, saying that she favors “immigration reform and a path to citizenship.” The former secretary of state shied away from offering an opinion on how exactly she thinks the government should offer citizenship to those residing in the country without documents, but she endorsed the reform bill that the Senate passed last year. Without naming the party, she called out the Republican leaders of the House of Representatives and said that they should allow a vote on the bill. “I think that’s a big missed opportunity for our country,” Clinton said, “because part of the reason we’re going to do really well in the 21st century is because we are a nation of immigrants. We keep attracting people like you and your family who want to make a contribution. It’s not only because we want to make life better for people like yourselves who is already here, it’s good for us.”

The Clintons were speaking at an event for the family foundation’s No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, which focuses on advancing women’s rights worldwide. The younger Clinton made news herself at the event by announcing that she is pregnant.

Clinton supported the failed bipartisan efforts to reform the immigration system during George W Bush’s second term. The Senate’s latest stab at fixing the system is more modest than the Bush-era proposal.

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Watch Hillary Clinton Tell an Undocumented 19-Year-Old Why She Supports Immigration Reform

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A Brief History of Big Tax Breaks for Oil Companies

by Eugenio8037 Posted on April 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion into the oil and gas industry in the form of generous, never-expiring tax breaks. How it all got started:

1916
The petroleum industry takes off as Americans’ love affair with the automobile begins. A new tax provision allows oil companies to write off dry holes as well as all “intangible drilling costs” in their first year of exploration. Over the next 15 years, oil and gas subsidies will average $1.9 billion a year in today’s dollars.

1926
Congress approves the “depletion allowance,” which lets oil producers deduct more than a quarter of their gross revenues. Texas Sen. Tom Connally, who sponsored the break, later admits, “We could have taken a 5 or 10 percent figure, but we grabbed 27.5 percent because we were not only hogs but the odd figure made it appear as though it was scientifically arrived at.”

1937
Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau calls the depletion allowance “perhaps the most glaring loophole” in the tax code. President Franklin D. Roosevelt urges Congress to close it and other tax-evasion methods “so widespread and so amazing, both in their boldness and their ingenuity, that further action without delay seems imperative.”

1947
Natural gas drillers in Kansas first experiment with hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, but the technology won’t be widely used until the federal government backs its development in the 1970s.

1950
President Harry S. Truman unsuccessfully prods Congress to end the depletion allowance.

1957
Asked about the depletion allowance, President Dwight Eisenhower replies, “I am not prepared to say it is evil because, while we do find, I assume, that a number of rich men take advantage of it unfairly, there must certainly be an incentive in this country if we are going to continue the exploration for gas and oil that is so important to our economy.”

1960
Presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debate the depletion allowance. Kennedy says he’s willing to review and close the “loophole.” Nixon counters, “I favor the present depletion allowance. I favor it not because I want to make a lot of oilmen rich, but because I want to make America rich.”

1969
Congress cuts the depletion allowance deduction from 27.5 to 23 percent, over the objections of the president of Gulf Oil, who calls it “a cornerstone, a major part of the foundation on which the industry has built its house. To dismantle it in whole or in part could very well jeopardize that whole structure and, to a serious degree, the economy dependent upon it.” President Nixon says the tax break is “in the national interest” because Mideast oil supplies could be cut off “in the event of a world conflict.”

1974
With the OPEC oil embargo and energy crisis at full tilt, Nixon vows to do “everything in my power to prevent the big oil companies and other major energy producers from making an unconscionable profit out of this crisis.”
President Gerald Ford authorizes the creation of the Energy Research and Development Administration to oversee energy R&D. Over the next five years, federal spending on fossil fuel research jumps tenfold to $1.4 billion.

1975
Ford almost vetoes but then signs a tax bill that repeals the depletion allowance for large companies. It remains in place for smaller, independent drillers.

1975-77
The Department of Energy oversees the first successful applications of large-scale fracking to extract oil and gas.

1977
President Jimmy Carter praises Sen. Russell Long of oil-rich Louisiana for voting “to do away with the oil depletion allowance, which was a very courageous thing to do.”

1978
Carter signs a “gas guzzler” tax on new cars that don’t meet federal mileage standards.

1979
Carter installs solar panels on the White House roof. President Ronald Reagan removes them in 1986.

1980
Carter signs a $228 billion tax on oil companies’ windfall profits as well as a tax credit to encourage the development of shale and tar oil, coalbed methane, and other unconventional fossil fuels.

1985
President Reagan takes aim at federal tax breaks. Oil and gas is one of few industries to emerge unscathed from the “showdown at Gucci Gulch.” He fails to convince Congress to kill the depletion allowance for most oil wells.

1988
As oil prices sink, Congress repeals the windfall profits tax.

1990
A bill signed by President George H.W. Bush doubles the gas guzzler tax and increases gasoline excise taxes. It also establishes a new tax credit for retrofitting existing oil wells to boost production, expands the tax credit for unconventional oil production, and loosens the depletion allowance.

1992
The Energy Policy Act establishes tax credits for renewable energy production and introduces tax deductions for cars powered by electricity and alternative fuels.

1995
President Bill Clinton signs the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, letting oil companies drill in federal waters without paying any royalties. More than 1,000 leases omit a promised price trigger, costing billions.

1999
Clinton extends the loosened rules for the depletion allowance.

2001
President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush claim a $733 depletion allowance on their income taxes.

2004
The American Jobs Creation Act extends a tax break to oil companies for not shipping domestic jobs overseas.

2005
With oil prices on the rise, President George W. Bush states, “With $55 a barrel oil, we don’t need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore.” But a few months later, he signs the Energy Policy Act, which expands the depletion allowance to apply to more drillers. It also lets companies write off exploration costs over two years instead of one.

2006
Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) introduces the Oil Subsidy Elimination Act, which could end many of Big Oil’s most lucrative tax breaks. It never gets out of committee.

2007
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama introduces the Oil sense (Subsidy Elimination for New Strategies on Energy) Act, which would repeal the depletion allowance and suspend royalty-free leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The bill dies in the Democratic-controlled Senate Finance Committee. A House bill that would have expanded tax credits for renewable energy and energy conservation also dies.

2008
Annual tax subsidies for renewable energy shoot past those for oil and gas.

2009
President Obama’s stimulus package includes $90 billion for energy efficiency and renewable-energy projects, including wind and solar electricity generation, fuel cells, and electric vehicles.

2010
The Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan proposes modifying or eliminating all tax expenditures and raising the gas tax by 15 cents. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan likewise suggests that “oil and gas depletion allowances could be restructured” as direct subsidies.

2011
House Speaker John Boehner tells abc News, “I don’t think the big oil companies need to have the oil depletion allowances.” Asked if oil subsidies should be cut, he answers, “They ought to be paying their fair share.” His spokesman clarifies: “The Speaker made clear in the interview that raising taxes was a non-starter, and he’s told the president that. He simply wasn’t going to take the bait and fall into the trap of defending ‘Big Oil’ companies.”
Executives of the big five oil companies testify before Congress about their tax breaks. In their defense, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) calls the hearing “a dog and pony show” and displays a photograph of a dog sitting on a pony.
A national survey finds that 7 in 10 Americans (including nearly 7 in 10 Republicans) oppose fossil fuel subsidies.

2012
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) introduces the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act, which would end $2.4 billion in tax breaks for the big five oil companies. Obama challenges Congress to “eliminate this oil industry giveaway right away.” Unable to get filibuster-proof support, it dies.
Mitt Romney says oil subsidies go “largely to small companies, to drilling operators and so forth.” He says he’d consider cutting them—if tax rates were slashed first.
The American Petroleum Institute launches a $3 million postelection media blitz, including ads that warn seven Democratic senators up for reelection in 2014 against touching the industry’s tax breaks: “American energy—not higher taxes on energy—will create jobs.”

2013
Despite talk of everything being “on the table,” oil’s tax perks survive the fiscal-cliff negotiations.
Congressional Democrats introduce five bills targeting tax giveaways for oil and gas companies. Their death is all but assured, especially in the Republican-controlled House.
In April, Obama introduces his 2014 budget, which includes $23 billion for renewable energy and energy efficiency over 10 years and permanent tax cuts for renewable power generation. It also would end “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.” In contrast, the gop budget proposed by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan targets “federal intervention and corporate-welfare spending” by cutting subsidies for renewables. Tax breaks for oil are left untouched.

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A Brief History of Big Tax Breaks for Oil Companies

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Wiretapping Advocate Condoleezza Rice Joins Dropbox

by BobbieStocks Posted on April 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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The internet is not pleased that Condoleezza Rice will be joining the board of the filesharing service Dropbox. A lot of the concern has to do with the fact that she’ll be helping Dropbox navigate “international expansion and privacy” issues. As Ars Technica notes, the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State isn’t exactly the kind of person you’d trust to defend your data from Uncle Sam: In 2003, she authorized NSA wiretaps of members of the United Nations Security Council at the behest of George W. Bush, and later defended them. Of course, to be fair, maybe having an insider like Rice onboard will allow Dropbox to push back against would-be government intrusions. Still, the news is likely to give a boost to Dropbox competitors that now market their cloud services, convincingly or not, as “NSA-proof.”

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Wiretapping Advocate Condoleezza Rice Joins Dropbox

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Obama admin sued for dragging feet on studies of climate impacts

by ColemanPermewan Posted on April 4, 2014

Obama admin sued for dragging feet on studies of climate impacts

By

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Just over a year ago, we told you that the Obama administration would soon start requiring federal agencies to consider climate change when analyzing the environmental impacts of major projects that need federal approval. Bloomberg reported in March of last year that the new guidelines would “be issued in the coming weeks.”

But many weeks have come and gone and the guidelines still haven’t been released, so now activists are suing the administration to hurry things along.

The lawsuit revolves around the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to study the environmental impacts of projects they oversee and to develop strategies for reducing those impacts. Since passage of the landmark law in 1969, NEPA assessments have covered a variety of potential environmental impacts. In early 2008, major environmental groups petitioned the George W. Bush administration to include climate impacts among them. After Obama came into office, his administration said it would broaden the scope of NEPA studies to cover climate change, and in 2010, it issued draft guidelines to this effect, but they’ve been bottled up at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) ever since.

This week, frustrated after years of inaction, the Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking to force Obama’s CEQ to finalize the new rules. From the lawsuit:

With the effects of climate change becoming more and more evident, prompt action is necessary to ensure that climate change analysis is integrated into all levels of federal agencies’ planning. Full analysis and meaningful consideration of these impacts before federal government decisions are made will strongly affect the extent to which climate change and its consequential dangers are limited or avoided in the coming century.

“The Obama Administration has repeatedly promised to take action on climate, but talk is cheap. Its delay here is unlawful, as well as inexplicable and irresponsible,” said George Kimbrell, a senior attorney with the Center for Food Safety. “This unlawful delay is the opposite of the Obama Administration’s repeated promises to address climate change. CEQ action is a perfect example of something the administration can do unilaterally, without requiring congressional efforts. Yet the CEQ process has mysteriously gone into a black hole.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Obama admin sued for dragging feet on studies of climate impacts

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Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

by LeviCfiasgh Posted on April 3, 2014

Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

By

WCN 24/7

Could it be that frackers are die-hard Ravens fans? That might explain their cavalier attitude about the health of citizens in Steeler Country.

Kidding! Money is the motive, yinz – and if Pennsylvanians are exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals in the making of it, who cares?

An alarming new study by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, published in the journal Reviews on Environmental Health, finds that current methods and tools used to measure harmful emissions from fracking wells don’t accurately assess health threats – not even close, in fact.

Federal and state officials tend to measure and report emissions in big-picture terms – tons of methane released per year, for example. Another method is to track hourly emissions over a given day or week. These might not capture rapid and brief increases in chemical exposure, which can cause real harm to bodily systems. SPEHP reports that emissions near drilling sites can fluctuate wildly, and toxic chemical particles can reach high levels of concentration in the air in a very short period of time – as little as a minute or two – and then drop back down. This can occur repeatedly throughout drilling, but might not be captured by the tools or methods customarily used to measure emissions.

SPEHP researchers collected data on levels of four toxic chemicals in 14 households near fracking sites in southwestern Pennsylvania, and found that contamination was concentrated at peak levels – three times the median level of concentration – about 30 percent of the time, but in spurts. These short blasts of contamination can go undetected by tools customarily used to measure emissions.

Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene are all toxic substances released into the air from shale drilling. So, what can go wrong if one is exposed to peak levels of these chemicals? Glad you asked! The health effects can include “respiratory, neurologic, and dermal responses as well as vascular bleeding, abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting.”

If that weren’t bad enough, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has a flawed system for responding to citizen complaints about emissions, as ProPublica reports:

[T]he agency’s own manual for dealing with complaints is explicit about what to do if someone reports concerns about a noxious odor, but is not at that very moment experiencing the smell: “DO NOT REGISTER THE COMPLAINT.”

When a resident does report a real-time alarm about the air quality in or around their home, the agency typically has two weeks to conduct an investigation. If no odor is detected when investigators arrive on the scene, the case is closed.

In light of the SPEHP findings, this response falls very much short of what would be needed to accurately determine whether there’s a health threat, as it not only fails to address the issue immediately, but also doesn’t account for the intermittency of spikes in exposure.

ProPublica reports that the DEP has been criticized for bowing to energy company interests rather than serving Pennsylvania citizens.

Activists and environmental groups have accused the agency of being overly deferential to the gas industry, and defensive and slow moving in its dealings with the public.

“It was very top down, very secretive and paranoid about who the enemies were,” said [George] Jugovic, [a] former agency official, who left the department when Corbett succeeded Rendell as governor. “The control on information was significant.”

Gov. Tom Corbett (R) has an impressive history of wooing gas companies to Pennsylvania. Now, these companies have made themselves at home enough to dump all their shit in the air without so much as a “whoops!”, and sure enough, it’s making some of those unlucky enough to live near fracking sites sick. Maybe in between bouts of vomiting, Pennsylvanians can try to enjoy some complimentary pizza.


Source
In Fracking Fight, a Worry About How Best to Measure Health Threats, ProPublica

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

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Dancing With the Tsars: A Gossip Column Dedicated to Celebrities Who Perform for Dictators

by PMMMathias Posted on April 2, 2014

Mother Jones

totalitarian request live

In January, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman went back to North Korea to chill with his “awesome” basketball-loving, uncle-purging pal Kim Jong Un. He even sang “Happy Birthday” to his brotalitarian buddy…Under Siege star Steven Seagal has been hanging out with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and supports his buddy’s annexation of Crimea. This bromance runs deep; in 2011, the Hollywood martial-artist asked Putin to support Russian immortality and artificial body research…Jennifer Lopez reportedly snagged $1.5 million to sing at a bash attended by Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (mind if we call you G-Berdy?), the dictator of Turkmenistan, last June…In October, Julio Iglesias sang at a gig put together by the son of the mysteriously wealthy president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang. With the cheapest seats going for nearly $1,000, fans had to beg, borrow, or steal from the state treasury to get in…Imma let you finish, but Kanye West had the best concert for a dictator’s progeny last year. In August, he rocked the wedding reception of the grandson of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev. $3 million is gonna buy a lot of damn croissants…


eavesdropping

“The concert was organized by the president’s daughter and I believe sponsored by UNICEF.”

—Sting, stung by reports that he’d taken more than $1 million to sing at a 2010 concert for the daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, whose police are known for watching every move you make. (Shrugging off the free PR, unicef said it had nothing to do with the event.)

“By going there, I played MUSIC for the Chechenyan sic people. I’m a MUSICIAN and would appreciate if you leave me out of your politics.”

—Seal, tweeting after he performed at Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s birthday bash in 2011. Also in line for party favors at the bash: Jean-Claude Van Damme and Hilary Swank.


autocratic for the people

While Moammar Qaddafi was busy with one-party rule, his family’s parties ruled! Among the crooners who sang for the Qaddafi kids over the years: Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, Timbaland, Enrique Iglesias, Nelly Furtado, and Usher. And don’t forget Beyoncé, who reportedly got $2 million for a Caribbean gig thrown by the Libyan strongman’s son Hannibal in 2010. Daddy Qaddafi himself partied all night long with Lionel Richie in 2006.


from the memory hole

The King of Pop wasn’t above entertaining lesser royalty. In 1996, the Sultan of Brunei paid Michael Jackson $17 million to moonwalk at his 50th birthday gala. More than a decade later, the gloved one sought a vacay from paparazzi and lawyers in Bahrain, only to be sued for $7 million by his host, Prince Abdullah al-Khalifa, for allegedly bailing on a deal to record an album for the royal record label…And who could forget when James Brown headlined the concert thrown as part of the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle,” the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman bout put on by Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko? As Etta James later dished about her host, the hardest working dictator in sub-Saharan Africa, “This mother was off the wall.”

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Dancing With the Tsars: A Gossip Column Dedicated to Celebrities Who Perform for Dictators

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It’s Time to Start Quoting Our Public Figures Accurately

by ChelseyUyc Posted on March 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jesse Sheidlower makes a point near and dear to my heart today: it’s time to get rid of the dashes. You know the ones: f—, n—–, s—, etc. This is not a plea for reporters to write like Hunter S. Thompson, it’s a plea to fully report the obscenities uttered by famous people that our news organizations are too delicate to report:

There have been numerous cases in recent years when the use of offensive language has been the news story itself. In 1998, Representative Dan Burton referred to President Clinton with an offensive word. In 2000, a microphone picked up George W. Bush using a vulgar term to describe the New York Times reporter Adam Clymer. In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney insulted Senator Pat Leahy on the Senate floor with yet another vulgarity. In 2007, Isaiah Washington was kicked off the television show “Grey’s Anatomy” for referring to his fellow actor T. R. Knight with a gay slur. This January, Representative Michael Grimm threatened an aggressive reporter, using an obscenity.

These stories were covered widely, but in most cases, the details were obscured. The relevant words were described variously as “an obscenity,” “a vulgarity,” “an antigay epithet”; replaced with rhyming substitutions; printed with some letters omitted; and, most absurdly, in The Washington Times (whose editor confessed this was “an attempt at a little humor”), alluded to as “a vulgar euphemism for a rectal aperture.” We learn from these stories that something important happened, but that it can’t actually be reported.

When a public figure uses an obscenity, it’s news. Readers deserve to know exactly what was said. Consider my favorite obscene quote of all time, courtesy of Richard Mottram, a British civil servant:

We’re all fucked. I’m fucked. You’re fucked. The whole department is fucked. It’s the biggest cock-up ever. We’re all completely fucked.

You just don’t get the flavor if you don’t spell out the words. And in the US, we often don’t even get the quote with the dashes. As Sheidlower says, we get “a vulgarity” or “a long string of obscenities” or something similar, making us feel like everyone else knows what happened and we’re being deliberately left out. It’s long past time to knock this off. News outlets should print the news, full stop. If an obscenity is part of it, accuracy and integrity are more important than delicate sensibilities.

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It’s Time to Start Quoting Our Public Figures Accurately

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Sen. Feinstein: The CIA Scandal Began Because the Agency Misled Congress About Torture

by Felipa6408 Posted on March 12, 2014

Mother Jones

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, kicked off a Washington kerfuffle with significant constitutional implications when she took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to accuse the CIA of spying on her committee’s investigation into its controversial interrogation and detention program. As pro-CIA partisans and the agency’s overseers on Capitol Hill squared off for a DC turf battle—with finger-pointing in both directions—lost in the hubbub was a basic and troubling fact: Feinstein had contended that this all began because, years ago, the spies of Langley had severely misled the legislators responsible for overseeing the intelligence agencies.

At the start of her speech, Feinstein laid out the back story, and her account is a tale of a major CIA abuse. The CIA’s detention and interrogation (a.k.a. torture) program began in 2002. For its first four years, the CIA only told the chairman and vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee about the program, keeping the rest of the panel in the dark. In September 2006, hours before President George W. Bush was to disclose the program to the public, then CIA Director Michael Hayden informed the rest of the committee. This piece of history shows the limits of congressional oversight. If only two members of the committee were informed, it meant that the panel could not provide full oversight of this program. But keeping secrets from legislators—even members of the intelligence committee—is not that unusual, and the story gets worse.

In December 2007, the New York Times reported that the CIA had destroyed two videotapes of the CIA’s interrogation (or torture) sessions. After this disclosure, Hayden told the Senate intelligence committee that eradicating the videos was not as worrisome as it seemed. According to Feinstein, he noted that CIA cables had detailed the interrogations and detention conditions and were “a more than adequate representation” of what had happened. He offered Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who was then chairing the committee, the opportunity to review these thousands of cables. Rockefeller dispatched two staffers to peruse these records.

It took the pair about a year to sift through all the material and produce a report for the intelligence committee. That report, Feinstein noted, was “chilling.” The review, she said, showed that the “interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us.”

That is, the CIA had misled the Capitol Hill watchdogs.

After reading the staff report, Feinstein, now chairing the committee, and Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), then the senior Republican on the committee, decided a far more expansive investigation was called for. On March 5, 2009, the committee voted 14 to 1 to initiate a full-fledged review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

It is that inquiry that has caused the recent fuss, with Feinstein claiming that the CIA (possibly illegally) penetrated computers used by committee investigators and removed documents indicating a CIA internal review of this program had concluded it was poorly managed, went too far, and did not produce decent intelligence. The committee’s more comprehensive review eventually produced a 6,300-page report slamming CIA that has yet to be made public, despite Feinstein pushing the CIA to declassify it.

So while this week’s focus is on whether the CIA improperly—or illegally—spied on the folks who have the constitutional obligation to monitor CIA actions in order to ensure the agency acts appropriately and within US law, Feinstein’s big reveal also presented a highly troubling charge: The CIA lied to Congress about what might be its most controversial program in decades. This in and of itself should be big news.

At the conclusion of her speech, Feinstein, referring to the present controversy, said, “How this will be resolved will show whether the intelligence committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation’s intelligence activities or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee.” That is true. And if there cannot be effective oversight of intelligence operations, then the foundation of the national security state is in question. Yet Feinstein’s remarks provide evidence that oversight was not working prior to the current face-off. If the CIA did not tell the Senate intelligence committee the truth about its interrogation and detention program, much more needs to be resolved than whether the spies hacked the gumshoes of Capitol Hill.

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Sen. Feinstein: The CIA Scandal Began Because the Agency Misled Congress About Torture

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Here Are 5 Infuriating Examples of Facts Making People Dumber

by Myrna Posted on March 5, 2014

The notorious “backfire effect” has now been captured in multiple studies. Alex E. Proimos/Wikimedia Commons On Monday, I reported on the latest study to take a bite out of the idea of human rationality. In a paper just published in Pediatrics, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth and his colleagues showed that presenting people with information confirming the safety of vaccines triggered a “backfire effect,” in which people who already distrusted vaccines actually became less likely to say they would vaccinate their kids. Unfortunately, this is hardly the only example of such a frustrating response being documented by researchers. Nyhan and his co-author Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter have captured several others, as have other researchers. Here are some examples: 1. Tax Cuts Increase Revenue? In a 2010 study, Nyhan and Reifler asked people to read a fake newspaper article containing a real quotation of George W. Bush, in which the former president asserted that his tax cuts “helped increase revenues to the Treasury.” In some versions of the article, this false claim was then debunked by economic evidence: A correction appended to the end of the article stated that in fact, the Bush tax cuts “were followed by an unprecedented three-year decline in nominal tax revenues, from $2 trillion in 2000 to $1.8 trillion in 2003.” The study found that conservatives who read the correction were twice as likely to believe Bush’s claim was true as were conservatives who did not read the correction. 2. Death Panels! Another notorious political falsehood is Sarah Palin’s claim that Obamacare would create “death panels.” To test whether they could undo the damage caused by this highly influential morsel of misinformation, Nyhan and his colleagues had study subjects read an article about the “death panels” claim, which in some cases ended with a factual correction explaining that “nonpartisan health care experts have concluded that Palin is wrong.” Among survey respondents who were very pro-Palin and who had a high level of political knowledge, the correction actually made them more likely to wrongly embrace the false “death panels” theory. 3. Obama is a Muslim! And if that’s still not enough, yet another Nyhan and Reifler study examined the persistence of the “President Obama is a Muslim” myth. In this case, respondents watched a video of President Obama denying that he is a Muslim or even stating affirmatively, “I am a Christian.” Once again, the correction—uttered in this case by the president himself—often backfired in the study, making belief in the falsehood that Obama is a Muslim worse among certain study participants. What’s more, the backfire effect was particularly notable when the researchers administering the study were white. When they were non-white, subjects were more willing to change their minds, an effect the researchers explained by noting that “social desirability concerns may affect how respondents behave when asked about sensitive topics.” In other words, in the company of someone from a different race than their own, people tend to shift their responses based upon what they think that person’s worldview might be. 4. The Alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda Link. In a 2009 study, Monica Prasad of Northwestern University and her colleagues directly challenged Republican partisans about their false belief that Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborated in the 9/11 attacks, a common charge during the Bush years. The so-called challenge interviews included citing the findings of the 9/11 Commission and even a statement by George W. Bush, asserting that his administration had “never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda.” Despite these facts, only one out of 49 partisans changed his or her mind after the factual correction. Forty-one of the partisans “deflected” the information in a variety of ways, and 7 actually denied holding the belief in the first place (although they clearly had). 5. Global Warming. On the climate issue, there does not appear to be any study that clearly documents a backfire effect. However, in a 2011 study, researchers at American University and Ohio State found a closely related “boomerang effect.” In the experiment, research subjects from upstate New York read news articles about how climate change might increase the spread of West Nile Virus, which were accompanied by the pictures of the faces of farmers who might be affected. But in one case, the people were said to be farmers in upstate New York (in other words, victims who were quite socially similar to the research subjects); in the other, they were described as farmers from either Georgia or from France (much more distant victims). The intent of the article was to raise concern about the health consequences of climate change, but when Republicans read the article about the more distant farmers, their support for action on climate change decreased, a pattern that was stronger as their Republican partisanship increased. (When Republicans read about the proximate, New York farmers, there was no boomerang effect, but they did not become more supportive of climate action either.) Together, all of these studies support the theory of “motivated reasoning”: The idea that our prior beliefs, commitments, and emotions drive our responses to new information, such that when we are faced with facts that deeply challenge these commitments, we fight back against them to defend our identities. So next time you feel the urge to argue back against some idiot on the Internet…pause, take a deep breath, and realize not only that arguing might not do any good, but that in fact, it might very well backfire. View original:  Here Are 5 Infuriating Examples of Facts Making People Dumber ; ;Related ArticlesCitizen Scientists: Now You Can Link the UK Winter Deluge To Climate ChangeA World of Water, Seen From SpaceLow-Lying Islands Are Going To Drown, so Should we Even Bother Trying To Save Their Ecosystems? ;

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Here Are 5 Infuriating Examples of Facts Making People Dumber

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The NSA’s Problems Go Beyond Just Its Phone Records Program

by DwainOquinn Posted on February 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Eli Lake talks with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about the NSA’s massive collection of phone records:

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Clapper said the problems facing the U.S. intelligence community over its collection of phone records could have been avoided. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11—which is the genesis of the 215 program—and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards… We wouldn’t have had the problem we had,” Clapper said.

“What did us in here, what worked against us was this shocking revelation,” he said, referring to the first disclosures from Snowden. If the program had been publicly introduced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, most Americans would probably have supported it. “I don’t think it would be of any greater concern to most Americans than fingerprints. Well people kind of accept that because they know about it. But had we been transparent about it and say here’s one more thing we have to do as citizens for the common good, just like we have to go to airports two hours early and take our shoes off, all the other things we do for the common good, this is one more thing.”

Two things. First, Clapper is quite possibly right. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Congress might well have approved DNA testing of everybody in the country if George Bush had proposed it. Hell, they approved the invasion of Iraq.

Second, though, Clapper is also wrong. I think he is, anyway. It wasn’t Snowden’s “shocking revelation” about the phone records program that did so much damage to the NSA. After all, we’ve known about that in fuzzy terms since 2005 and in very specific terms since Leslie Cauley reported it in 2006:

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

This provoked a bit of controversy at the time, but it faded away pretty quickly. It’s true that Snowden provided documentary evidence that had been missing in the earlier reports, but he didn’t really change what we knew. The sad fact is that the mere knowledge that the NSA was collecting an enormous database of every call made in the United States simply didn’t bother people very much when it was first revealed.

No, what hurt the NSA was Snowden’s revelations about everything it was doing. If it had just been phone records, interest might have died out quickly, just as it did in 2006. But it was far more than that, and that’s what’s kept this alive. Clapper is kidding himself if he thinks otherwise.

See the original article here – 

The NSA’s Problems Go Beyond Just Its Phone Records Program

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