Tag Archives: government

We Are Programmed to Receive

by VRBSanorabni Posted on September 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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It’s Saturday, and I am oh-so-tired of Donald Trump. (The latest: he finally coughed up his favorite Bible verse, but it doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the Bible. Since this was an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, he knew this had to be coming but still didn’t bother to look up a genuine verse. I swear, he’s just taunting us. He’s actually a Democrat with an IQ of 300 and he’s running a test to see just how far you can bamboozle the press corps and the conservative base and still lead the Republican primary race. Judging by Wednesday’s debate performance, he’s finally tiring of the gag because it appears you simply can’t go too far.)

So: no more Donald. Instead, prepare yourself for a ridiculous topic explored at ridiculous length. Here’s the background: the iPod in my car is set to permanent shuffle play, and yesterday the Eagles’ “Hotel California” came up. I’ve heard this song hundreds of times, I suppose, but this time one word in the final famous lines suddenly struck me as odd:

“Relax,” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave.”

Programmed? This song was written in 1976, before the PC revolution and the rise of Silicon Valley conspired to make programming into a common word. See update below. Even cheap programmable calculators had just barely started to hit the market. It was certainly a common word among techie types, which is probably why it never seemed odd to me before, but was it common among shaggy rock musicians? It doesn’t seem like it would be. Did Don Henley take an intro CS course at North Texas State? Or is the word being used in a different sense?

Naturally, I went to my favorite source for word usage over time, the Google Ngram Viewer. Here’s what it shows:

There are two notable things here. First, the use of programmed peaks in 1984. That’s odd. You’d think it would have kept on rising into the stratosphere. It’s in common use today for everything from building a space shuttle to setting up your toaster oven. UPDATE: In comments, weirdnoise suggests that this is because coding is used rather than programming these days. Could be.

More germane to my question, however, is the fact that its use starts to rise around 1940. What’s up with that? This is obviously a non-computer usage, since digital computers hadn’t been invented at that point. So let’s go to Google Books and check things out. Programmed appears to have been commonly used in four basic senses. Here are examples of each:

War Housing: Hearings Before the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, 1942: “The 20,000 units in item 5b and the 100,000 additional Government dormitories yet to be programmed and financed, as shown in item 5c….”

Variety Radio Directory, 1940: “National Broadcasting Co. Owned and/or Managed and/or Programmed Stations—474….”

Health and Its Maintenance: A Hygiene Text for Women, 1931: “She has always programmed her work. She never undertook more than she could do and do well….”

Life magazine ad, 1949: “IBM products using electronic principles: Card-programmed Calculator….”

In order, the four senses in which programmed was used are: (1) in construction and engineering scheduling, (2) in radio scheduling, (3) as a generic synonym for scheduled, and (4) the IBM sense, which is a precursor to the common computer programming sense of today.

The first three of these are all variants of scheduled, or else used in the similar sense of verbing the noun program. The final one is the source of the contemporary usage of the word in the software biz.

So what were the Eagles thinking of? It doesn’t make sense that it was used as a synonym for scheduled. That doesn’t read right, and anyway, why not just use the word scheduled instead? The computer sense works in context, but somehow seems unlikely. That leaves us with the radio programming sense, and I suppose that’s the right one. Musicians would obviously be familiar with this usage, and so would their audience.

I warned you that this was a ridiculously long post about a ridiculous topic. Don’t blame me if you read all the way to the end. But now that you have, feel free to comment if you think there’s a possibility I’ve left out.

UPDATE: Via Twitter, Dan Perkins (aka Tom Tomorrow) reminds me that programmed—in the computer programming sense—was fairly commonly used in science fiction TV and movies in the 60s and 70s. For example, here it is from 1965 in the first episode of Lost in Space:

DR. SMITH: I have reprogrammed the robot. His power has been activated. Exactly eight hours after launch the robot will destroy the spaceship with all hands aboard.

Here it is from 1967 in I, Mudd, an episode in the original Star Trek series:

KIRK: Who sent you?
NORMAN (an android): I am not programmed to respond in that area.

Here it is from 1968 in 2001: A Space Odyssey:

INTERVIEWER: Do you believe that Hal has genuine emotions?
POOLE: Well, he acts like he has genuine emotions. He’s programmed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him.

And from 1972 in Silent Running:

LOWELL: Hey, that’s really excellent. Now, um…you see, what I’ve done is…I’ve reprogrammed both of you so that now you’ll respond directly to me.

And of course, from 1977 in Star Wars:

OWEN: You, I suppose you’re programmed for etiquette and protocol.
THREEPIO: Protocol? Why, its my primary function, sir. I am well-versed in all the customs—
OWEN: I have no need for a protocol droid.
THREEPIO: Of course you haven’t, sir. Not in an environment such as this. That is why I have been programmed—

OK, I’ll stop now. The point is that perhaps the computer programming sense of the word was actually pretty common in popular culture by 1976. So I guess there was no real mystery to be solved after all.

UPDATE: Or maybe it’s being used in the new-agey sense of cult programming. That would make sense on multiple levels.

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We Are Programmed to Receive

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Nuclear Weapons Complex That Couldn’t Keep Out 82-Year-Old Nun Is Still Unsafe

by EstelaPalfreyma Posted on September 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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A good security system would seem essential for the federal repository holding virtually all of the nation’s highly enriched uranium, a key ingredient of nuclear weapons, just outside Knoxville,Tenn.

But the high-tech system installed at a cost of roughly $50 million over the past decade at the Department of Energy’s Y-12 complex is still riddled with flaws that impede its operation, according to a newly released report by the department’s top auditor. Moreover, no one knows how much the government will have to spend to fix it or when that task might be accomplished, the report says.

Flaws in the site’s security system first came into national view in July 2012, when an 82-year-old nun and two other anti-nuclear activists cut through fences and walked through a field of motion detectors to deface the exterior of Y-12’s Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, which holds enough explosives to make 10,000 nuclear bombs. Subsequent investigations concluded that those monitoring the few critical sensors that were operating that day had been trained to ignore them by persistent false alarms, including many triggered by wildlife.

But not much has changed since that break-in, according to the report by Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman, even though the department spent more than a million dollars in 2012 to get a consultant’s advice about how to make the system work better, and then millions more completing the installation of high-tech sensors in 2013. The report says that the so-called Argus security system, which was developed by DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and named optimistically after the fabled 100-eyed monster of Greek mythology, “did not fully meet the site’s security needs” and was not installed the way it was designed to be used. It’s still prone to frequent false alarms and falls short of the Energy Department’s requirements.

Friedman blames the flaws on inadequate spending and poor management. In particular, those installing the system tried to do so on the cheap. Instead of undertaking a top-to-bottom modernization, they tried to integrate new equipment with older alarm wiring and cabinets. Those operating it said this effort was not successful, and that it caused false alarms to jump by 25 percent.

As a result, the report states, the operators were “not able to efficiently perform their duties.” A 27-month study of alarm data that concluded in July 2014 showed that false alarms accounted for more than 35 percent of all alerts.

Budget records suggest that the task of safeguarding nuclear weapons has not been as high a priority at the Energy Department as developing them. The security program that supports the Argus project and others like it across the nation’s nuclear sites received $79.8 million for the current fiscal year. For 2016, the Energy Department has asked Congress for 5.8 percent less, or $75.2 million. Meanwhile, spending on weapons programs stands at $8.1 billion, and the Energy Department’s request to Congress for next year seeks 10.5 percent more weapons funding, boosting the total to $8.8 billion.

Argus’s troubles are not unique to Y-12. A report by the Government Accountability Office in May said similar problems erupted at the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site when Argus was installed there. “We determined that the Argus project experienced schedule delays and cost increases as a result of inadequate project management and funding issues,” the GAO wrote.

The Argus project in Nevada began in November 2010 with a targeted completion date of October 2011 and an estimated cost of $8.4 million. By June of 2012, it still wasn’t done, and the estimated cost had more than doubled, to $17.8 million. It’s been on hold since May 2014, and the Nevada site “has continued to rely on an outdated security system,” according to the GAO.

At Y-12, the system’s operation has been undermined as well by the use of error-filled and cumbersome maps of the complex, which obscure the views of the operators. “Even within the confines of…funding limitations, we found that management weaknesses contributed, at least in part, to the issues identified,” Friedman’s report states.

The inspector general recommends installing the necessary components to have a fully operational version of Argus, and replacing parts of the security system that are driving the high rate of false alarms. Although the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the production and handling of nuclear weapons, has analyzed the security needs at Y-12 and identified the work that needs to be done to improve it, no detailed plan, schedule for making the upgrades, or cost estimate for the full project has been developed by the Energy Department, according to Friedman. One estimate suggested the Y-12 improvements could cost $300 million.

In a letter responding to Friedman, NNSA chief Frank Klotz wrote that NNSA agreed with the audit’s conclusions and recommendations. Klotz said efforts have begun to address the lingering security needs at Y-12 “within programmatic constraints,” in part by developing a plan by the end of September 2016 for replacement and maintenance of security systems across the nation’s nuclear labs.

“The secure operation of our facilities is a top priority,” Klotz wrote.

Originally posted here – 

Nuclear Weapons Complex That Couldn’t Keep Out 82-Year-Old Nun Is Still Unsafe

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Marx and Keynes Put Economics on the Map, and They Can Take It Right Off Again

by AdelaideFullwood Posted on September 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over at PostEverything, Dan Drezner wonders why economics has managed to wield such an outsized influence within the social sciences. His strongest point—or at least the one he spends the most time on—is that economists “share a strong consensus about the virtues of free markets, free trade, capital mobility and entrepreneurialism.” This makes them catnip to the plutocrat class, and therefore the favored social scientists of influential people everywhere.

Fine, says Adam Ozimek, but what about liberal economists? “Why is Paul Krugman famous? Robert Shiller? Joe Stiglitz? Jeff Sachs? ‘To please plutocrats’ is not a good theory.” And this: “Why do liberal think tanks with liberal donors supporting liberal causes hire so many economists? To please plutocrats?”

I think Drezner and Ozimek each make good points. Here’s my amateur historical explanation that incorporates both.

The first thing to understand is that in the 19th century, economists were no more influential than other social scientists. Folks like David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus were certainly prominent, but no more so than, say, Herbert Spencer or Max Weber. What’s more, economics was a far less specialized field then. John Stuart Mill had a strong influence on economics, but was he an economist? Or a philosopher? Or a political scientist? He was all of those things.

So what happened to make economists so singularly influential in the 20th century? I’ll toss out two causes: Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes.

The fight for and against communism defined the second half of the 20th century, and Marx had always identified economics as the underpinning of his socio-historical theories. Outside of the battlefield, then, this made the most important conflict of the time fundamentally a fight over economics. In the public imagination, if not within the field itself, the fight between communism and free markets became identified as the face of economics, and this made it the most important branch of the social sciences.

Then Keynes upped the ante. In the same spirit that Whitehead called philosophy a series of footnotes to Plato, economics in the second half of the 20th century was largely a series of footnotes to Keynes. Rightly or wrongly, he became the poster child for liberals who wanted to justify their belief in an activist government and the arch nemesis of conservatives who wanted no such thing. In the same way that communism was the biggest fight on the global stage, the fight over the size and scope of government was the biggest fight on the domestic stage. And since this was fundamentally a fight over economics, the field of economics became ground zero for domestic politics in advanced economies around the world.

And that’s why economists became so influential among both plutocrats and the lefty masses. Sure, it’s partly because economists use lots of Greek letters and act like physicists, but mostly it’s because that window dressing was used in service of the two most fundamental geo-socio-political conflicts of the late 20th century.

So does that mean economics is likely to lose influence in the future? After all, free market capitalism and mixed economies are now triumphant. Compared to the 20th century, we’re now arguing over relative table scraps. And, as Drezner points out, the profession of economics has hardly covered itself with glory in the opening years of the 21st century. Has their time has come and gone?

Maybe. I mean, how should I know? Obviously there’s a lot of inertia here, and economics will remain pretty important for a long time. But the biggest fights are gone and economists have an embarrassing recent track record of failure. If the rest of the social sciences want to mount an assault on the field, this would probably be a pretty good time to do it.

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Marx and Keynes Put Economics on the Map, and They Can Take It Right Off Again

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Inside the Landmark Court Case That Will End Indefinite Solitary Confinement in California

by JustinKrauss Posted on September 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, 10 California inmates succeeded in stopping the decades-long use of indefinite solitary confinement in the state’s prison system. In a landmark settlement to a class-action suit they filed in 2012, California must now institute widespread reforms—which advocates hope will be a catalyst for change across the nation.


Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons.


Interactive: Inside a Solitary Cell


What Extreme Isolation Does to Your Mind


Documents: 7 Surprising Items That Get Prisoners Thrown Into Solitary


Maps: Solitary Confinement, State by State


VIDEO: Shane Bauer Goes Back Behind Bars at Pelican Bay

See more MoJo coverage of solitary confinement.

As part of the settlement, prison officials can isolate an inmate only if he or she commits a serious or violent infraction. Any perceived rule violation must be then proven in a hearing. Even those who do end up housed in the so-called Secure Housing Unit (SHU) will have different living quarters. The “high-security but nonisolation environment” will allow prisoners movement without restraints, the same amount of time away from their cells as the general prison population, access to educational and recreational programs, and physical contact with their visitors.

The settlement also bars the prison from housing inmates in these units for more than 10 years and will officially put an end to indeterminate stays. Instead, there will be a two-year program that provides incremental steps with increasing privileges to return to the general population.

Most inmates currently serving time in solitary are expected to qualify for removal under the settlement agreement—including all who have served more than 10 years—and they will be transitioned out over the next year.

“It is a remarkable feat of political organizing. This whole movement and the result is because of their collective action,” said Alexis Agathocleous, counsel on the suit and the deputy legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “It’s a huge step forward, in terms of how solitary confinement is used in California, but I really think it also sets up the model for how reform can occur around the country.”

As my colleague Shane Bauer wrote in an award-winning 2012 feature, thousands of inmates idle alone inside small concrete cells within the Security Housing Unit at California’s notorious Pelican Bay State Prison. Confined to the windowless rooms for 22.5 hours a day, prisoners in solitary are allowed only a short daily reprieve from their cells for exercise, inside another small cement room that is equipped with a camera to monitor their activities.

Gabriel Reyes spent more than 17 years living this way, without access to direct sunlight, physical contact with another person, rehabilitation and education programs, and even phone calls from his family. “Unless you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself,” he wrote in 2011, “between four cold walls, with little concept of time, no one to confide in, and only a pillow for comfort—for years on end. It is a living tomb.”

Reyes ended up at Pelican Bay after burglarizing an empty house in 1995. It was his third conviction, and, under California’s “three strikes” law, it landed him 25 years to life. But it wasn’t this crime—or any other—that got him thrown into the SHU. Like many of the more than 1,100 prisoners housed there, Reyes was put in solitary simply for being suspected of being part of a gang.

Using the “Predictive Behavior Model,” prison officials could isolate inmates for just about anything they thought showed signs of gang involvement: associating with the wrong person, having certain kinds of tattoos, or even reading books and poetry that officials deemed suspect was enough to land a prisoner “in the hole.” And, at Pelican Bay, you could stay there for the rest of your life.

Researchers have documented the devastating and permanent mental- and physical health detriments caused by isolation, and, according to a 2013 Government Accountability Office report, there’s no evidence that the use of solitary confinement makes prisons safer. Still, around 80,000 inmates are currently housed in solitary units around the country, costing tax payers in the process: Pelican Bay spends an additional $12,300 per inmate per year.

Reyes has been fighting to change the system for years, along with many other inmates who have endured long stints in the SHU. After coordinating by talking through pipes or yelling from cell to cell, he and nine other inmates—who have each spent more than a decade in solitary—launched two hunger strikes and were eventually joined by more than 12,000 inmates across California.

Finally, in 2012, with the help of a legal team that included support from the Center for Constitutional Rights and California Prison Focus, the group of inmates decided to take legislative action—and now indefinite solitary confinement may be done with for good.

The prisoners themselves, including many of those whose suit brought about this settlement, will now be able to oversee its implementation. As inmate representatives they will also regularly meet with California prison officials to offer insights into prison conditions and programs.

While this settlement is a huge win in the fight to put an end to solitary confinement, advocates emphasize the battle is not over.

“It is a really big deal—and something that we hope will act as a tipping point,” said attorney Charles Carbone, co-counsel on the suit. “I am hoping what we did here in California not only cures the issue of solitary confinement and the practice of isolating prisoners, but also starts or leads a larger conversation about the prison epidemic.”

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Inside the Landmark Court Case That Will End Indefinite Solitary Confinement in California

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Inside the Most Expensive Nuclear Bomb Ever Made

by KelleyGresswell Posted on August 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Engineers at the United States’ nuclear weapons lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have spent the past few years designing and testing the B61-12, a high-tech addition to our nation’s atomic arsenal. Unlike the free-fall gravity bombs it will replace, the B61-12 is a guided nuclear bomb. A new tail kit assembly, made by Boeing, enables the bomb to hit targets far more precisely than its predecessors.

Greg Maxon

Using “Dial-a-yield” technology, the bomb’s explosive force can be adjusted before launch from a high of 50,000 tons of TNT equivalent to a low of 300 tons—that’s 98 percent smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima 70 years ago.

Despite these innovations, the government doesn’t consider the B61-12 to be a new weapon but simply an upgrade. In the past, Congress has rejected funding for similar weapons, reasoning that more accurate, less powerful bombs were more likely to be used. In 2010, the Obama administration announced that it would not make any nuclear weapons with new capabilities. The White House and Pentagon insist that the B61-12 won’t violate that pledge.

The B61-12 could be deployed by the new generation of F-35 fighter jets, a prospect that worries Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “If the Russians put out a guided nuclear bomb on a stealthy fighter that could sneak through air defenses, would that add to the perception here that they were lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons?” he asks. “Absolutely.”

So far, most of the criticism of B61-12 has focused on its price tag. Once full production commences in 2020, the program will cost more than $11 billion for about 400 to 480 bombs—more than double the original estimate, making it the most expensive nuclear bomb ever built.

This story comes from our friends at Reveal. Read more of their coverage of the B61-12 and national security.

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Inside the Most Expensive Nuclear Bomb Ever Made

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Hillary’s Email: Still No There There

by LelaSandoval Posted on August 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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The AP’s Ken Dilanian reports on the use of email in the State Department:

The transmission of now-classified information across Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email is consistent with a State Department culture in which diplomats routinely sent secret material on unsecured email during the past two administrations, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

….In five emails that date to Condoleezza Rice’s tenure as secretary of state during the George W. Bush administration, large chunks are censored on the grounds that they contain classified national security or foreign government information….In a December 2006 email, diplomat John J. Hillmeyer appears to have pasted the text of a confidential cable from Beijing about China’s dealings with Iran and other sensitive matters.

….Such slippage of classified information into regular email is “very common, actually,” said Leslie McAdoo, a lawyer who frequently represents government officials and contractors in disputes over security clearances and classified information.

What makes Clinton’s case different is that she exclusively sent and received emails through a home server in lieu of the State Department’s unclassified email system. Neither would have been secure from hackers or foreign intelligence agencies, so it would be equally problematic whether classified information was carried over the government system or a private server, experts say. In fact, the State Department’s unclassified email system has been penetrated by hackers believed linked to Russian intelligence.

….Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said State Department officials were permitted at the time to use personal email accounts for official business, and that the department was aware of Clinton’s private server….There is no indication that any information in Clinton emails was marked classified at the time it was sent.

Whatevs. Let’s spend millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of congressional committee time investigating this anyway. Maybe we’ll finally find that Whitewater confession we’ve been looking for so long.

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Hillary’s Email: Still No There There

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First Amendment Law is Facing Some Very Big Changes

by JanSpinksg Posted on August 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Adam Liptak says that Reed v. Town of Gilbert is the sleeper Supreme Court case of the past year. It unanimously struck down an ordinance that discriminated against signs announcing church service times, but only three justices ruled on the basis of existing law. The other six signed an opinion that went further, ruling that many other speech regulations are now subject to “strict scrutiny.” How far will this go?

Strict scrutiny requires the government to prove that the challenged law is “narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.” You can stare at those words as long as you like, but here is what you need to know: Strict scrutiny, like a Civil War stomach wound, is generally fatal.

“When a court applies strict scrutiny in determining whether a law is consistent with the First Amendment,” said Mr. Abrams, who has represented The New York Times, “only the rarest statute survives the examination.”

Laws based on the content of speech, the Supreme Court has long held, must face such scrutiny. The key move in Justice Thomas’s opinion was the vast expansion of what counts as content-based. The court used to say laws were content-based if they were adopted to suppress speech with which the government disagreed.

Justice Thomas took a different approach. Any law that singles out a topic for regulation, he said, discriminates based on content and is therefore presumptively unconstitutional.

Securities regulation is a topic. Drug labeling is a topic. Consumer protection is a topic.

This is obviously not news to people who follow this stuff carefully, but it was news to me. Apparently the reach of Reed is pretty spectacular: three laws have been struck down by lower courts in just the past two months based on the reasoning in the case. Any law that treats, say, medical records or political robocalls or commercial speech differently from any other kind of speech is in danger—and there are a lot of laws like this.

They say that hard cases make bad law. But Reed was an easy case. It failed “the laugh test” said Elena Kagan. And yet, it seems likely to have provided an excuse for an astonishingly broad change in how speech is regulated. So far it’s stayed mostly under the radar, but eventually something bigger than panhandling or ballot selfies will get struck down, and suddenly everyone will notice what happened. What then?

Professor Robert Post said the majority opinion, read literally, would so destabilize First Amendment law that courts might have to start looking for alternative approaches. Perhaps courts will rethink what counts as speech, he said, or perhaps they will water down the potency of strict scrutiny.

“One or the other will have to give,” he said, “or else the scope of Reed’s application would have to be limited.”

Stay tuned.

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First Amendment Law is Facing Some Very Big Changes

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China Finally Adopts Market-Based Value for its Currency, But We May Not Like the Results

by AdolphJanzen164 Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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For years the United States has been complaining that China artificially undervalues its currency, which makes their exports cheaper and gives them a trade advantage over American firms. In response, China has gradually let the renminbi rise. By 2015, it had roughly reached fair market value—though not all American politicians agreed about that.

But then the Chinese economy started going sour. Exports were down. The stock market crashed. Growth slowed. What to do? Answer: devalue the renminbi. But instead of doing it by fiat, pretend that you’re merely responding to market forces:

Every morning, Beijing sets a target for the trading of its currency against the U.S. dollar, then allows investors to buy and sell the currency for 2 percent more or less. Tuesday’s change relaxes the government’s control over setting that rate. The midpoint will now be set at the market’s closing rate for the previous day.

….Now, market forces could pressure the currency to depreciate rather than appreciate, making Chinese products comparatively cheaper….In China, the depreciation will be a boon for exporters and heavy industry, but bad news for companies that depend on imported goods. Shares of Chinese airlines plummeted on Tuesday, as analysts predicted that the higher cost of oil in U.S. dollars would weigh on their earnings.

It’s convenient to have a market-based policy as long as that produces a devaluation of the currency. But will Chinese authorities stick to this policy even when it means the renminbi will appreciate? Good question.

So what does it all mean? Here are a few obvious thoughts:

This is yet another vote of no confidence in the Chinese economy. When you put together everything that Chinese authorities have done over the past six months, I’d say they’re close to full-scale panic.
Investors are likely to push the renminbi even lower, and this is going to make life harder on anyone in China with dollar-denominated debt. This includes lots of local governments who have been financing the housing boom, which means this devaluation could hasten the housing bust everyone has been waiting for.
This will be a political issue in the US, but a tricky one. China is manipulating its currency to its own advantage—boo! hiss!—but has also adopted a policy that allows the renminbi’s value to be dictated by market forces—which is what we’ve been demanding all along. It will be interesting to see how all the Republican presidential candidates decide to respond to this.

Generally speaking, I think this should be taken as bad news. The world economy remains fragile, and if the Chinese economy is falling into recession—as the Chinese themselves seem to believe—it will affect all of us. And not in a good way. Stay tuned.

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China Finally Adopts Market-Based Value for its Currency, But We May Not Like the Results

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Here’s Another Vital Conversation That Donald Trump Is Ruining

by GonzaloTen93 Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Over at Vox, David Roberts investigates Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s views on climate change and finds that they are thoughtful, nuanced, and carefully grounded in science.

Kidding, kidding. Trump’s proclamations on climate change are as sweeping, bombastic, and asinine as his shocking claim that Mexican immigrants are a bunch of rapists. Here are a couple of typical tweets:

Trump thinks cold weather in the US in winter disproves the demonstrable fact that global average temperatures have been steadily rising since the Industrial Revolution. Roberts’ pithy conclusion is that Trump’s opinions are wrong, but, “They are, for the most part, mainstream Republican positions.” That depends on how you look at it. Rejecting climate science is the norm among Republican politicians. (Republican voters are more evenly split between climate science acceptance and denial.) But Trump’s specific approach to climate change represents a more rare and particularly disturbing species of climate science denialism.

Most other Republican presidential candidates do not actually deny that the Earth is getting warmer. Rather, they hem and haw about whether humans and greenhouse gas emissions are the cause of it, and to what extent. Here are some examples:

Jeb Bush: “I think global warming may be real…It is not unanimous among scientists that it is disproportionately manmade.”

And Rick Perry: “I don’t believe man-made global warming is settled in science enough.”

And just yesterday, John Kasich: “I think that man absolutely affects the environment, but as to whether, what the impact is…the overall impact—I think that’s a legitimate debate.”

They argue that the science of human-induced climate change is incomplete, but they accept that warming is measured by data and that NASA’s temperature readings are accurate.

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Some more extreme conservatives, like Ted Cruz, question whether the data actually even shows the Earth is warming. The more mainstream way of doing this, which Cruz did in his appearance at the Koch brothers’ recent confab in California, is to selectively and misleadingly present very specific facts in order to create a false impression. The more fringey, conspiracist approach, which Cruz also engaged in at that event, is to claim that the temperature measurements are being manufactured by scientists with an agenda. Cruz said, “If you look at satellite data for the last 18 years, there’s been zero recorded warming…They’re cooking the books. They’re actually adjusting the numbers.”

That’s pretty out there, but less so still than Trump because Cruz does accept that one would establish warming by measuring the temperature, and by doing so not just on one day in one place, but all over the Earth for years. Trump doesn’t selectively present the data or assert that it’s been rigged, he just ignores it. If it’s cold outside in New York in the winter, Trump says, then there is no global warming. His problem is twofold: He does not understand the difference between weather (still often cold in New York in the winter) and climate (gradually warming on average over the entire Earth), and he does not respect the difference between data and anecdote. Trump is hardly unique in this regard—remember Senate Environment Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and his snowball—but Trump is the only top-tier Republican presidential candidate who subscribes to it.

So the fact that Trump is in first place in the GOP presidential polls, with more than twice as high a percentage as his nearest competitor, Jeb Bush, reveals some alarming things about a large segment of the Republican voter base (not smart) and the prospects for reaching consensus on the need for climate action (not good).

Trump isn’t merely another extremist who rejects climate science. Trump isn’t really a conservative at all. He’s a reactionary populist who has elevated ignorance to a political philosophy. Call it ignorantism.

Even if Trump hadn’t said anything about climate change in particular, his dismissiveness toward objective fact-finding processes would bode ill for the environment. Government policies—economic, public health, environmental—require an accurate measurement of data to inform policymakers who write laws and regulators who enforce them. And a plurality of the Republican electorate currently supports a presidential candidate who does not accept that data, rather than personal anecdote, is how one measures empirical fact.

Despite the widespread opinion that Trump performed poorly in the first Republican debate last week, the only poll to come out since shows him still in the lead with 23 percent of Republican voters. The same poll shows 29 percent of respondents saying Trump did worst in the debate. But a lot of Republicans find his buffoonery and belligerent ignorance compelling.

Even though Trump will not be the GOP nominee, whoever it is will need to keep Trump’s supporters on board. And all those climate hawks hoping the GOP will stop being “the party of stupid” will be disappointed.

Original source: 

Here’s Another Vital Conversation That Donald Trump Is Ruining

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Trump Adds a Touch of Class to the Anti-Planned Parenthood Mob

by KaliSabofrv Posted on August 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a radio interview yesterday with conservative host Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump took the unusual step of agreeing with other Republican presidential candidates. He said that it would be better for the federal government to shut down than to continue funding Planned Parenthood.

“The only way to get rid of Planned Parenthood money for selling off baby parts is to shut the government down in September. Would you support that?” Hewitt asked. Trump replied, “Well I can tell you this. I would.” In the late ’90s, Trump said he supported keeping late-term abortions legal, but since first considering a run for the GOP nomination in 2011, he has been pro-life.

Trump joins a long list of conservatives who have expressed outrage over undercover videos released by a network of anti-abortion activists last month. Jeb Bush also offered his two cents. “The next president should defund Planned Parenthood,” he said in an interview. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal severed the state’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood yesterday. Meanwhile, the Senate debated a bill that aimed to strip all federal funding of Planned Parenthood. The bill ultimately failed after the threat of a Democratic filibuster led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Republican senators and 2016 hopefuls Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have promised to do everything in their power to deny funding to Planned Parenthood, even if it comes down to a government shutdown. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who chastised his colleagues for the 2013 shutdown, told NPR that he believes a shutdown would be justified in this case. “If Democrats want to stand before the American people and say they support this practice of dismembering unborn children, then that’s their privilege,” McCain said.

It’s possible that when Congress returns from its five-week August recess, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner will attach a new bill to defund Planned Parenthood to a must-pass budget bill, employing the same tactics that were used in the 2013 shutdown.

Now that Trump has signed on to a potential shutdown, he thinks it could succeed. He acknowledged to Hewitt that the government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act in 2013 was a political disaster for the Republicans—but that was their own fault. “If they had stuck together, they would have won that battle,” he asserted. “I think you have to in this case, also.”

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Trump Adds a Touch of Class to the Anti-Planned Parenthood Mob

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