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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

by Ebony8143ve Posted on September 26, 2014

Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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26 Sep 2014 6:21 PM

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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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Yes, America’s green movement is often seen as white. And there are plenty of reasons for that, including the fact that environmental organization staffers are predomnantly white and that a small fraction of environmental grant funding goes toward environmental justice. But when you ask Americans what they care about, nonwhites are the ones who give a damn.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, organized and prettified by FiveThirtyEight’s DataLab, nonwhite Americans are significantly more likely than whites to think global warming should be a top priority for the U.S. government. The gap is now over 20 percent.

FiveThirtyEight

What FiveThirtyEight notes, however, is that even when you control for political party (sure, Democrats are going to be more likely to favor government action, and more minorities are Democrats), the numbers still skew in favor of nonwhites.

FiveThirtyEight

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In other words, despite any sort of messaging to the contrary, people of color care about the environment. A lot.

As many media outlets have noted, if the People’s Climate March was any indication, this movement is getting visibly more diverse. But events like the Americas Latino Eco Festival and this kind of polling data are bringing more attention to the idea that, if we’re talking beliefs, it already was diverse. Ninety percent of Latinos, for example, believe that the government should take action on climate change. According to a 2010 poll from Yale University, people of color “were often the strongest supporters of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” And a recent Green For All survey shows similar results.

People talk about “inclusivity” in the environmental movement. Maybe what they should be pointing to is “reality.”

Source:
The Racial Gap on Global Warming

, FiveThirtyEight.

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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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GOP Candidate: Mitt Romney’s "47 Percent" Remarks Are Even More True Today

by WilhemiBanniste Posted on September 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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A GOP House candidate in Nevada has been caught on tape telling a crowd at a fundraiser that Mitt Romney was right to say that 47 percent of the country mooch off the government. Cresent Hardy, the Republican candidate for Nevada’s 4th district, added that since 2012, when Romney made his remarks, the “47 percent” has only grown.

“Can I say that without getting in trouble, like Governor Romney?” Hardy said, at a fundraiser held last Thursday at the Falcon Ridge Golf Club. “The 47 percent is true. It’s bigger now.”

Hardy’s remarks refer to the leaked video of Mitt Romney telling donors, behind closed doors, that 47 percent of the country are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” The video was released by Mother Jones.

At last week’s fundraiser, Hardy reportedly blamed the country’s troubles on women, minorities, and young voters, since those groups voted for the president in large numbers. Jon Ralston, a top Nevada political commentator, reported Hardy’s comments on his show last night.

This is not the first time Hardy has disparaged voters on the campaign trail. A video posted by the Nevada Democratic Party in February shows Hardy claiming that people in “welfare districts” drive Escalades—a callback to the “welfare queens” trope of the 1980s.

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GOP Candidate: Mitt Romney’s "47 Percent" Remarks Are Even More True Today

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National Briefing | Washington: Federal Report Describes Trouble for Some Birds

by Myrna Posted on September 9, 2014

After the National Audubon Society released a report saying 650 bird species will be threatened by climate change, a report released by other agencies concluded that nearly one-third of American birds are in trouble. Continue at source: National Briefing | Washington: Federal Report Describes Trouble for Some Birds ; ; ;

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National Briefing | Washington: Federal Report Describes Trouble for Some Birds

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Dot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at the Ebola Epidemic in the Context of Ecological Health

by Myrna Posted on September 9, 2014

There’s a chance the Ebola outbreak could spur increased conservation and surveillance in ecosystems that might harbor dangerous pathogens. Original article: Dot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at the Ebola Epidemic in the Context of Ecological Health ; ; ;

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Dot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at the Ebola Epidemic in the Context of Ecological Health

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ECB Finally Shows Signs of Taking Lousy Economic Growth Seriously

by ChristiSheppard Posted on September 4, 2014

Mother Jones

In a surprise move, the European Central Bank cut interest rates nearly to zero today And there’s more:

The central bank said that in October it would begin buying asset-backed securities, bundles of loans issued by banks to businesses and households….Perhaps more significantly, Mr. Draghi said that the central bank’s governing council was ready to take further measures if needed — a clear reference to quantitative easing, or broad-based purchases of government bonds or other assets.

“The governing council is unanimous in its commitment to using additional unconventional instruments,” Mr. Draghi said at a news conference….“Q.E. was discussed,” Mr. Draghi said. “A broad asset purchase program was discussed.” He said some members of the governing council favored starting such purchases, but others did not.

More from the Wall Street Journal:

While the ECB had in recent months indicated it was considering an ABS purchase program, the addition of a covered bond program and rate cuts was a surprise, and an indication that officials have grown increasingly concerned that the recent period of very low inflation could persist longer than first thought and may threaten the currency area’s economic recovery.

“In August, we see a worsening of the medium-term inflation outlook, a downward movement in all indicators of inflation expectations,” Mr. Draghi said. “Most, if not all, the data we got in August on GDP (gross domestic product) and inflation showed that the recovery was losing momentum.”

It’s still too little, too late—as usual with the ECB—but at least it suggests that European leaders are finally taking seriously the combination of low inflation and lousy economic growth in the eurozone. More please.

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ECB Finally Shows Signs of Taking Lousy Economic Growth Seriously

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ISIS is a Problem That Only Iraqis Can Solve

by Arlen23Bbfkswz Posted on September 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Christopher Paul and Colin Clarke have studied 71 insurgencies during the post-WWII period and have concluded that every successful counterinsurgency shared several characteristics. They apply the results of their research to the problem of the ISIS insurgency in Iraq:

First, we found that in every case where they succeeded, counterinsurgent forces managed to substantially overmatch the insurgents and force them to fight as guerrillas before getting down to the activities traditionally associated with counterinsurgency….U.S. air power could make a significant contribution toward that end. Airstrikes will help curb Islamic State advances in strategically important parts of Iraq and thus, help bolster the Iraqi government and security forces, at least in the short term.

Second, we concluded from the research that “effective COIN practices tend to run in packs”….Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques identified three COIN concepts critical to success. These three concepts were implemented in each and every COIN win, and no COIN loss implemented all three: Tangible support reduction; commitment and motivation; and flexibility and adaptability.

….U.S. support to an Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy to defeat the Islamic State must focus on reducing tangible support to the insurgents, increasing the commitment and motivation of the Iraqi military and security forces and increasing the government’s legitimacy among Iraqi Sunnis.

It’s been a long time since I spent much time reading about COIN and COIN strategies, but this basically sounds right to me. And it should send a shiver down the spine of anyone who thinks the US should get deeply involved in fighting ISIS.

Here’s why. One of the key factors that I remember identifying during the height of the Iraq insurgency was local commitment. In a nutshell, it turns out that virtually no postwar COIN effort led by a big Western country has been successful. Western help is OK, but the COIN effort has to be led by the local regime. It’s not a sufficient condition for success, but it’s a necessary one.

Paul and Clarke are basically confirming this. Sure, American air strikes might help in terms of the sheer firepower needed to successfully fight ISIS. But of the other three key COIN practices, two are purely local and the third is mostly local. There’s very little the United States can do to help out on these fronts. Only the Iraqi government can increase its legitimacy among the Sunni minority, and only the Iraqi government can properly motivate its military. (The US can provide training and materiel, but it can’t provide commitment and motivation.) Even the problem of reducing tangible support for the ISIS insurgents is mostly something only the Iraqi government can do. The US can help, but only if Iraqis are leading the way.

At the moment, there’s little evidence that the Iraqi government is capable of doing any of these three things. The new government of Haider Al-Abadi might be able to make progress on these fronts, but it hasn’t demonstrated that yet. Until it does, more US help is almost certainly doomed to failure.

Instinctive hawks should think long and hard about this. The record of the United States in counterinsurgencies is dismal. If the conditions are just right, we might be able to do some good in Iraq. At the moment, though, the conditions are appalling. We can put a few fingers in some dikes, but unless and until the Iraqi government steps up to the plate, there’s virtually no chance that deeper US involvement will turn out well.

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ISIS is a Problem That Only Iraqis Can Solve

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Here’s the Latest Right-Wing IRS Fantasy

by HelenaHastings Posted on August 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s a great example of the conservative media bubble at work. I was browsing The Corner a few minutes ago and came across a post telling me that the government has, rather astonishingly, acknowledged that it has another backup of Lois Lerner’s missing emails. Judicial Watch, which has been trying to get hold of these emails, sent out a press release trumpeting its discovery:

Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe….This is a jaw-dropping revelation. The Obama administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner’s missing emails….The Obama administration has known all along where the email records could be — but dishonestly withheld this information.

Well. That’s fascinating. But I wondered what was really up. I went to Google News but all I found were links to conservative news sites. The Judicial Watch story was plastered over all of them: Forbes, The Blaze, NRO, Breitbart, Fox, Townhall, the Washington Examiner, the Free Beacon, and the New York Observer. But none of the usual mainstream news sources seemed to have anything about this.

Except for The Hill. Hooray! So I clicked:

An administration official said Justice Department lawyers had dropped no bombshells last week, and that Judicial Watch was mischaracterizing what the government had said.

The official said that Justice lawyers were only referring to tapes backing up IRS emails that were routinely recycled twice a year before 2013, when the investigation into the Tea Party controversy began….The administration official said that the inspector general is examining whether any data can be recovered from the previously recycled back-up tapes and suggested that could be the cause of the confusion between the government and Judicial Watch.

Roger that. What he’s saying is that backup tapes are routinely recycled and written over, but it’s possible that some of the tapes weren’t entirely written over. There’s a chance that old emails might still be at the tail end of some of the tapes and could be recovered. And who knows: maybe some of them were Lerner’s. This is, as you can imagine, (a) the longest of long shots, and (b) a pretty difficult forensic recovery job even if some parts of the backup tapes contain old messages. It’s certainly not a jaw-dropping revelation.

But in right-wing fantasyland, it’s no doubt already become conventional wisdom that the feds have some kind of massive government-wide backup system that contains every email ever written by any federal employee. The Obama administration has just been hiding it.

Which is exactly what you’d expect from them, isn’t it?

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Here’s the Latest Right-Wing IRS Fantasy

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Yes, Republicans Really Are Unprecedented in Their Obstructionism

by HyeNelmsamd Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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When we talk about Republican obstruction of judicial nominees in the Senate, the usual way is to look at filibusters and cloture votes. But that can sometimes be misleading, since cloture votes can happen for a variety of reasons. Or we can look at the raw number of seats filled. But that can be misleading too, since this can depend on how aggressive the president is about nominating new judges in the first place. A better way may be to simply look at how long nominees are delayed. That’s easier to measure, and long delays mostly happen for only one reason: because the minority party is blocking floor votes.

Via Jonathan Bernstein, the chart on the right comes from @Mansfield2016. It shows pretty clearly what’s happened to judicial nominees over the past couple of decades. Under George HW Bush, nominees that made it to the Senate floor were voted on almost immediately. The majority Democrats waited only a few days to schedule a vote.

That jumped suddenly when Bill Clinton became president and Republicans started delaying his nominees. Things settled down and delays plateaued during George W Bush’s administration.

And then came Barack Obama. Once more delays spiked. Even after the rules were changed, delays have stayed high, averaging about 80 days. This is far higher than it was under Bush or Clinton. Bernstein comments:

I believe that Senate rules requiring super-majority cloture for judicial nominations are an excellent idea, provided the minority observes the Senate norm of using filibusters rarely. Unfortunately, Republicans simply haven’t abided by longstanding Senate norms. After Obama’s election, they suddenly insisted that every nomination required 60 votes — an unprecedented hurdle. They blockaded multiple nominations to the DC Circuit Court. They have, before and after filibuster reform, used Senate rules to delay even nominations that they have intended ultimately to support. Since reform, they have imposed the maximum delay on every single judicial nominee.

Ideally, I’d like to see a compromise that restores the minority’s ability to block selected judicial nominees. But right now, the more pressing concern is that if Republicans win a Senate majority in November, they may simply shut down all nominations for two full years. That would be absolutely outrageous. Yet it seems entirely plausible.

That final comment is what makes these numbers even more outrageous. It’s fairly normal for a minority party to start delaying nominees in the final year or two of an administration. Obviously they’re hoping to win the presidency soon and they want to leave as many seats open as possible for their guy to fill. This tends to inflate the average numbers for an administration.

But that hasn’t happened yet for Obama. His numbers for his first five years are far, far higher than Bush’s even though Bush’s are inflated by delays during his final year in office. It’s just another example of the fact that, no, both parties aren’t equally at fault for the current level of government dysfunction. Republicans greeted Obama’s inauguration with an active plan of maximal obstruction of everything he did, regardless of what it was or how necessary it might be in the face of an epic economic collapse. No other party in recent history has done that. It’s a new thing under the sun.

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Yes, Republicans Really Are Unprecedented in Their Obstructionism

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Is It Time for Obama to Change Course on Iraqi Kurdistan?

by Aileen5637 Posted on August 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Dworkin, who has spent quite a bit of time in Iraqi Kurdistan, thinks the Obama administration is pursuing a failed strategy in Iraq:

In Kurdistan examples are everywhere of the failure of American diplomacy. Refugees have been a problem for months, but only in the last few days has our government gotten serious about providing large scale material support to the Kurds….On the economic front the State Department has gone out of its way to be unhelpful. The Kurdish government is in a desperate economic situation due to the refugee crisis, the security crisis, and the central government’s refusal to share oil revenue.

….The Obama team has adopted Maliki’s line, in essence arguing that Kurdish oil undermines Iraqi unity. That’s an idea that has become increasingly ridiculous with each setback in Baghdad….But the idea of Kurds breaking away from Iraq was anathema to the Obama team….The result is ongoing economic strangulation at precisely the moment the Kurds are being attacked by ISIS. Government salaries haven’t been paid in months. One physician friend in Sulaimania wrote to me that the doctors are working for free. There have also been acute fuel shortages.

Security is the most obvious area where American soft power has failed. For months now the Kurds have been lobbying for a more coordinated approach against ISIS, and they have gotten the cold shoulder over and over. The Obama team was content to arm a disloyal and unreliable Iraqi Army, and they were perplexed when those heavy weapons ended up under ISIS control. But they refused to coordinate significant weapons procurement for the Peshmerga, despite increasingly desperate appeals, until the ISIS rampage forced them to change tack this past week.

I think the highlighted sentence is key. From a diplomatic point of view, the United States either supports a unified Iraq controlled by a central government in Baghdad, or it supports a federal Iraq in which Kurdistan is largely independent. For better or worse, the US made the decision long ago to support a unified Iraq, and that’s not a decision that can be reversed lightly. Everything else flows from this.

Is this incompetent? I don’t think that’s fair. Countries simply can’t change tack on major issues like this when their allies are in trouble. And like it or not, Baghdad is our chosen ally. It may be that there’s more we could do to quietly help the Kurds behind the scenes, but it’s hard to imagine anything serious changing as long as we officially support the authority of the central government in Baghdad over all of Iraq.

In other words, all of the things Jonathan mentions are part of an entirely coherent strategy. Wrong, maybe, but coherent. Rather than commenting on them separately, then, we should be focusing on the bigger picture: Is it finally time for the US to end its opposition to an independent—or semi-independent—Kurdistan? Jonathan made the case for that a couple of months ago here, and I can’t say that I forcefully disagree with him. Certainly we ought to be giving this a more public airing. “When we’re dropping bombs on a place,” Jonathan told me via email, “it should force some conversation about the broader strategy.” It’s hard to argue with that.

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Is It Time for Obama to Change Course on Iraqi Kurdistan?

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The Feds Are Demanding That Twitter Turn Over More User Info Than Ever

by Jeffry8238 Posted on July 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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US law enforcement and intelligence agencies are hitting Twitter with more information requests about its users than ever before, and in most cases the social network is handing over some data, according to a new report released by the company on Thursday. Twitter notes that many of the government demands, which are typically related to criminal investigations, are originating from California, New York, and Virginia. They’re coming from federal, state, and local law enforcement and intelligence officials, a Twitter spokesman says.

Like several other tech companies, Twitter releases transparency reports disclosing information about the government requests for user data it has received. According to the latest report, between January 1 and June 30, Twitter received just over 2,000 requests for information covering about 3,100 Twitter accounts from authorities in 54 countries, with about 1,250 of those requests coming from US agencies. That’s a sharp increase from the previous six months, when there were about 1,400 requests, around 830 of those from the US. According to the Twitter spokesman, US authorities have placed more information requests over the last six months than the company has ever received in a similar timeframe.

While Twitter granted zero requests to some countries that requested information recently, such as Turkey, Venezuela, and Pakistan, the social network handed over at least some information in 72 percent of the cases when US authorities requested it.

While the social network can report a tally of law enforcement-related requests, the social network is barred by the US government from publishing the specific number of national security-related requests—such as national security letters and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders—it has received. Twitter notes that it met with the FBI and the Justice Department earlier this year to push for more transparency.

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The Feds Are Demanding That Twitter Turn Over More User Info Than Ever

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