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Another Look at Young High School Grads

by CarsonAmaya3891 Posted on May 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at the Economic Policy Institute, I’m in hot water over my question about the unemployment rate for young high school grads:

Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum seems to dislike a New York Times article calling job prospects for young high school graduates “grim.” Along the way, he directs an odd bit of unprovoked snark at us….The reason we get 17.8 percent while Kevin gets 11.2 percent when looking at unemployment rates for young high school graduates is pretty obvious: we’re looking at 17-20 year old high school graduates who are not enrolled in further schooling while he is looking at 20-24 year old high-school graduates (no college).

For the record, I meant for my snark to be aimed not at EPI, but at the Times. Their reporter should have done at least a cursory check of standard BLS data to see if it backed up her story, but she didn’t. That said, let’s take a closer look at the EPI data.

I can’t quite recreate their methodology, but that doesn’t matter. As usual, I’m only asking, “Compared to what?” In this case the question is, “How does unemployment among young high school grads compare to the normal rate before the recession?” Here’s the EPI chart:

I’m just eyeballing this, but it looks like the pre-crisis average was a little over 15 percent. Today it’s 18 percent. In other words, about one-fifth higher than normal. That’s roughly the same as 6 percent compared to 5 percent.

So if the headline unemployment rate were at 6 percent, would you call that “grim”? I wouldn’t. I’d say there’s certainly room for improvement, but it’s not too bad. Ditto for young high school grads. There’s clearly room for further improvement, but the current numbers don’t suggest an ongoing crisis. Things are very much getting back to normal.

I realize that my hobbyhorse about the economy might be getting annoying. And I sympathize with everyone on the left who wants to make sure we don’t declare victory and give up on further economic gains, especially for the working and middle classes. At the same time, we should also respect what the numbers are telling us. And by all the usual conventional measures, the economy is is pretty good shape. For now, at least, the recession really is largely over.

POSTSCRIPT: Just to make sure I’m as clear as possible, I’ll repeat what I said a couple of days ago: what the numbers tell us is that the current state of the economy as conventionally measured is pretty good compared to normal. This has nothing to do with larger, structural critiques of the economy. If you think that tax rates are too high or wages are too stagnant or income inequality is out of control, those are entirely different issues. These kinds of critiques have very little to do with how well or badly the economy is performing at the moment.

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Another Look at Young High School Grads

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The Supreme Court Just Made Government Hacking Much Easier

by KimberEldershaw Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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A Supreme Court ruling issued Thursday could make it much easier for the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to hack computers across the country, angering privacy advocates and drawing a rebuke from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The court approved a change to Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure, which outlines how federal criminal cases are run. The current version of the rule says search warrants are only valid in the relatively small judicial districts where they were issued. Under the new rule, magistrate judges would be able to issue warrants that apply to computers throughout the country, allowing law enforcement officers to hack and infect them remotely. The change still has to be approved by Congress, which has until December 1 to reject or alter the rule change before it automatically takes effect.

The government says the change is necessary to keep up with wide-ranging computer networks and criminals who use tools to hide their physical locations online. Courts in Oklahoma and Massachusetts threw out evidence this month in two child pornography cases stemming from the government’s takeover of a dark-web site called Playpen, which it used to insert tracking tools into the computers of people accessing child porn. Because the order allowing the takeover was issued by a judge in Virginia, the judges in the two cases said, the evidence from the investigation could not be used elsewhere.

But privacy advocates say the rule change is an attempt by the government to expand its hacking powers without public debate. “Instead of directly asking Congress for authorization to break into computers, the Justice Department is now trying to quietly circumvent the legislative process by pushing for a change in court rules, pretending that its government hacking proposal is a mere procedural formality rather than the massive change to the law that it really is,” said Kevin Bankston, the director of the Open Technology Institute at the liberal-leaning New America Foundation, in a statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden also attacked the rule change as overly broad. “Under the proposed rules, the government would now be able to obtain a single warrant to access and search thousands or millions of computers at once; and the vast majority of the affected computers would belong to the victims, not the perpetrators, of a cybercrime,” he said in a press release. Wyden has promised to introduce a bill that would reverse the Supreme Court’s ruling.

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The Supreme Court Just Made Government Hacking Much Easier

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Here’s how to spur more investment in clean energy

by PattiIBRGhendz Posted on April 13, 2016

Here’s how to spur more investment in clean energy

By on 13 Apr 2016 2:31 amcommentsShare

Next Friday, dozens of world leaders will gather in New York to officially sign the U.N. climate deal they hashed out in Paris last December. But the Paris Agreement will have only limited impact unless the world figures out a way to pony up the money necessary for a global transition to clean energy. Analysts put the price tag around $1 trillion annually through 2050.

The researchers behind the New Climate Economy, an initiative of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, think they know how to get those ponies in line. In a report released Wednesday, they write that the key to generating investment in clean energy is making the investments less risky; not digging up new money per se. There’s plenty of private investment money that could be channeled toward clean energy — hiding anywhere from pension funds to insurance companies’ portfolios. National governments, multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the World Bank, and others just need to figure out how to steer it in the right direction.

Part of the challenge is that many investors currently think of renewable projects the same way they think about fossil fuel projects, write the authors of the report. Investing in the energy sector is investing in the energy sector, the logic goes. But because fuel is free for many types of renewable energy, up to 90 percent of the costs for these projects are borne up front, and that makes them fundamentally different investments from other types of energy infrastructure.

“Renewables have often been penalized because the financing structures are geared toward fossil fuel projects,” Helen Mountford, director of economics at the World Resources Institute and program director of the New Climate Economy, told Grist. And that means we need new models.

One of the solutions is to get national governments and MDBs directly investing early in renewable projects, which then makes it less risky and more appealing for the private sector to come in with additional dollars. The New Climate Economy authors write that for every dollar invested by MDBs, up to 20 can flow in from the private sector. A core question, then, is how to convince players like the World Bank to invest more in sustainable infrastructure.

John Roome, senior director of the World Bank Group’s climate change program, argues that the MDBs are already heading in that direction. “We believe this is critical for our poverty alleviation mission,” Roome told Grist. “I think there is significant demand out there” for decreasing carbon footprints and increasing climate resilience, he continued, and the Bank views the main challenge as one of implementation.

Last week, the World Bank released a new climate action plan that promises increases in climate-related funding, which Roome and his team believe will lead to more mobilization of private finance. The plan has the Bank supporting 30 new gigawatts of renewable energy capacity over five years, but “a lot of that is not necessarily directly fully financed by the Bank,” says Roome. Instead, it will come from the private sector. The action plan claims that the World Bank “will aim to mobilize $25 billion of commercial funding for clean energy over the next five years.”

Governments will also need to shift their policies to encourage private sector investment in clean energy. “National governments have a huge responsibility to get the policy framework right,” says Mountford. “We’re underpricing carbon. In most cases we’re pricing it at zero or pricing it very low.” Carbon taxes and carbon-trading systems could do a lot to spur investment in renewables, since taking the environmental and social costs of carbon into account helps keep renewables cost-competitive.

We also need to stop using public funds to support dirty energy, says Mountford. “Globally, there are something like $600 billion going to fossil fuel subsidies. That’s the wrong direction,” she says. The G20 alone spends $450 billion annually subsidizing fossil fuels.

MDBs, too, will need to move away from supporting dirty energy. The World Bank, for example, still hasn’t committed to halting funding for fossil fuel projects. While Roome says it hasn’t funded a coal project in five years, natural gas projects are still on the table (and in rare situations, developing countries can still qualify for coal funding). He sees these projects as a necessary evil of sorts. “If you look at heating in Eastern Europe, a lot of that heating is currently generated from coal,” he says. “If you want a central heating system, it’s pretty difficult to run that off the back of renewables. Gas, in that environment, is not only the cheapest and gives people the benefits of a heating system, but it has a much lower carbon footprint than the alternative.”

Overall, the plummeting cost of clean energy promises to help the world edge toward that $1 trillion annually, “but it’s not enough on its own,” says Mountford. “We have to get the financing right.”

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Here’s how to spur more investment in clean energy

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Conservatives love subpoenas about climate change — until they get hit with one themselves

by GermanMansour Posted on April 11, 2016

Joe Barton (R-Tex), who sought to subpoena after a climate scientists published a study supporting the concept of climate change. Flickr/Gage Skidmore

Conservatives love subpoenas about climate change — until they get hit with one themselves

By on 11 Apr 2016commentsShare

It’s become a go-to strategy for climate change deniers to demand subpoenas and documents from scientists whenever they get a whiff of a potential controversy. But they like it less when the same tactic is used on them.

Attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands Claude Walker served the conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) with a subpoena last Thursday, demanding several decades’ worth of communications, emails, and other documents pertaining to CEI’s work on climate change policy and donor information. By subpoenaing CEI, Walker is broadening “a multifaceted legal inquiry into whether fossil fuel companies broke any laws as they sought for decades to undermine the scientific consensus and head off forceful action to address the climate crisis,” reports InsideClimateNews.

Libertarian and conservative writers at at The Blaze, American Thinker, The Washington Times, Bloomberg View, and Cato Institute have criticized the subpoena, calling it the product of “hysterics,” part of an “absurd climate inquisition,” and a chapter in “Al Gore’s climate witch hunt.” CEI itself called the move “an affront” to its First Amendment rights, adding that if Walker succeeds, “the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another.”

Where was this outrage when right-wing politicians were doing the same, but to scientists? Republicans in Congress have given CEI and its allies plenty of opportunities to call out their own antics. For example:

1. House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) issued subpoenas to administrators and scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in late 2015. Smith wanted their communications after the journal Science published a NOAA’s report debunking the deniers’ favorite excuse that global warming is on “pause.”

2. Smith has been on a tear lately. Last fall, he delivered a notice to Jagdish Shukla, a climate scientist at George Mason University in Virginia, which requested that Shukla “preserve all e-mail, electronic documents, and data (‘electronic records’) created since January 1, 2009,” pending an investigation. Shukla had signed a letter urging federal investigation of whether fossil fuel companies knowingly deceived the public on climate.

3. Joe Barton (R-Tex), a former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee from 2004 to 2007, sought the personal emails of climate scientist Michael E. Mann in 2005, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, after Mann’s study showed a rapid increase in global temperatures.

4. In perhaps the most famous incident of its kind, a hacker got a hold of more than 1,000 emails and 3,000 other documents from climate scientists who were authoring a United Nations report on climate change consensus — deniers likened it to a major scandal, calling it “climategate.” They tried to find a smoking gun in climate science that didn’t exist. Ex-Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli demanded Michael Mann’s files from his former university as a result.

CEI is caught in the crossfire aimed at ExxonMobil of late, given CEI’s long history promoting inaccurate science and policies to discredit climate change action. Nineteen state attorneys general are already investigating ExxonMobil to determine whether the company broke the law in reportedly misleading its investors and the public about climate change. And it just so happens that Exxon happens to have contributed at least $1.6 million to CEI since 1985.

No matter what comes of CEI’s subpoena, it won’t stop the think tank’s allies from doing the same to target climate scientists.

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Conservatives love subpoenas about climate change — until they get hit with one themselves

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21 countries shrank their carbon pollution while growing their economies

by RolandoEstell8 Posted on April 5, 2016

21 countries shrank their carbon pollution while growing their economies

By on 5 Apr 2016commentsShare

There’s some handwringing even among skeptics who accept climate change is real and human-made that rising greenhouse gas emissions is the inevitable product of a growing economy. And for years, that was pretty much the case: The only time a country saw emissions dip was in an economic recession.

But that doesn’t look to be the case any longer, particularly for industrialized nations. A new analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI), based on data from BP and the World Bank, finds 21 countries have cut greenhouse gas emissions since 2000 but have seen their economy grow all the same. That includes the United States:

World Resources Institute

The WRI analysis lends further support to a trend at the global level of decoupling emissions from economic growth. Last month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that energy-related emissions stayed flat in 2015 for the second year in a row, while global GDP had continued to grow at about 3 percent. In the U.S. alone, there was a 6 percent drop in energy-related carbon emissions and a 4 percent increase in GDP from 2010 to 2012.

It will be hard to deny this decoupling of growth and emissions, but science deniers always find a way.

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PR guru attempts the impossible: Convince everyone utility companies are all right

by JunkoHowden2 Posted on March 29, 2016

PR guru attempts the impossible: Convince everyone utility companies are all right

By on 29 Mar 2016commentsShare

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

The U.S. utility industry, beset by stricter pollution regulations and market forces that have made renewable energy more competitive, is seeking to rebrand itself into something more appealing to the public.

CEOs of many of the country’s major utilities met at a January board meeting of the Edison Electric Institute, the trade organization representing investor-owned electric companies. The institute revealed that it has hired a communications consultant who will help utilities upgrade their image. That includes shifting language, for example, from “utility-scale solar” to something friendlier, like “community solar.”

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“What we are seeing is generally a lot of negative attacks on our industry,” Brian Wolff, EEI’s executive vice president for public policy and external affairs, said at the meeting. Those attacks, he said, include ads that are “designed to harm our industry” and “create more distance between our companies and customers.”

The Huffington Post obtained a full audio recording of the meeting and a transcript from a source who was present, as well as a 2016 corporate goals document and a recap of 2015.

New environmental regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants are forcing changes at power plants. Meanwhile, solar energy has gotten about 70 percent cheaper since 2009, spurring a rapid expansion. Some utilities have installed their own solar systems. In some cases, utilities have backed attacks on rooftop solar.

Wolff said the industry group had hired New York crisis communications expert Michael Maslansky to help develop a new communication plan that would be presented to members this month.

Maslansky’s firm has helped Toyota weather a massive recall for faulty accelerator pedals and helped Starbucks convince the public its instant coffee was somehow different from others. Maslansky previously worked with Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz, who is credited with getting Republicans to use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming” because it sounds less scary, and for christening President George W. Bush’s “Healthy Forests Initiative” (which benefited the timber industry) and “Clear Skies Act” (which actually relaxed air pollution regulations).

Wolff praised the efforts of companies outside the utility industry to relate to customers, pointing to an ExxonMobil ad showing Americans turning on light switches. But it’s utilities that provide electricity, Wolff pointed out, not oil companies.

“They’re actually using our product to enhance their image,” said Wolff. “The conversation here is one that we need to be leading, not other industries.”

The utility industry, Wolff told industry leaders, needs to talk about “reputation management.” He presented slides on “using the same language, having the same messages.” And he noted that those who are speaking for power producers are going to develop a plan for “language to use, language to lose.”

“Think of this as a style guide going forward,” Wolff said. “We don’t want to call this a campaign. I view this as something that we need to do year in, year out … We need to be able to think about something sustained, something repetitious, something ongoing.”

Maslansky conducted in-depth interviews and spoke with focus groups about the language the industry should use, Wolff said. The research found that many people had no strong opinions about utilities one way or another. But there were also people who held negative views, he said. “They view us a monopoly, no incentives to serve the customers. They view us as stuck in the past in terms of technology.”

Hence the desire to start using terms like “community solar” instead of “utility-scale solar.”

This is a particularly hot issue in the world of electricity policy. Across the country, the price of installing solar panels on homes and businesses has declined, thanks to market forces and policies like tax incentives that make it more appealing.

But in some states, utilities have begun pushing back against policies like net metering, which allows homes and businesses with their own solar power systems to sell excess energy back to the power grid. Policy battles over solar have played out in recent years in Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Hawaii, among other places. (A great Rolling Stone article last month outlined the stakes.)

Utilities argue that net-metering policies aren’t fair, since homeowners and businesses with solar panels don’t pay their share for transmission lines and infrastructure, and can make a profit selling energy to the grid. The utility companies say they’re not anti-solar. In fact, they say, they love their own massive solar installations, usually called “utility-scale” solar.

But advocates for rooftop solar like the idea of someone other than utilities having the opportunity to own solar panels, and the incentives that make that possible. Rooftop solar gives individuals and businesses independence, and expands energy sources beyond utility companies. “Utility-scale” solar is nice, the advocates say, but people and communities should also be producing energy from the sun.

The messaging plan the utility industry is developing seeks to tap into that sentiment by dropping the term “utility-scale solar” in favor of “community solar.”

“‘Community solar’ really resonated with customers … They really wanted something that defined what it meant to be community,” Wolff said at the meeting.

“‘Utility-scale solar,’ owned by the utility, sounds like the utilities are going to be in complete control,” he continued. “We say, ‘Community solar for all.’ Again, there is a way to get around this without trying to get too complicated here. They like the word ‘community solar.’ It conveys the benefits of what we are talking about here.”

“We should proceed with the terminology that is more favorable to us,” he said. “And ‘community’ is clearly more favorable to us.”

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One problem, though: “Community solar” is already a term in use to describe something outside the utility industry. It refers to solar projects owned by the public or a joint entity — panels on a shared housing complex, for example, or an array shared by multiple businesses pooling their funds. There are 91 community solar projects around the country, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Wolff told HuffPost in an interview that Maslansky’s work is part of a larger effort to reshape the utility industry’s communication with customers, which typically only occurs through monthly bills, or when there’s a major storm or outage.

It’s “not really a communications plan as much as it is language that our customers can understand,” Wolff said.

Wolff noted that utilities are making big investments in solar, installing new solar capacity at record rates. “We’re trying to bring our customers along on the journey we’re on, which is a journey of transformation,” he said.

Wolff said he foresees no problems with using the term “community solar.” “Community-scale solar is larger” than simply solar panels, he said. “It’s really universal solar is what it is, because you’re providing to cities, communities.”

Maslansky said the communication project is an effort to help power companies better relate to their customers. “Basically, the industry is more customer focused than ever before,” he told HuffPost in an email. “And they want to make sure that customers understand the steps they are taking to prepare for the future. Customer feedback has told them that their language could improve on both fronts.”

But solar advocates are suspicious. Bryan Miller, a vice president at the rooftop solar company Sunrun and president of the Alliance for Solar Choice, said he thinks the branding effort reflects utilities’ growing concern about rooftop power systems taking a chunk out of their business. He called the co-option of community solar “dishonest politics,” given the fight utilities have waged against rooftop solar in some states.

“Instead of renaming their actions, they should change their actions,” said Miller. “Then they wouldn’t have to worry about how to spin them.”

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PR guru attempts the impossible: Convince everyone utility companies are all right

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ISIS Appears to Be Close to Collapse

by BIBSeanvrq Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Liz Sly of the Washington Post has an unusually optimistic report about the fight against ISIS today. She reports that both Palmyra and a string of villages in northern Iraq are being overrun by US-backed forces:

These are just two of the many fronts in both countries where the militants are being squeezed, stretched and pushed back….Front-line commanders no longer speak of a scarily formidable foe but of Islamic State defenses that crumble within days and fighters who flee at the first sign they are under attack.

….Most of the advances [] are being made by the assortment of loosely allied forces, backed to varying degrees by the United States, that are ranged along the vast perimeter of the Islamic State’s territories. They include the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in northeastern Syria; the Kurdish peshmerga in northern Iraq; the Iraqi army, which has revived considerably since its disastrous collapse in 2014; and Shiite militias in Iraq, which are not directly aligned with the United States but are fighting on the same side.

The U.S. military estimated earlier this year that the Islamic State had lost 40 percent of the territory it controlled at its peak in 2014, a figure that excludes the most recent advances.

….In eastern Syria, the seizure late last month of the town of Shadadi by the Kurdish YPG — aided by U.S. Special Forces — was accompanied by the capture of nearly 1,000 square miles of territory….The operation was planned to take place over weeks. Instead, the town fell within days, said a senior U.S. administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly.

“Shadadi was going to be a major six-week operation,” he said. “The ISIS guys had dug trenches and everything. Instead, they completely collapsed. They’re collapsing town by town.”

This could just be happy talk, of course. It wouldn’t be the first time. Or maybe ISIS is regrouping for an epic last stand. But if this reporting is true, it represents a self-sustaining dynamic: rumors of ISIS collapse inspire Iraqi forces to fight harder, which in turn contributes to ISIS collapse. At this point, Sly reports, the issues in the way of further progress are as much diplomatic as military: “We could probably liberate Mosul tomorrow, but we would have a real mess on our hands if we did,” says Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

I wonder what Republicans will do if ISIS is truly on the run by the time campaign season starts in the fall? Whine that they could have done it even faster? Complain that we didn’t steal all the oil while we were at it? They’re barely going to know what to do with themselves if the weak-kneed appeaser Barack Obama first kills bin Laden and then takes out ISIS.

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ISIS Appears to Be Close to Collapse

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The NFL Really Doesn’t Like Being Compared to Big Tobacco

by Maryann3677 Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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For more than a decade, the National Football League supported a series of peer-reviewed studies that concluded that brain injuries sustained during football players’ careers did not lead to long-term consequences. But a new investigation by the New York Times reports that the research omitted data from more than 100 documented concussions—and, perhaps more troubling, that the NFL had a closer connection to the tobacco industry than previously known.

While the Times found “no direct evidence that the league took its strategy from Big Tobacco,” its story lays out a series of overlapping ties between the league and tobacco giants, from hires to requests for advice. A league attorney challenged the assertion in a letter to the Times that was included in the story, writing, “The N.F.L. is not the tobacco industry; it had no connection to the tobacco industry.”

But the league didn’t stop there. On Thursday morning, the league released a statement pushing back against the Times report. The newspaper then followed up with a series of tweets refuting the NFL’s statement—after which the league responded with another statement.

Here’s a point-by-point breakdown of what the Times reported and how both sides responded to each other’s claims on Thursday:

Times on NFL’s use of flawed data: “For the last 13 years, the N.F.L. has stood by the research, which, the papers stated, was based on a full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. But confidential data obtained by The Times shows that more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from the studies—including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, the MTBI studies published by the MTBI Committee are clear that the data set had limitations…The studies never claimed to be based on every concussion that was reported or that occurred. Moreover, the fact that not all concussions were reported is consistent with the fact that reporting was strongly encouraged by the League but not mandated, as documents provided to the Times showed.”

Times‘ responses:

NFL’s follow-up statement: “The studies themselves expressly noted the limitations in their work and never claimed to be based on every concussion that was reported or that occurred. The fact that not all concussions were reported is consistent with the fact that reporting was strongly encouraged by the League but not mandated, as the documents we provided to the Times showed. We nevertheless agree that these limitations could have been more clearly stated.”

Times on Dorothy Mitchell, a former legal liaison who oversaw the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, and her ties to the tobacco industry: “Before joining the N.F.L., Ms. Mitchell, a young Harvard Law School graduate, had been one of five lawyers at Covington & Burling who had provided either lobbying help or legal representation to both the N.F.L. and the tobacco industry, sometimes in the same year.”

NFL’s initial statement: “Her experience as a young lawyer working on a tobacco case (among many other cases) was entirely unknown to the NFL personnel who hired and supervised her, as well as to members of the MTBI Committee, until they learned of this proposed story.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “At her law firm, Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., Dorothy Mitchell worked on a wide variety of matters, including employment matters for the League and a matter for the Tobacco Institute as a young associate. The NFL did not seek out Ms. Mitchell for employment or know that she had worked on any tobacco matter.”

Times on contact between Lorillard general counsel Arthur Stevens and former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue in 1992: “In 1992, amid rising concerns about concussions, Mr. Tisch—the Giants and Lorillard part owner—asked the cigarette company’s general counsel, Arthur J. Stevens, to contact the N.F.L. commissioner at the time, Mr. Tagliabue, about certain legal issues…In a letter obtained by The Times, Mr. Stevens referred Mr. Tagliabue to two court cases alleging that the tobacco and asbestos industries had covered up the health risks of their products.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, neither then-NFL Commissioner, Mr. Tagliabue, the League nor its counsel ever solicited, reviewed, or relied on any advice from anyone at Lorillard or the Tobacco Institute regarding health issues.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “Commissioner Tagliabue did not know Mr. Stevens and does not recall communicating with him prior to or after the October 20 letter. There is no evidence in an extensive review of files that Mr. Tagliabue solicited the advice, reviewed the advice or acted upon the advice. Nor did anyone else at the League ever take any action regarding health issues based on advice from Lorillard or the Tobacco Institute.”

Times on the league and tobacco industry sharing lobbyists: “Still, the records show that the two businesses shared lobbyists, lawyers and consultants. Personal correspondence underscored their friendships, including dinner invitations and a request for lobbying advice.”

NFL’s initial statement: “In fact, the League has never participated—either through its counsel of over 50 years, Covington & Burling, or otherwise—in any joint lobbying efforts with the Tobacco Institute.”

Times‘ response:

NFL’s follow-up: “The NFL has worked with Covington & Burling for more than 50 years, and both the NFL and the Tobacco Institute have retained Covington & Burling at various times for lobbying services—as have any number of other companies and individuals in Washington and elsewhere. But the NFL never participated in any joint lobbying efforts with the Tobacco Institute. Regarding health and safety, the NFL retained assistance from Covington & Burling from 2009-2014 for its lobbying efforts in state legislatures to pass youth concussion laws, the ‘Lystedt Law,’ in all 50 states.”

Times on NFL’s use of the same research firm as the Tobacco Institute: “On at least two occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, the N.F.L. hired a company whose client list included the Tobacco Institute to study player injuries. The league also hired a company — for a matter unrelated to player safety—that had performed a study for the tobacco industry that played down the danger of secondhand smoke.”

NFL’s response: “The Times asserts a connection between the League and the Tobacco Institute because both hired the Stanford Research Institute (SRI)…In fact, one of the research studies the Times alludes to was jointly commissioned by the NFL and the NFL Players Association. There is no evidence that SRI engaged in misleading or inappropriate research.”

Times on former NFL president Neil Austrian: “Neil Austrian, a former N.F.L. president, had previously run an advertising agency that under his leadership reversed its ban on taking tobacco clients. He called Philip Morris ‘an honorable company that sets high standards.’ It was during his tenure at the N.F.L. that the concussion committee was created.”

NFL’s response: “Mr. Austrian had no involvement with the MTBI Committee during his tenure at the NFL. Mr. Austrian was responsible for the business entities of the league.”

Times on Joe Browne, the NFL’s former senior vice president of communications: “When Congress was considering legislation that dealt with when a team owner could relocate a franchise, Joe Browne, a league official sought lobbying advice from a representative of the Tobacco Institute. ‘I would like to take the opportunity to sit down and discuss this bill with you further,’ Mr. Browne said in a 1982 letter to the institute’s president, Sam Chilcote.”

NFL’s response: “The Times implies that there was a nefarious relationship between Joe Browne and Sam Chilcote. In fact, Joe Browne (then NFL SVP of Communications) built a personal relationship with Sam Chilcote while Mr. Chilcote was at the Distilled Spirits Council in the 1970s…Mr. Browne contacted Mr. Chilcote in 1982 for some advice as someone he knew in Washington, DC about a subject completely unrelated to tobacco, concussions, or any player-related or medical issue. We have seen no evidence—from the Times or otherwise—that demonstrated their relationship had anything to do with tobacco or NFL health and safety.”

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The NFL Really Doesn’t Like Being Compared to Big Tobacco

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No One Knows Just How Big Europe’s Jihadi Problem Really Is

by RetaEdengjymusl Posted on March 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Belgium on Tuesday, security services across Europe and elsewhere are on alert for more potential attacks. But even as Belgian police identify suspects and more information comes to light, no one can say just how big Europe’s jihadi threat actually is.

For one thing, there’s no generally accepted estimate of the number of terrorist operatives lurking in European cities. The most dangerous potential attackers are the men—about 5,000 from Western Europe alone—who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS and other jihadi groups. The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a think tank set up by the former British prime minister, estimated in January that about 1,300 of those fighters have returned to Europe. Ed Husain, a senior adviser to the group, told Newsweek that the fighters are “a potent force and a significant threat.”

But it’s also unclear how many of them return home with the intent to kill. A report issued last April by the Congressional Research Service noted that “only a small proportion of foreign fighters have actually committed acts of violence upon returning to their home countries” and that “some European fighters may return traumatized and disillusioned by the brutality of the conflict and have no intention of committing violence at home.”

Colin Clarke, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, agrees that many of the fighters return home and “wash their hands” of the jihadi experience. “I’d say the lion’s share probably do, or they just know that they’re being watched by the security services,” he says. “I’d say it’s only a small minority of guys that come back with the intent to attack.” Unfortunately, those that do are “usually highly skilled” and able to coordinate attacks like the ones in Paris and Brussels.

And for every man who straps on an explosive vest or picks up a rifle, there’s a long chain of people who have helped him plan, get weapons, forge documents, and carry out other logistical tasks. “You’re going to have a facilitation network that is two or three people to every one that’s an actual terrorist that wants to mobilize to violence,” says terrorism researcher Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. That means the 1,300 returned fighters could represent only a baseline number of jihadis, not a pool from which only a handful of attackers have emerged. “I would say it’s bigger,” Watts says.

No matter the exact size of the problem, some countries simply appear unequipped to handle the number of potential targets and the intense surveillance needed to track them. The problem is particularly bad in Belgium, which has a weak government and security services divided by language barriers. “Some guys are speaking Flemish, some are speaking French, some are speaking German,” says Clarke. “Very few are speaking Arabic.”

Other countries are facing similar crunches in manpower and resources. “The countries that I’m worried about the most are these smaller countries that lack both the capacity and the sort of competency in counterterrorism but have had a lot of foreign fighters go to Iraq and Syria,” Watts says. “Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium all need to be concerned.”

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No One Knows Just How Big Europe’s Jihadi Problem Really Is

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Mitch McConnell likes procrastinating so much, he wants the whole country to do it

by AdrianneBeaudoin Posted on March 23, 2016

Mitch McConnell likes procrastinating so much, he wants the whole country to do it

By on 23 Mar 2016 11:04 amcommentsShare

The most powerful man in the Senate isn’t interested in doing his job, and he’s telling state leaders around the country: Why should you do yours?

That man would be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose steadfast refusal to consider a Supreme Court nominee until after the election gives new meaning to the word “dillydally.” Now the Kentucky Republican, in a letter published Monday to state governors, is also urging procrastination on another important issue: climate change.

McConnell is referring specifically to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which requires states to submit plans for curbing carbon pollution from power plants an average of 32 percent by 2030. It’s the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate-fighting agenda, and McConnell has been urging states to drag their heels since the EPA issued the rule a year ago, when he told them to  “just say no.”  McConnell argued that states should refuse to submit a carbon-cutting plan to the EPA as a means of protest, even though legal experts dismissed his reasoning.

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Now McConnell is emboldened by the Supreme Court’s unexpected decision in February to stay the Clean Power Plan while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decides the case. If the courts do uphold the rule, McConnell insists there is no risk for states to stop planning for implementation. “[E]ven if the CPP is ultimately upheld,” he writes to governors, “the clock would start over and your states would have ample time to formulate and submit a plan; but if the court overturns the CPP as I predict, your citizens would not be left with unnecessary economic harm.”

Legal scholars say McConnell is once again giving terrible advice. “No one knows how it’s going to play out” in the courts, New York University Institute for Policy Integrity Senior Attorney Jack Lienke (and sometime Grist contributor) told me. “All we know is the rule is stayed until this litigation is resolved, and we don’t know exactly how it’s going to be resolved.”

There’s no reason for states to assume that if they stop their work now, the “clock would start over” and their time to implement the Clean Power Plan would be extended if the rule is upheld, Lienke said. The courts could do any number of things, as could the EPA. “It is bad advice to suggest they should count on that happening. The Supreme Court orders granting the stay didn’t say anything about holding up deadlines.”

Since the Supreme Court’s stay was issued last month, 19 states have kept working toward the Clean Power Plan regs, while 19 states have halted their efforts (four states are exempt because they have so few coal-fired power plants sector). McConnell’s letter is meant to help sway the nine states still debating what to do into the procrastinator’s column.

Ironically, his advice could wind up hurting the coal-reliant states (like his home state of Kentucky) that need extra time to begin a clean-energy transition. Foot dragging might be McConnell’s speciality, but it’s no good for anything but his political machinations.

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Mitch McConnell likes procrastinating so much, he wants the whole country to do it

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