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The Looming Olive Oil Apocalypse

by Margene8108 Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

The world’s most celebrated olive oil comes from sun-drenched groves of Italy. But Italy is also a hotbed of olive oil subterfuge, counterfeit, and adulteration—and has been since Roman times, as Tom Muellar showed in an eye-opening 2007 New Yorker piece (which grew into a book called Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.) Next year, getting real olive oil from Italy is going to be even harder than usual. Here’s the LA Times’ Russ Parsons:

As a result of what the Italian newspaper La Repubblica is calling “The Black Year of Italian Olive Oil,” the olive harvest through much of Italy has been devastated—down 35% from last year.

The reason is a kind of perfect storm (so to speak) of rotten weather through the nation:

When the trees were turning flowers to fruit in the spring, freezing weather suddenly turned scorching, causing the trees to drop olives. Summer was hot and humid, leading to all sorts of problems. Then in mid-September, there was a major hail storm, knocking much of the fruit that remained onto the ground.

Other major olive oil-producing nations suffered similar calamities; Parsons reports that in Spain and Mediterranean neighbors, production is also “forecast to be far below last year’s.” And California, that big chunk of Mediterranean-like climate on our west coast, where excellent olive oil is produced? Parsons says the epochal drought is pinching production, and he quotes Muellar to the effect that “frankly, I hear about a lot of games being played there too, with labels and quality alike.” Sigh.

I find all of this distressing. I came of age as a cook in an era of olive oil hegemony. I treat it like the oil that powers my car, as something to be relied on casually, as if it appeared by magic from nowhere. (Nearly all my Tom’s Kitchen columns feature it.)

Once a staple of Mediterranean polyculture—farms and households would feature olive trees in mixed groves along with a multitude of other crops—olive oil production has long since industrialized. Here is The Ecologist from 2008:

Industrial olive farms grow their olive trees, planted at high densities, in massive irrigated orchards on lowland plains. The olives are harvested by machines that clamp around the tree’s trunk and shake it until the olives fall to the ground. Oil is then extracted by industrial-scale centrifuge, often at high temperatures. In contrast, small, traditional farms are often ancient, their trees typically planted on upland terraces. The farmers manage their groves with few or no agrochemicals, less water and less machinery. Olives are picked off the ground by hand and the oil extracted by grinding the olives in a millstone and press. Demand for cheap, mass-produced oil is making it a struggle for the smaller, traditional farms to be economically viable, however.

….

Intensive olive farming is a major cause of one of the biggest environmental problems affecting the EU: widespread soil erosion and desertification in Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal. In 2001, the European Commission ordered an independent study into the environmental impact of olive farming across the EU. The report concluded: ‘Soil erosion is probably the most serious environmental problem associated with olive farming.

I fear that next year’s olive oil crunch is a harbinger of things to come. I am officially in search of alternative cooking fats. One I’ve come to appreciate: lard from pasture-raised hogs. Lard’s rotten nutritional reputation is the result of outdated and discredited science. And it makes food taste really good, too.

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The Looming Olive Oil Apocalypse

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A Thanksgiving Snowstorm Could Make America’s Busiest Travel Day A Living Hell

by PrincesWestover Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

NWS Weather Prediction Service

This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

If you’ve ever wanted to make post-stuffing snow angels, this year could be your chance.

Forget for a moment that Monday will feature near-record highs on the East Coast. (However, if you’re in Washington or New York City, you should bask in this afternoon’s highs in the low to mid-70s, if you can swing it.)

Forget, too, that in my post on Friday I said not to worry (yet) about a looming Thanksgiving Eve nor’easter. At the time, weather models were all over the place, with only the ECMWF showing a direct hit. Some models didn’t show a consolidated storm forming at all, just two separate weak weather systems: a minor storm over the Great Lakes and a stalled-out cold front somewhere between the East Coast and Bermuda.

Since then, there’s been growing consensus among the computers that those two systems will join forces. The National Weather Service has already posted winter storm watches for hefty snow totals just inland of the major Northeast cities along I-95. This storm is happening. And there’s an increasing chance it’ll force a change in your travel plans.

For instance, Sunday’s edition of the GFS model showed explosive storm formation on Wednesday—enough to qualify as a meteorological “bomb,” which is a deepening of the storm’s central pressure by more than 24 millibars in 24 hours.

As the storm grows—starting off the mid-Atlantic on Wednesday morning and heading over Newfoundland on Thanksgiving afternoon—it’s now a lock to produce heavy snows well inland and in higher elevations from North Carolina to Canada. The only real question remaining is, how much snow will fall in the major cities along the coast?

Even the National Weather Service can’t decide. The agency’s local forecast offices—the ones with the most knowledge of small-scale idiosyncrasies of tricky snowfall forecasts—are downplaying the storm’s potential to produce snow in the cities.

Here’s the local snowfall map from the Boston office, for example:

One thing is certain: This storm will produce a very tight snowfall gradient along the coast, making an accurate forecast that much more difficult. NWS Boston

On the low end, that means this storm will bring only an inch or two of messy slush to the major cities, while Grandma’s house upstate gets the bulk.

The agency’s centralized forecast office—the Weather Prediction Center—is much more bullish.

In a reasonable worst case put forward by the WPC, 10 to 12 inches could fall in every major city from D.C. northward, snarling traffic and canceling flights coast to coast. A more reasonable guess is 3 to 6 inches of snow in the major cities, with double that just 30 miles inland. But even that outcome is just a blend of two extremes. The most likely scenario is a sharp cutoff between heavy cold rain mixed with a few flakes, and an all-out snowstorm. All the local forecast offices mentioned this annoying feature in their discussions on Monday.

There are still a few key unknowns, like the exact path the storm’s center will take offshore, that will determine which possibility becomes reality. Ocean temperatures are still in the 50s, so even an hour or two of wind from a northeast direction rather than due north could warm the lower levels of the atmosphere enough to turn snowflakes into raindrops along the coast. Dynamical cooling—which happens when a storm strengthens at quick enough rates—could help tip the scale toward coastal snow.

This map has about a 10 percent chance of panning out. NWS Prediction Center

It would be just the second white Thanksgiving in New York City since 1938. The last one was in 1989, when the snowstorm’s strong winds tore a hole in Snoopy’s nose. In Washington, D.C., the storm promises an end to the longest November snowless streak since recordkeeping began in 1888. The last measurable snow during November in the nation’s capital was in 1996, when a piddly quarter-inch fell. There was also a big Thanksgiving Eve storm just last year, but no snow fell in either city.

In many ways, this is a weather forecaster/masochist’s dream scenario: You’ve got a potentially high-impact weather event, on the highest-impact travel day of the year, with an unusually high amount of uncertainty. To my fellow forecasters: Good luck getting this one right!

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A Thanksgiving Snowstorm Could Make America’s Busiest Travel Day A Living Hell

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Obama’s Immigration Order: Lots of Sound and Fury, But Not Much Precedent

by RCXModesto Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

In the New Republic this weekend, Eric Posner warns that President Obama’s recent executive action on immigration may come back to haunt liberals. Obama’s order was perfectly legal, he says, but “it may modify political norms that control what the president can do.” And since most of the regulatory apparatus of the government is fundamentally liberal in nature, a political norm that allows presidents to suspend enforcement of rules they don’t like benefits conservatives a lot more than it does liberals.

This is not something to be taken lightly, and Posner makes his point pretty reasonably—unlike a lot of conservatives who have been busily writing gleeful, half-witted columns about suspending the estate tax or dismantling the EPA. Political norms matter, as Republicans know very well, since they’ve smashed so many of them in recent years. Still, there are a couple of reasons that there’s probably less here than meets the eye, and Posner acknowledges them himself.

First, although the core of Obama’s authority to modify immigration law lies in his inherent power to practice prosecutorial discretion—which is rooted in the Constitution—the specific actions he took are justified by statutory language and congressional budgeting priorities that are unique to immigration law. As conservative lawyer Margaret Stock reminds us, “The Immigration and Nationality Act and other laws are chock-full of huge grants of statutory authority to the president.” And Posner himself agrees. “The president’s authority over this arena is even greater than his authority over other areas of the law.” He reiterates this in his TNR piece, explaining that immigration law “falls uniquely under executive authority, as a matter of history and tradition.”

So Obama’s actions may be unusually broad, but that’s largely because immigration law is written to give the president considerable latitude. That’s much less the case for things like the tax code or the Clean Air Act. So even though it’s true, as Posner says, that most regulatory statutes “contain pockets of vagueness,” there’s less precedent here than it seems, and less breaking of political norms than Posner imagines.

But there’s a second reason that Obama isn’t seriously breaking any political norms: they were already broken years ago. Posner himself tells the story:

In 1981, Ronald Reagan entered the presidency vowing to deregulate the economy. But because the House was controlled by Democrats, Reagan could not persuade Congress to repeal as many regulatory statutes as he wanted to.

So Reagan sought to undermine the regulatory system itself. He forced agencies to show proposed regulations to the Office of Management and Budget, a White House agency, and empowered the OMB to block or delay regulations that did not satisfy a cost-benefit test. Although OMB was told to obey the law, liberals howled that the effect of the cost-benefit test was to undercut regulation since no such test existed in the statutes under which agencies issued regulations. And when the Reagan administration could not change or repeal the rules, it cut back on enforcement. The Justice Department famously reduced enforcement of the antitrust and civil rights laws. More howls ensued.

But the Reagan administration exhausted itself fighting against political distrust of an imperial executive and overreached by trying to deregulate in areas—like the environment—that people cared about. Republican successors—the two Bushes—did not pursue deregulation through non-enforcement with such zeal. Obama’s deferral actions, by further normalizing non-enforcement, may reinvigorate the Reagan-era push for deregulation through the executive branch.

It’s become traditional that when a new president takes office he immediately suspends any of his predecessor’s executive actions that have been recently implemented. At the same time, his own team begins beavering away on regulatory changes that are part of his campaign agenda. At a different level, orders are written that make it either easier or harder for agencies to implement new rules and enforce old ones. And while Reagan may not have gotten all the deregulation he wanted, the OMB has become a permanent part of the regulatory landscape, which is yet another avenue for presidents to affect the enforcement of rules. It may not get a lot of attention, but when you fiddle with the cost-benefit parameters that OMB uses, the ripple effect can be surprisingly extensive.

In other words, agency regulations and executive orders are already major battlegrounds of public policy that are aggressively managed by the White House, regardless of which party is in power. Has Obama expanded this battleground? Perhaps. But I don’t think the change is nearly as great as some people are making it out to be. Immigration law is fairly unique in its grant of power to the executive, so we don’t really have to worry about President Rand Paul rewriting the tax code from the Oval Office. We do need to worry about all the other executive actions he might take, but for the most part, I don’t think that’s changed much. The kinds of things he can do are about the same now as they were a week ago.

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Obama’s Immigration Order: Lots of Sound and Fury, But Not Much Precedent

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Antonin Scalia’s Son Now Works For Snoopy

by FloraStaten Posted on November 19, 2014

Mother Jones

When Democrats in Congress tried to fix the financial system in 2010, one of their main goals was to end the plague of giant financial institutions that had attained too-big-to-fail status—gargantuan banks and non-banks (say, insurance companies) that could one day collapse and, consequently, sink the entire economy unless they received a government bailout. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation that Congress passed compelled financial regulators to identify these companies and called for extra rules for these behemoths to minimize the risk of implosion.

So far that process has been humming along relatively smoothly. But it could soon be derailed in court, thanks to Eugene Scalia, the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and a partner at the Washington power-law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. In recent years, Scalia the Younger, on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce and other clients, has waged a campaign via a series of lawsuits to defang assorted Dodd-Frank rules governing banks and other financial institutions. Scalia’s lawsuits have largely aimed at marginal aspects of financial reform, not the foundational elements of the Wall Street reform law. But Reuters reported earlier this month that insurance giant MetLife—preferred insurer of Snoopy—had hired Scalia, an indication the firm was preparing take the government to court to challenge a designation that MetLife is a too-big-to-fail institution. If such a case does ensue and Scalia is successful, he could make it tough for the government to label any non-bank as too big to fail.

Read more about Eugene Scalia’s campaign to sabotage Wall Street reform.

Dodd-Frank established the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a 10-member body of government regulators, including the secretary of the Treasury and the chair of the Federal Reserve. This council is in charge of determining which financial companies qualify as a Systemically Important Financial Institution, or SIFI. Under Dodd-Frank, the process for designating a bank a SIFI is straightforward: any bank with $50 billion in assets is automatically a SIFI. Nineteen US banks now meet this definition.

But deciding which non-banks pose a systemic risk is trickier. To slap the SIFI label on a non-bank, the FSOC has to consider 11 factors, including how much leverage the company carries, whether it is a major player in handing out loans to US businesses, how interconnected it is with institutions already designated as SIFIs, and the level of credit it provides to low-income and minority communities.

Once declared a SIFI, a bank comes under the supervision of the Federal Reserve and is subject to stricter rules, such as higher capital requirements. But for the non-banks deemed SIFI, the Federal Reserve has yet to issue new rules, leaving unclear what extra requirements they will be forced to comply with as too-big-to-fail institutions.

So far, the FSOC has said just three non-bank companies are too big to go under: AIG, Prudential, and GE Capital. In September, the FSOC unanimously proposed listing MetLife—the largest insurer in the country—as a SIFI, a move that the company immediately challenged. In early November, according to Bloomberg, Scalia and MetLife’s CEO met with the FSOC to argue against the designation. The board still must issue a final declaration on MetLife, but given the earlier consensus, it seems likely it will stick to the original decision.

MetLife’s recourse would be to contest the designation in court. It’s not certain that MetLife would sue the FSOC. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “The people familiar with the matter said a major factor in MetLife’s decision about litigation would be the strength of the written rationale provided to the company by the Financial Stability Oversight Council.” But it appears a good bet that Scalia would find room to object. The pioneering tactic he has used to convince judges to reject other financial regulations is to argue that the government didn’t conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis before issuing a regulatory decision—that is, contending that the feds were lazy with their math and didn’t provide enough justification for the way they devised a rule. And when the FSOC has issued SIFI designations in the past, its rulings have tended to be more thematic and analytical than facts-drenched. The decision on Prudential, for example, runs 12 pages and broadly discusses the insurance company’s role in the economy without presenting many statistics to back up the claim that Prudential poses a wider risk if there’s a run on its assets.

In May, Scalia testified before the House Committee on Financial Services and slammed the FSOC’s decision on Prudential. “The process by which companies are considered for designation is exceptionally opaque,” he griped in his written testimony, describing this particular decision as lacking “substantiation and analytic rigor.”

Scalia has had a good run, winning a series of cases challenging other parts of Dodd-Frank. But several of those victories came at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which until recently was dominated by Republican appointees. Now, thanks to the Democrats’ decision to weaken the Senate filibuster, the appeals court has several new Obama appointees, shifting the balance of power to a majority that might be less hostile to the FSOC’s decision-making. So as MetLife ponders whether to mount a legal crusade against the financial regulators, its officials have to consider this: with those new judges, can Scalia continue his streak? And should they bring and a case and lose, what are the odds a higher court featuring another Scalia—who might have to recuse himself—could help them out?

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Antonin Scalia’s Son Now Works For Snoopy

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1 in Every 30 US Children Is Homeless

by JayneRanieri Posted on November 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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The number of homeless children in America reached nearly 2.5 million last year, an all-time high, according to a new report released by the National Center on Family Homelessness.

The report, titled “America’s Youngest Outcasts” and published Monday, concluded the current population amounts to 1 child out of every 30 experiencing homelessness. From 2012 to 2013, the number of homeless children jumped by 8 percent nationally, with 13 states and the District of Columbia seeing a spike of 10 percent or more.

National Center on Family Homelessness

“The same level of attention and resources has not been targeted to help families and children,” co-author of the report and director of the center Carmela DeCandia told the Associated Press. “As a society, we’re going to pay a high price, in human and economic terms.”

Researchers behind the study cited several major drivers behind the recent surge including high poverty levels, insufficient affordable housing across the country, and traumatic stress experienced by mothers. Different reports have cited 90 percent of homeless mothers have been assaulted by their partners, with children overwhelmingly exposed to similar acts of violence.

According to Monday’s report, youth homelessness is particularly problematic in some parts of the South, Southwest, and California:

National Center on Family Homelessness

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1 in Every 30 US Children Is Homeless

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BREAKING: The Senate Just Voted Not to Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline

by LaraMurray Posted on November 17, 2014

green4us

Republicans have vowed to try again next year when they control the Senate.  Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) is rounding up support for a Senate vote tomorrow on the Keystone XL pipeline. James Berglie/ZUMA UPDATE (11/18/14, 6:17 pm ET): A controversial bill to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline failed in the US Senate Tuesday evening. It received 59 “aye” votes, just shy of the 60 needed to send the bill to President Obama’s desk. The fight isn’t over yet; Republicans have said they plan to prioritize approving the pipeline once they take control of the Senate next year. Below the headlines last week about President Obama’s major climate agreement with China, another environmental story was gaining steam: A vote in Congress to force approval of Keystone XL, a controversial pipeline that would carry crude oil from Canada down to refineries on the Gulf Coast. On Thursday, the House voted overwhelmingly in favor of the pipeline, as it has done numerous times in the past. The Senate is expected to vote on an identical bill tomorrow. Previous Keystone legislation has always stalled in the Senate due to opposition from Democrats. But the vote tomorrow will likely have more Democratic support than ever before, making it the closest the pipeline has yet come to approval. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happening with Keystone this week? As of Sunday, according to Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the bill is still one vote shy of the 60 it would need to break a Senate filibuster, pass Congress, and land on the president’s desk. If enacted, the legislation would green-light a construction permit for the pipeline, removing that authority from the State Department, which currently has the final say because the project crosses an international border. President Obama has said that his administration would only approve the project if it didn’t increase total US carbon emissions; a State Department report in January suggested that the pipeline was unlikely to effect America’s carbon footprint because the oil it would carry would get exported and burned one way or the other. But the final decision was postponed indefinitely in April and is awaiting the outcome of a court case in Nebraska that could alter the pipeline’s route. Congressional Republicans have accused Obama of willfully kicking the decision down the road for as long as possible; on Thursday Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week’s vote was long overdue after years of the administration “dragging its feet.” Why is the vote happening now? When Republicans take control of the Senate next year, with a host of new climate skeptics in tow, they could pass a new round of Keystone legislation—perhaps even with enough support to override a presidential veto. So why rush? The answer revolves around the Senate race in Louisiana, where incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu is locked in a run-off campaign with Republican challenger Bill Cassidy, who currently serves in the House. The special election is scheduled for Dec. 6, and Landrieu appears to be trailing Cassidy. Landrieu represents a state with close ties to the oil industry, and she has long been one of the pipeline’s most vocal advocates. Last week she introduced the Keystone bill in what many on Capitol Hill have described as a last-ditch political maneuver to score points with her constituents before the runoff. Cassidy introduced the House version of the bill shortly thereafter. This morning, anti-pipeline activists set up shop in front of Landrieu’s residence in Washington: A pipeline has gone up on Sen Landrieu’s front lawn as ClimateChange activists protest expected up vote @350 #NoKXL pic.twitter.com/aixaZF0Vpd — john zangas (@johnzangas) November 17, 2014 If the bill passes, will President Obama sign it into law? Probably not. At a press conference in Burma last week, Obama said that his “position hasn’t changed” and that the approval process should go through the proper State Department channels. It’s hard to imagine that after all of Obama’s statements on Keystone’s carbon footprint, the approval process, and his series of climate promises last week, he would capitulate on the pipeline merely for the benefit of one Senate Democrat who appears unlikely to win anyway. It seems more likely that he would save Keystone approval as a bargaining chip to keep the GOP-run Congress from attacking his other hard-won climate initiatives. We’ll have to wait and see how this all plays out over the next few days.

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BREAKING: The Senate Just Voted Not to Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline

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BREAKING: The Senate Just Voted Not to Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline

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Elevate Your Mood With the Cool Ghouls

by SherlynMerriman Posted on November 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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Cool Ghouls
A Swirling Fire Burning Through the Rye
Empty Cellar

Psychedelic in the sense of “anything goes,” as opposed to tired DayGlo nostalgia, San Francisco’s Cool Ghouls project a sloppy party-going-overboard vibe that belies their considerable assets. This vibrant sophomore album was recorded by Sonny Smith, leader of Sonny and the Sunsets, and like that lovably slackerish crew, this snappy quartet uses a studied casualness to mask major pop smarts. Guitars veer abruptly from snarling fuzztones to folk-rock chimes and back, while the cascading three-part vocal harmonies are sunny exuberance exemplified, but never fussy or precise, and the songs are downright catchy. Recommended to fans of the Beau Brummels or Robyn Hitchcock—and anybody else needing a quick mood elevator.

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Elevate Your Mood With the Cool Ghouls

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Did Obama Shoot Himself in the Foot on Net Neutrality?

by RoxanaSaunders Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Monday, President Barack Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to safeguard net neutrality and not allow internet companies to give preference (for a fee) to certain types of online traffic. After much debate, the president was declaring his support for a free-flowing internet in which telecom firms do not block or slow traffic in order to pocket more profits or promote their own commercial (and perhaps even political) interests. But there could be a problem: FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, whom Obama appointed, is not yet on board.

After Obama’s announcement, Wheeler, according to the Washington Post, told industry insiders he preferred to allow some for-profit fast-tracking. That seemed to suggest the president may have a fight of his own making. Last year, Obama had the chance to nominate an outspoken consumer advocate to chair the FCC. But he picked Wheeler—whose views on the issue weren’t entirely clear—instead. After the Post‘s story was published, Huffington Post reported that Wheeler had not taken a hard-and-fast stance against the president, but was still figuring out what to do—and perhaps hoping to slow down the process.

So Wheeler is in the hot seat—but he also could pose an obstacle to the man who put him there. When Obama had to name a new chair of the FCC—which oversees radio, TV, satellite, and cable communications nationwide—and Wheeler emerged as a front-runner, many free internet groups expressed concern. These advocates worried that Wheeler, who had been a prominent lobbyist for telecom trade groups, was too close to industry and not likely to champion the interests of consumers. Obama favors strictly regulating the internet as a public utility (so preferential access cannot be bought and sold) and millions of Americans have sent letters to the FCC urging the commission to treat all internet content equally. But Wheeler has been leaning toward allowing internet companies to charge content providers like Netflix and Facebook extra for faster internet speeds—which could result in the creation of a tiered system for the internet. There’s no telling yet whether Wheeler will throw a wrench into Obama’s plan to preserve an equal-access-for-all internet.

It didn’t have to be this way. Several other candidates Obama was considering for the FCC post in 2013 were ardent net neutrality backers. There was Karen Kornbluh, who advocated for global open internet policies as Obama’s ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And there was Susan Crawford, a Cardozo Law School professor specializing in tech policy who favors net neutrality and has been called “the Elizabeth Warren of tech policy.”

Mignon Clyburn, an FCC commissioner since 2009, was also floated as a potential nominee to chair the FCC. In 2010, she spoke on the importance of net neutrality for people of color, saying it was “essential…for traditionally underrepresented groups that the FCC maintain the low barriers to entry that our current open internet provides.” Another potential candidate, California Public Utilities Commissioner Cathy Sandoval—who worked in the Clinton-era FCC—also has a reputation for being consumer-minded.

Yet the president went with Wheeler—a major Obama donor and friend of the administration. At the time, Wheeler was the managing director at a venture capital firm. But he had previously spent 12 years as CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, a telecom trade group, and before that served as president of the National Cable Television Association, a cable lobbying shop. “He’s beloved in the telecom industry,” a former Obama administration official told Mother Jones in March 2013. After securing the backing of a few public interest advocates—including Crawford—Wheeler sailed to confirmation in the Senate.

The decision on whether to keep the internet truly open is not Wheeler’s alone. Two other Democratic commissioners and two Republican commissioners sit on the FCC’s five-member panel and must vote to finalize new rules. But a public interest-minded FCC chair would make it easier for the agency to implement strong net neutrality regulations.

The basic issue is whether the FCC can regulate the internet as a public utility—say, like phone lines. If the commission claims this power, then it can adopt rules that maintain open and equal access to the internet. The two Republicans on the commission are likely to vote against any form of internet regulation. (They don’t accept the notion that the internet should be regulated by the FCC, whether as a public utility or under the more lax regulations Wheeler has been considering.) That means it’s up to Wheeler and his two fellow Dems to agree on an overall approach and specific rules governing the internet providers’ management of the information super-highway.

Wheeler’s industry-friendly stance makes that difficult. Democratic commissioners Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel have both expressed opposition to allowing internet companies to provide tiered service. Obama’s public push for net neutrality could help persuade Wheeler, Clyburn, and Rosenworcel to agree to regulate the internet as a public utility. But the president’s announcement could also backfire, stiffening the spines of Clyburn and Rosenworcel and making them less willing to compromise with Wheeler on allowing some form of paid prioritization of internet services. That could create a stalemate among the three Democrats, leaving the FCC without a rule specifically governing internet service. Internet service has been essentially unregulated since January—when a court struck down an earlier attempt by the FCC to implement net neutrality rules—leaving internet service providers free to demand extra money for faster content delivery. That happens to be a situation that Republicans on and off the commission do not find troubling.

Wheeler could choose to sidestep a fight with his fellow Democratic commissioners by allowing the GOP-controlled Congress, which will assume office in January, to make the net neutrality decision for him. Though Obama could veto any Republican-passed legislation aimed at gutting net neutrality, a Republican-dominated Congress could try to attach an amendment that partly defunds the FCC to a large must-pass bill. In other words, it could be a mess.

Wheeler could “run out the clock on this Congress,” explains Sascha Meinrath, the founder of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, then “wait until Republicans take over, and then claim that he cannot act due to pressure from Republican congressmen.” Which is not what one would expect from a commissioner appointed by the president. But if Wheeler does thwart Obama’s call for net neutrality, the president cannot say that he wasn’t warned.

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Did Obama Shoot Himself in the Foot on Net Neutrality?

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Will China Help Barack Obama Save the World?

by TaniaRizzo Posted on November 11, 2014

Mother Jones

Without active leadership from China and the United States—the world’s biggest economies and carbon emitters—there’s little hope of reaching a global deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at next year’s big climate summit in Paris. That’s why President Barack Obama’s visit to Beijing this week for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is shaping up to be a big deal for the fight against global warming.

Climate change is, of course, just one part of Obama’s complex agenda in China. But policy experts say his one-on-one meetings with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Wednesday could provide much-needed momentum, potentially signaling to the world the extent to which both countries are willing to slash their carbon pollution.

“It is key we get the Chinese on board before Paris,” said Tim Boersma, an energy security analyst with the Brookings Institution. “And whomever comes up with the formula will have produced a brilliant policy move.”

Obama is hoping it’s his team that comes up with the goods. This week’s talks will build on a series of efforts by the two countries to cooperate on climate policy, says Elliot Diringer, the executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and a former White House senior environmental policy adviser.

“The success of Paris rests very heavily on US and Chinese participation, there’s no question,” he said, adding that Obama’s team “has worked hard to be a consistent partner” to the Chinese. According to Diringer, the hard work has “helped pay off in some renewed trust.”

That trust—basically telling each other “we’re serious, if you are”—seems to be growing. In 2013, US and Chinese leaders leaders signed a bilateral agreement to reduce HFCs, a family of powerful greenhouse gases used in heavy industry. There has also been cooperation on energy security at the highest levels of both governments. The US-China Oil and Gas Industry Forum, sponsored the two countries’ governments, has been meeting for the last 13 years. In 2009, Obama and then-President Hu Jintao announced an agreement to develop China’s immense shale gas resources, conceived in part as a way to help break China’s coal addiction and reduce emissions.

Now, world leaders are hoping to replace the expired Kyoto agreement to curb greenhouse gases with a new treaty that will be negotiated in Paris. Much is unknown about what form the final agreement will take, but a key first step is for individual countries to make declarations about how much they are willing to cut their emissions. The European Union has already come forward with its proposal: Last moth, EU members agreed to slash emissions by 40 percent by 2030, a figure that environmental groups criticized as not being ambitious enough.

Analysts don’t expect any similarly big announcements to come out of Obama’s meetings in Beijing this week. But Diringer anticipates the countries will privately exchange important information on their intended targets and wait until the end of March to publicly announce how much they intend to cut. “I’d expect a bit of show and tell, but no direct negotiation or deal or target levels,” he added.

Even small maneuvers at such a high-profile meeting can send big signals to the international community, especially if Washington and Beijing publicly commit to getting their emissions targets on the table well in advance of the Paris meeting. Simply putting out a statement outlining a timetable would be be a big deal. “A joint declaration by the world’s two largest carbon emitters that they will put ambitious numbers on the table would inject additional momentum heading into Paris,” Diringer said.

As part of its argument for closer climate ties and stronger action, Obama’s team is highlighting an issue the Chinese are already extremely sensitive to: air pollution. Smog routinely blankets Chinese cities, and the environmental crisis has become a political emergency as Chinese officials worry about the potential for escalating social unrest. The issue has already spurred action: China has begun pushing coal-fired power plants out of major cities and is working on plans for a massive, nationwide cap-and-trade program that is slated to start in 2016.

Pushing China to use cleaner energy is a no-brainer for the US administration. Secretary of State John Kerry told a group of business leaders in Beijing ahead of the summit: “This is a win-win-win-win-win, because in every aspect, you gain in health of your population, you gain in environmental protection, long-term responsibility. You gain in security; you gain in energy independence, energy capacity. You gain in health, where you have air that’s cleaner.”

Heavy smog blanketed Liaocheng, a city in Shandong, last month. US officials are highlighting the impact of pollution as a reason for China to take climate action. Imaginechina/ZUMA

Still, some experts worry that this week’s meetings could actually end up undermining the Paris negotiations. Kyle Ash, a climate policy analyst with Greenpeace, warns that any bilateral arrangements reached between China and the United States over the next year might reinforce the idea that the Paris agreement should be voluntary, since the two biggest emitters would have already signed a their own deal. “We hope that the leaders are not going to be using the bilateral relationships to slow progress on multilateral talks,” he said. “It’s a worry because we’re on a tight timeline.”

Regardless of the risks, Diringer says successful climate talks this week will benefit both countries. China wants to be seen as a powerful leader on the world stage, and an engaged global citizen. Meanwhile, “stronger US action has always run up against the claim that China and India aren’t doing anything. An ambitious number from China will make it easier to sell the Obama climate agenda at home.”

And Obama will need all the help he can get. The GOP takeover of the Senate threatens to undermine international confidence in America’s ability to tackle the climate issue at home, a development that could make progress in Paris even harder.

For both the United States and China, says Ash, “success in Paris will be convincing the world that they’re acting at home.”

Continued:  

Will China Help Barack Obama Save the World?

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Watch John Oliver Explain How the Government Seduces Americans to Spend Huge on the Lottery

by SalliePflaum Posted on November 10, 2014

Mother Jones

Americans spend a colossal amount of money betting on the lottery, even when the chances of winning have always been near-impossible. In fact last year alone, lottery sales raked in a massive total of $68 billion, according to the latest Last Week Tonight.

“That’s more than Americans spent last year on movie tickets, music, porn, the NFL, Major League Baseball, and video games combined,” John Oliver explained. “Which means Americans basically spent more on the lottery than they spent on America.”

It becomes even more bizarre when you understand it’s our states governments profiting from the giant business, which targets lower-income families who have historically spent more on tickets than the wealthy.

One of the frighteningly successful ways governments accomplish this is by creating ads that essentially mask the lottery as some kind of mutual fund or “charitable investment.” Watch below:

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Watch John Oliver Explain How the Government Seduces Americans to Spend Huge on the Lottery

Posted in alo, Anchor, Bunn, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch John Oliver Explain How the Government Seduces Americans to Spend Huge on the Lottery