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It’s Looking Like Another Trump Blowout in Indiana

by TamikaMordaunt4 Posted on May 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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There’s not much more to say about the Republican primary. The polls now show Donald Trump with a commanding lead in tomorrow’s primary in Indiana, and he’s got a big lead in California too. It’s all over but the shouting.

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It’s Looking Like Another Trump Blowout in Indiana

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The Super-Rich Tech Elite Is Just Fine With Big Government

by SwenDaneit Posted on May 2, 2016

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Gregory Ferenstein, in the course of arguing that super-rich donors are about equally split between Democrats and Republicans (although the Republicans donate more in absolute dollars), points out that the super rich in Silicon Valley are almost exclusively Democrats. Why?

I think the more likely explanation is that the nation’s new industrial titans are pro-government.

Google, Facebook, and most Internet titans are fueled by government projects: the Internet began in a defense department lab, public universities educate a skilled workforce and environmental policies benefit high tech green industries. The CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, is a fan of Obamacare, which helps his entrepreneurial drivers keep their health insurance as they transition between jobs.

In other words, the Democratic party is good for emerging industries and billionaires recognize it. Donald Trump is a candidate known to go after major figures in tech; a trend that may further the Democrats friendship with new industrial titans.

Perhaps more importantly, I’ve argued that the modern emerging workforce of Silicon Valley, urbanized professionals, and “gig economy” laborers all represent an entirely new political demographic redefining the Democratic party to be more about education, research and entrepreneurship, and less about regulations and labor unions.

There’s something to this, but I suspect culture has a lot more to do with it. Most of these folks have spent their lives marinating in social liberalism, and being situated in the Bay Area just adds to that. So they start out with a visceral loathing of conservative social policies that pushes them in the direction of the Democratic Party. From there, tribalism does most of the additional work: once you’ve chosen a team, you tend to adopt all of the team’s views.

Beyond that, yes, I imagine that tech zillionaires are more than normally aware of how much they rely on government: for basic research, for standards setting, for regulation that protects them from getting crushed by old-school dinosaurs, and so forth. And let’s be honest: most of the really rich ones have their wealth tied up almost entirely in capital gains, which doesn’t get taxed much anyway. So endorsing candidates who happen to favor higher tax rates on ordinary income (which they probably won’t get anyway) doesn’t really cost them much.

For most folks in Silicon Valley, even the super rich, there’s very little personal cost to supporting Democrats. Combine that with an almost instinctive revulsion at both troglodyte Republican policies and the Fox News base of the party, and there just aren’t going to be many Republican supporters in this crowd.

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The Super-Rich Tech Elite Is Just Fine With Big Government

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Campaign Reporters Fess Up: They Really Can’t Stand Hillary Clinton

by FannyMileham Posted on April 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last month Politico polled 80 campaign reporters about this year’s race. It turns out they hate Nevada and Ohio but love South Carolina—mainly because it has good food, apparently. They think Maggie Haberman is the best reporter covering the race, and Fox News has done the best job of hosting a debate. Donald Trump has gotten the softest coverage, probably because they all agree that “traffic, viewership, and clicks” drives their coverage.

And who’s gotten the harshest coverage? Do you even have to ask? It turns out that even reporters themselves agree that it’s not even a close call:

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Campaign Reporters Fess Up: They Really Can’t Stand Hillary Clinton

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Democrats Have a Class Gap. Republicans Have a Generation Gap.

by KianBittner Posted on April 28, 2016

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What are the big fault lines within the Democratic and Republican parties? According to a recent Pew report, Democrats have a class gap: Democratic elites are far more liberal than less educated members of the party. But there’s not much of a generation gap: old and young voters are pretty similar ideologically.

Among Republicans, it’s just the opposite. They have a huge generation gap, with older voters skewing much more conservative than younger voters. But there’s no class gap: their elites are in pretty close sync with the party base. The raw data is here, and the chart below shows the magnitude of the difference:

This is interesting, since the most talked-about aspect of the Democratic primary was the astonishingly strong preference of young voters for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. But why did they prefer Bernie? The obvious answer is that they’re more liberal than older Democrats and therefore preferred his more radical vision—but the Pew data says that’s not the case.

So what is the answer? The age gap could still explain a bit of it, since young Democrats are a little more liberal than older Democrats. And the class gap could also explain a bit of it, since Bernie voters tend to be both young and well educated. But even put together, this doesn’t seem like enough.

Obviously there was something about Bernie that generated huge enthusiasm among younger voters. But if it wasn’t ideology, what was it?

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Democrats Have a Class Gap. Republicans Have a Generation Gap.

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Trump’s Foreign Policy Doesn’t Improve When Read From a Teleprompter

by CalebB87yltepl Posted on April 27, 2016

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I kinda sorta listened to Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech this morning. You know, the one we were all looking forward to because it was written by an actual speechwriter and would be delivered via teleprompter. That’s Trump being presidential, I guess.

So how did Trump do? That depends on your expectations. For a guy who never uses a teleprompter, not bad. By normal standards, though, he sounded about like a sixth grader reciting a speech from note cards. On content, it was the same deal. Compared with normal Trump, it wasn’t bad. By any real-world standard, it was ridiculous.

Fact-checking his speech is sort of pointless, basically a category error. Trump is a zeitgeisty kind of guy, and that’s the only real way to evaluate anything he says. In this case, the zeitgeist was “America First”—and everyone’s first question was, does he know? Does he know that this is a phrase made famous by isolationists prior to World War II? My own guess is that he didn’t know this the first time he used it, but he does now. Certainly his speechwriter does. But he doesn’t care. It fits his favorite themes well, and the only people who care about its history are a bunch of overeducated pedants. His base doesn’t know where it came from and couldn’t care less.

So: America First. And that’s about it. Trump will do only things that are in America’s interest. He will destroy ISIS, crush Iran, wipe out the trade deficit with China, eradicate North Korea’s bomb program, and give Russia five minutes to cut a deal with us or face the consequences. Aside from that, Trump’s main theme seemed to be contradicting himself at every turn. We will crush our enemies and protect our friends—but only if our friends display suitable gratitude for everything we do for them. We will rebuild our military and our enemies will fear us—but “war and aggression will not be my first instinct.” We will be unpredictable—but also consistent so everyone knows they can trust us. He won’t tell ISIS how or when he’s going to wipe them out—but it will be very soon and with overwhelming force. He will support our friends—but he doesn’t really think much of international agreements like NATO.

Then there was the big mystery: his out-of-the-blue enthusiasm for 3-D printing, artificial intelligence, and cyberwar. Where did that come from? In any case, the Pentagon is obviously already working on all three of these things, so it’s not clear just what Trump has in mind. (Actually, it is clear: nothing. Somebody put these buzzwords in his speech and he read them. He doesn’t have the slightest idea what any of them mean.)

So what would Trump do about actual conflicts that are actually happening right now? Would he send troops to Ukraine? To Syria? To Libya? To Yemen? To Iraq? Naturally, he didn’t say. Gotta be unpredictable, after all.

But whatever else you take away, America will be strong under Donald Trump. We will be respected and feared. Our military will be ginormous. No one will laugh at us anymore. We will proudly defend the values of Western civilization. This all serves pretty much the same purpose in foreign policy that political correctness, Mexican walls, and Muslim bans serve in Trump’s domestic policy.

And there you have it. Did he really need a teleprompter for that?

Originally posted here – 

Trump’s Foreign Policy Doesn’t Improve When Read From a Teleprompter

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Cruz-Fiorina in 2016!

by EsmeraldaSym Posted on April 27, 2016

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The rumor mill says that Ted Cruz plans to announce today that Carly Fiorina will be his running mate. Jim Geraghty comments:

Announcing Fiorina today would be a big gamble for Cruz. There’s a lot to like about Fiorina, but will this announcement help lock up Indiana and give Cruz a slew of delegates in places like California? If Fiorina is today’s big news, we may look back on this as a key moment where Cruz united the anti-Trump factions of the party… or we may look back on this as a Hail Mary pass.

Hmmm. Pretty sure I know which one of these it will be. In fact, it’s even worse than it seems. Given Fiorina’s popularity in California, it’s more like a Hail Mary pass to the wrong end zone.

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Cruz-Fiorina in 2016!

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Lemonade Is the Opiate of the Masses

by NanceeLockhart Posted on April 26, 2016

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I’m having some trouble coming up with political or even quasi-political topics to write about this morning, so instead let’s watch Chris Hayes risk his hard-won career in a single tweet:

A few tweets later Hayes is careful to assure us that he hasn’t gone completely around the bend: “In conclusion: @Beyonce is legitimately a genius and we’re lucky to have her in our shared cultural life.” Whew. Even in the polysyncretic, multicultural stewpot that defines modern America, there are still a few norms of required behavior left, and unqualified praise of Beyoncé is high on that list. I was relieved to see that Hayes was questioning only the meaning of Beyonce’s lyrics, not her unparalleled genius.

By now, I suppose it’s obvious that I don’t care one way or the other about Beyoncé. I’ve read snatches of the lyrics from Lemonade, and they strike me about the same way most popular music lyrics strike me. “Middle fingers up, put them hands high. Wave it in his face, tell him, boy, bye. Tell him, boy, bye, middle fingers up. I ain’t thinking ‘bout you.” That really doesn’t do much for me, but de gustibus. I could name lots of stuff that’s meaningful to me but strikes most other people as puerile or just plain dumb.

Still, it really is kind of weird that Hayes is so obviously reticent about asking his question. For those of you who just returned from a trip to Mt. Everest, Lemonade is Beyoncé’s latest album, and the lyrics are all about the pain she felt when her husband, music mogul Jay-Z, cheated on her. Or so it’s universally assumed. It is very definitely not assumed that Beyoncé is capable of writing searing lyrics that have nothing to do with her own personal life. Odd, isn’t it? That’s almost the definition of a genius. Why couldn’t she do that?

For what it’s worth, I’d also point out a couple of other things. First, Beyoncé is famous for her almost fanatical control of her image. Second, as many people have pointed out, Lemonade is available for streaming only on Tidal, which is Jay-Z’s company. So that means Beyoncé is helping Jay make a lot of money off his alleged infidelity—and shoring up his faltering streaming service at the same time.

So then. Take your pick:

Jay-Z cheated on Beyoncé. She’s pissed off about it and wrote an album to exorcize her pain.
Nothing happened. It’s just an album on the subject of infidelity and other things, which Beyoncé captures with astonishing virtuosity. Geniuses can do that sort of thing.
It’s all part of Beyoncé’s endless pseudo-narrative, which she controls with about the same subtlety that Stalin used to control the Red Army. Art in the service of art may have a long and rich history, but art in the service of great riches does too.

And with that, I’m off to lunch while everyone tears me apart. Have fun!

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Lemonade Is the Opiate of the Masses

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It Was Chinese Tea That Spawned the Tea Party

by ClaudeErdmann Posted on April 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Today brings a new academic entry in the angry voter sweepstakes. A quartet of high-powered economists took a look at congressional districts and divided them up by how much they were exposed to trade with China. Some districts showed lots of job losses due to trade while others showed very little. How did voters react?

Districts with lots of job losses were somewhat more likely to vote out incumbents, but not by a lot. Nor were they more likely to switch parties. However, they were likely to become more extreme, electing very conservative Republicans and very liberal Democrats:

The point estimates suggest that about three quarters of the movement away from the political center induced by trade is the result of increasing conservativeness among elected legislators, while one quarter is due to increasing liberalness.

….Districts subject to larger increases in import competition from China are substantially less likely to elect a moderate legislator….Comparing more and less trade-exposed districts, the more-exposed district would become 18.5 percentage points less likely to have a centrist in power between 2002 and 2010. To put this magnitude in context, over the 2002 to 2010 time period, the fraction of “moderates” in the House declines to 37.1% from a baseline of 56.8%.

The authors believe that import competition from China following their accession to the WTO has played a big role in the polarization of American politics:

China bashing is now a popular pastime as much among liberal Democrats as among Tea Party Republicans. Our contribution in this paper is to show that this political showmanship is indicative of deeper truths. Growing import competition from China has contributed to the disappearance of moderate legislators in Congress, a shift in congressional voting toward ideological extremes, and net gains in the number of conservative Republican representatives, including those affiliated with the Tea Party movement.

Why did this benefit conservatives more than liberals? At a guess, it’s because they were better able to tap into voter anger. Both sides could make similar economic arguments, but conservatives could add a healthy dose of nationalism to the mix, something that liberals are a lot less comfortable with. That made their attacks on China more resonant.

Ironically, voters on both sides were basically getting scammed. Big talk aside, neither conservatives nor liberals did much to reduce trade with China. In fact, it’s not clear there was much they could have done. Short of abandoning the WTO and starting a trade war, there really weren’t a lot of options on the table. The net result, then, was lots of windy rhetoric and a more polarized Congress, and eventually the Donald Trump campaign. But Trump, like all the rest of the China bashers, has nothing more than windy rhetoric too.

At this point, the game is almost fully played out anyway. China’s impact on American jobs is a done deal, with little more to come as China itself moves to a less manufacturing-oriented economy and finds itself in competition with countries like Vietnam and Indonesia. But if the authors of this paper are right, the American political scene will continue to pay a price for decades to come.

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It Was Chinese Tea That Spawned the Tea Party

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Are Wall Street Profits Fundamentally Based on Consumer Laziness?

by LoreenDavidson Posted on April 25, 2016

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Brad DeLong:

It used to be that we collectively paid Wall Street 1% per year of asset value–which was then some 3 years’ worth of GDP–to manage our investment and payments systems. Now we pay it more like 2% per year of asset value, which is now some 4 years’ worth of GDP.

He is responding to a post by Noah Smith that, when I click on it, turns out to be a response to me. My question was simple: finance is a very competitive industry, so how has it stayed so astronomically profitable for so long? Smith suggests that part of the answer is lending to households, but another part is asset management fees:

Asset-management fees are middleman costs that all kinds of players in the finance industry charge to move money around….The amount of wealth in the U.S. economy has soared since 1980 — just think of the rises in the housing and stock markets over that time — meaning that the middlemen in the finance industry have been taking their percentage fees out of a much larger pool of assets.

….But why have profits from these middleman fees stayed so high? Why haven’t asset-management charges gone down amid competition? In a recent post, I suggested one answer: people might just be ignoring them. Percentage fees sound tiny — 1 percent or 2 percent a year. But because that slice is taken off every year, it adds up to truly astronomical amounts. So if people are just ignoring what middlemen skim off the top, because each fee seems small, investors could be handing significant fractions of the country’s GDP to the financial sector out of sheer carelessness. That would certainly keep profits high; if many investors pay no attention to what they’re being charged, more competition can’t push down those fees.

So a combination of rising asset values and unchanging management fees can explain a large part of both finance’s growth and its continued profitability.

James Kwak has more here, basically suggesting that lots of people pay high fees for actively-managed funds deliberately. They figure that the higher price means better performance, just as a higher price usually means better performance in most areas of the consumer economy.

If Smith and Kwak are right, it means the enormous profitability of the financial system is based primarily on products sold to consumers (mutual funds, home loans), not to services offered to the rich or to the rest of the industry. Is this true? To find out, someone would have to break out industry profitability by product line (so to speak) and figure out where most of the money is coming from. Has anyone ever done that?

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Are Wall Street Profits Fundamentally Based on Consumer Laziness?

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The Top US Cities for Urban Farming

by LuellaCorin476 Posted on April 18, 2016

There is so much to love about growing your own food its cheap, its lack of travel requirements and packaging make it sustainable, you know what was used in its creation, and then of course, its literally as fresh as it can be. There is simply nothing like plucking a tomato off the stem and eating its still-sun-warmed self from a hand scented with tomato-leaves smell. And all of that is not lost to legions of urban farmers who have taken over scruffy back plots and rooftops and vacant lots, giving them new life with gardens, greenhouses, coops and even hives. Little House on the Prairie has given way to little house on the subway line.

Every city has different regulations in terms of what urban harvesters can and cannot do, but what cities are doing the most in terms of urban farming? Researchers sifted through thousands of listings in the database of real estate brokerage Redfin and collected data on keywords like greenhouse, garden and chicken to see which cities (with populations greater than 300,000) have the most of these features per capita. Granted this list is based on homes for sale not homes in total, but it nonetheless gives an indication of where people have invested in agricultural accouterments. And maybe better yet, where the best place to buy a home with a chicken coop might be!

Holding the number one spot is Eugene, Oregon. Its not uncommon for homeowners in Oregon to have chickens or honey bees, said Matthew Brennan, a Redfin agent in Portland. The city of Portland allows homeowners to keep up to three animals, including chickens, ducks, doves, pigeons, pygmy goats and rabbits, without permits. Oregonians have a hankering for that sustainable lifestyle and Eugene is more affordable and has more space than Portland.

Below is a summary of the findings, visitRedfinfor more on each city.

Redfin

1. Eugene, Oregon
Listings with Chicken: 1.4%
Listings with Garden: 17.8%
Listings with Greenhouse: 1.29%
Median Sale Price: $256,000

2. Burlington, Vermont
Listings with Chicken: 0.9%
Listings with Garden: 16.7%
Listings with Greenhouse: 1.25%
Median Sale Price: $243,000

3. Santa Rosa, California
Listings with Chicken: 0.7%
Listings with Garden: 15.0%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.5%
Median Sale Price: $475,000

4. Greenville, South Carolina
Listings with Chicken: 0.5%
Listings with Garden: 15.5%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.15%
Median Sale Price: $159,000

5. Orlando, Florida
Listings with Chicken: 0.1%
Listings with Garden: 14.9%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.12%
Median Sale Price: $178,000

6. San Francisco, California
Listings with Chicken: 0.1%
Listings with Garden: 14.4%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.22%
Median Sale Price: $1,150,000

7. Albuquerque, New Mexico
Listings with Chicken: 0.4%
Listings with Garden: 13.7%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.28%
Median Sale Price: $219,000

8. Columbia, South Carolina
Listings with Chicken: 0.1%
Listings with Garden: 13.7%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.20%
Median Sale Price: $125,000

9. Tampa, Florida
Listings with Chicken: 0.1%
Listings with Garden: 13%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.06%
Median Sale Price: $176,000

10. Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
Listings with Chicken: 0.2%
Listings with Garden: 12.7%
Listings with Greenhouse: 0.11%
Median Sale Price: $223,000

Written by Melissa Breyer. Reposted with permission from TreeHugger.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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The Top US Cities for Urban Farming

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