Tag Archives: mother

Eastern Ukrainians Dislike EU and US, But They Dislike Russia Even More

by DoraOZLPgq Posted on May 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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I don’t have a lot to add to this, but I thought this recent poll result from Pew was sort of fascinating. It’s part of a survey of Ukrainian attitudes toward governance, and the main takeaway is that Ukrainians from both east and west are strongly in favor of remaining united. Even in the east, only 18 percent favor allowing regions to secede.

That’s a surprisingly high number, but the question on the right was even more interesting. It turns out that eastern Ukrainians don’t really think very highly of any of the foreign actors currently meddling in Ukrainian politics. Unsurprisingly, 46 percent don’t like the EU and 52 percent don’t like the US, but an even higher number, 58 percent, don’t like Russia either. Even among Russian speakers, a small plurality dislike Russia.

If these poll results are accurate, there’s little appetite for secession in eastern Ukraine, and little appetite for Russian intervention. That should be food for thought for Vladimir Putin.

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Eastern Ukrainians Dislike EU and US, But They Dislike Russia Even More

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Price Tag for California Bullet Train Rises Yet Again

by dwsfwa Posted on May 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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I imagine that most of you are tired of my endless linking to news articles reporting that the California bullet train will cost ever more, more, more. Some of you are tired of it because you don’t live in California and don’t care. The rest of you care, but are dismayed at the sight of a fellow liberal who opposes the bullet train.

I hear you. But I can’t help myself. Here’s the latest from an engineering firm hired by the state:

The estimated cost of building a key Central Valley segment of the California bullet train has increased by nearly $1 billion from the original estimate, based on figures in an environmental impact statement approved by the rail agency Wednesday….The lowest cost estimate for the 114-mile segment in a 2011 environmental report was $6.19 billion. The comparable figure increased 15% to $7.13 billion in the new report.

The California High Speed Rail Authority said in a statement that it believes the cost will be lower than URS is projecting.

Well, I’m willing to bet that the cost will be higher than URS is projecting. Most construction costs rise after actual construction begins, after all, and so far the rail authority hasn’t laid a single mile of track.

There have been all sorts of disputes between rail supporters and URS, so it’s pretty easy to ignore their estimates if you’re inclined to. As for me, I’m sticking to my prediction that the bullet train will end up costing at least $100 billion in 2011 dollars, assuming it gets built at all. I don’t think anyone has been willing to take me up on that bet yet.

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Price Tag for California Bullet Train Rises Yet Again

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Conservative Pro-Growth Policies Don’t Actually Produce Any Growth

by KatrinGascoigne Posted on May 7, 2014

Mother Jones

Michael Hiltzik draws my attention to something I missed when it first appeared a few weeks ago. Menzie Chinn decided to check out whether conservative pro-growth policies actually led to high growth, and the chart on the right shows the results. Chinn compared scores on the ALEC-Laffer “Economic Outlook” ranking to actual growth in 2013-14 and looked for a trend. There wasn’t one. “If there is any evidence,” he concludes after a more detailed look at the data, “it suggests that a higher ALEC-Laffer Economic Outlook score is associated with a worse economic performance.”

However, although a high ALEC-Laffer ranking may not stimulate any actual growth, Hiltzik points out that it does correspond to reduced taxes on the wealthy and slashed spending on state services that benefit the poor and working class. In other words, it may not affect growth, but it sure is a good deal for the rich. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?

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Conservative Pro-Growth Policies Don’t Actually Produce Any Growth

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GOP Super-Donor on Politicians: “Most of These People…They’re Unemployable”

by CarmeloStanley Posted on May 5, 2014

Mother Jones

Meet John Jordan. As National Journal‘s Shane Goldmacher writes, Jordan runs his own vineyard, flies his own planes, cuts his own pop-song music video parodies (here he is with some barely clothed women in “Blurred Vines”)—oh, and he’s a huge donor to Republican candidates and committees. He raised and donated seven figures for Karl Rove’s Crossroads organization in the 2012 cycle. Last year, he went solo, pumping $1.4 million into his own super-PAC, the deceptively named Americans for Progressive Action, in an effort to elect Republican Gabriel Gomez in a Massachusetts special US Senate election. (Gomez lost by 10 points.)

Goldmacher visited Jordan at this 1,450-acre vineyard in northern California and came back with no shortage of juicy quotes and flamboyant details. For all his political giving, it turns out, Jordan doesn’t really like politicians:

“I’m not trying to spoon with them,” he says. “I don’t care. In fact, I try to avoid—I go out of my way to avoid meeting candidates and politicians.” Why? “All too often, these people are so disappointing that it’s depressing. Most of these people you meet, they’re unemployable… It’s just easier not to know.”

Ouch.

Jordan dishes on Rove and his Crossroads operation, which spent $325 million during the 2012 election season with little success:

“With Crossroads all you got was, Karl Rove would come and do his little rain dance,” Jordan says. He didn’t complain aloud so much as stew. “You write them the check and they have their investors’ conference calls, which are”—Jordan pauses here for a full five seconds, before deciding what to say next—”something else. You learn nothing. They explain nothing. They don’t disclose anything even to their big donors.” (Crossroads communications director Paul Lindsay responded via email, “We appreciated Mr. Jordan’s support in 2012 and his frequent input since then.” Rove declined to comment.)

Jordan’s thoughts on his super-PAC’s $1.4 million flop in 2013 offer a telling glimpse into the world of mega-donors, the type of people who can drop six or seven figures almost on a whim:

Jordan had blown through more than $1.4 million in two weeks on a losing effort—and he loved every second of it. “I never had any illusions about the probability of success. At the same time, somebody has to try, and you never know. You lose 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, so why not do it?” he says. “And I’ve always thought it would be fun to do, and I had a great time doing it, frankly.” Now, Jordan says that the Gomez race was just the beginning—a $1.4 million “potential iceberg tip” of future political efforts.

Who might Jordan support in 2016? He tells Goldmacher he hasn’t decided. But he was impressed during a recent visit by the subject of Mother Jones‘ newest cover story, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.

Continued – 

GOP Super-Donor on Politicians: “Most of These People…They’re Unemployable”

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Is the US Economy Becoming Dangerously Lethargic?

by Meridith7282 Posted on May 5, 2014

Mother Jones

Jim Pethokoukis highlights an interesting chart today from a Brookings report. The authors are concerned about a declining rate of entrepreneurship in the United States:

Business dynamism is inherently disruptive; but it is also critical to long-run economic growth. Research has established that this process of “creative destruction” is essential to productivity gains by which more productive firms drive out less productive ones, new entrants disrupt incumbents, and workers are better matched with firms. In other words, a dynamic economy constantly forces labor and capital to be put to better uses. But recent evidence points to a U.S. economy that has steadily become less dynamic over time. Two measures used to gauge business dynamism are firm entry and job reallocation. As Figure 1 shows, the firm entry rate—or firms less than one year old as a share of all firms—fell by nearly half in the thirty-plus years between 1978 and 2011.

So fewer people are starting up new businesses, and this trend has been evident for several decades. Pethokoukis speculates that the problem might be too little uncertainty in the economy: “Maybe the U.S. private sector has become too conservative and cautious….The U.S. still generates lots of innovation overall, but maybe too much is of the job-killing sort rather than job-creating kind that marks a dynamic economy.”

Maybe. But I’d really like to see a breakdown of what kinds of business creation have declined. My first guess here is that the decline hasn’t been among the sort of Silicon Valley firms that drive innovation, but among more prosaic small firms: restaurants, dry cleaners, hardware stores, and so forth. The last few decades have seen an explosion among national chains and big box retailers, and it only makes sense that this has driven down the number of new entrants in these sectors. When there’s a McDonald’s and a Burger King on every corner, there’s just less room for people to open up their own lunch spots. But if there’s been a decline in the number of new small retailers, that may or may not say anything about the dynamism of the American economy. It just tells us what we already know: national chains, with their marketing efficiencies and highly efficient logistics, have taken over the retail sector. Amazon and other internet retailers are only hastening this trend.

But is this what’s really driving the downward trend in new business creation? The Brookings report doesn’t give us any clues. But it sure seems like this is the absolute minimum we need to know in order to draw any serious conclusions about what’s really going on here.

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Is the US Economy Becoming Dangerously Lethargic?

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Roz Chast: The MoJo Years

by huklx2 Posted on May 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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While cartoonist Roz Chast is best known as a fixture in the pages of the New Yorker, back in the day she was also a regular contributor to Mother Jones. Below, we’ve collected Chast’s work from the pages of MoJo between 1983 and 1988.
Plus: Read an interview with Chast about her new cartoon memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

August 1983

September/October 1983

November 1983

December 1983

January 1984

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February/March 1984

April 1984

May 1984

June 1984

July 1984

August/September 1984

November 1984

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December 1984

January 1985

February/March 1985

May 1985

June 1985

July 1985

August/September 1985

October 1985

January 1986

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February/March 1986

April/May 1986

June 1986

July/August 1986

September 1986

October 1986

November 1986

December 1986

January 1987

May 1987

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June/July 1987

August/September 1987

October 1987

November 1987

December 1987

January 1988

February/March 1988

April 1988

May 1988

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June 1988

July/August 1988

September 1988

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Roz Chast: The MoJo Years

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"Short Shorts Are Not for Everybody": An Interview With Brittney Griner

by VioletteXBQA Posted on May 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Even if you don’t follow women’s basketball, you probably know of Brittney Griner and her nasty dunks. Last year, the 6-foot-8 Phoenix Mercury center made the WNBA All-Star Game as a rookie, and tied the league’s all-time dunk record with two slams in her very first game. But she’s more than one of the WNBA’s hottest stars. She’s also one of the most famous gay athletes in all of sports; last year, she became Nike’s first out endorsee, and she’s helped create an anti-bullying mobile app that’s currently raising money on IndieGogo. So why, at 23, did Griner feel the urge to write a memoir? (In My Skin, cowritten with Sue Hovey, was released in April.) It’s simple, she says: “I didn’t want to wait till the end of my career to tell my story.”

Mother Jones: You write that you were bullied as a kid, and that you felt like “a physical misfit, my body flat and thin, my voice low.” When did you start to feel comfortable in your skin?

Brittney Griner: I would say ninth grade, when I started wearing the clothes that I wanted to wear. I was so tired of living a lie, dressing a certain way. When you go to high school, you definitely feel like you’re an adult, and I wanted to be true to myself. By the time I got to college I was completely out, and all my friends knew—just about everyone in my family knew. That’s when I told myself, “Okay, I wanna do all this.”

MJ: You’re known for your style—lots of tattoos, but also the argyle socks, bow ties, preppy chic. How has that style evolved?

BG: When I first came out, I kinda overdid it. I dressed extremely older-boyish, like sagging, and big shirt and big jeans. I was just like, “I’m gonna go extreme.” And then as I got older, the baggy clothes got a little more fitting to my body, but still masculine. Before, I wouldn’t wear tight jeans—”That’s girl! I want guy!” I thought. But now I wear jeans that actually fit me and look good. A lot of people do the preppy look, and the bow ties and the vest and jacket, the blazer and everything, and I started to like it even more.

MJ: When the WNBA proposed tigther-cut uniforms, how did you react?

BG: I was just running in slow motion, saying, “Nooooooo!” I play basketball. I need a jersey and I need some shorts that I feel comfortable in. I’m trying to hoop, not go to a fashion show on the court. Short shorts are not for everybody. I’m not trying to wear capris, but I got a lot of leg. I need to cover it up a little bit. They want more male attendance, and for us to change our uniforms to “sleek and sexy” takes away from what we’re trying to do on the court. I want you to come watch my game, not the uniforms. If you wanna come just because we look sexy, then I really don’t want you there. I feel like we need to get away from that.

MJ: Your Nike contract allows you to model clothes branded for men. A Nike spokesman told ESPN the Magazine, “It’s safe to say we jumped at the opportunity to work with her because she breaks the mold.”

BG: I want to print that quote and put it on the wall! For a company like Nike to say that I’m breaking the mold! I was extremely happy. I’m not the only female that wears men’s clothes, so I’m not one in a million. But someone told me I was kinda pioneering it—for it to be okay, to be accepted.

MJ: You write at length about your struggles at Baylor, both with coach Kim Mulkey and with the school’s anti-homosexuality policy. What was it like to hear from folks in Waco that this was some sort of betrayal?

BG: It’s not right. Like the rule that Baylor has in the handbook, that if you’re openly gay you can be kicked out—it’s unjust, and I think it should be changed. I never had a problem with my team. My teammates accepted me. We were on the court, we played, we hooped, we fought for each other, and I had a great time as far as basketball. Nobody ever came up to me and was like, “Get off our campus.” I never got that. And people knew on campus. I wasn’t hiding. From the way I dressed to the way I acted in public, it wasn’t a problem, so I don’t understand why the rule is still there.

MJ: You write that you didn’t know about the policy before arriving at Baylor, and that Mulkey told you being gay wouldn’t be a problem there. And yet people ask, “Why did you go to Baylor if you knew it was anti-gay?”

BG: First off, it’s easy for people to say stuff when they don’t know the full story. If they would read the whole story, the whole book, they would see. I was told everything would be fine, and I didn’t know about the rule until later on. I get the question a lot: Do you wish you would’ve gone somewhere else? No, no I don’t. I went 40-0. I won a national championship. I grew as a person, I grew as a player, and me and Coach Mulkey, we had a lot of great times. She taught me a lot of great lessons, and I met a lot of great people. And I still go back to Baylor. I’ve been back up there; I went there for homecoming. I went down on the field and the fans clapped and cheered for me, yelled my name. I love my school; that’s always going to be my school. People who think, “Oh, she should’ve just gone somewhere else”; I’m like, “No, I was where I needed to be.”

MJ: What do you make of the high-profile comings-out of Jason Collins, Michael Sam, and Derrick Gordon?

BG: I had a prior agreement with ESPN to come out with them, but it kind of came out earlier in a Sports Illustrated online interview. It was fine. I wanted it to be a conversation. I didn’t want it to be like, “Breaking news: Brittney Griner is gay!” I just wanted it to be on my time. It’s a little bit tougher on the male side—people judge really hard—and when they come out it’s definitely big news. It takes a lot of bravery. I would love for it to get to the point where it’s not breaking news, not how they define us. We don’t want to be treated any different.

MJ: Not to shift gears too quickly, but do you think should college athletes get paid?

BG: I do. You give up a lot of your time. You have your not-mandatory-but-mandatory summer. “You don’t have to be here, but you better be here.” We miss holidays, we miss all that. We devote all our time to basketball. Studying on the road, late nights, getting in—it’s like we’re working a job nonstop. And I definitely think we should get a little bit more.

MJ: How would it have been different if you’d been considered an employee?

BG: An employee. Pauses. I think I would like “employee,” because that means that I’m on that payroll! Laughs. Honestly, that’s how I feel. I felt like I was a Baylor employee. Instead of going to work in the office and punching in on the timecard, I was going to practice everyday, right after class got dressed, and got in practice for a couple of hours. Summertime, I was there the whole time. But we don’t get any off days. We can’t call in sick.

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"Short Shorts Are Not for Everybody": An Interview With Brittney Griner

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Fox News and the Rise of Racial Animus in the Obama Era

by ArleenFriese Posted on May 1, 2014

Mother Jones

Today, using questions from the General Social Survey, Nate Silver tries to quantify the effect of Barack Obama’s election on the racial attitudes of white Republicans and Democrats. On several of the most overtly racist questions (“blacks are lazy,” “blacks are unintelligent”) there’s little evidence of change. But on two of the questions with more political salience, there’s evidence of a pretty substantial effect.

The chart on the right illustrates this. The number of white Republicans who believe the government spends too much money on blacks had been trending slowly downward for years. Based on that trend, you’d expect the number today to be a bit above 20 percent.

Instead, it took a sharp upward jump in 2010 and again in 2012, ending up a bit over 30 percent. In other words, among white Republicans, it appears that the election of a black president has increased the belief that blacks get too many government bennies by about 10 percentage points. This belief is now at levels not seen since the anti-busing days of the 70s.

I’m not sure what conclusions to draw from this beyond the obvious ones. As you might suspect from some of my posts over the past few years, I basically blame Fox News and conservative talk radio for this state of affairs. Without Fox fanning the flames of racial animus over the past several years, I suspect we wouldn’t see this effect. That’s just a guess on my part, but I think it’s a pretty good one.

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Fox News and the Rise of Racial Animus in the Obama Era

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An Awful Lot of People Seem to Have Fibbed About Responding to the Heartbleed Bug

by DannielPeterson Posted on April 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Via Hayley Tsukayama, check out this question about the Heartbleed bug from Pew Research:

That’s pretty impressive, no?

“I think it’s a pretty striking number,” said Lee Rainie, the center’s director, in an e-mailed statement….Rainie added that the urgency of the coverage likely prompted people to act quickly to address the issue. “We didn’t ask people how they’d heard about Heartbleed, but I’d guess that it was a combination of media coverage plus chatter in users’ networks via social media and e-mail,” he said. “And much of what we were seeing was the basic message, ‘This one is really serious and you need to respond.'”

I too think this is a pretty striking number. But I don’t believe it for a second. If you had security consultants make personal house calls to every internet user in the United States, I don’t think 61 percent would change their passwords. I would frankly be surprised if 61 percent of internet users even know how to change their passwords.

Am I being too cynical? Maybe. But what I’m curious about is where this number comes from. Since I doubt that the real number of password changers is even half of the Pew number, why did so many people fib about it when a pollster called them? And what does that say about how people respond to pollsters in general?

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An Awful Lot of People Seem to Have Fibbed About Responding to the Heartbleed Bug

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US Economy Tanks Completely in the First Quarter

by CharoleBlohm Posted on April 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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The economy took a huge dive in the first quarter. It grew at such a slow annualized rate, 0.1 percent, that I had to enlarge my usual FRED chart just so you could see the tiny bar on the far right. The full BEA report is here.

So what happened? Consumer expenditures actually increased reasonably well. Government consumption was about flat, which isn’t too unusual these days. But fixed investment—including housing—tanked, inventories shrank, and exports plummeted. That was enough to swamp the strong gains in consumer spending.

It’s hard to draw any positive conclusions from this. Cold weather is getting some of the blame, but I always take weather-based excuses with a big grain of salt. Basically, the economy is still really sluggish. Job growth is OK but not great and wage growth is positive but only barely. Despite that, here’s what the Wall Street Journal has to say:

The latest figures come as Federal Reserve officials conclude at two-day meeting Wednesday. The numbers aren’t likely to have a large influence on policy, given the expectations for improved growth later in the year. Officials, however, are closely monitoring inflation measures. Persistently low inflation could complicate the Fed’s decisions about how to wind down its bond-buying program this year and when to raise benchmark interest rates from near zero.

Yeesh. Crappy GDP growth, sluggish job growth, and persistently low inflation “aren’t likely to have a large influence on policy.” Then what the hell would have a large influence on policy? Needless to say, a GDP report like this is music to Republican ears, so we certainly can’t expect Congress to react in any productive way. That means the Fed is all we’ve got. But apparently we don’t have them either.

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US Economy Tanks Completely in the First Quarter

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