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Obama to create largest marine protected area ever, because bigger is better

by XVNEmilqkoj Posted on June 17, 2014

Obama to create largest marine protected area ever, because bigger is better

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Say what you will about the U.S., when we do something, we do it supersized.

So when Obama decides to make a marine reserve, he doesn’t just put your average patch of ocean off-limits to commercial fishing, energy exploration, and other shenanigans. No. It’s a massive portion of the Pacific that more than doubles the total amount of protected ocean. In the world. From The Washington Post:

[T]he Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument would be expanded from almost 87,000 square miles to nearly 782,000 square miles — all of it adjacent to seven islands and atolls controlled by the United States. The designation would include waters up to 200 nautical miles offshore from the territories.

“It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to the pristine ocean,” said Enric Sala, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence who has researched the area’s reefs and atolls since 2005.

Marine protected areas are widely acknowledged as one of the most effective tools to fight back against overfishing, habitat destruction, and ecological loss. By roping off some of the most productive waters, we give fish a fighting chance. In this case, the proposed boundaries encompass a number of “underwater mountains,” habitats which are important as fish nurseries and centers of marine biodiversity.

The potential expansion area would quintuple the number of underwater mountains under protection. It would also end tuna fishing and provide shelter for nearly two dozen species of marine mammals, five types of threatened sea turtles, and a variety of sharks and other predatory fish species.

There will likely be the usual sighing about the pushiness of a president who refuses to work with his old pals in Congress. And the American tuna industry is likely to be one of the more vocal opponents, as about 3 percent of the U.S. catch comes from the area proposed for protection. But as Pacific bluefin tuna are one of the most overfished species in the sea, they could use the break. If all goes well, this sanctuary could actually help ensure that there are lots of fish out there for us to catch.

It’s a little early to declare victory — this announcement is merely a proposal, to be followed by a public comment period that will end later this year, hopefully with the official expansion of the reserve. But today’s announcement — coming on the tails of Capitol Hill Ocean Week and John Kerry’s “Our Ocean” conference in D.C. and the announcement of a new public nomination process for marine sanctuaries and a crackdown on seafood fraud — might signal a turning of the tides. (What, you thought you’d get out of this without seaing a pun?)

Or you could look at it another way: Small island nations like Palau and Kiribati have set aside their own swaths of sea as marine sanctuaries, and the U.K. is considering doing the same to the area around the Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific. We may have taken our time about it, but it looks like we’re finally embracing the healthy spirit of competition to massively outdo all of them.


Source
Obama will propose vast expansion of Pacific Ocean marine sanctuary, The Washington Post

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern. Follow her on Twitter.

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Obama to create largest marine protected area ever, because bigger is better

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The Dick Cheney/Rand Paul Feud Continues—And They’re Both Wrong

by ElmerKTEyid Posted on May 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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This past weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney made yet another media appearance to denounce President Barack Obama. But Cheney also used the opportunity to continue his feud with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kent.), who is mulling a bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. On the friendly turf of Fox News Sunday, Cheney was asked about Paul’s 2009 damning accusation—reported last month by Mother Jones—that Cheney used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse for the Iraq war so that Halliburton, the military contractor Cheney once led, would reap a large profit.

Cheney replied,

Well, before I ever took the job as vice president, I totally severed all my ties with Halliburton, at considerable financial cost. I had no relationship at all with the company throughout the time I was vice president. I didn’t even talk to them. We kept a totally arm’s length relationship. So he obviously is not familiar with the facts.

Paul’s statement was harsh; he essentially had claimed that Cheney had betrayed the nation, exploiting a national horror and causing widespread death and destruction (including the deaths of thousands of Americans) to enrich his corporate cronies. When questioned by ABC News’ Jon Karl about his Cheney comment, Paul insisted, “I’m not questioning Dick Cheney’s motives.” But that’s precisely what Paul had done. And Paul had accomplished what not many could do: he evoked sympathy for the former vice president, who had led the Bush administration’s campaign to rally public support for the Iraq war with false claims about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al Qaeda.

It’s been easy for Cheney and his defenders to dismiss Paul’s over-the-top, conspiracy-theory-like assertion. But on Fox News, the ex-veep, too, went too far. He maintained that he had no financial ties with Halliburton while he was George W. Bush’s number-two and made a personal sacrifice by trading his CEO badge for a White House job. But that’s not entirely accurate.

As Politifact.com noted a few years ago, when Cheney became vice president, he pocketed a $34 million payout from Halliburton. In fact, because he probably sold stock options at an opportune time, he profited enormously because the stock price was at a high:

It’s not clear when Cheney sold his stock options, but it likely was within weeks of his being named to the ticket — a period when Halliburton shares hit their 2000 peak, in the low-to-mid $50 range. By November 30, 2000, the stock had fallen to $33 a share. If he’d waited until then to sell, his payday would have been one-third lower, or roughly $14 million rather than $22 million.

Moreover, when Cheney was veep, he continued to receive deferred payments from Halliburton. In 2004, the New York Times reported, “Mr. Cheney’s financial disclosure statements from 2001, 2002 and 2003 show that since becoming vice president-elect, he has received $1,997,525 from the company: $1,451,398 in a bonus deferred from 1999, the rest in deferred salary.” And at that time, Cheney still held some stock options in the company.

As vice president, Cheney repeatedly contended he had no continuing relationship with Halliburton. In 2003, he declared, “I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had, now, for over three years.” But a report issued that year by the Congressional Research Service undermined Cheney’s claim. It found that if a public official retained unexercised stock options and collected deferred salary—as Cheney did then—the official had “retained ties” to the company.

So when Cheney now says that he had nothing to do with Halliburton while he was vice-president, he is contradicted by the Congressional Research Service. Maybe he wasn’t in contact with his old pals at the firm, but he continued to bank millions of dollars from the company as it obtained Iraq-related contracts from the US government.

In this ongoing scuffle pitting a GOP establishment heavy (who’s a hawk) against a possible insurgent Republican presidential candidate (who’s an intervention skeptic), both are wrong. When Paul assailed Cheney, he went too far and joined the ranks of the tin-foil-hats crowd—and then he tried to claim he had not said what he said. In defending himself, Cheney misrepresented his financial relationship with Halliburton. This mud-wrestling match has yet to produce a winner, but it is showing that each participant has a problem with accuracy.

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The Dick Cheney/Rand Paul Feud Continues—And They’re Both Wrong

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Vladimir Putin Has Been Outplayed by Barack Obama

by LarueLukis Posted on May 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Max Fisher notes this morning that although President Obama got a lot of flak for his restrained response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, his approach of giving Vladimir Putin enough rope to hang himself has turned out to be a lot cannier than his critics expected:

This has been so effective, and has apparently taken Putin by such surprise, that after weeks of looking like he could roll into eastern Ukraine unchallenged, he’s backing down all on his own. Official Russian rhetoric, after weeks of not-so-subtle threats of invading eastern Ukraine, is backing down. Putin suddenly looks like he will support Ukraine’s upcoming presidential election, rather than oppose it, although it will likely install a pro-European president. European and American negotiators say the tone in meetings has eased from slinging accusations to working toward a peaceful resolution.

Most of this is economic. Russia’s self-imposed economic problems started pretty quickly after its annexation of Crimea in March and have kept up. Whether or not American or European governments sanction Russia’s broader economy, the global investment community has a mind of its own, and they seem to have decided that Russia’s behavior has made it a risky place to put money. So risky that they’re pulling more money out.

A lot of that may have come the targeted sanctions that Obama pushed for against individual Russian leaders and oligarchs. Those targeted sanctions did not themselves do much damage to the Russian economy. But, along with Russia’s erratic behavior in Ukraine and the lack of clarity as to whether Europe and the US could impose broader sanctions, it appears to have been enough to scare off global investors — the big, faceless, placeless mass of people and banks who have done tremendous damage to Putin’s Russia, nudged along by the US and by Putin himself.

I’m a little less surprised than Fisher, though Obama’s policy was always a bit of a crapshoot since there was no telling (a) just how important Putin thought annexation of eastern Ukraine was, and (b) how much economic pain Putin was willing to put up with. This wasn’t necessarily a rational calculation on Putin’s part, which meant it was never entirely amenable to rational analysis on our part.

Still, there have always been good reasons to think that a military annexation of eastern Ukraine represented a huge risk for Russia—potentially turning into a long and wearying guerrilla war—and that even the existing economic sanctions were biting hard enough to be worrisome. After all, Putin’s nationalistic fervor may have initially played well domestically, but in the long term domestic opinion depends heavily on economic performance. If the Russian economy started to tank, those adoring crowds would have turned surly in pretty short order.

In my mind, the biggest wild card has always been this: what, really, is the value of eastern Ukraine to Russia? Yes, there’s some industry, and potentially a land border with Crimea. But those are frankly small things, especially if annexing Ukraine was likely to lead to prolonged low-level war and even stiffer sanctions from the West. As for Putin’s claim to be responsible for oppressed Russian-speaking minorities, I don’t think anyone should take that too seriously. He may sincerely feel aggrieved about this, but even the threat of action has already gotten him what he wants on this score: a strong likelihood that Kiev will negotiate a certain level of autonomy for regions in eastern Ukraine, and perhaps a more accommodating approach in other countries toward Russian speakers.

With the caveat—again—that this has never been an entirely rational situation, I continue to think that eastern Ukraine simply isn’t valuable enough to Russia to justify a lot of risk. Putin made a play for taking control without any real opposition, and it failed. It’s obvious now that the cost would be pretty high, both in military opposition and in economic pain. Too high. And Putin knows it.

Would a more assertive military posture from Obama have made a difference? Maybe. But there’s as much chance it would have made things worse as there was that it would have made things better. This is something that the John McCains of the world have never understood, which is odd since they know perfectly well how they themselves respond to threats of violence. Why do they think Putin would respond any differently?

In the end, Putin will probably come out of this OK. He has Crimea, and he’s regained at least a bit of the influence over Ukraine that he lost via his bungled foreign policy early in the year. If he backs off now, the economic pain will ease; Ukraine will be a more pliant neighbor; and he’ll retain his popularity at home. If he’s smart, he’ll decide this is close enough to victory, and call it a day.

But the United States will come out OK too. The punditocracy will have a hard time acknowledging this, since they’re pretty dedicated to the idea that there only two kinds of foreign policy success: military intervention and flashy, high-stakes diplomatic missions. But there are more subtle kinds of success too. This may well turn out to be one of them.

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Vladimir Putin Has Been Outplayed by Barack Obama

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China Is Still Just a Jumbo Version of Albania

by MillardPyle Posted on May 1, 2014

Mother Jones

I don’t want to pretend to some kind of faux naivete here, but can someone tell me why there’s suddenly a big frenzy about whether China is now the biggest economy in the world? China has 1.3 billion people. Of course they’re eventually going to eventually be bigger than the US. If not this year, then next year or the year after. Everyone knows this. Everyone has always known this. It’s no surprise, and it’s no big deal. They’ve still got about the per capita GDP of Albania, and it will be decades before they become even a middle-income country.

So who cares if they’re fudging the official numbers or the PPP calculations are being done wrong or whatever? Why does anyone even remotely care about this supposed milestone?

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China Is Still Just a Jumbo Version of Albania

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CIA Lashes Out at Senate Staffers it Says Mishandled Classified Info

by HollieHazon Posted on March 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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McClatchy has an update to yesterday’s story about the CIA monitoring Senate staffers who were investigating the CIA’s detention and torture practices. Apparently, long after their report was complete and the CIA had already responded, the Senate staffers were trawling through a CIA database and ran across an internal review ordered by former CIA Director Leon Panetta of previously released materials. The staffers concluded that the Panetta review confirmed their findings, even though the official CIA response had strongly disputed them:

The aides printed the material, walked out of CIA headquarters with it and took it to Capitol Hill, said the knowledgeable person.

….The CIA discovered the security breach and brought it to the committee’s attention in January, leading to a determination that the agency recorded the staffers’ use of the computers in the high-security research room, and then confirmed the breach by reviewing the usage data, said the knowledgeable person.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a member of the Intelligence Committee who has led calls for the release of the report, disclosed at a hearing in December the existence of the Panetta review without saying how the committee had learned of it. He contended that the review broadly corroborated the committee’s findings and questioned why it was dramatically different from the CIA’s official response.

Roughly speaking, Senate staffers say their actions were justified because they had evidence the CIA was lying to them. The CIA says its actions were justified because Senate staffers were removing top secret materials that weren’t supposed to leave the secure room they were working in.

In the meantime, the 6,300-page report itself is still in limbo, with the CIA fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from being released. But maybe it’s time for the report and the internal review and the CIA response and everything else to be published so the American public can decide for itself what it thinks of all this? We’re the ones paying the bills, after all.

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CIA Lashes Out at Senate Staffers it Says Mishandled Classified Info

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New Bridge Scandal Emails: Port Authority Official Said Christie Team’s Lane Closure "Violates Federal Law"

by DarellUXTK Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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New Bridge Scandal Emails: Port Authority Official Said Christie Team’s Lane Closure “Violates Federal Law”

In a September 13 email released Friday by the New Jersey Assembly panel probing Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s George Washington Bridge scandal, Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye wrote that the decision to shut down access lanes to the bridge violated state and federal laws.

“I believe this hasty and ill-advised decision violates Federal Law and the laws of both States,” Foye noted, explaining his decision to reopen those lanes to traffic. “I am appalled by the lack of process, failure to inform our customers and Fort Lee and most of all by the dangers created to the public.”

Foye sent his email after four days of heavy traffic jams caused by the closures to nearly a dozen officials at the Port Authority, including chairman David Samson, a Christie appointee.

Private messages released on Wednesday strongly suggested that a top aide to Christie orchestrated the lane closures as an act of political revenge. Samson’s role in the scandal remains unclear.

Screenshot from new emails released as part of an investigation into politically motivated lane closures on the George Washington Bridge

On Thursday, Christie expressed confidence that Samson played no part in causing the Fort Lee traffic disaster, saying, “I am convinced that he had absolutely no knowledge of this, that this was executed at the operational level and never brought to the attention of the Port Authority board of commissioners.” Yet when Foye ordered the lanes reopened on September 13, David Wildstein, a Christie appointee at the Port Authority official wrote to a Christie staffer, “We are appropriately going nuts. Samson helping us to retaliate.”

Another email released on Friday shows an effort to keep the story from going public. On the night of September 13, Foye received an email from Bill Baroni, a Port Authority official appointed by Christie (who resigned in December as the scandal was unfolding). It read, “I am on my way to the office to discuss. There can be no public discourse.”

And another email released on Friday indicates that the Christie crew was worried about Foye. On September 18, Samson wrote Scott Rechler, the vice chair of the Port Authority Board of Commissioners,* that he strongly suspected Foye of “stirring up trouble” by speaking anonymously to a Wall Street Journal reporter about the Fort Lee traffic debacle. He went on: “This is yet another example of a story—we’ve seen it before—where Foye distances himself from an issue in the press and rides in on a white horse to save the day In this case, he’s playing in traffic, made a big mistake.”

These emails were released as part of a collection of hundreds of emails and text messages that journalists and investigators are now scrutinizing. Read them here.

Correction: An earlier version of this article failed to note Rechler’s position in the Port Authority. He is the vice chair of its Board of Commissioners.

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New Bridge Scandal Emails: Port Authority Official Said Christie Team’s Lane Closure "Violates Federal Law"

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Chris Christie’s Not in the Clear Yet. These Text Messages Show Why.

by TamelaTMXX Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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New Bridge Scandal Emails: Port Authority Official Said Christie Team’s Lane Closure “Violates Federal Law”

At his Thursday press conference, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he played no part in causing a traffic jam last fall on the George Washington Bridge and in nearby Fort Lee. He ultimately took responsibility for the debacle, but Christie said his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, had ordered the traffic jam without his knowledge. Emails showed that she had been in cahoots with David Wildstein, a Christie appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Christie fired Kelly on Thursday, and he insisted that she was the only member of his inner circle who knew that the traffic mess was politically motivated and not the result of a supposed traffic study.

Yet text messages turned over to investigators by Wildstein raise the possibility that months before the disclosure this week of Kelly’s bombshell email—“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”—other senior Christie aides knew the traffic study excuse wasn’t true.

Here’s the backstory. The traffic jam happened on the week of September 9 and quickly became a local controversy. Lawmakers began investigating, and on November 25, Bill Baroni, another Christie appointee at the Port Authority, testified before the New Jersey Assembly’s transportation, public works, and independent authorities committee. Baroni told lawmakers that the lane closures were part of a study to determine whether Fort Lee should have three dedicated lanes leading onto the George Washington Bridge.

State lawmakers didn’t buy Baroni’s explanation. “I think that at best this was clumsy and ham-handed,” said committee chair John Wisniewski, a Democrat. “At worst, this was political mischief by a political appointee.”

Immediately after his testimony, according to documents released this week, Baroni texted David Wildstein asking how Christie administration officials in Trenton, the state capital, had reacted to his testimony:

11/25/2013 11:58 AM David Wildstein: You did great
11/25/2013 11:58 AM Bill Baroni: Trenton feedback
11/25/2013 11:59 AM Bill Baroni: ?
11/25/2013 11:59 AM David Wildstein: Good
REDACTED MESSAGE
11/25/2013 11:59 AM Bill Baroni: Just good? Shit
11/25/2013 12:00 PM David Wildstein: No i have only texted brudget Bridget Anne Kelly and Nicole they were VERY happy
11/25/2013 12:00 PM Bill Baroni: Ok
11/25/2013 12:00 PM David Wildstein: Both said you are doing great
11/25/2013 12:06 PM David Wildstein: Charlie said you did GREAT

Note the two names in that exchange we have placed in bold type: Nicole and Charlie. According to public records and news stories, the only Nicole politically close to Christie at the time was Nicole Davidman, who was the governor’s campaign finance director in 2013 and the wife of Christie’s press secretary. The only Charlie in Christie’s inner circle was Charles McKenna, Christie’s chief counsel and the aide now leading the internal investigation of the bridge mess. State investigators assume that the Charlie mentioned in this text is McKenna, according to a legislative source, but they are not yet certain about Nicole (though they have not yet identified other possibilities).

Presuming these texts refer to Davidman and McKenna, here’s what needs to be answered: Were these two Christie lieutenants happy about Baroni’s testimony for the same reason as Kelly? Both Kelly and Wildstein knew the study wasn’t the true cause of the traffic mess, and it’s reasonable to conclude that they were delighted because Baroni had stuck to that story and not said anything about Kelly instructing Wildstein to cause the jam that paralyzed traffic in Fort Lee for days. But did Charlie and Nicole cheer Baroni’s bogus testimony in the same way? And what does it mean that Wildstein, the man who arranged the lane closures, lumped together Kelly, the aide who instigated the closures, and Nicole? (Christie touched on this only briefly in his press conference: “I believe that I’ve spoken to everyone who was mentioned in the emails except for Charlie McKenna, who is away at a family funeral. And I am confident, based upon my conversations with them, that they had no prior knowledge nor involvement in this situation.”)

This is just one line of inquiry Bridgegate investigators ought to focus on. Christie asserts that Kelly was the only member of his political team in on the bridge caper. But if others were aware of Baroni’s stonewalling, the governor has a problem—especially if that includes McKenna, whom Christie has picked to probe the bridge scandal. At the least, it might be ill-advised for the governor to have a fellow who apparently praised Baroni’s bogus testimony in charge of penetrating the cover-up.

Christie’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

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Chris Christie’s Not in the Clear Yet. These Text Messages Show Why.

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Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs for December

by Lubao2pzs Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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The American economy added 74,000 new jobs in December, but about 90,000 of those jobs were needed just to keep up with population growth, so net job growth clocked in at minus 16,000. There’s no way to sugar coat this: it’s pretty dismal news. Last night was obviously a bad time to predict that the economy might be getting back on track.

The headline unemployment rate dropped to 6.7 percent, but that’s mainly because a huge number of people dropped out of the labor force, causing the labor force participation rate to decline from 63.0 percent to 62.8 percent. At the same time, the number of discouraged workers dropped. This suggests that in addition to the usual exodus of workers due to retirement, a fair number of people simply gave up and quit looking for work, dropping out of the official numbers entirely.

It’s only one month, and it might not mean much. Maybe it was just bad weather. Maybe. But it’s a lousy start to the year.

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Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs for December

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Chris Christie Needs to Talk to Bridget Anne Kelly Pronto

by Raisacjayv Posted on January 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Recent political scandals have given us a whole new set of colorful euphemisms for dodgy behavior. Wide stance. Walking the Appalachian trail. Drunken stupor. And now, We’re doing a traffic study.

More MoJo coverage of Chris Christie’s bridge scandal


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Chris Christie: I Am “Heartbroken” And “Embarrassed” About Bridge Scandalâ&#128;&#148;But Not Guilty


Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official


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5 Unanswered Questions About Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal


Bridgegate Edges Closer and Closer to Chris Christie Himself

And speaking of Bridgegate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie held an epic press conference today about it. Actually, “held” is the wrong word. As I write this, it’s still going on. He’s apologized repeatedly, denied that he’s a bully, claimed that he’s embarrassed and humiliated, and fired a couple of his close aides. He’s doing pretty well, and if he’s telling the truth that he knew nothing about any of this before it happened, then he might be able to put it all behind him eventually. Still, I was struck by this:

Q: I’m wondering what your staff said to you about why they lied to you. Why would they do that? What was their explanation? And what about Mr. Samson? What role did he play in this?

GOV. CHRISTIE: I have — I have not had any conversation with Bridget Kelly since the email came out. And so she was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had. And I’m, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation at the moment.

Bridget Anne Kelly was one of Christie’s top aides, and very clearly someone who was rather gleefully involved in planning the pre-election lane closures on the George Washington Bridge as retribution against the mayor of Ft. Lee. But Christie wasn’t interested in talking to her directly to find out what was going on? Really? That sounds like a guy who either (a) already knows what she’d tell him, or (b) is afraid of what she might tell him.

A friend of mine also emails with this:

Here’s something I haven’t heard yet, and it seems kinda obvious to me:

Bridget Anne Kelly: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

David Wildstein: “Got it.”

Does this exchange sound like it’s between two people who are suggesting a new and novel way to screw their political opponents, or between two people who have clearly done this before?

If I’m working in the governor’s office1 and someone sends me an email saying “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee!” I’d probably email back something like, “What are you talking about?” or “What happened in Fort Lee that’s causing all the traffic?” Instead, Wildstein knows what she’s getting at right away, and what he’s supposed to do. Then he does it.

It would surprise me less if this turns out to be the only time they’ve done this than if we discover two or three more incidents of politically inspired “traffic problems.”

Maybe that’s what Christie is afraid to find out?

1Actually, Wildstein worked at the Port Authority. But you get the idea anyway. “Wildstein was known as the Governor’s eyes and ears inside this massive agency,” says one reporter, and he’s a longtime friend and confidante of Christie’s.

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Chris Christie Needs to Talk to Bridget Anne Kelly Pronto

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New Study Says Poverty Rate Hasn’t Budged For 40 Years

by JohannaG58 Posted on December 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Washington Post reports some good news:

Government programs such as food stamps and unemployment insurance have made significant progress in easing the plight of the poor in the half-century since the launch of the war on poverty, according to a major new study….The findings also contradict the official poverty rate, which suggests there has been no decline in the percentage of Americans experiencing poverty since then.

According to the new research, the safety net helped reduce the percentage of Americans in poverty from 26 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012.

There are certain things you always need to be aware of in different fields of study. If it’s test scores among school kids, you need to disaggregate by race and ethnic background. If it’s life expectancy and Social Security, you need to make sure to use life expectancy at age 65, not life expectancy at birth. And if it’s poverty measurements, you need to distinguish between elderly poverty and working-age poverty.

Social Security has dramatically reduced elderly poverty, so if you simply look at overall poverty rates they’re always pulled down by the success of Social Security. But what about the working-age poor? How have government programs helped them? This was the first thing I looked for in this new study, and I found it in the red line in Figure 4:

This is a lot less cheery. Poverty has still declined, but not by much, and only between 1967 and 1973. Since 1973, the poverty rate hasn’t budged. It was 15 percent forty years ago and it’s 15 percent today.

Now, there’s still some good news in this study. Using their new measurement, the researchers find that child poverty has dropped from from 31 percent to 18 percent over the past three decades. They also find that safety net programs have reduced poverty rates and dramatically reduced “deep poverty” rates. It’s also heartening that poverty rates increased only slightly during the Great Recession. Safety net programs have significantly ameliorated a human catastrophe over the past five years.

But the headline result, I think, is simple: among the working-age poor, poverty has been stuck for the past four decades. We’ve made virtually no progress at all.

This article:

New Study Says Poverty Rate Hasn’t Budged For 40 Years

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