Tag Archives: paulson

Why Has Only Hillary Clinton Turned Over All Her Emails?

Mother Jones

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I have a dumb question. Hillary Clinton has been forced, via FOIA request, to release all of her work-related emails from her term as Secretary of State. Today we learned there may be more to come. By the time it’s all over, we’ll have something like 30-40,000 emails that have been made public.

So here’s my dumb question: why has this happened only to Hillary Clinton? If FOIA can be used to force the release of every email sent or received by a cabinet member, why haven’t FOIA requests been submitted for all of them? It would certainly be interesting and newsworthy to see all of Leon Panetta’s emails. Or all of Condi Rice’s. Or all of Henry Paulson’s.

So what’s the deal? Why has this happened only to Hillary Clinton?

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Why Has Only Hillary Clinton Turned Over All Her Emails?

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The Meat Industry Is Killing Kids, Say Pediatricians

Mother Jones

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According to the National Pork Producers Coalition, the way the meat industry currently uses antibiotics is no problem. “Existing FDA regulations are increasingly strict and provide adequate safeguards against antibiotic resistance,” the group insists on its website.

But Jerome Paulson and Theoklis Zaoutis disagree. Pediatricians who serve on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Environmental Health, they have published a blunt report in the journal Pediatrics, arguing that systemic overuse of antibiotics in livestock production is a key driver of the resistance crisis, which, they show, sickens 2 million Americans every year, kills 23,000, and runs up an annual healthcare bill of $21 billion annually.

With their developing immune systems, children are particularly vulnerable—salmonella alone causes more then 120,000 illnesses, 44,000 physician visits, 4600 hospitalizations, and 38 deaths annually among kids younger than five, the authors report.

They point out that US livestock producers uses a staggering 32.2 million pounds of antibiotics in 2012 (the last year for which data exist), more than four times the amount used to treat people. Fully 60 percent of the those farm-dispensed drugs “are considered to be important in human medicine,” they add. This annual bombardment of farm antibiotics, they show, kills susceptible bacteria and allows resistant ones to proliferate. Of the Salmonella that commonly show up in the US meat supply, 5 percent are are resistant to 5 or more classes of antibiotic drugs—and 3 percent can withstand ceftriaxone, the “first-line therapy for salmonellosis in pediatrics,” the authors note.

Paulson and Zaoutis then run through the various ways these superbugs move off of farms and threaten people. “Increasingly, food animals are raised in large numbers under close confinement, transported in large groups to slaughter, and processed very rapidly,” they write. “These conditions can cause increased bacterial shedding and contamination of hide, carcass, and meat with fecal bacteria.” Resistant bacteria can also escape the farm through farmers, farm workers, and farm families, and casual visitors, who then can spread the germs throughout the communities. Then there’s the vast concentrations of manure from these facilities, which “can contaminate foods when manure containing resistant organisms is applied to agricultural soils and the organisms are then present in farm runoff.”

They end with a critique of what those pork producers claim are “increasingly strict” FDA rules on farm antibiotic use. Currently, the rules allow farmers to use antibiotics not only to treat to disease but also “prevent” it—a loophole that, as I and others have shown, allows meat producers to maintain current practices. That practice “can harm public health, including child health, through the promotion of resistance,” the authors warm. Who are you going to believe—the folks charged with keeping your kids healthy, or the ones charged with profitably churning out billions of meat animals each year?

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The Meat Industry Is Killing Kids, Say Pediatricians

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This Map Shows Why The Midwest Is Screwed

Mother Jones

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The ongoing drought in California has been, among other things, a powerful lesson in how vulnerable America’s agricultural sector is to climate change. Even if that drought wasn’t specifically caused by man-made global warming, scientists have little doubt that droughts and heat waves are going to get more frequent and severe in important crop-growing regions. In California, the cost in 2014 was staggering: $2.2 billion in losses and added expenses, plus 17,000 lost jobs, according to a UC-Davis study.

California is country’s hub for fruits, veggies, and nuts. But what about the commodity grains grown in the Midwest, where the US produces over half its corn and soy? That’s the subject of a new report by the climate research group headed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer (who recently shut down rumors that he might run for Senate).

The report is all about climate impacts expected in the Midwest, and the big takeaway is that future generations have lots of very sweaty summers in store. One example: “The average Chicago resident is expected to experience more days over 95 degrees F by the century’s end than the average Texan does today.” The report also predicts that electricity prices will increase, with potential ramifications for the region’s manufacturing sector, and that beloved winter sports—ice fishing, anyone?—will become harder to do.

But some of the most troublesome findings are about agriculture. Some places will fare better than others; northern Minnesota, for example, could very well find itself benefiting from global warming. But overall, the report says, extreme heat, scarcer water resources, and weed and insect invasions will drive down corn and soybean yields by 11 to 69 percent by the century’s end. Note that these predictions assume no “significant adaptation,” so there’s an opportunity to soften the blow with solutions like better water management, switching to more heat-tolerant crops like sorghum, or the combination of genetic engineering and data technology now being pursued by Monsanto.

Here’s a map from the report showing which states’ farmers could benefit from climate change—and which ones will lose big time:

Risky Business

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This Map Shows Why The Midwest Is Screwed

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University of Chicago Hires Notorious Goldman Sachs Fraudster to Teach Economics to Undergrads

Mother Jones

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The lone individual found liable for committing fraud during the lead up to the financial crisis will soon be teaching undergrads the basics of economics at one of America’s most prestigious universities. Former Goldman Sachs banker Fabrice Tourre—better known by his self-assigned nickname, “Fabulous Fab”—is studying to get his Ph.D. in economics from University of Chicago. Per the Chicago Maroon, the school’s student newspaper, Tourre will teach a class this semester, offering honors students the opportunity to learn “Elements of Economics Analysis 3” from a man who owes over $1 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tourre is a poster child for Wall Street malfeasance. While working at Goldman in 2007, he designed a financial product called Abacus 2007-AC1. This collection of mortgage-backed securities was designed to fail—hedge funder John Paulson had asked Goldman to sell a package of bad mortgages that he could then bet against. Thanks to Tourre and the foreclosure crisis, Paulson made a cool $1 billion. Fab and Paulson knew Abacus was a bum product from the get-go, but Tourre hide that information from investors. Goldman rewarded Tourre handsomely for the scheme: he was promoted and earned a reported $2 million.

After the crash, though, the deal came under scrutiny. Congress summoned Tourre and other Goldmanites for hearings to examine the causes of the crisis, and Fab drew widespread media attention when e-mails he sent to his girlfriend became public. The e-mails showed Tourre boasting about how he had hoodwinked investors. Here’s an excerpt:

When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: “Well, what if we created a “thing”, which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?”) it sickens the heart to see it shot down in mid-flight.

The emails raised the ire of the SEC, which sued Goldman and Tourre for fraud. The agency settled with Goldman for $550 million in the summer of 2010, but the deal didn’t include protection for Tourre. (Goldman has been covering his legal fees, though). Last year, a federal court found Tourre liable for six counts of civil securities fraud. The fines totaled $1 million, an amount he’s currently contesting. Although the ruling was a victory for people who wanted to see Wall Street pay for the financial crisis, it was a minor win—Tourre, who was 28 when he helped create Abacus, was only a mid-tier employee at Goldman.

Tourre did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon. But last April he granted The Wall Street Journal a glimpse into his life as an average grad student. He was captain of an undefeated intramural soccer team, cheering his teammates own from crutches after an injury. He tutored fellow classmates. But the remnants of his former life of decadence linger. He lives in a high-rise apartment with a scenic view of Lake Michigan and a uniformed guard at the entrance.

The course guide for the class Tourre will be teaching describes it as “an introduction to macroeconomic theory and policy.” There’s no word on whether dreaming up crappy new financial products to sell to unwitting investors will be on the syllabus, too.

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University of Chicago Hires Notorious Goldman Sachs Fraudster to Teach Economics to Undergrads

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China’s going greener, even if it means flattening 700 mountains

China’s going greener, even if it means flattening 700 mountains

China’s economic growth may be slowing for the first time in decades, but its air pollution is still going gangbusters. The city air is choked with fine particulates, and experts are projecting 3.6 million global deaths due to air pollution by 2050, many of them in China. The country announced this week it would be investing $56 billion in cleaning that up over the next three years, in part to appease, as Reuters reports, “increasingly prosperous urban residents.”

AdamCohn

Henry Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs CEO and treasury secretary who became the face of the 2008 economic collapse, has some advice for this newly struggling China. Paulson says the country’s potential “is stifled by traffic and pollution.” From The New York Times:

By adopting a new approach to urbanization, its leaders can assure more balanced investment, address a major source of debt, achieve a consumption windfall and clean up the country’s environment. Otherwise, China’s economic and environmental problems will worsen, with vast implications for the rest of the world …

A flawed system of municipal finance is driving debt, corruption and dissent, while unsustainable urban planning has yielded polluted cities that are destroying China’s ecosystem. Yet China’s future requires continued urbanization, which, absent a new approach, will only make the problem worse.

Cities can, however, be part of the solution: better urban policies can put China on a healthier path forward, economically and environmentally.

Hey, you know what sounds like a better urban policy to me? Destroying 700 mountains! From The Guardian:

In what is being billed as the largest “mountain-moving project” in Chinese history, one of China’s biggest construction firms will spend £2.2bn to flatten 700 mountains around Lanzhou, allowing development authorities to build a new metropolis on the northwestern city’s far-flung outskirts …

The first stage of the mountain-flattening initiative, which was first reported on Tuesday by the China Economic Weekly magazine, began in late October and will eventually enable a new urban district almost 10 square miles in size to be built.

Yes, of course. This city is so dirty — let’s make it bigger!

Lanzhou, home to 3.6 million people alongside the silty Yellow River, already has major environmental concerns. Last year, the World Health Organisation named it the city with the worst air pollution in China. The city’s main industries include textiles, fertiliser production and metallurgy.

Liu Fuyuan, a former high-level official at the country’s National Development and Reform Commission, told China Economic Weekly that the project was unsuitable because Lanzhou is frequently listed as among China’s most chronically water-scarce municipalities. “The most important thing is to gather people in places where there is water,” he said.

Where once there were 700 mountains and no water, there shall now be this megalopolis. Wait through the ad on this video and you will be graced with the Lanzhou developer’s vision for this future city, from trees to light rail to oil refinery. I’m not sure if I am supposed to excited or so, so scared.

Yeah, I’m gonna go with scared.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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China’s going greener, even if it means flattening 700 mountains

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