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Why Did the Media Ignore the Beirut Bombings One Day Before the Paris Attacks?

by DulcieYIAkvrza Posted on November 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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After the Paris attacks, a popular tweet made the rounds asking why the media was covering it so heavily when they’d ignored a pair of ISIS suicide bombings in Beirut just the day before. Over at Vox, Max Fisher says this is just plain wrong:

The New York Times covered it. The Washington Post, in addition to running an Associated Press story on it, sent reporter Hugh Naylor to cover the blasts and then write a lengthy piece on their aftermath. The Economist had a thoughtful piece reflecting on the attack’s significance. CNN, which rightly or wrongly has a reputation for least-common-denominator news judgment, aired one segment after another on the Beirut bombings. Even the Daily Mail, a British tabloid most known for its gossipy royals coverage, was on the story. And on and on.

Yet these are stories that, like so many stories of previous bombings and mass acts of violence outside of the West, readers have largely ignored.

It is difficult watching this, as a journalist, not to see the irony in people scolding the media for not covering Beirut by sharing a tweet with so many factual inaccuracies.

I get Fisher’s point, but come on. There’s coverage and then there’s coverage. On November 14, the New York Times dedicated a huge banner headline and nearly its entire front page to the Paris attacks. On November 13—well, don’t bother looking for their Beirut story. Fisher is right that they had one, but it ran on page A6. And Vox itself? Beirut was relegated to one mention in its “Sentences” roundup on Thursday. By my count, Paris has so far gotten 26 separate posts.

It’s true that readers tend to tune out reports of violence in the Middle East and other non-rich countries, but so does the media. Justifiable or not, there’s plenty of blame to go around here.

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Why Did the Media Ignore the Beirut Bombings One Day Before the Paris Attacks?

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The Return of the Warblogs

by EverettUHF Posted on November 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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We’re in a war of civilizations. If you won’t say radical Islam, you aren’t serious. We need to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here. They hate us for our freedoms.

I really hoped I’d heard the last of this nonsense around 2003, but I guess not. The sensibility of the post-9/11 warblogs is back, along with all the overweening confidence in amateurish geo-religious belligerence that fueled them the first time around. But at least this time, in the midst of the panic, we have a president who says this when he’s asked about committing more ground troops to the fight against ISIS:

We would see a repetition of what we’ve see before: If you do not have local populations that are committed to inclusive governance and who are pushing back against ideological extremists, that they resurface unless you’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries.

The war against ISIS will be won when Iraq gains the political maturity to provide a working army that’s not merely a tool of the endless Sunni-Shia civil war in the Middle East. We could turn Anbar into a glassy plain, and all that would happen is that something worse than ISIS would crop up.

There’s a lot we can do to defeat ISIS, and most of it we’re already doing. Airstrikes? Check. Broad coalition? Check. Working with Arab allies? Check. Engage with Sunni tribal leaders? Check. Embed with the Iraqi military? Check. There’s more we could do, but often it’s contradictory. You want to arm the Kurds and create a partnership with the Iraqi government? Good luck. You want to defeat Assad and ISIS? You better pick one. You want to avoid a large American ground force and you want to win the war fast? Not gonna happen. Everyone needs to face reality: This is going to be a long effort, and there are no magic slogans that are going to win it. Unfortunately, they can make things worse.

The Paris attacks were barbaric and tragic. Let’s try not to turn our response to them into a tragedy as well.

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The Return of the Warblogs

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How to sell the gas tax to people who hate taxes and love driving

by ASDJonathan Posted on November 10, 2015

How to sell the gas tax to people who hate taxes and love driving

By on 10 Nov 2015commentsShare

Trying to get Americans to raise the gas tax is like trying to get kids to eat healthy. Deep down, both suburban car lovers and sticky little humans know that their respective standoffs are nothing more than ideological grandstanding, and that paying a bit more at the pump and knocking back those peas and carrots won’t actually be the worst thing ever. But here we are, cruising around crumbling infrastructure with our cheap gasoline. And there’s little Joey, starving to death at the kitchen table.

Here’s Grist’s own Ben Adler laying out the very real problems with this standoff — the tax one, not the peas and carrots one:

There is perhaps no more vicious, self-reinforcing cycle in American life today than our dependence on automobiles. We subsidize suburban sprawl through favorable tax treatment, we mandate it through zoning codes, and we socialize the costs of the pollution it causes. We then end up with communities segregated into shopping, offices, and homes, so spread out and car-oriented as to make walking impractical.

… With so much driving necessary to get anywhere, and far too many SUVs on the road, it’s no surprise that Americans are averse to raising taxes on gasoline.

Gas taxes are how we fund federal transportation spending. Currently, the gas tax is just 18.4 cents per gallon, the same as it was in 1993 — and one-third less once adjusted for inflation. Because we haven’t raised it for two decades, we have developed a shortfall for currently authorized spending — and that doesn’t even begin to address the considerably larger amount we should appropriate to fix our crumbling transportation infrastructure.

But a new study published in the journal Energy Policy has revealed a glimmer of hope. Through a series of online surveys conducted between 2012 and 2014, two sociologists at Michigan State University found that people were significantly more likely to support a gas tax hike if they were told that a) the money would go toward energy-efficient transportation, b) the money would go toward infrastructure repair that current taxes couldn’t cover, or c) the money would be refunded equally to all Americans, rather than given to the U.S. Treasury’s General Fund.

(Note to Joey’s parents: One thing that didn’t work was telling survey respondents how much other countries paid for gas. So, you know, maybe stop talking about how much the neighbor girl loves her broccoli.)

To design these surveys, the MSU researchers used what’s called “fear appeal literature.” This is mostly worth pointing out because the world should know that such a thing exists. But also, it’s kind of important. According to the researchers, the findings of such literature show that: “for people to take action against a threat, it is not sufficient that they believe that the threat is severe and that they are susceptible to its consequences. They also must believe that there are practical ways of protecting themselves against the threat.”

Makes sense. People want to know that their sacrifices actually matter. That’s why if I ever have kids, I plan to convince them that we’re all constantly on the verge of spontaneous combustion and that a healthy diet is the only thing keeping the flames at bay. I’ll practically have to pry those Brussels sprouts out of their terrified little hands!

Source:

How voters would accept higher gas tax

, MSU Today.

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New Suitcase Offers Nothing New, Gets Big Writeup in Slate

by LukeSackett Posted on November 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, in what is apparently not an ad, Slate is running an ad for Away, a fabulous new carry-on suitcase designed by two former Warby Parker executives. Here’s the skinny:

To create their carry-on, Rubio and Korey spoke with thousands of people to determine what travelers look for most. They found that many consumers want attractive, well-constructed luggage that provides organization and….

With that in mind, they created a carry-on that has four durable double wheels—a design detail that alone took 20 designs iterations to get right—plus a laundry separation system that keeps belongings organized, YKK zippers that provide stability, and a….

Hmmm. So far that sounds like pretty much every other carry-on suitcase in the galaxy. But wait! What’s behind those ellipses? This:

….and a built-in 10,000 mAh battery that can be charged beforehand and power a smartphone up to five times during a trip.

So let me get this straight. The big selling point of this suitcase is that it includes a built-in battery that’s a lot less convenient than a standalone battery you can put anywhere you want? Or is it just that it has a special pocket for a battery? Either way, who cares? Buy a suitcase and a 10,000 mAh battery (about 20 bucks on Amazon) and you’ll have the same thing the Warby Parker execs are hawking. And probably pay less.

What am I missing? Why did Slate run this?

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New Suitcase Offers Nothing New, Gets Big Writeup in Slate

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This Film Could Change How the Right Wing Feels About Guns

by AugustaHerndon Posted on October 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Evangelical Pastor Rob Schenck was a radical anti-abortion activist who hadn’t put too much thought into gun rights. But rattled by a mass shooting at Washington’s Navy Yard, something inside him shifted; he soon began to question gun culture from a moral standpoint and later preached about the human cost of gun violence instead.

His pivot drew the attention of filmmaker Abigail Disney, grandniece of legendary entertainment mogul Walt Disney. In her gripping directorial debut, The Armor of Light, Disney follows Schenck’s self-exploration into the muddied world of gun control in America. Disney accompanies Schenck to shooting ranges, a National Rifle Association convention, and even a memorable meeting with Lucia McBath, whose son Jordan Davis was shot and killed at a Florida gas station. Along the way, she finds herself wading with Schenck into a moral conflict at the heart of the debate: whether it’s possible to be both anti-abortion and pro-gun.

Mother Jones spoke with Disney about her family’s relationship with the NRA, her friendship with Schenck, and how the documentary shaped her own views on the polarizing gun debate.

Mother Jones: At the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this summer, you mentioned you had a completely different documentary in mind. What was that original idea, and how did it shift to the documentary you eventually made?

Abigail Disney: It was that conservatives and conservative values aren’t really reflected in the radical values of the NRA. And the other idea was that the NRA is not what you think it is: It’s an evolving, ever-changing organization, and it has not always been this radical, right-wing arm of the Republican Party, and that the history of the NRA is in fact really interesting.

All of that really fell away because there’s a real difference between a documentary that was all about facts and history and information. People just don’t get as engaged in that kind of documentary—they don’t fall in love, they don’t cry, they don’t forget who they are, they don’t ride with you. As we realized we had richer, vérité kind of people, what we wanted to do is focus in on the vérité story.

MJ: That original idea delved more into your own family background. Can you tell me a bit about that?

AD: That’s right. I almost forgot about that. When I sat there in 1971 and watched my grandfather open Walt Disney World, I was a little 11-year-old girl who worshiped the ground he walked on. You probably couldn’t have found much daylight between the NRA and the Disney company. They probably would’ve had had identical demographics for the people who really loved those companies. Then in 2008, in Florida, you have them up against each other in a court, because one of the Disney employees has decided to, because he’s an NRA member, challenge Disney’s no-gun policy for employees. How does it happen in not very long, 38 years, that you go from two companies with almost identical constituencies to fighting each other in a court of law about a fundamental issue?

Abigail Disney John L.

MJ: What drew you then to Rob Schenck’s story in particular?

AD: While we were looking at how we were going to talk about Florida, that’s how we met Lucy McBath. We met Rob, and he was such an interesting story. His whole life was interesting. He ended up being such an eloquent man and a deeply thoughtful and sweet person, which was not what I expected when I first met him. That upended the whole project.

MJ: Why choose this evangelical pastor as the subject through which you’re examining the national gun control debate?

AD: There are very few people who have committed more to the pro-life discourse than Rob has. He’s spent time in jail. He has really lived it. He has committed everything he’s had to it. If in fact he believes that every human life was sacred, I knew that if he had his conscious awakened, I knew he wouldn’t be able to close his eyes to it.

MJ: Was he receptive to you focusing on his internal debate?

AD: Oh my God, yeah. It’s a tough subject for him to talk about. It was almost all risk and not a lot of reward. But he recognized that right out of the gate, because he knows how high feelings run on this issue. He saw the writing on the wall. Yeah, of course, he was reluctant. We met over dinner in Union Station in Washington. We had a three-hour conversation that first time. And he said, “Thanks a lot. Now I have to go home and think about this. I’m going to go pray on this and we’ll get in touch.” Laughs. I checked with him every Monday for five weeks, and every week he would say, “I’m still praying.” By the end of the five weeks, I was pretty sure he was going to say no to being in the documentary. So I was pretty shocked when he said, “There’s a deep moral failing in the center of my community, and I can’t pretend I don’t see it anymore. So with or without you I have to go forward.”

MJ: How did you get him to agree to let you act as a fly on the wall as he went through this self-exploration?

AD: I keep wondering if everybody on the political left had someone who they were separated at birth from. Wouldn’t that be interesting if that were true? Once we got to know each other, we had such similar impulses. We saw in a similar way, and we developed a strong friendship. We would talk on the phone for hours, philosophically and theologically, about all of these issues. Around the edges of the film, this lovely friendship started to form. And that’s why he was willing to trust me. He signed a release right away, and I said to him, “I think you’re signing this because you’re afraid you’ll chicken out.” And he said yes. Laughs. He could’ve stopped cooperating, but he trusted me. I feel so grateful for that.

MJ: You mentioned that you and Rob disagreed on a few things. Did that disagreement factor into the documentary at all?

AD: It didn’t, but it impacted the world around the edges of the documentary, and it continues to affect us. Now that we have a friendship, we can engage in those issues. It’s not like dropping an atomic bomb in the middle of everything because we’ll stay friends no matter how we disagree. We do tease each about the things we disagree about. I don’t judge him, and he doesn’t judge me. It’s powerfully important for me as a pro-choice person and person who supports Planned Parenthood to have Rob accept me as not a baby-killing horrible person. That’s actually a massive step away from his original position, and he’s taking a lot of heat in his world just for being my friend, just for hanging around with me.

MJ: One of the most poignant moments in the documentary was the one when Lucy McBath meets Rob at his place. How did that moment come together?

AD: I get very close to people when I’m shooting them. We would go and shoot a scene with Lucy, and I would spend the whole time telling her about Rob. Then I would go shoot a scene with Rob and tell him all about Lucy. Eventually they wanted to know each other. These are two people who would never have overlapped in any other way or context. We brought to the garden at Rob’s office and just sat and watched what unfolded. I remember weeping behind the camera, because I was so moved by the way they connected.

MJ: What is Rob Schenck up to now? How has his life changed since the documentary’s release?

AD: He’s definitely lost funders to his not-for-profit. He’s lost friendships. He’s a really relational person, so that’s really hard on him. He takes that personally. He’s been surprised by the amount of support we’ve gotten. I’ll tell you: I’ve taken heat from lefties. It’s like, “How dare you let these people speak for themselves? How dare you not make fun of them? You let Rob off too easily for his abortion work. You don’t show us the whole depth of what a horrible person he is. Why are you letting him off so easy?” I’ve taken it from feminist friends, and I’ve taken it from lefty friends too. But that reassures me. If the right is attacking us and the left is attacking us, that’s exactly where we want to be.

MJ: Do you and Rob still differ in the way you approach gun control issues?

AD: He would talk about it as an Evangelical. I could develop every argument that I had for gun control, but I could never have done what Rob did, which was to say: In respecting the Second Amendment, you have to be very careful not to violate the Second Commandment. Only an evangelical could’ve arrived at that. When you say the Second Commandment, you will not take any image before me, which means you can’t worship the image or the crucifix itself. You have to worship God. When you worship an idol, you’re substituting a thing for the ultimate. So therefore, in worshipping the Second Amendment and taking your orders from the Constitution over and above your orders from the Bible, are you in fact violating the Second Commandment? Evangelical ears perk up when you suggest the Second Commandment is being violated. That gets their attention. I never would’ve known that nuisance about these people, so Rob’s able to get under their skin in a way that I never could have.

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This Film Could Change How the Right Wing Feels About Guns

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Here Are the Ridiculous Post-Debate Overnight Online Polls

by KristieE36 Posted on October 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Is it worth reporting the results of the overnight online polls following the debate? Sure. Why not? We all know that online polls are mostly garbage, but we also know that if you aggregate them we can turn dross into gold. So let’s do it! The chart on the right shows you the average of three online polls from Drudge, Time, and CNBC.

Let’s also check out Betfair. Unfortunately, I’ve never been quite sure I know how to interpret their trend charts, but if I did it right this time it looks like Cruz is up, Trump is even, and Rubio, Carson, and Bush are down. Since this is probably all meaningless, I suppose it doesn’t matter much if I’m interpreting the betting results right. Still, one of these days I guess I should figure it out for real.

If this stuff has any legitimacy at all, I’d say that (a) Cruz did well, (b) Rubio might have helped his cause, (c) Carson is ebbing, (d) Jeb is toast, and (e) nobody else changed their standing much. I’m ignoring the huge number of people who thought Trump won the debate because I refuse to believe it.

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Here Are the Ridiculous Post-Debate Overnight Online Polls

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Reports of Entitlements’ Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

by RaymundHuggins Posted on October 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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When news of a bipartisan budget deal began to emerge Monday night, progressives immediately worried that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress would allow cuts to entitlement programs in order to strike a deal with Republicans. “The White House, every Democrat running for president, and every Democrat in Congress should make clear that any deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits would be unacceptable policy—and politically, would be wildly unpopular with voters,” the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said in a statement. House Speaker John Boehner didn’t do much to allay their fears, saying on Tuesday that the deal “is the first significant reform to Social Security since 1983.”

But budget experts say these concerns are unfounded. In fact, the deal actually shores up the finances of an important entitlement program without hurting people who have already earned their benefits.

Released Monday night, the 144-page budget deal would fund the government and raise the debt ceiling for two years, punting any showdown to 2017, after Obama has left the White House. The bill also lifts the tight federal spending caps imposed by the 2011 sequestration law.

Even though the deal saves money by making small cuts to Medicare and Social Security disability insurance (the main part of the program beyond the standard retirement benefits), the budget mostly tinkers around the edges. “The agreement doesn’t have any changes in disability eligibility standards,” says Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It doesn’t change the level of benefits. The small amount of savings are achieved through program integrity measures, which are just efforts to make sure the Social Security Administration is doing the best possible job of who’s actually eligible for benefits.” These sorts of technocratic tinkers are simple measures to ensure the integrity of the programs’ goals, something pushed by both conservatives and progressives.

Primarily, the deal shuts down a pilot program that allows 20 states to dish out benefits without requiring a prior medical sign-off. “To a very small degree, that would reduce the number of people awarded benefits, well less than a percent of the number of people getting benefits,” Van de Water says. “This is designed to produce better decisions, not to make the program more restrictive or less generous.” By awarding benefits slightly less frequently, the deal lengthens the solvency of the disability benefits program.

For Medicare, the deal cuts costs by reducing the amount the government spends on payment rates for providers. When it comes to recipients, the deal stabilizes premiums for a group of seniors who were due for a large rate spike in 2016. Because Social Security isn’t scheduled to get a cost-of-living bump this year, premium rates won’t rise for most people who receive Medicare. For the 30 percent of Medicare Part B recipients for whom rates would have jumped 52 percent next year, the budget deal keeps the current rates in place. But everything evens out for beneficiaries in the end, as the people who benefit this year will have to pay higher premiums down the road. “It’s a good way of spreading out the costs and meaning people aren’t hit by a huge increase this year, and they can budget for it,” Van der Water says. “But it’s not a net benefit over time. It’s simply smoothing things out.”

Original article – 

Reports of Entitlements’ Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

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Mitt Romney Admits Obamacare Was Based on Romneycare—and That It Worked

by GenevieHirsch Posted on October 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Mitt Romney spent much of his campaign for president in 2012 battling “Obamneycare”: the claim that President Barack Obama’s health care initiative was based on Romneycare, the health care system Romney put in place as governor of Massachusetts.

Yet on Friday, Romney appeared finally to admit the obvious—that the Affordable Care Act was based on the Bay State’s successful health care initiative. What’s more, the man who ran on a platform of repealing Obamacare seemed to concede that the national health care law is working.

“Without Tom pushing it, I don’t think we would have had Romneycare,” Romney told the Boston Globe for an obituary of his friend, Staples founder Tom Stemberg, who passed away Friday. “Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So without Tom, a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.”

That was some admission, and a tremendous flip-flop for Romney. But then came—wait for it—another Romney flip-flop on this matter. On Friday afternoon, Romney took to Facebook to declare that he still opposed Obamacare:

Getting people health insurance is a good thing, and that’s what Tom Stemberg fought for. I oppose Obamacare and believe it has failed. It drove up premiums, took insurance away from people who were promised otherwise, and usurped state programs. As I said in the campaign, I’d repeal it and replace it with state-crafted plans.

Link:

Mitt Romney Admits Obamacare Was Based on Romneycare—and That It Worked

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Obamacare Can Help Keep People Off Disability

by HelaineCopley Posted on October 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Lydia DePillis tells us today about Paul Khouri, who has a rare and expensive medical condition. After steadily losing hours at his job, he finally lost his health insurance:

So instead of going out and trying to support himself with another job, Khouri took the safer option: Applying for Social Security disability insurance and Medicaid. It was a long process, requiring visits to doctor after doctor. Finally getting approved brought some relief — until he realized that returning to work would bring new complications. If he earned more than about $1,000 every month, he would quickly lose the medical assistance he desperately needed.

“It’s really scary when you’re worried about how much money you can make, because you don’t want to make too much,” Khouri says. “But at the same time, the benefits aren’t enough.” The average federal disability check is about $1,200 a month, which puts people right around the poverty line; Khouri is staying in his parents’ house to save on rent.

The prospect of falling over the “cash cliff,” as the sudden dropoff in disability insurance is known, is part of what’s keeping people with disabilities out of the workforce, despite many programs put in place over the years to reduce that disincentive.

DePillis spins this out as a way of explaining some problems with the Social Security disability program, but this is a little unclear. Khouri was apparently able to get a new job that paid $30,000 per year, but couldn’t accept the full salary because he wanted to stay eligible for Medicaid benefits. But he can’t be turned down for Obamacare, so why not sign up for that? With an expensive condition, Khouri would likely pay the full $2,000 annual premium plus the $6,600 out-of-pocket max every year, but that would still leave him with $21,400. Even after taxes, this is more than he gets from disability payments, and he wouldn’t have to limit his future promotions.

Maybe I’m missing something. It’s true that Medicaid is more reliable, since you can’t lose it regardless of whether you have any income. More generally, this stuff can be tricky and there are sometimes details that aren’t obvious from the outside. Still, while a better, more universal health care system would certainly help here, even Obamacare seems like it would help a lot.

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Obamacare Can Help Keep People Off Disability

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No, Poor People Don’t Inherit a Lot of Money

by JeromeBlackweld Posted on October 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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I had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I missed the twilight session of the Benghazi hearing. When I got home, it was 8 pm on the East Coast….and the hearing was still going on. Yikes. I assume I didn’t miss anything, did I?

Anyway, while I was in the waiting room I was browsing The Corner and came across the graphic on the right. It struck me as peculiar. The bottom income quintile in America gets 43 percent of its wealth from inheritance? Even granting that these households don’t have much wealth to begin with, that really didn’t seem right.

There was a link to piece by Kevin Williamson that turned out to be two years old—which is something like two decades in blog years. Still, I was curious, and I had nothing else to do while I waited. So I clicked the link. Here’s what Williamson says:

For the top income quintile, gifts and inheritances amount to 13 percent of household wealth, according to research published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics….Meanwhile, inherited money makes up 43 percent of the wealth of the lowest income group and 31 percent for the second-lowest. In case our would-be class warriors are having trouble running the numbers here, that means that inherited money on net reduces wealth inequality in the United States.

This is pretty misleading. I tracked down the BLS report, and it turns out this 43 percent figure is only for those households that inherit anything in the first place. But as you might expect, a mere 17 percent of low-income households report any inheritance at all. If you average this wealth across all low-income households, inheritance accounts for about 7.4 percent of the wealth of the entire group. If you do the same thing for the top earners, inheritance accounts for about 4.9 percent of the wealth of the entire group.

So….7.4 percent vs. 4.9 percent. When you compare entire groups, which is the right way to do this, there’s not very much difference between the two. And in a practical sense, the difference is even more negligible. If you run out the numbers, the wealth of the bottom group increased from $56,000 to $63,000 per household. Big whoop. Conversely, the wealth of the top group increased from $7.2 million to $7.6 million. That’s a nice chunk of change. In a technical sense, the low-income group got a bigger percentage increase, and income inequality has been reduced. But in any normal human sense, $7,000 is such a tiny amount that it doesn’t matter. In a nutshell, rich people inherit a lot of money and poor people don’t.

I’m not really sure what the point of being misleading about this is, since Williamson’s main themes in the linked piece are (a) rich people don’t get most of their money from inheritance, and (b) rich people are mostly married and work a lot of hours. Those things are both true, and there’s no real reason to toss in the other stuff. All it does is provide grist for other people to make misleading graphics later on.

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No, Poor People Don’t Inherit a Lot of Money

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