Tag Archives: people

Here’s Yet Another Obamacare Non-Horror Story

by ConnorWattersto Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here in California, we keep feeling the hammer blows of Obamacare. Thanks to the new law, our state’s largest individual health insurer is being forced to jack up insurance premiums for thousands of — oh wait. Let’s read the fine print here:

Thousands of Anthem Blue Cross individual customers with older insurance policies untouched by Obamacare are getting some jarring news: Their premiums are going up as much as 25%….Anthem Blue Cross said its plan to raise rates reflects that escalating healthcare costs are an economic reality industrywide.

The company said customers do have new options thanks to the healthcare law. “Many of the members affected here may be eligible for federal subsidies via the Covered California exchange and may have lower premiums if they decide to switch to an Affordable Care Act-compliant policy,” company spokesman Darrel Ng said.

Roger that. Premiums are skyrocketing for policies that have nothing to do with Obamacare. What’s more, Anthem Blue Cross is recommending that affected customers might want to check out the Obamacare exchange to see if they can get a better deal there.

This is yet another reason to be skeptical of claims that Obamacare is responsible for rate shock all over the country. It’s not a myth. It really has happened to some people. But the truth is that it affects only a small number of people; the horror story anecdotes routinely turn out to be either exaggerated or flatly false; and insurance companies have been jacking up rates for years anyway. They were going to do it in 2014 whether Obamacare existed or not.

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Here’s Yet Another Obamacare Non-Horror Story

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Are Fitbit, Nike, and Garmin Planning to Sell Your Personal Fitness Data?

by bestpage Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Lately, fitness-minded Americans have started wearing sporty wrist-band devices that track tons of data: Weight, mile splits, steps taken per day, sleep quality, sexual activity, calories burned—sometimes, even GPS location. People use this data to keep track of their health, and are able send the information to various websites and apps. But this sensitive, personal data could end up in the hands of corporations looking to target these users with advertising, get credit ratings, or determine insurance rates. In other words, that device could start spying on you—and the Federal Trade Commission is worried.

“Health data from a woman’s connected device, may be collected and then sold to data brokers and other companies she does not know exist,” Jessica Rich, director of the Bureau for Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, said in a speech on Tuesday for Data Privacy Day. “These companies could use her information to market other products and services to her; make decisions about her eligibility for credit, employment, or insurance; and share with yet other companies. And many of these companies may not maintain reasonable safeguards to protect the data they maintain about her.”

Several major US-based fitness device companies contacted by Mother Jones—Fitbit, Garmin, and Nike—say they don’t sell personally identifiable information collected from fitness devices. But privacy advocates warn that the policies of these firms could allow them to sell data, if they ever choose to do so.

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Are Fitbit, Nike, and Garmin Planning to Sell Your Personal Fitness Data?

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White House Vows to Respond to Petition Demanding Deportation of Justin Bieber

by tf942pe Posted on January 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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You’ve all heard that embattled Canadian pop star Justin Bieber was recently arrested for alleged drag racing and drunk driving. Now the Obama White House has promised to weigh in on the incident and resulting backlash.

In late 2011, the White House launched its We the People initiative, an online system in which anyone can create an account and petition the government. If a petition reaches a certain number of signatures (currently set at 100,000) within a month of its posting, the Obama administration’s own rules require White House staff to respond.

A new petition, created on January 23, has reached that threshold. It’s titled, “Deport Justin Bieber and revoke his green card,” and it reads:

We the people of the United States feel that we are being wrongly represented in the world of pop culture. We would like to see the dangerous, reckless, destructive, and drug abusing, Justin Bieber deported and his green card revoked. He is not only threatening the safety of our people but he is also a terrible influence on our nations youth. We the people would like to remove Justin Bieber from our society.

(The petition is tagged under the issues of “criminal justice and law enforcement,” “human rights,” and “women’s issues.”)

The We the People page hosts a wide variety of petitions, including ones that focus on subjects such as AIDS prevention and mass shootings in America. But the White House also receives—and sometimes responds to—frivolous petitions, including one asking the Obama administration to build the Death Star and another calling for states to adopt Pokémon characters as state animals. (The latter was yanked from the government website.)

The usual White House rules indeed apply to the Bieber petition, Matt Lehrich, an assistant White House press secretary, confirms in an email to Mother Jones:

Every petition that crosses the threshold will be reviewed by the appropriate staff and receive a response. Response times vary based on total volume of petitions, subject matter, and a variety of other factors.

A previous White House petition called for the deportation of CNN host Piers Morgan because of his strong support for gun control in America. White House press secretary Jay Carney issued a response defending the First Amendment, and Morgan is still working in the United States.

We’ll see if the White House’s response has any impact on Bieber’s feelings about the Obama administration. As of the president’s reelection, things seemed pretty good:

But on a serious note, if you’d like to read about how Bieber’s case highlights the complexities of America’s deportation system, click here.

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White House Vows to Respond to Petition Demanding Deportation of Justin Bieber

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Rep. Michael Grimm’s Challenger Weighs In: "A Shameful Abuse of Power"

by jjhhhjz Posted on January 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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New York GOP Rep. Michael Grimm’s outburst after last night’s State of the Union was problematic because members of Congress (or anyone, really) aren’t supposed to threaten to throw reporters off balconies—at least not when a camera is rolling. But Grimm’s aggressive confrontation with NY1’s Michael Scotto also complicates an already difficult re-election campaign. Although the 11th district is New York City’s most conservative, it still voted for President Barack Obama by a 51–47 margin in 2012, making Grimm one of just a handful of Republicans representing blue-leaning districts. To that end, he was already one of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s top targets heading into 2014, even before he threatened to “break” Scotto “in half. Like a boy.” And unlike last cycle, when the Democratic nominee was dismissed as a former actor who lived with his dad, Grimm is facing a viable challenger in the form of former New York City council member Domenic Recchia Jr.

On Wednesday, Recchia was quick to pounce, issuing a statement blasting the incumbent:

Michael Grimm’s behavior last night was disgraceful, completely unacceptable, and unbefitting of a United States Congressman. Using threats of physical violence to intimidate the press from doing their jobs is against everything our country—and our government—stands for, and is a shameful abuse of power.

Michael Grimm owes Michael Scotto and the NY1 team an apology. He also owes the people of Staten Island and South Brooklyn an apology. The people of this district deserve leadership that in the wake of the President’s State of the Union is focused and committed to restoring the promise of the American Dream for all Americans. They deserve leadership that is focused on creating jobs, stimulating the economy, investing in transportation alternatives, and strengthening the middle class. Instead they’ve got Michael Grimm, who is clearly part of the distractions plaguing Congress, not the solutions. It’s time the people of this district had a representative focused on working for them.

Grimm already delivered on one of those apologies—on Wednesday he called Scotto to apologize.

Continued – 

Rep. Michael Grimm’s Challenger Weighs In: "A Shameful Abuse of Power"

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8 Tips for Greening Your Super Bowl Party

by Teofilnpc Posted on January 29, 2014

Hosting a green Super Bowl party is easy if you follow some of our simple tips. Photo: Shutterstock

The National Football League has taken steps to make Super Bowl XLVIII a green event, including purchasing renewable energy certificates, hosting e-waste recycling events and using biodiesel in outdoor generators.

How can you do your part? If you’re hosting a party for the big game, help green the event by making your gathering as eco-friendly as possible. To help you do so, we’ve put together a list of eight simple tips for planning your green Super Bowl party.

1. Green your TV

Even your TV can be green. Photo: Shutterstock

Having a group of people watch a game together does save some energy, since only one TV will be on instead of many. Still, most people want to see a football game on a big screen. If you’re considering buying a new TV for your party, choose an energy-efficient model. Many televisions are Energy Star certified, and on average these models are 25 percent more energy efficient than other models.

If you do choose to buy a new TV, be sure to donate or recycle your old one. The EPA offers suggestions for where to do this, or you can search for local options here at Earth911.

Next page: Make food at home

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8 Tips for Greening Your Super Bowl Party

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Republicans Are Trying to Build a Better Primary

by KennethCovingto Posted on January 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Bernstein reports on Republican efforts to shorten the primary season:

If all goes according to plan, the result will be votes in the first four (“carve-out”) states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina — in February, followed by votes in rapid succession in March and April, with the primary season finishing up in May. That’s a lot more compressed than the January-to-June schedule of the past few cycles.

….The 2012 cycle, the theory goes, just went on too long, with eventual nominee Mitt Romney taking too many shots from other candidates. My feeling, however, is that the hits Romney took almost certainly didn’t matter for the fall campaign. The real lesson of 2012 that Republicans should worry about is that virtually any crank, no matter how little qualified for president, can have a very good two weeks….It’s essentially the stories of Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum in 2012.

By compressing the calendar, you increase the danger that a mediocre or worse candidate could get hot at just the right time and wrap up the nomination before the party has time to stop it….The March crunch could get so momentous that it overwhelms the rest of the schedule. In other words, if crunch time in March takes on the air of a de facto national primary — even one spread out over two or three weeks — it could mean trouble.

I agree that compressing the actual voting might not matter much. These days, primary campaigns start early: we’ll almost certainly have several declared candidates by early 2015 and a full field by the middle of the year. Those guys are going to be out on the trail taking shots for a very long time no matter what. Besides, primary season is almost always effectively over by March or April anyway, even if there are a few Ron Paul-esque stragglers who refuse to concede for PR reasons. It rarely lasts more than 14 or 15 weeks.

So what about Bernstein’s theory that the real problem is beefing up the invisible primary so that fringe candidates are booted out early? I’m not so sure about that either. The clown show of 2012 was truly sui generis, something that’s never really happened before. And I’m not so convinced that any of the fringe folks would have had better odds in a compressed primary season, as he suggests. Sure, they each got hot for a week or two, but they typically got hot in one or two states. I don’t think they could have replicated that performance if they’d been competing in lots of different states at once.

But I could be wrong! Generally speaking, my advice to both parties is simple: Make your primaries as similar to a general election as possible. That would mean, for example, ditching the Iowa caucuses, since the kind of retail politics that win in Iowa are irrelevant to success in November. What you want is a candidate that can raise lots of money; appeal to lots of people; and has a good media presence. That’s what wins general elections these days, and a successful primary season is one that gives the advantage to those qualities. The quaint notion that New Hampshire is a great place to start because it’s a small state and gives everyone a chance is ridiculous. No modern political party should want a process that gives everyone a chance. They should want a process that brutally winnows out the vanity candidates and narrows the field to folks who know how to win on the big stage.

It won’t happen because it would require the parties to play massive hardball with the Iowas and New Hampshires of the world, something they won’t do. But they probably should.

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Republicans Are Trying to Build a Better Primary

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Is Our Robot Future Really All That Speculative Anymore?

by NanceeDundalli Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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James Pethokoukis points us to a new working paper about economic growth released by the San Francisco Fed this month. Here’s a piece:

Even more speculatively, artificial intelligence and machine learning could allow computers and robots to increasingly replace labor in the production function for goods….In standard growth models, it is quite easy to show that this can lead to a rising capital share — which we intriguingly already see in many countries since around 1980 (Karabarbounis and Neiman, 2013) — and to rising growth rates. In the limit, if capital can replace labor entirely, growth rates could explode, with incomes becoming inï¬&#129;nite in ï¬&#129;nite time.

Pethokoukis comments:

The Fed paper is particularly amazing when you consider that when outgoing Fed chairman Ben Bernanke mentioned “robotics” in a commencement address last spring, he was the first US central-bank boss to use the word in a speech since Alan Greenspan in 2000. Expect more mentions from Janet Yellen.

Technological progress in AI and robotics — even short of the singularity — raises huge questions about the future of work, mobility, and inequality….What do we make of all those long-range economic and fiscal forecasts from folks at the Fed, Congressional Budget Office, and other expert groups? How do we plan for a future that may be just as revolutionary, if not more so, as the Industrial Revolution?

My long-form take on this is here. The thing that gets me is that so many people continue to think of this as wild speculation. I don’t mean the infinite incomes stuff, which is obviously hyperbole since we’ll always need more than just capital to make the economy run. I just mean the general idea that robots and AI are pretty obviously going to have a huge economic impact in the medium term future. This is something that seems so obvious to me that I’m a little puzzled that there’s anyone left who still doesn’t see it. Nonetheless, an awful lot of people still think of this as science fiction. I put the doubters into four rough buckets:

  1. Moore’s Law is going to to break down sometime very soon, and we’ll never get the raw computing power we need for true AI.
  2. There is something mysterious about the human brain that we will never be able to emulate with silicon and software. Maybe something, um, quantum.
  3. Meh. We’ve been hearing about AI forever. It’s never happened before, it’s not going to happen this time either.
  4. La la la la la.

#1 is at least plausible. I think we’re too far along for it to be taken very seriously anymore, but you never know. #2 is basically New Age nonsense dressed up as physics. #3 is understandable, but lazy. We heard about going to the moon for a long time too, but it didn’t happen until the technology curve caught up. We’re at the same point with AI. #4 is the group of people who kinda sorta accept that AI is coming, but for various reasons simply don’t want to grapple with what this means. Conservatives don’t like the idea that it almost inevitably will require a much more redistributive society. Liberals don’t like the idea that it might make a lot of standard lefty social programs obsolete.

As a liberal believer, I’ll put myself in the latter camp. I’m not willing to give up on the standard liberal social program because (a) I might be wrong about AI, (b) if I’m not, we’re still going to need variations on these programs, and (c) we still have to deal with the transition period anyway. I assume conservative believers might feel roughly the same way.

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Is Our Robot Future Really All That Speculative Anymore?

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Are Breakfast Meetings a Sign of Hopeless Incompetence?

by RoxanaSaunders Posted on January 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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For most of my career, I was blessed with bosses who almost never insisted on holding breakfast meetings. I hated them and rarely found them very productive because half the group was still trying to rub the sleep out of their eyes. Today, Paul Krugman provides his own theory of breakfast meetings, based on his stint at the CEA in 1982:

I can understand why busy, productive people might sometimes want to meet at 7 AM. But what soon became completely clear was that the people who insisted on those early meetings were precisely the least competent and productive guys — the economics team at the NSC, which was totally hopeless in the Reagan years, the team at Agriculture (ditto), and so on. (No offense to current personnel, who I hope are in a completely different class; there were a lot of really strange people allegedly doing economics in the early Reagan period.) It was hard not to conclude that they were making a show of being incredibly busy and hard-working; they probably went back to their offices after breakfast and read Ayn Rand novels or something.

Meanwhile, people at USTR and the Fed, who really did know what they were doing, showed no similar fetish.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that for most of my career I was also blessed with bosses who were pretty competent folks.

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Are Breakfast Meetings a Sign of Hopeless Incompetence?

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What’s Kathleen Hanna Listening to 16 Years Post-Bikini Kill?

by ggkk2121333 Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Two decades ago, Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, who now fronts a quintet called The Julie Ruin, was at the forefront of the punk-rock feminist movement. I asked the riot grrrl icon what she’s listening to nowadays, and here’s what she had to say. To read the rest of our interview, click here.

1. I’d say Santigold is probably my favorite younger artist. “Creator” is the song that I listen to when I’m really like, “I can’t do it anymore!” It’s such a bold statement about being someone who makes stuff, whatever that stuff is. It gives me so much confidence.

2. I really like Grimes a lot. I love that she produces her music and she’s unapologetic about being a feminist. It sounds like a contradiction to mix fashion with feminism and I really love that she just walks through that like, “What do you mean? There’s no contradiction.”

3. I’ve been really into Vic Chesnutt lately. His music is so moving and so beautiful, and his voice is just so different than anybody else’s. I’ve lost a lot of people to suicide and I can’t listen to the music of friends who died of suicide, but I can listen to his, because he wasn’t my friend. There is sadness in his pain and also just joy. I love the idea that he survives through his music. That’s a really hopeful, sweet thing.

4. I really love LCD Soundsystem—like everybody else on the planet—just the way that James Murphy took so many references of Joy Division, or whatever he was referencing, and really was able to make it his own. He has a great record collection and knows a lot of music and it really comes out in such an interesting, beautiful way. He mixed a song on our record, so I got to meet him, and it was really fun.

5. I love old country music: Hank Williams Senior, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, and all that kind of stuff. George Jones is a favorite. I just really love the style of writing where every chorus is colored by the verse and the verses change what the chorus means. It tells stories of peoples’ lives. I listened to country music as a kid. I’m kind of leaning toward that way of writing as I get older.

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What’s Kathleen Hanna Listening to 16 Years Post-Bikini Kill?

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The Wait Continues for Safe Tap Water in West Virginia

by Myrna Posted on January 11, 2014

After a chemical spill greater than previously estimated, hundreds of thousands of people may have to wait days before the water is declared safe to use again. More here: The Wait Continues for Safe Tap Water in West Virginia ; ;Related ArticlesThousands Without Water After Spill in West VirginiaRising Tide Is a Mystery That Sinks Island HopesAppeals Court Upholds BP Oil Spill Settlement ;

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The Wait Continues for Safe Tap Water in West Virginia

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