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DHS Funding Fight Is Going Down to the Wire

by GemmaMcMinn Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

We’re getting down to the wire in the funding fight over the Department of Homeland Security: DHS will shut down this weekend if funding isn’t approved by Friday. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell wants to simply hold two separate votes: one to fund DHS and another to repeal President Obama’s recent immigration actions. But tea partiers in the House are adamantly opposed to that: they want to keep the two things together in one bill, which they hope will force Democrats to cave in and kill the immigration plan. In reality, it will only produce deadlock in the Senate and a shutdown of DHS that Republicans will be blamed for. So what’s John Boehner to do? Greg Sargent comments:

We’ve seen this particular thriller a number of times already. Here’s how it always goes: We are told there’s no way Boehner would ever dare move must-pass legislation with a lot of Democrats. He’s stuck! Then pressure builds and builds, and Boehner does end up passing something with a lot of Democrats. Last I checked, he’s still Speaker.

….The fact that Boehner has the mere option of passing clean funding with the help of a lot of Democrats is rarely even mentioned. You can read article after article about this whole showdown and not be informed of that basic fact. Thus, the actual reason we’re stuck in this crisis — Boehner is delaying the moment where he does pass something with Dems for as long as possible — goes oddly unmentioned. Yet recent history suggests that Boehner himself knows this is how it will end, and that all of this drama won’t change the outcome.

Probably so. After all, the only thing that changed in the last election was control of the Senate, and Senate Republicans are willing to compromise. The House is probably going to have to go down that road eventually too.

But my guess is that they’re going to shut down DHS for a while first. Boehner has made it pretty clear that he feels like he needs to demonstrate his conservative bona fides at the beginning of this new session of Congress, and that means holding out as long as he can. It’s a waste of time, and it’s going to hurt Republican efforts to work on other legislation, but that’s life. Symbols are important, and Boehner needs to show whose side he’s on. There’s a good chance this will last a couple of weeks before it gets resolved.

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DHS Funding Fight Is Going Down to the Wire

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What the Broadband Industry Really Needs Isn’t Net Neutrality. It Needs Competition.

by QJYBerthafcqn Posted on February 24, 2015

Mother Jones

Will strong net neutrality rules reduce the incentive for cable companies to invest in high-speed network infrastructure? Maybe, though similar rules certainly haven’t had that effect in the cell phone market. Of course, the cell phone market is intensely competitive, and that’s probably the real difference between the two. As Tim Lee notes today, Comcast’s cable division is immensely profitable—certainly profitable enough to fund plenty of new high-speed infrastructure. But why should they bother?

Comcast’s high profits are evidence of high barriers to entry in the broadband industry. Ordinarily, a company that consistently made billions of dollars in profits would attract new competitors seeking to capture a piece of the market.

But with a few exceptions — such as Google’s projects in Kansas City and elsewhere — this hasn’t really happened. In most parts of Comcast’s service territory, consumers’ only alternative for broadband service is the local phone company.

Conversely, Comcast doesn’t seem interested in trying to steal market share from rivals. Comcast could expand into the service territory of neighboring cable companies or it could spend money building a next-generation fiber optic network the way Verizon and Google have done. Instead, they’ve chosen to spend more money rewarding shareholders than investing in their networks.

Given current political realities, strong net neutrality rules are a good idea. But an even better idea would be to forget about net neutrality and open up local markets to real competition. I think we’d find out pretty quickly that broadband suppliers have plenty of money for infrastructure upgrades if the alternative is a steadily shrinking market share as competitors start eating their lunch.

Competition is good. Big companies don’t like it, and our approach to antitrust enforcement has unfortunately lost sight of competition as a sufficient raison d’être. That’s too bad. It’s the cure for a lot of ills and a way to keep the rest of the regulatory state relatively light. It’s well past time for us to rediscover this.

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What the Broadband Industry Really Needs Isn’t Net Neutrality. It Needs Competition.

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Quote of the Day: "I am coming after you with everything I have."

by BettyWhitefoord Posted on February 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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From Bill O’Reilly, to a reporter who called to ask about a Mother Jones report that he had wildly exaggerated his coverage of the Falklands War:

During a phone conversation, he told a reporter for The New York Times that there would be repercussions if he felt any of the reporter’s coverage was inappropriate. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “You can take it as a threat.”

Charming, as always. And once again, this is the difference between O’Reilly and Brian Williams. O’Reilly and Fox News will never admit any wrongdoing, and will fight back with everything they’ve got. There will be no six-month suspension for Bill O’Reilly.

Will it work? Probably yes. After all, O’Reilly is paid to be a windbag, so the fact that he’s exaggerated some stuff on his personal resume seems like it’s just part of the package. Still, I admit that this episode is getting a lot more attention than it was when I first commented on it. The fact that the New York Times is covering it on its front page is proof of that. So maybe it’s going to hurt O’Reilly more than I thought. Stay tuned.

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Quote of the Day: "I am coming after you with everything I have."

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Once Again: What’s the Deal With the Pretense That the Academy Awards Are Supposed to Last 3 Hours?

by EbonyCastles Posted on February 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Kelsey McKinney writes today about why Joan Rivers was left out of the “In Memoriam” segment at the Oscars last night:

The sequence, ultimately, only has so much room. Every year dozens of Academy Award nominees die, but there’s only room to memorialize about 30 of them in a show that almost always runs over time already.

Whoa. Hold on. The Academy Awards almost never run over time. They are, quite plainly, expected to last 3½ hours. For one thing, they always last 3½ hours.1 For another, there’s abundant evidence that show directors know exactly how long each bit is going to last. And there’s also the evidence of other awards shows, which demonstrates that directors can hit a scheduled end mark within a minute or two. Every time. So they know perfectly well that the Oscar telecast is going to last 3½ hours.

But for some reason, the publicly acknowledged length of the show is 3 hours. Why? I’ve asked this before. It can’t be too deep a secret since it’s so obviously planned this way and has been for years. But why?

1Actually this year they really did run long, a little over 3 hours and 35 minutes. But that’s unusual.

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Once Again: What’s the Deal With the Pretense That the Academy Awards Are Supposed to Last 3 Hours?

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Factlet of the Day: Office Workers Will Soon Have Less Space Than Supermax Prisoners

by Garland5332 Posted on February 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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The open plan revolution has wrought its havoc:

The average amount of space per office worker in North America dropped to 176 square feet in 2012, from 225 in 2010, according to CoreNet Global, a commercial real estate association.

Here’s the “explanation”:

Bosses — and the designers and architects they hire — are betting that most employees will not notice the difference. “The balance between individual spaces and community spaces has changed drastically,” said David Bright, a senior vice president of Knoll, the office furnishing manufacturer, “with shared and community spaces taking up a greater proportion of space than they once did.”

….The argument for more communal space is that open offices foster communication and accidental creativity — that serendipity is a plus, if serendipity is defined as bumping into co-workers and chatting about projects they may not necessarily be assigned to.

Oh, I’m willing to bet that employees have noticed the difference. Maybe not the 20-somethings who have never been treated like anything but cattle in their lives, but everyone else feels the squeeze. They’ll shut up about it, because who wants to be the old dinosaur opposed to “communication and accidental creativity”? But believe me, they’ve all noticed.

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Factlet of the Day: Office Workers Will Soon Have Less Space Than Supermax Prisoners

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 February 2015

by DegaLockyer Posted on February 20, 2015

Mother Jones

The quilts are back! This is Hopper peering down from the second story hallway and surveying her domain from between the quilts hanging over the railing. Amusingly, Hilbert saw her and immediately started fussing and mewling, trying to figure out to get up to her. He jumped on a bench, but that wasn’t high enough. He put his paws up on the wall, but plainly couldn’t climb up it. Finally, after about a minute of this nonsense, a neuron fired somewhere and he remembered that all he had to do was run up the stairs. So he did, and then immediately lost interest in whatever it was he thought he wanted. But it was touch and go there for a while.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 February 2015

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Quote of the Day: The Surveys Will Continue Until Morale Improves

by Lenore38Gawtf Posted on February 20, 2015

Mother Jones

From a study of low morale in the Department of Homeland Security, explaining why the authors hadn’t made much progress in figuring out why morale was low:

“Other entities had already engaged employees in efforts to assess morale,” and as a result, DHS employees were developing “interview/survey fatigue.”

Survey fatigue! Otherwise known as stop screwing around with your endless damn assessments and just do something, OK?

But apparently more studies are in the works anyway. Will they improve morale? Stay tuned for next week’s exciting episode!

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Quote of the Day: The Surveys Will Continue Until Morale Improves

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The NSA Has Access to Your Cell Phone’s Encryption Key. And Everyone Else’s Too.

by TobiasKethel Posted on February 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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The surveillance state, it turns out, is even bigger and badder than we thought. Previously, the story from the NSA has been: yes, we have access to petabytes of telephone metadata (who you called, what time you called, etc.), but we don’t have routine access to your actual conversations. And this even made a kind of sense: telephone companies store bulk metadata and can make it available to the NSA. They don’t record phone conversations. Besides, on cell phones those conversations are encrypted anyway.

But guess what? That encryption depends on a key stored on the SIM card inside your cell phone. If you have access to the key, you can listen in to all the conversations you want.

You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Here is Jeremy Scahill at the Intercept:

American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

….The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world.

….According to one secret GCHQ slide, the British intelligence agency penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks, planting malware on several computers, giving GCHQ secret access….Most significantly, GCHQ also penetrated “authentication servers,” allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications between a targeted individual’s phone and his or her telecom provider’s network. A note accompanying the slide asserted that the spy agency was “very happy with the data so far and was working through the vast quantity of product.”

The folks at Gemalto say they had no idea any of this had happened. Apparently it was a very stealthy hack indeed. As you might expect, there is much, much more at the link.

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The NSA Has Access to Your Cell Phone’s Encryption Key. And Everyone Else’s Too.

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How Big a Deal Would It Be If Red States Lost Their Obamacare Subsidies?

by DevonMarden Posted on February 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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What happens if the Supreme Court somehow persuades itself that Obamacare subsidies shouldn’t be available to people in states that rely on the federal exchange? Answer: in the red states that have refused to operate their own exchanges, lots of people would lose their subsidies—and most likely lose their health insurance too, since they could no longer afford it.

We already know that most red-state governors don’t care about that. After all, if they did care they’d accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which would provide health care to millions of their residents. So Greg Sargent takes a different tack today. What would it mean to state economies if their subsidies go away? Sargent’s rough calculations are on the right. Florida, for example, would lose about $5 billion per year, which would be a hit to its economy. Would that be likely to convince its governor to start up a state exchange so that subsidies would keep flowing?

Sadly no. Florida has a state GDP of about $750 billion. The loss of $5 billion would represent about half a percent of the state’s economy. That’s not nothing, but it’s close. And it’s certainly not enough to make up for the opprobrium of being thought soft on Obamacare.

So….nice try. But I think we’re pretty much where we’ve always been: it’s going to be yelling and screaming from constituents and lobbyists that eventually gets red-state governors (and legislatures) to accept any part of Obamacare that they have a choice about. It’s anyone’s guess when that yelling will finally get loud enough.

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How Big a Deal Would It Be If Red States Lost Their Obamacare Subsidies?

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Walmart’s Surprise Wage Increase Might Be Good News About the Economy

by BlairArdill Posted on February 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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This is interesting news, especially in the wake of my earlier post about the dismal state of earnings growth in 2014. Walmart is raising wages:

The retail giant, which has been criticized for continuing to pay some employees the bare legal minimum, said that all of its United States workers would earn at least $9 an hour by April and $10 per hour by 2016. That would mean a raise for about 40 percent of its work force, to at least $1.75 above the federal minimum wage, the retailer said….Walmart’s move follows in the footsteps of retailers like Gap and Ikea, which both took steps last year to keep pay above federal minimum wage level, in an effort to lessen turnover and attract more lower-wage workers.

….In trying to address other major complaints from workers, Walmart said it would work to make scheduling easier and more predictable, and would also improve employee training.

Why is Walmart doing this? I hope Neil Irwin is right:

The best possible news would be if Walmart’s executives made this decision not out of a desire for good press or for a squishy sense of do-gooderism, but because coldhearted business strategy compelled it.

….The company’s sales and profits rose nicely between 2007 and 2014 while the company kept a lid on its payroll. Gains went to Walmart shareholders, not Walmart workers. So what has changed? The simple answer is that the world for employers is very different with a 5.7 percent unemployment rate (the January level) than it was five years ago, at 9.8 percent. Finding qualified workers is harder for employers now than it was then, and their workers are at risk of jumping ship if they don’t receive pay increases or other improvements. Apart from pay, Walmart executives said in their conference call with reporters that they were revising their employee scheduling policies so that workers could have more predictability in their work schedules and more easily get time off when they needed it, such as for a doctor’s appointment.

Megan McArdle highlights some recent changes in Walmart’s business strategy, such as a stronger focus on e-commerce, groceries, and better inventory control:

What a lot of these changes have in common is that you need good workers to execute them well. (Terrible things happen in the grocery business unless you have an absolutely passionate commitment to rooting out expired meat and past-it produce.) Keeping stock on the shelves doesn’t sound hard until you try to get resentful teenagers to actually do so. And so forth.

One way to get a more dedicated and experienced workforce is to pay workers more. They’ll stay longer, and they’ll be very eager to keep that job. Wal-Mart had clearly previously concluded that it didn’t need a dedicated and experienced workforce composed of people who were really eager to keep their jobs. Now the company seems to have changed its mind.

From any other retailer, this would just be an isolated bit of news. From Walmart, it’s potentially a big deal—thanks both to Walmart’s sheer size and its impact on other retailers. Maybe, just maybe, it’s a sign that the labor market really is starting to tighten.

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Walmart’s Surprise Wage Increase Might Be Good News About the Economy

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