Tag Archives: progress

How a Private Equity Firm’s Home Management Led to a Child’s Death

by BraydenUqe Posted on June 23, 2014

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Security is a slippery idea these days—especially when it comes to homes and neighborhoods.

Perhaps the most controversial development in America’s housing “recovery” is the role played by large private equity firms. In recent years, they have bought up more than 200,000 mostly foreclosed houses nationwide and turned them into rental empires. In the finance and real estate worlds, this development has won praise for helping to raise home values and creating a new financial product known as a “rental-backed security.” Many economists and housing advocates, however, have blasted this new model as a way for Wall Street to capitalize on an economic crisis by essentially pushing families out of their homes, then turning around and renting those houses back to them.

Caught in the crosshairs are tens of thousands of families now living in these private equity-owned homes. For them, it’s not a question of economic debate, but of daily safety and stability. Among them are the Cedillos of Chandler, Arizona, a tight-knit family in which the men work in construction and the oil fields, while the strong-willed women balance their studies with work and children, and toddlers learn to dance as early as they learn to walk. Their story of a private equity firm, a missing pool fence, and the death of a two-year-old child raises troubling questions about how, as a nation, we define security in housing and why, in the midst of what’s regularly termed a “recovery,” many neighborhoods may actually be growing increasingly vulnerable.

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How a Private Equity Firm’s Home Management Led to a Child’s Death

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News Analysis: Trying to Reclaim Leadership on Climate Change

by Myrna Posted on June 1, 2014

President Obama’s proposal of new power plant rules is calculated to help keep environmental promises. Link:   News Analysis: Trying to Reclaim Leadership on Climate Change ; ;Related ArticlesEnvironmental Groups Focus on Change by Strengthening Their Political OperationsDot Earth Blog: White House Stresses Widespread Energy Progress Ahead of New Climate RuleWhite House Stresses Widespread Energy Progress Ahead of New Climate Rule ;

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News Analysis: Trying to Reclaim Leadership on Climate Change

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Republicans confirm they don’t know squat about science

by Aaron Doolsey Posted on May 30, 2014

Don’t ask me

Republicans confirm they don’t know squat about science

By

John Boehner’s Flickr feed

House Speaker John Boehner — not a scientist

GOP politicians are using a new tactic when they talk about climate change: playing dumb.

As the Huffington Post reports, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told journalists on Thursday that he’s “not qualified to debate the science over climate change” — but he does know that Obama’s “prescription for dealing with changes in our climate” involves hurting the economy and “killing” American jobs.

This isn’t a wholly new approach, as Climate Progress point out:

“I’m not a scientist,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in 2009, his first in a long line of statements denying climate change. “I’m not sure, I’m not a scientist,” Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) said of climate change in 2010 (Grimm changed his mind on the issue this past April).

The tactic is an interesting (and seemingly effective) way for politicians to avoid acknowledging or denying the reality of climate change while still getting to fight against any regulation to stop it.

Politico has more recent examples:

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott has offered the response “I am not a scientist” on multiple occasions when the topic has come up lately. Even the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have put big money into fighting President Barack Obama’s energy and climate policies, disclaimed any pretense at scientific know-how when wealthy climate activist Tom Steyer challenged them to a debate on climate change.

“We are not experts on climate change,” Koch spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia said in an email to The Wichita Eagle this month. She added, “The debate should take place among the scientific community, examining all points of view and void of politics, personal attacks and partisan agendas.”

While some Republican politicians and their fossil-fuel overlords might be shying away from public attacks on climate science, they’re not shying away from public attacks on climate action. They are already attacking the new climate rules that President Obama plans to announce on Monday. They would rather doom us all to climate chaos than help the nation switch over to renewable energy — and that really is dumb.


Source
John Boehner: ‘I’m Not Qualified To Debate The Science Over Climate Change’, The Huffington Post
Republicans on climate science: Don’t ask us, Politico
Boehner Says He’s ‘Not Qualified’ To Talk About Climate Science. Here’s How Scientists Responded., Climate Progress

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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John Podesta, climate hawk and Keystone opponent, joins Obama team

by Jay Walker Posted on December 11, 2013

John Podesta, climate hawk and Keystone opponent, joins Obama team

By

Center for American Progress

This post has been updated at the bottom with news that Podesta will recuse himself from the Keystone XL decision.

President Obama is getting a new high-level adviser who cares a lot about climate change and doesn’t care much at all for the Keystone XL pipeline.

John Podesta is no stranger to the White House; he served as chief of staff to President Clinton. And he’s no stranger to the Obama team; he led the president’s transition into office after the 2008 election. Since then, he’s served as an “outside adviser,” The New York Times reports, and “has occasionally criticized the administration, if gently, from his perch as the founder and former president of the Center for American Progress, a center-left public policy research group that has provided personnel and policy ideas to the administration.”

For the coming year, he’ll be advising from the inside. He will help out on health care and “will focus in particular on climate change issues, a personal priority of Mr. Podesta’s,” according to the Times. Podesta is expected to encourage Obama to take action through his executive authority, as Congress is unwilling and unable to pass legislation on climate change or much else. “Podesta has been urging Obama for three years to use the full extent of his authority as president to go around Congress,” Politico reports.

Podesta is also an outspoken opponent of Keystone, and his move to the White House is making some Keystone boosters nervous, National Journal reports.

InsideClimate News has more:

His arrival comes just as the decision on TransCanada’s proposal to build a controversial pipeline to deliver tar sands crude from Alberta across the midsection of the United States approaches a critical turning point: the completion of a final environmental impact statement by the State Department. That will be followed by a crucial 90-day period in which Obama must decide whether the pipeline is in the U.S. national interest. …

Podesta has allied himself closely with some of [the environmentalists opposing the pipeline], including the wealthy investor Tom Steyer, who has been mobilizing opposition to the project. They appeared together at CAP’s conference to celebrate its 10th anniversary this fall.

Just last week, CAP co-sponsored a daylong conference with Steyer’s team in Georgetown to argue that the pipeline could not pass the litmus test Obama set back in June — that the Keystone could only be approved if it didn’t significantly exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions. …

[A]s the various interests in the Keystone decision make their final arguments at the White House, Podesta could not be better positioned as a particularly close adviser to voice his own views — and to debunk the arguments of those who favor the tar sands pipeline.

Will Podesta make the difference on Keystone? Don’t count on it. There are already plenty of people in the administration on both sides of the issue. Ultimately, the call is Obama’s alone.

But Podesta could make the difference on UFO issues …

UPDATE, from The New Yorker:

A White House aide emailed late Tuesday that Podesta would recuse himself from working on the Keystone Pipeline decision.

“In discussions with Denis,” the aide said, speaking of White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, “John suggested that he not work on the Keystone Pipeline issue, in review at the State Department, given that the review is far along in the process and John’s views on this are well known. Denis agreed that was the best course of action.” Podesta’s climate change portfolio will therefore be limited largely to overseeing implementation of E.P.A. regulations, which are already moving along, and not the far more controversial and politically sensitive decision about the pipeline.

Still, Podesta is on record strongly opposing the pipeline. If Obama approves the project, he will have to do so knowing he is contradicting the assessment of his new climate-change adviser.

Full disclosure: Grist periodically reprints posts from ClimateProgress, a Center for American Progress blog.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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John Podesta, climate hawk and Keystone opponent, joins Obama team

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You’ve Got Snail Mail! Handwritten Letters to Mother Jones, Vol. 1

by Aaron Doolsey Posted on December 7, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

And you thought letter writing was a lost art? Mother Jones still receives handwritten letters every day, and not all of them are from prisoners or crazy people. In any case, they just pile up. We no longer publish letters in the print magazine, and our communications are largely digital these days. We also don’t have the staff bandwidth (if you’ll pardon the internet jargon) to respond to our digital trolls, let alone our snail-mail ones. And yet every day I walk past that stack of letters and wonder what it contains. I decided to read a handful each day, or skim them at least, and share some choice excerpts with all y’all.

Mother Jones Snail Mail, Volume 1

April 2013
Dear Mother Jones,
I haven’t heard anything again in the news regarding the “house in a residential neighborhood” that neighbors (CA) complained had a lot of Chinese pregnant women paying to have their babies there so they would have US citizenship. It sounded to me like a sure-fire way to build sleeper cells. Worth investigating?
—JPH, Washington, DC

May 2013
President, Foundation for National Progress,
The “Truth” is that despite your Assertions/claims that “your hard hitting investigative journalism” is Accurate and Factual—you are delusional self congratulating Fools. When I see distortions and outright lies being printed about firearms, firearm , 2nd amendment Rights Groups and organizations, your credibility about other issues you print material about becomes untrustworthy as to veracity. Good bye you San Francisco “Tootie Frooty” Assholes located in the “land of Fruits and Nuts” (California).
—Anonymous

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You’ve Got Snail Mail! Handwritten Letters to Mother Jones, Vol. 1

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Virginia voters know we’re changing the climate, Republican candidate does not

by Leon Russell Posted on October 28, 2013

Virginia voters know we’re changing the climate, Republican candidate does not

By

chesapeakeclimateTerry McAuliffe gets climate change. So do most Virginians.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe is ahead in the gubernatorial polls in Virginia, despite accusations from his climate-denying Republican opponent that he’s waging a “war on coal” in a coal-powered state. His lead might be partly attributable to the fact that Virginians actually are concerned about global warming.

With a week remaining before the election, Old Dominion University polling [PDF] is showing that 44.1 percent of likely voters intend to support McAuliffe in the race for governor. Republican Ken Cuccinelli is favored by 36.9 percent of poll respondents, while 6.9 percent said they plan to vote for Libertarian Rob Sarvis.

Notably, the pollsters found that Virginia voters strongly shared their favored candidate’s views on climate change — which is bad news for the Republican:

62.7 percent of likely voters indicated that they believed “human activity is a major contributing factor in climate change,” while 34.5 percent indicated that they did not believe this to be the case.

66.4 percent of Cucinelli supporters indicated that they do not believe human activity is a major contributing factor in climate change, while 88.5 percent of McAuliffe and 68.1 percent of Sarvis supporters indicated that human activity is a major contributor to climate change.

Climate Progress puts the poll results into some context:

Gage SkidmoreKen Cuccinelli does not get climate change.

Cuccinelli has made his opposition to climate science a key selling point of his candidacy. In Thursday’s final debate, he boasted of his unsuccessful lawsuit to stop the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases and accused McAuliffe of waging a “war on coal.”

In the debate, McAuliffe criticized Cuccinelli’s also-unsuccessful attempt to wage a witch hunt against a University of Virginia climate scientist that cost the university $570,000. Cuccinelli “intimidated scientists at our great universities,” McAuliffe observed, warning that this would scare off businesses from investing in Virginia.

Also check out: The Virginia governor’s race, the craziest political race of the year, is putting climate in the spotlight


Source
Summary of Results from Social Science Research Center Poll, Old Dominion University
Virginia Poll Finds More Than 60 Percent Believe Human Activity A Major Cause Of Climate Change, Climate Progress

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Climate scientists are 95 percent sure that humans are causing global warming

by Theodot7v8 Posted on August 19, 2013

Climate scientists are 95 percent sure that humans are causing global warming

By Lisa Hymas

Shutterstock

When it comes to climate science, the writing is on the wall.

Climate hawks are buzzing over leaks from the fifth big climate report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due to be officially released in September. Spoiler: Scientists are pretty damn confident that we’re screwing up the climate.

An earlier draft was leaked in December by climate deniers trying to undermine the case for anthropogenic climate change. News of more recent leaked drafts comes to us from Reuters, which has no such agenda. Reuters sums up the report this way:

Climate scientists are surer than ever that human activity is causing global warming, according to leaked drafts of a major U.N. report, but they are finding it harder than expected to predict the impact in specific regions in coming decades. …

Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the U.N. panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities — chiefly the burning of fossil fuels — are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.

That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a small minority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame. …

Experts say that the big advance in the report, due for a final edit by governments and scientists in Stockholm from Sept. 23-26, is simply greater confidence about the science of global warming, rather than revolutionary new findings.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress reminds us that the IPCC reports are generally conservative:

[The forthcoming report] is just a (partial) review of the scientific literature … [L]ike every IPCC report, it is an instantly out-of-date snapshot that lowballs future warming because it continues to ignore large parts of the recent literature and omit what it can’t model. For instance, we have known for years that perhaps the single most important carbon-cycle feedback is the thawing of the northern permafrost. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment climate models completely ignore it, thereby lowballing likely warming this century.

Here’s reaction from climate scientist Michael Mann, via Climate Progress:

The report is simply an exclamation mark on what we already knew: Climate change is real and it continues unabated, the primary cause is fossil fuel burning, and if we don’t do something to reduce carbon emissions we can expect far more dangerous and potentially irreversible impacts on us and our environment in the decades to come.

And, for entertainment value, here’s reaction from denier-ville, via the Hockey Schtick blog:

[A]ll of these fatuous figures [about likelihood of human causation] are pulled out of the air to support the IPCC ideologies and not based upon any statistical analysis or science.

Back in reality-ville, John Abraham at The Guardian thanks all the climate scientists who have donated time to produce the IPCC report and wonders whether we need them to keep spending their time this way:

[T]he IPCC has done its job. For this fifth report, they have synthesized the science and provided enough evidence that action is warranted. How many more reports of this type do we need? Will a sixth report that confirms what we already know make much of a difference? Will a seventh? …

Whatever the future holds for the IPCC, the history books will tell us we were warned. Time and time again, the world’s best scientists have sent us clear messages.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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