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ERP Blogstorm Part 3: Banking

by GrantBramlett Posted on December 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Part three of our series of charts from the Economic Report of the President is all about banking. Mostly, it’s a trip down memory lane. Here’s a look at the worldwide market in derivatives over the past couple of decades:

The volume of derivatives went from $10 trillion to $35 trillion in two years starting right before the market crashed. Here’s another perspective on that:

In 1990, shadow banking was about the same size as the traditional banking sector. By 2007 it was more than twice as big. Just before the crash, shadow banking comprised two-thirds of the entire banking industry and it was almost entirely unregulated. This is why I was happy that Hillary Clinton at least mentioned shadow banking during the campaign.

Here’s how all this affected tradition banks:

In 2007, losses from trading amounted to about $30 billion. By 2009 that had skyrocketed to about $100 billion—and that’s in addition to about $40 billion in traditional loan losses. This is what happens when you start with a housing market that’s already in bubble territory and then egg it on with insane levels of rocket science derivatives, most of them unregulated bastard offspring of the shadow banking sector.

So what’s happened since then? We had a huge crash, the Fed instituted higher capital ratios for “systemically important financial institutions,” and we passed the Dodd-Frank reforms. Here’s what banks look like now:

Before the Great Recession, the biggest banks (green line) had Tier 1 equity ratios of about 7 percent. That’s why they couldn’t weather the crash. Today they’re above 12 percent. Is that enough? Maybe not. But it’s a helluva lot better than it used to be.

Finally, here’s an intriguing chart that shows one of the specific consequences of Dodd-Frank:

Most single-name derivatives are now cleared through a central clearinghouse, which makes it easy for traders to cancel out mirror-image positions they hold. This is called “compression,” and it reduces the total volume of derivatives and increases the safety of the financial system. Today, derivatives worth $200 trillion (notional) are compressed out of existence each year.

Needless to say, Republicans are hellbent on repealing Dodd-Frank. Sure, it makes the banking system safer and helps protect consumers, but big banks don’t like it, so that’s that. The party of Donald Trump, the working man’s president, will do whatever Wall Street tells them to do. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

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ERP Blogstorm Part 3: Banking

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Pipeline spills 176,000 gallons 150 miles from Standing Rock.

by AltonMast09011 Posted on December 13, 2016

Nearly 684 institutions and 60,000 people representing $5 trillion globally have committed to divestment from fossil fuels in the last 15 months, according to a report out today from Arabella Advisors, a B-corporation that focuses on “effective philanthropy.”

Trump’s election could, if anything, have an unintended effect on environmental activists’ divestment campaign. What began largely as a grassroots effort on college campuses has grown into a global movement that’s reached South Africa, Japan, and Australia in the year since the Paris climate conference.

The difference today is that Arabella finds divestment is gaining ground for more than just moral reasons: “Now, diverse legal scholars, businesses, and investors are warning that fiduciaries who fail to consider climate change risks in their investment analyses and decisions may be at risk of breaching their legal duty as fiduciaries.”

Trump’s recent selection of a climate-denying cabinet further demonstrates most environmental progress in the next few years will be locally driven.

Lindsay Meiman of the activist group 350.org told Grist that divestment has provided “a really powerful on-ramp” to climate activism. “In the face of intensifying climate impacts, and regressive and anti-climate governments like the Trump administration, it’s more critical than ever that our institutions — especially at the local level — step up to break free from fossil fuel companies,” added 350’s May Boeve.

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Pipeline spills 176,000 gallons 150 miles from Standing Rock.

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George W. Bush EPA chief slams Trump’s pick

by BuddyWalden Posted on December 12, 2016

Christine Todd Whitman is arguably the most prominent figure ever to lead the Environmental Protection Agency under a Republican president, and she has critical words for Donald Trump’s potentially disastrous pick Scott Pruitt.

“I don’t recall ever having seen an appointment of someone who is so disdainful of the agency and the science behind what the agency does,” Whitman told Grist. The former governor of New Jersey led the EPA under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003.

“It doesn’t put us in a good place, in my mind,” Whitman said. “And he’s going to have trouble within the agency if he does convey that kind of disdain to the career staff.”

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Pruitt has close ties to the oil and gas industry. As Oklahoma attorney general, he sued the agency at least 13 times in five years, eight cases pending. The most high-profile case is his ongoing lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s most ambitious climate-related regulation. His career has gotten a boost from the likes of oil executive Harold Hamm, who was co-chair of Pruitt’s reelection campaign.

At times, Pruitt directly coordinated with the Oklahoma oil and gas industry to put pressure on the Obama White House in an effort to weaken clean air and water regulations or squash investigations.

REUTERS/Nick Oxford

“He obviously doesn’t care much for the agency or any of the regulations it has promulgated,” Whitman said. “He doesn’t believe in climate change; he wants to roll back the Clean Power Plan.”

Whitman foresees Pruitt clashing with the staff of the agency she once ran, which could have several consequences, she said. Staffers could stand in the way of Pruitt’s ambitions to cut back on the agency’s role, slowing the potential damage of his appointment. But at the same time, Pruitt could slow the staff’s ongoing and vital work. Remember Flint, Michigan? Superfund cleanups? Clean air?

Or, if the clashes are too severe and agency staffers either walk away or get purged under Pruitt, the EPA would lose a vast amount of expertise in a short period of time. “I worry about people retiring and losing institutional knowledge,” Whitman said. “They can slow things down, but he could too, and put a hard stop to regulations.”

In addition to suing over Clean Power Plan regulations, Pruitt has argued that climate activists should be prosecuted, and that debate over whether climate change is human-made should be encouraged in classrooms and Congress — despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the debate is settled.

Compared to where her party stands today on climate change, Whitman is considered an outlier. She has argued that the GOP should moderate itself on climate change and accept that humans play a role. Her philosophy — “Not being a scientist, I rely on the ones that are” — is quite rare these days. As extreme as Pruitt is, he’s in line with Republicans like House Science Chair Lamar Smith and Senate Environment and Public Works Chair James Inhofe — climate-denying senators who use their positions to confuse the public and block progress on climate action.

Still, Whitman pointed out the possibility for pushback to Pruitt’s anti-conservation agenda from hunters and ranchers within the GOP’s base, and possibly the more moderate Republicans she has had conversations with in Congress (Whitman declined to name those politicians).

For those still fooling themselves into thinking that Trump means it when he tells interviewers he has an “open mind” on climate science and environmental protection, his appointments should be telling.

“I never thought Trump was particularly an ideologue, but the picks have been a very conservative mindset,” Whitman said. “That will tell you he is quite serious about the anti-government pronouncements he made.”

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George W. Bush EPA chief slams Trump’s pick

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These Are the Books We’re Giving Our Friends This Year

by Monique7546 Posted on December 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Every year, Mother Jones receives hundreds of worthy books, but there are always a handful that truly stand out, the ones we end up foisting on friends and family. Well, friends and family, here you go, in no particular order. Also, be sure and check out the Best Cookbooks post by food and ag writer Tom Philpott, and stay tuned for photo book picks from photo editor Mark Murrmann and the year’s best music from critic Jon Young (on Sunday).

The Hopefuls, by Jennifer Close. Beth, the twentysomething protagonist of Jennifer Close’s wryly observed new novel, is an aspiring journalist loving life in New York City. But when her husband, Matt, gets a job in the Obama administration, Beth reluctantly agrees to follow him to DC. Thanks to Close’s eye for detail, The Hopefuls is like a still life of Washington in 2008. She masterfully captures both the contagious enthusiasm and wonky snobbery of DC’s rising political stars and their hangers-on. One character is forever telling anecdotes about senior Obama adviser David Axelrod, pretentiously referring to him as “Ax.” Another refers to Obama as “the senator”—a subtle humble brag that he’s worked for the president since way back when. Beth is miserable in this dreary social circle—until she and her husband click with a charismatic couple from Texas. And before she knows it, Beth herself is swept into this world of political strivers. Ultimately, The Hopefuls is as much about friendship as it is about politics—and about what happens when the two collide. —Kiera Butler, senior editor

My Father, the Pornographer, by Chris Offutt. This memoir is not a salacious romp, as the cover might suggest, but a slow-burning examination of Chris Offutt’s strained relationship with his late dad, a prolific author of smut and sci-fi. Offutt focuses less on the giant pile of kinky material he inherited than how it affected his childhood, his family, and his sense of self. His final plunge into his father’s most secret, and shameful, obsessions is worth the wait. —Dave Gilson, senior editor

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, by Mary Roach. This latest book from the perpetually curious Mary Roach looks at the weird yet deadly serious science of keeping soldiers alive. In a globe-trotting tour of labs, training grounds, and a nuclear sub, Roach explores how fighting men and women sweat, sleep, and poop. “No one wins a medal” for this obscure, often gross, survival research, Roach writes. “And maybe someone should.” Like her previous books Gulp and Stiff, Grunt oozes bodily fluids, flippant footnotes, and weapons-grade wordplay. —D.G.

The Arab of the Future 2: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1984-1985, by Riad Sattouf & Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63, by Marcelino Truong. Two of the most affecting memoirs of the year are graphic novels by French cartoonists who grew up astride two cultures. The Arab of the Future 2 picks up where its predecessor left off: Riad Sattouf, the adorable six-year-old son of a Syrian father and a French mother, is adjusting to his new life in his father’s village outside Homs in the mid-1980s. Sattouf’s bubbly illustrations belie the bleakness of his surroundings, and the violence and misogyny he witnesses.

Marcelino Truong’s beautifully illustrated tale follows him and his two siblings in their move to Saigon as the Vietnam War heats up. While the kids are enthralled by the war and oblivious to its horrors, their French-born mother breaks down as she sees just how quickly things are falling apart. The two authors’ artistic and narrative sensibilities differ, but their work is united by common themes: surreal childhoods amid geopolitical conflict (Sattouf and his playmates battle the Israeli Army; Truong and his cousins pretend to fight the Viet Cong) and idealistic fathers (Sattouf’s dad is a Qaddafi- and Saddam-admiring pan-Arabist, while Truong’s is an official in the US-backed South Vietnamese government) who are blind to the strife afflicting their countries—and families. Read together or separately, these comics pack a surprising punch. —D.G.

Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File, by John Edgar Wideman. In his first book in more than a decade, the acclaimed African American author and Brown University professor John Edgar Wideman explores the saga of Emmett Till’s father, who was court-martialed and hanged by the United States military well before the notorious lynching of his son by white racists in Mississippi. Via a Freedom of Information Act request, Wideman obtains records from Louis Till’s military trial and interrogates the file from every angle—filling in the gaps with his own vivid imagination and recollections. Part history, part memoir, part mystery, part fiction, this insightful book reveals as much about the author as it does about his subject. As Wideman put it to me in a recent interview, “To write a story about Louis Till puts me on trial.” —Michael Mechanic, senior editor

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead. You’ve probably heard plenty about 2016’s National Book Award winner for fiction, but I’ll pile on anyway. Whitehead’s riveting slavery saga reimagines the underground railroad as a literal thing, but he doesn’t dwell too heavily on that plot device. The story follows a pair of escapees from a Georgia plantation as they move north along the railroad, pursued by a determined slave catcher. Among other things, they stumble across a bizarre eugenics experiment in South Carolina and a vile campaign of ethnic cleansing in North Carolina. Whitehead’s character-driven tale brings into visceral relief the horrors, the cruelty, the stark inhumanity of an economy based on captive black labor. And he reminds us, too, of the grim fate that awaited Southern whites brave enough to oppose the system. —M.M.

The Fortunes, by Peter Ho Davies. Given the extraordinary success of Chinese Americans today, it’s easy to forget how tough white society made things for their forebears who flocked here during the Gold Rush or who were imported as cheap labor for railroad companies—only to later be scapegoated and officially excluded by an act of Congress that would remain in force until 1943 (just in time for the interning of Japanese Americans). Davies’ outstanding new novel reminds us how things were (and still are, if the 2016 election is any indication). The experiences of Davies’ characters—a poor laundry boy hired on as a railroad magnate’s valet, an ambitious Chinese American starlet—highlight the tightrope walk of maintaining one’s culture while striving for acceptance in a resentful society. The Fortunes feels particularly timely now that we’ve handed the White House keys to a man who threatens to register and exclude Muslim immigrants, and to deport Americans (for really, what else can we honestly call them?) brought here without papers as toddlers. —M.M.

While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man’s Descent Into Madness, by Eli Sanders. One night in 2009, a disturbed young man named Isaiah Kalebu entered a Seattle home through an open window and raped and stabbed two women, killing one. He was sentenced to life in prison, but local journalist Eli Sanders, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the case, kept digging. While the City Slept, his compassionate examination of the lives that collided that night, relates how a bright but abused boy grew into a violent criminal and, as one psychiatrist put it, “became his illness.” The book plays double duty as tribute to those whose lives were upended and a meticulous indictment of the way we fail fellow citizens with serious mental disorders. —Madison Pauly, assistant editor

Pumpkinflowers, by Matti Friedman. This is a 21st-century war story, with all of the IEDs, propaganda videos, jihadi groups we’re accustomed to—but one told in the restrained, introspective style of the World War I writers Friedman turned to for inspiration. It’s partly an engrossing personal story, partly a history of a forgotten chapter in Middle East conflict, and one of the best-written books I’ve read in years. —Max J. Rosenthal, reporter

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi. This ambitious debut novel sparked a bidding war and landed Gyasi a seven-figure contract just one year after she graduated from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Following seven generations across two continents, Gyasi manages to fit the many stages of slavery’s plunder into a relatively slim volume, to dazzling and often devastating effect. Though some of the storylines unravel a bit toward the novel’s end, the emphasis on global slavery’s ramifications in West Africa, told with rich and lively characters and language that hums, makes this well worth the commitment. —Maddie Oatman, story editor

Real Food, Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It, by Larry Olmsted. We’ve all been told to steer clear of artificial ingredients, but how much do you know about fake—meaning fraudulent—food? Turns out, it’s everywhere, including in your kitchen right now. Olive oil, parmesan cheese, fish fillets, red wine; it would seem the more scrumptious the victual, the more likely it is to be a sham. Olmsted gives us the lay of this seedy landscape with momentum and aplomb. He demystifies the process by which fake ingredients end up in your shopping cart, explains why some of these deceitful foods could be a real threat to your health, and sheds a light on the government policies and shortsighted commercialism that landed them there. —M.O.

Swing Time, by Zadie Smith. Award-winning author Zadie Smith’s fifth novel interweaves two narratives. One involves the unnamed narrator’s childhood friendship, wrought by a shared passion for dance. The other one revolves around the narrator’s adult travels to Africa in the employ of a pop star as she grapples with her own biracial identity. Penned in Smith’s inimitable, winding style, Swing Time looks unflinchingly at race, gender, parenting, love, and friendship. In places, I found the book an unnerving reminder of my own childhood, of parents who seemed invincible and maddeningly certain about the course of their offspring’s future. —Becca Andrews, assistant editor

March: Book Three, by Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell. Police brutality, segregation, voting rights: Many of the big issues of the 1960s are alive and well today. The March graphic-history trilogy tells the story of the civil rights movement through the eyes of Rep. John Lewis, onetime chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—a group at the center of the struggle. In poignant detail, the March books, totally 600 pages, put us at the heart of the battles over desegregation and black suffrage. We meet the movement’s leaders and witness the ugly local clashes leading up to the March on Washington. In the third installment, which earned a 2016 National Book Award, the beatings and defiance of “Bloody Sunday” stand in sharp contrast to Lewis’ pride on President Barack Obama’s inauguration day. The book, and the trilogy, offer lessons for modern strivers on how far we’ve come—while serving as a reminder of how far we have yet to go. —Edwin Rios, reporter

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond. In a tome filled with heartbreak, Desmond, a sociologist who teaches at Harvard, embeds with eight families who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads in the segregated city of Milwaukee. Rich in history and bolstered by engrossing research, Evicted vividly captures with empathy the lives of those caught up in deep poverty as they reel from the consequences of losing their homes. In doing so, it elevates the importance of affordable housing in today’s society. “Housing is deeply implicated in causing poverty in America today,” Desmond told me in March, “and we have to do something.” —E.R.

A Rage for Order: The Middle East in turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS, by Robert F. Worth. This is not your typical Middle East manuscript—no bird’s eye view of battlefield advancements or policy analysis on the region in collapse. Rather, Robert F. Worth, the longtime correspondent for the New York Times, managed to be on the ground seemingly everywhere that mattered during the zenith of the Arab Spring, and takes us a journey inside the lives of those whose hopes rode on the Arab Spring’s promise and whose lives changed—or ended—forever once the popular uprisings collapsed into insurgencies and civil war. It’s a beautifully written, moving account that brings humanity and heart to a region typically only considered in terms of conflict and chaos. —Bryan Schatz, reporter

God Save Sex Pistols, by Johan Kugelberg, with Jon Savage and Glenn Terry. Curator, author, and all-around underground know-it-all Johan Kugelberg released the end-all Sex Pistols ephemera collection earlier this year, and just in time; soon after, Joe Corre, son of punk impressarios Malcolm McClaren and Dame Vivien Westwood, celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Sex Pistol’s first single by burning more than $6 million worth of rare, original Sex Pistols and UK punk memorabilia. Though the original artifacts were lost to Corre’s piqued sense of anti-nostalgia, God Save Sex Pistols lovingly showcases photos, letters, flyers, records, posters, shirts—everything related to the band that once terrified parents and politicians. The book also serves as a more focused compendium to Kugelberg & Savages’ excellent 2012 book, Punk: An Aesthethic. —Mark Murrmann, photo editor

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong. Few writers know how to explain science clearly, and even fewer science writers compose genuinely gorgeous prose. Ed Yong is that unicorn. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us is the most elegant guide I’ve seen to our still-primitive understanding of the microbiome—the gazillions of tiny critters living within us. Like Nietzsche peering into a microscope, Yong urges us to think beyond “good” and “bad” microbes: “These terms belong in children’s stories. They are ill-suited for describing the messy, fractious, contextual relationships of the natural world.” Context is everything. “The same microbes could be good in the gut, but dangerous in the blood,” Yong writes. One of the many functions of mother’s milk, one scientist informs him, may be to “provide babies with a starter’s pack of symbiotic viruses”—and that’s a good thing. “Every one of us is a zoo in our own right—a colony enclosed within a single body,” he writes. “A multi-species collection. An entire world.” —Tom Philpott, food and ag correspondent

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank. His forward-looking autopsy may seem like a contradiction in terms, but Thomas Frank had the dirge of the Democratic Party cued up before primary season. Still, the shock of November 8 catapulted the virtuosic Listen, Liberal from insightful to downright prophetic. Frank meticulously charts the Democrats’ suicidal slide from a party of the factory floor to one of late-summer galas on Martha’s Vineyard. He hits on all the major missteps—the decline of middle-class wages, the bank bailouts, the trade deals, the technocracy (oh, the technocracy!)—all of which were later parceled out by the flabbergasted into grasping post-election think pieces. Frank’s book is lacerating and urgent, but also titillating, witty, and downright fun to read. It will no doubt give some establishment Dems the strong urge to throw the book into the ocean—indeed, their proximity to the coast and ability to conceivably do just that is part of the problem. This, for my money, is the best nonfiction of 2016. —Alex Sammon, editorial fellow

Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays, by Cynthia Ozick. Narratives of decline seem to be particularly in, but no one can render this notion quite as beautifully as Ozick. At 88, she’s been around the literary block, and she can’t help but lament the state of the American traditions of reading and writing. “What’s impossible not to notice,” as she put it to me earlier this year, “is the diminution of American prose.” To read Ozick is enriching for her startling vocabulary alone, though her intellectual force is also something to behold. This essay collection stakes out the critical cultural importance of literary criticism, and does so with the linguistic expertise of a poet—peaking with a vivid disemboweling of the term “Kafkaesque,” for all its faux-literary worth. One thing, for Ozick, is certain: The road to cultural aridity is paved with 3.5-star Amazon reviews. —A.S.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. If you want to understand how Donald Trump took over the GOP, and how he won so many Rust Belt counties that voted for Barack Obama, this is a good place to start. Vance uses the story of his childhood in a dying steel town to highlight what he sees as cultural shortcomings and political delusions among the region’s white working class. “We talk about the value of hard work,” he writes, “but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese.” There’s plenty to disagree with in Vance’s analysis—his insistence on blaming “welfare queens” for their financial problems, for example. Still, for all of us asking, “What just happened to my country?” Hillbilly Elegy provides some invaluable clues. —Jeremy Schulman, senior project manager, Climate Desk

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These Are the Books We’re Giving Our Friends This Year

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tells Standing Rock water protectors to move on.

by WilfredoOlvera9 Posted on November 28, 2016

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and right-wing pundit, told Fox News that President-elect Trump has asked him to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. (Trump tweeted that he is “seriously considering” Carson for the post.)

Carson has already turned down a chance to be Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services on the grounds that he is unprepared to run a federal agency. So how is HUD any different? Good question.

Carson lacks any relevant experience. HUD is charged with developing affordable and inclusive housing. Under the Obama administration, it has promoted smart-growth goals, such as linking low-income housing with mass transit.

During Carson’s unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he never proposed any policies to promote low-cost or integrated housing. Asked on Fox about his knowledge of HUD’s work, Carson pointed to his experience growing up in a city.

Trump is also reportedly considering Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino to run HUD. Under Astorino, the county has failed to comply with a 2009 settlement in which it agreed to build more affordable housing.

So Trump will nominate either someone wholly unqualified or someone who opposes affordable housing. It’s almost as if the luxury real-estate developer once sued for discriminating against black tenants doesn’t care about affordability or integration.

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tells Standing Rock water protectors to move on.

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The season premiere of Madam Secretary dealt with climate change, and some people didn’t like that.

by BeauBlakeley Posted on October 3, 2016

According to a paper released Tuesday by James Hansen, formerly of NASA and now at Columbia University*, the landmark Paris Agreement is solid C-minus work — but when it comes to climate commitments, mediocrity is criminal. Slacker countries making only modest emissions reductions will lock future generations into dangerous levels of climate change.

The average global temperature is already 1 to 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels, according to Hansen’s group. That’s on par with the Earth’s climate 115,000 years ago, when the seas were 20 feet higher than they are today.

Unless we phase out fossil fuels entirely in the next few years, Hansen told reporters on Monday, future generations will have to achieve “negative emissions” by actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. Seeing as we don’t even know if that’s possible, that’d be a helluva task for our progeny.

Hansen and his coauthors’ work, which is undergoing peer review, supports a lawsuit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government. It charges our lawmakers with not protecting the “life, liberty, and property” of future citizens by allowing fossil fuel interests to keep polluting.

But a solution is possible, Hansen explained, if we commit to a fee on carbon pollution and more investment in renewable energy.

*Correction: This story originally referred to Hansen as a former NASA director. He was director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

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The season premiere of Madam Secretary dealt with climate change, and some people didn’t like that.

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The Swedes are cleaning up trucking with old-timey tech.

by Tangela9738 Posted on October 3, 2016

According to a paper released Tuesday by James Hansen, formerly of NASA and now at Columbia University*, the landmark Paris Agreement is solid C-minus work — but when it comes to climate commitments, mediocrity is criminal. Slacker countries making only modest emissions reductions will lock future generations into dangerous levels of climate change.

The average global temperature is already 1 to 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels, according to Hansen’s group. That’s on par with the Earth’s climate 115,000 years ago, when the seas were 20 feet higher than they are today.

Unless we phase out fossil fuels entirely in the next few years, Hansen told reporters on Monday, future generations will have to achieve “negative emissions” by actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. Seeing as we don’t even know if that’s possible, that’d be a helluva task for our progeny.

Hansen and his coauthors’ work, which is undergoing peer review, supports a lawsuit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government. It charges our lawmakers with not protecting the “life, liberty, and property” of future citizens by allowing fossil fuel interests to keep polluting.

But a solution is possible, Hansen explained, if we commit to a fee on carbon pollution and more investment in renewable energy.

*Correction: This story originally referred to Hansen as a former NASA director. He was director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Continued here – 

The Swedes are cleaning up trucking with old-timey tech.

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The New Supreme Court Term: Cheerleading Uniforms, Bad Banks, and a Little Girl and Her Dog

by cheribrunton41 Posted on September 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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The last few Supreme Court terms were blockbusters, featuring a historic gay marriage decision, critical abortion and contraception cases, Obamacare cliffhangers, and a ruling on racial preferences in college admissions. The new term, which begins Monday and runs through the end of June, will be different. Instead of culture wars and political jousting, there will be cases involving cheerleading uniforms, patents for incontinence products, banks behaving badly, and a goldendoodle named Wonder.

The unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February and the failure of the Senate to confirm a replacement have left an eight-member court that seems to be shying away from big political questions and hot-button issues that might produce unsatisfying 4-4 votes. But as veteran Supreme Court litigator Tom Goldstein quipped recently at a DC panel discussion on the court, “There are plenty of boring, important cases out there.”

Even in its reduced state, the court can’t entirely avoid some critical conflicts in need of resolution. For instance, a number of its cases this term involve race in the justice system and elsewhere, at a particularly timely moment when many parts of the country are suffering from deep unrest over the role of race in law enforcement.

One of the first cases slated for oral arguments this term is Buck v. Davis, a case that raises a serious question about how race has infected the “machinery of death.” In 1997, Duane Buck was sentenced to death in Texas after his own lawyer introduced an expert witness who testified that Buck was more likely to commit violent crimes in the future because he was black. Potential for future danger is a critical component juries must consider in issuing a death sentence in Texas.

Texas has conceding that such testimony was unconstitutional, but it has continued to press for Buck’s execution nonetheless. The high court will have to decide whether the case presents extraordinary enough circumstances to justify reopening his sentencing. A ruling against Buck would send a disturbing signal to the justice system that there’s virtually no amount of racial discrimination that could prompt the court to overturn a death sentence tainted by bias.

In Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the court will also take up the issue of racial bias on juries. By law, jury deliberations can’t be used to help a defendant appeal a negative sentence. But in this case, one of the jurors, who convicted Miguel Pena-Rodriguez of misdemeanor charges related to groping a young woman, insisted during the deliberations that he didn’t believe the defendant or his alibi witness because they were Mexican. Pena-Rodriguez is seeking a new trial on the basis of the juror’s behavior, and the question before the court is whether there can be exceptions to jury deliberation confidentiality in the interest of granting defendants their Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury.

In what almost looks like deliberate scheduling, the court’s biggest racial discrimination case on the docket so far will be argued on Election Day (perhaps in the hope that reporters will be too busy to notice). The city of Miami has filed two cases against Bank of America and Wells Fargo for allegedly targeting minorities with predatory loans that contributed to the city’s foreclosure crisis. The city argues that such discriminatory lending and the resulting loan defaults left the city with diminished tax revenues and huge bills for cleaning up the mess left behind in blighted neighborhoods. The question for the court is whether Congress, in the Fair Housing Act, intended for municipalities, or only individuals, to sue to combat lending discrimination. The lower court sided with Miami, but if the high court disagrees, cities deeply affected by the foreclosure crisis will lose this particular avenue for holding banks accountable.

The only case on the docket close to a culture warrior entry this term is Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley. A Michigan church applied for a grant from Missouri’s Scrap Tire Grant program for assistance resurfacing a playground at its preschool with a safer, rubber top made of old tires. While the church’s grant proposal was well rated, the state ultimately turned it down because the state constitution prohibits direct aid to a church. The church sued, with help from a legion of lawyers fresh off the gay marriage battles. They argue that Missouri’s prohibition, originally conceived as part of an anti-Catholic movement, violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, especially when the money was going to a purely secular use.

While this might have been an easy win for the church before the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who was on the court when the justices took the case in January, the remaining eight-members might not be quite so well-disposed to rule in its favor. Forcing taxpayers to underwrite improvements to church property is in direct conflict with some of the court’s earlier rulings. Critics see a ruling for the church as a slippery-slope sort of argument, leading to compulsory government support of religion, which the Founders deeply opposed. In a sign of how much the court might already have been deadlocked on this case, it still hasn’t been scheduled for oral arguments.

Justice Samuel Alito suggested last spring that the court could use a justice with some experience in patent and intellectual property law. The court proved him right on Thursday, choosing to take up a case on whether disparaging terms can be trademarked. Lee v. Tam involves The Slants, an Asian American dance band that tried to trademark its name. Because some consider the name a slur, the US Patent and Trademark Office rejected the trademark application. The Slants sued and prevailed in the lower court, which found the trademark ban unconstitutional. The most obvious beneficiary of a Supreme Court ruling in the band’s favor, however, would be the Washington Redskins. Last year, a federal judge ordered the patent office to revoke the federal trademark registrations for the team after they were challenged in court by Native Americans who find the NFL team name offensive. A win for The Slants would be a win for the Redskins, too.

And then there are the cheerleading uniforms, which lawyers have called the “most vexing, unresolved question in copyright law.” At issue in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands is whether a design in a cheerleading uniform can be copyrighted, or whether it’s simply part of the overall uniform, which cannot be copyrighted. The case could have a big impact, of all places, in Hollywood, where intellectual-property fights over movie costume knockoffs are legion. But it also has implications for people who like to dress up as Batman at comic-cons, Civil War reenactors, and 3-D printer aficionados, who rely on creative tweaks to other people’s designs that might become inaccessible to them should those clothing designs become copyrighted.

There’s still hope for some more compelling cases to come before the court between now and next June. On the horizon is the transgender bathroom issue—a case involving a Virginia school board’s decision to ban transgender kids from using the bathroom of their choosing that the court could to hear this term. Also on the docket but not yet scheduled for arguments is a case regarding the constitutionality of North Carolina’s draconian plan to restrict voting. The law has been put on hold until after the election, but the court eventually will have to decide it on the merits.

There’s also the pending Wisconsin “John Doe” case, a political blockbuster involving allegations of criminal campaign finance violations by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. The state Supreme Court ultimately stopped the investigation into the alleged violations after several judges refused to recuse themselves from the proceedings, despite having benefited from outside election spending by many of the same groups that were accused of illegal coordination with Walker’s campaign. Documents leaked this month to the Guardian gave credence to the allegations against Walker. The Supreme Court could decide as soon as Monday whether to take up the question of the judges’ recusal.

In the meantime, until the court decides what to do with those more controversial cases, the most media-friendly case of the term could be Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools, a case that shows how public officials can be blind to the optics of their decisions. In 2009, when Ehlena Fry was five years old, Michigan school officials banned her from bringing her goldendoodle therapy dog, Wonder, to class with her. Fry suffers from cerebral palsy, and the dog gave her some measure of independence by opening doors and helping her take off her coat, get out of chairs, and pick up pencils. Fry’s family sued, alleging violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act. The school district fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the family needed to exhaust other remedies before relying on the ADA for relief. Even if the school officials ultimately win this case, they have already lost in the court of public opinion. Just watch this video to see why:

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The New Supreme Court Term: Cheerleading Uniforms, Bad Banks, and a Little Girl and Her Dog

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We Talked to New Yorkers on the Block That Was Bombed About Who Will Make America Safe Again

by DarwinDiederich Posted on September 19, 2016

Mother Jones

New Yorkers are practical. “It would have been awesome to see a dumpster go flying across the street. I would have paid to see that,” Chelsea office worker Matthew Swope told me, deadpan, as we stood near to where a bomb detonated on Saturday night, injuring 29 people and triggering a manhunt across two states. “What else are you going to do?”

Residents and workers along 23rd Street near 7th Avenue were getting on with life Monday afternoon, as police oversaw a complicated crime scene nearby. Meanwhile, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump engaged in a war of words over terrorism, and over who would make Americans feel safer. “They are looking to make this into a war against Islam, rather than a war against jihadists, violent terrorists,” Clinton said about potential terrorists attacking America. “The kinds of rhetoric and language Mr. Trump has used is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries.”

Trump, on the other hand, blamed immigration: “These attacks, and many others, were made possible because of our extremely open immigration system.”

Residents and workers in Chelsea, however, completely rejected Trump’s hardline immigration policy as a solution to future terrorist attacks. “Of course, Clinton—I feel that she can do a better job of protecting us,” Swope said. “She has a much more level-headed personality.”

Jane Nelson, who was visiting a friend in Chelsea, was even blunter: “He knows nothing.”*

Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified the person who said “He knows nothing.”

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We Talked to New Yorkers on the Block That Was Bombed About Who Will Make America Safe Again

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

by NannetteUnj Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump’s big speech at the Republican convention on Thursday didn’t contain a single reference to the environment or climate change. It was vague on policy overall, focusing heavily on the primary themes of this year’s Republican National Convention: bashing Hillary Clinton’s character and fear-mongering over crime and national security, with a heavy dose of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

There was, however, one section that dealt hazily with energy policy. Unfortunately, it was filled with falsehoods. Let’s go through the four key assertions one at a time:

“Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it.”

The apparent source for this figure is the National Association of Manufacturers, a conservative business lobbying organization that is fiercely opposed to regulations. The group’s $2 trillion estimate calculates only the cost of regulatory compliance and not the cost savings that result from government rules. So the fact that environmental and workplace safety regulations prevent health-care expenses and missed work days, for example, is simply ignored in this calculation. When you do account for the benefits of regulations, they often end up saving far more money than they cost. Experts debunked NAM’s report; the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service cited the Office of Management and Budget in calling the kind of methodology used “inherently flawed.” No unbiased, empirical cost-benefit analysis would come up with anything close to the number Trump cites.

“We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.”

The source for this $20 trillion figure is the Institute for Energy Research, an organization funded by the Koch brothers. As The New York Times has previously noted, “economic reality” contradicts this projection. Additional fossil fuel production has diminishing returns because increased supply means lower prices. So, according to experts the Times interviewed, the number is wildly exaggerated.

“My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steelworkers of our country out of work—that will never happen when I am president.”

Hillary Clinton’s admission that coal workers will be put out of work in the years ahead was not a statement of what she wants; it was a statement of reality. The coal industry is shedding jobs because of mechanization, tapped-out mountains, and increasing competition from natural gas and renewables. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan would prevent backsliding toward more coal use but not seriously worsen the industry’s already grim prospects. So Trump can’t actually reverse coal’s decline just by rolling back regulations. In any case, Clinton, unlike Trump, has a plan to put laid-off workers from this dying industry back to work in growing sectors—including, but not limited to, wind and solar energy production.

“With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country. This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans—we will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions more jobs.”

Trump is right that infrastructure investment would be good for the economy. Too bad his party’s own platform explicitly rejects spending on railways and many other kinds of infrastructure. And, in reality, Trump’s insane budget plan would leave no money for such projects.

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

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