Tag Archives: slideshows

BinC Watch: Donald Trump Has Now Changed His Mind on the Minimum Wage Three Times In Three Days

by GeoffreLDVQ Posted on May 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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Does Donald Trump think we should raise the federal minimum wage? Let’s roll the tape:

November 10, 2015: NO!

CAVUTO: So do not raise the minimum wage? TRUMP: I would not do it.

May 8, 2016: YES!

I think people have to get more….Sure it’s a change. I’m allowed to change.

May 8, 2016: NO!

I don’t know how people make it on $7.25 an hour….I think people should get more….But I would say let the states decide.

May 11, 2016: YES!

Goofy Elizabeth Warren lied when she says I want to abolish the Federal Minimum Wage. See media—asking for increase!

So what does Trump really think about the minimum wage? There’s no telling. Maybe he really has changed his mind over and over. Maybe he didn’t realize there were separate state and federal minimum wages until someone clued him in on May 8. But his tweet today sure makes it clear that he wants an increase in the federal minimum wage. He even capitalized it to make sure we got the point. I wonder how long we’ll have to wait before he claims he never said this and he really wants the states to decide after all?

It’s easy to write this off to Trump’s general buffoonery, and that would be fair. What gets me is that his fans continue to believe everything he says even though he does stuff like this all the time. Do they really believe he’s going to build a wall? Why? I don’t think it would take him more than a few days in office to change his mind and insist that he had said all along that everything was up for negotiation.

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BinC Watch: Donald Trump Has Now Changed His Mind on the Minimum Wage Three Times In Three Days

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Obamacare Continues to Not Be Doomed

by beauwolford Posted on May 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Veronique de Rugy predicts disaster for Obamacare once again:

The bottom line is that after slow start, insurance companies find themselves having to increase premiums a fair amount. It seems that while for now subsidies may cover the pain for individuals, they probably won’t be able to after this year, at which point insurance companies will have to stomach the full cost of their losses due to the expiration of the reinsurance and risk-corridor programs. There soon won’t be enough subsidies to offset the premium hikes.

We’ve heard this pretty much every year: insurers are requesting huge premium increases! We’re doomed! Perhaps a bit of perspective would be helpful:

Insurers lowballed their Obamacare prices initially, coming in with premiums that were less costly than CBO projections. Higher prices were always inevitable.
Every year, insurers request big increases. They don’t get them. They get moderate increases.
Whatever happens, this is the free market at work, not some defect in Obamacare. If high premiums are truly what conservatives care about, we can fix that any time we want. Just ask Canada how to do it—or Sweden or Germany or Spain or Japan or pretty much any other advanced country on the planet.

Life isn’t perfect. Obamacare isn’t perfect. Health care is an expensive service, and health care insurance is expensive too. But so far Obamacare has done a pretty good job of keeping costs reasonably well contained. I’d wait until the end of the year before yet again declaring that it’s a failure and yet again being wrong.

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Obamacare Continues to Not Be Doomed

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Childhood Obesity Is Still Going Up, Up, Up

by JonahMilliner Posted on May 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hey, do you remember that breathless CDC study from a couple of years ago showing a dramatic drop in obesity among 2-5-year-olds? I was pretty skeptical about it, and today I learn that I was right to be. I basically figured that it was a noisy sample that didn’t make sense, but according to a new look at the data it’s worse than that: the data is noisy, and that allowed the CDC researchers to cherry pick a starting point that made it look like there was a huge drop.

Roberto Ferdman provides a new chart based on the new study. Take a look. If you start in 2003, as the CDC study did, it looks like there’s a big drop. The prevalence of obesity among girls goes down 2.1 percentage points, and among boys it goes down a whopping 6.1 percentage points.

But if you include data going back to 1999, which is the true beginning of this data series, the improvement is distinctly more modest: a drop of 1.1 percentage points for girls and 1.7 percentage points for boys. And those drops aren’t even statistically significant.

The original study was always suspect because the alleged drop for 2-5-year-olds wasn’t matched in any other age group. And sure enough, a fresh look at the rest of the data continues to show rising obesity for every other age group. Suddenly the results for 2-5-year-olds look perfectly in sync.

It’s one thing if this newer study shows different results because it includes 2013-14 data. But deliberately excluding the starting point of the data series is the real culprit, and that’s inexcusable. The authors of the original study have some explaining to do.

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Childhood Obesity Is Still Going Up, Up, Up

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Shia Mob in Iraq Demands More Technocrats

by GroverDingle Posted on April 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Protesters stormed the Iraqi parliament today:

Baghdad Operations Command declared a state of emergency and said all roads into the capital had been closed….Iraq is in the grip of a political crisis, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi attempting to reshuffle his cabinet and meet the demands of the demonstrators, who have been spurred on by the powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. But Abadi has been hampered by chaotic parliament sessions, where lawmakers have thrown water bottles and punches at one another.

Oddly, the “firebrand cleric” Sadr (remember when that practically used to be his first name in news reports?) is demanding that…the current hacks running government ministries be replaced with nonpartisan technocrats. “More bean counters in the cabinet!” isn’t the usual rallying cry of a populist uprising, but there you have it.

Needless to say, the sectarian hacks currently in charge have been resisting this change for the past month. In the meantime, Iraq is in chaos. Again.

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Shia Mob in Iraq Demands More Technocrats

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Economic Growth Slows to 0.5% in First Quarter

by FreddyHoliday Posted on April 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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The economy grew at a sluggish 0.5 percent annual rate in the first quarter. The main culprits for the poor performance were downturns in durable goods, nonresidential construction, and defense spending. This is the third year in a row in which growth has been poor in the first quarter, which means that one-off excuses about snowstorms and so forth don’t really hold water anymore. But it might be a statistical artifact. Jared Bernstein says “there’s some concern with the seasonal adjusters, which some argue are biasing Q1 down and Q2 up.” I guess we’ll have to wait until Q2 to find out.

Even if that’s true, however, growth is still fairly listless, averaging around 2 percent per year. It’s yet another indication that the global economy remains fragile and the Fed should think twice before raising rates any more than they’ve already done.

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Economic Growth Slows to 0.5% in First Quarter

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Lemonade Is the Opiate of the Masses

by NanceeLockhart Posted on April 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’m having some trouble coming up with political or even quasi-political topics to write about this morning, so instead let’s watch Chris Hayes risk his hard-won career in a single tweet:

A few tweets later Hayes is careful to assure us that he hasn’t gone completely around the bend: “In conclusion: @Beyonce is legitimately a genius and we’re lucky to have her in our shared cultural life.” Whew. Even in the polysyncretic, multicultural stewpot that defines modern America, there are still a few norms of required behavior left, and unqualified praise of Beyoncé is high on that list. I was relieved to see that Hayes was questioning only the meaning of Beyonce’s lyrics, not her unparalleled genius.

By now, I suppose it’s obvious that I don’t care one way or the other about Beyoncé. I’ve read snatches of the lyrics from Lemonade, and they strike me about the same way most popular music lyrics strike me. “Middle fingers up, put them hands high. Wave it in his face, tell him, boy, bye. Tell him, boy, bye, middle fingers up. I ain’t thinking ‘bout you.” That really doesn’t do much for me, but de gustibus. I could name lots of stuff that’s meaningful to me but strikes most other people as puerile or just plain dumb.

Still, it really is kind of weird that Hayes is so obviously reticent about asking his question. For those of you who just returned from a trip to Mt. Everest, Lemonade is Beyoncé’s latest album, and the lyrics are all about the pain she felt when her husband, music mogul Jay-Z, cheated on her. Or so it’s universally assumed. It is very definitely not assumed that Beyoncé is capable of writing searing lyrics that have nothing to do with her own personal life. Odd, isn’t it? That’s almost the definition of a genius. Why couldn’t she do that?

For what it’s worth, I’d also point out a couple of other things. First, Beyoncé is famous for her almost fanatical control of her image. Second, as many people have pointed out, Lemonade is available for streaming only on Tidal, which is Jay-Z’s company. So that means Beyoncé is helping Jay make a lot of money off his alleged infidelity—and shoring up his faltering streaming service at the same time.

So then. Take your pick:

Jay-Z cheated on Beyoncé. She’s pissed off about it and wrote an album to exorcize her pain.
Nothing happened. It’s just an album on the subject of infidelity and other things, which Beyoncé captures with astonishing virtuosity. Geniuses can do that sort of thing.
It’s all part of Beyoncé’s endless pseudo-narrative, which she controls with about the same subtlety that Stalin used to control the Red Army. Art in the service of art may have a long and rich history, but art in the service of great riches does too.

And with that, I’m off to lunch while everyone tears me apart. Have fun!

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Lemonade Is the Opiate of the Masses

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Supreme Court Urges Nevada to Stop Hating on California

by DannieEyre25436 Posted on April 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Excellent news. The Supreme Court has confirmed that Nevada does indeed hate California and needs to knock it off:

Nevada has not applied the principles of Nevada law ordinarily applicable to suits against Nevada’s own agencies. Rather, it has applied a special rule of law applicable only in lawsuits against its sister States, such as California.

….The Nevada Supreme Court explained its departure from those general principles by describing California’s system of controlling its own agencies as failing to provide “adequate” recourse to Nevada’s citizens….Such an explanation, which amounts to little more than a conclusory statement disparaging California’s own legislative, judicial, and administrative controls, cannot justify the application of a special and discriminatory rule. Rather, viewed through a full faith and credit lens, a State that disregards its own ordinary legal principles on this ground is hostile to another State.

….We can safely conclude that, in devising a special—and hostile—rule for California, Nevada has not “sensitively applied principles of comity with a healthy regard for California’s sovereign status.”

The case itself doesn’t matter much. An inventor moved to Nevada and then sued California when it harassed him for back taxes. Nevada normally limits these judgments to $50,000 even if you win, but as long as you’re suing California, it turns out the sky’s the limit. The Supreme Court was not amused. Nevada can’t do that just because they think poorly of California’s laws.

But all is forgiven now. Come to the beach and relax, Nevadans! Don’t let the dark side consume you.

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Supreme Court Urges Nevada to Stop Hating on California

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Chart of the Day: Americans Think Hard Work Is the Key to Success. Europeans, Not So Much.

by TomasObrien Posted on April 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here’s a fascinating result from the plucky pollsters at Pew Research:

I’m not surprised that the US ranks highest. But I am surprised at how much higher. Only a quarter of the French think that hard work is important for getting ahead in life? How about that. Even the famously diligent Germans clock in at only 49 percent.

Granted, in order to make the grade, you have to score this as 10 (or “10,” as Pew puts it) on a 0-10 scale. Maybe Europeans tend to score it as a 9—still pretty important, but not quite totally life-engulfing. Either way, though, apparently we Americans continue to believe in the importance of hard work a lot more than our Europeans peers. No 6-week vacations for us!

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Chart of the Day: Americans Think Hard Work Is the Key to Success. Europeans, Not So Much.

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Trump, Clinton Remain Way Ahead in New York Primary

by JaydenOconner Posted on April 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’m not sure how reliable primary polling has been this year, but the Pollster aggregates are pretty clear for Tuesday’s primary in New York. Donald Trump retains a commanding lead on the Republican side, even though New Yorkers should know better, and Hillary Clinton is ahead of Bernie Sanders by 15 points in the Democratic primary. Both Trump and Clinton have increased their leads slightly since the beginning of the month.

Sam Wang forecasts that a big win in New York puts Donald Trump on track to win the Republican nomination outright with 1265 delegates by the end of primary season. His probability of getting 1237 or above is 64 percent. Hillary Clinton, of course, has basically already won the Democratic nomination thanks to her current lead in pledged delegates and her overwhelming lead in superdelegates. The Democratic primary has been little more than shadow boxing for at least the past month.

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Trump, Clinton Remain Way Ahead in New York Primary

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Donald Trump Is Now Way Out Ahead of Ted Cruz

by Dedra Temores Posted on April 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Two days ago—two!—I posted a Pollster chart showing that Ted Cruz had nearly caught up to Donald Trump on a national level. This was based on polling through April 6, and today we have polling results through April 11. Look what’s happened:

Yikes! The head-to-head between Trump and Cruz has gone from 39-38 to 53-25. Trump now has a 28-point lead over Cruz, about as big as any he’s had since the beginning of the year.

Maybe this is just a temporary spike—or, then again, maybe April 6 was the temporary spike. Either way, this is an extraordinary amount of movement for an aggregate measure in just five days. Did something happen on April 6 that I missed?

UPDATE: Sam Wang says this spike is just the effect of one high-end-of-the-range poll (NBC/SurveyMonkey) and one super-high poll (YouGov). I don’t expect aggregates to move so strongly based on just one or two polls, but it looks like he’s right. Those two polls by themselves added 27 points to Trump’s lead. So I guess there’s no need to panic just yet.

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Donald Trump Is Now Way Out Ahead of Ted Cruz

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