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Welsh Rockers Catfish and the Bottlemen Aim "Right to the Top"

by HassanBlackweld Posted on June 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Van McCann, the gleeful 21-year-old frontman of Welsh indie-rock band Catfish and the Bottlemen, doesn’t appear to have a sarcastic bone in his body. We meet in a shady spot on Randall’s Island in New York City, at the Governor’s Ball music festival. Even among the Brooklynites jockeying to out-hipster each other, McCann’s bouncy rocker haircut and skinny pants stand out. He informs me that I have a face that makes him happy to look at, which is also how he feels about Scottish actor Ewan McGregor’s face. In fact, the band’s new video for the song, “Kathleen,” features almost three minutes of McGregor smiling on screen. McCann isn’t being ironic. “I just love him!” he exclaims.

McCann’s band, which debuted Kathleen and the Other Three, its new EP, in the US earlier this month, has the kind of back story a label might try to make up to draw buzz. (The UK’s Communion Records, which also works with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, signed Catfish and the Bottlemen in 2013). McCann says his mom couldn’t have children naturally, and he was born in the final in-vitro fertilization attempt. When he was a kid his family traveled around Australia, where he saw a busker named Catfish and the Bottlemen, hence the name. He met his bandmates—guitarist Billy Bibby, bassist Benji Blakeway, and drummer Bob Hall—in school back in Llandudno, Wales, and when McCann was 15, he got kicked out of school, not “because I was a little shit,” but because he was playing too many shows and missing exams.

Since then, Catfish and the Bottlemen have been busting their asses and playing a lot of gigs—including ones they’re not invited to. McCann recalls one time when the band couldn’t get on the opening slot of a show they wanted to play, so they rented a generator, revved it up, put on ninja masks in the parking lot, and waited for everyone to leave the gig before starting to rock out. “Everyone just went crazy; we got arrested for sound pollution!” McCann says. Last year, they played upward of 100 shows in 18 months. This summer, they’re scheduled to play more than 30 festivals.

Their EP’s title track is a catchy, sex-drenched rock song that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Arctic Monkeys record, or maybe the long-lost dirty Killers album. “It’s impractical, to go out and catch a death with a dress fit for the summer/So you don’t/Instead you call me up with a head full of filth,” McCann sings. The other songs aren’t quite as much fun, although “Homesick” reminds me of all the times I emo-ed out in my car to Dashboard Confessional as a teenager—which as far as I’m concerned, is a good thing. McCann notes that right now he’s listening to British indie group Little Comets and the National, but he’s also a fan of the Strokes, Van Morrison, and the Beatles, of course.

At the Governor’s Ball, the Bottlemen played around noon, long before fans flooded the park to see Skrillex and Jack White. But speaking with McCann, I got the sense that the band could cheerfully propel itself straight to world domination. McCann says his goal is to play giant stadiums, not just intimate indie-rock clubs. “Right to the top, all the way to the top. To me, I don’t see the point of doing it otherwise,” he says. He describes playing New York as, “Fucking ace, man. It’s amazing, I love it!” He adds, giddily, “When I was walking through the streets of New York the other day, this girl came up to me and was like, ‘Dude your band is awesome!’ I was like, ‘I’ve only been here a day!'”

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Welsh Rockers Catfish and the Bottlemen Aim "Right to the Top"

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Here’s the Easiest Way to Fund the Interstate Highway System: Just Restore the Damn Gas Tax

by PierresHood Posted on April 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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With a few exceptions, the interstate highway system is blissfully toll-free. That may be about to change:

With pressure mounting to avert a transportation funding crisis this summer, the Obama administration Tuesday opened the door for states to collect tolls on interstate highways to raise revenue for roadway repairs.

….The question of how to pay to repair roadways and transit systems built in the heady era of post-World War II expansion is demanding center stage this spring, with projections that traditional funding can no longer meet the need. That source, the Highway Trust Fund, relies on the 18.4-cent federal gas tax, which has eroded steadily as vehicles have become more energy efficient.

….With the trust fund about to run into the red and the current federal highway bill set to expire Sept. 30, Congress cannot — as its members often note — keep “kicking the can down the road.”

Hold on. It’s true that we’re using a bit less gasoline than in the past. But that’s not why the Highway Trust Fund is in dire shape. It’s in dire shape because the federal gas tax has been cut nearly in half since it was last changed two decades ago. In 1993 dollars, it’s now about 11 cents per gallon. If it had just kept up with inflation, highway funding would be in fine shape.

Now, there’s arguably a good reasons to allow tolls. Basically, it makes driving on interstates more of a pain in the ass, which probably means marginally less driving on interstates. And less driving is good for the planet. So if you think that making it less convenient to drive is a good idea, tolls might help.

But you know what else would cut down on driving? Gas taxes restored to 1993 levels. So what’s the point of dicking around instead with tolls and corporate tax reform and all that? The answer, of course, is Republicans, who have sworn a blood oath never to raise taxes, even if “raising” actually means “keeping them at the same level.” So instead of just bumping up the gax tax by a dime or two and then indexing it to inflation—no muss, no fuss—we’re going to play a bunch of idiotic and annoying games merely to keep our roads in decent repair.

Thanks, Republicans. I appreciate it.

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Here’s the Easiest Way to Fund the Interstate Highway System: Just Restore the Damn Gas Tax

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New hurricane maps will show whether your house could drown

by GilbertHancock Posted on April 17, 2014

New hurricane maps will show whether your house could drown

By

Gina Jacobs / Shutterstock

The federal government will begin making its hurricane warning maps more colorful this summer, adding a range of hues to represent the danger of looming floods.

Red, orange, yellow, and blue will mark coastal and near-coastal areas where storm surges are anticipated during a hurricane. The different colors will be used to show the anticipated depth of approaching flash floods.

Severe flooding that followed Superstorm Sandy helped prompt the change — NOAA says it had a hard time convincing Manhattanites that they faced any real danger from such floods.

“We are not a storm-surge-savvy nation,” Jamie Rhome, a storm surge specialist with NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, told Reuters. “Yet storm surge is responsible for over half the deaths in hurricanes. So you can see why we’re motivated to try something new.”

Here’s a hypothetical example of what one such map might look like for Florida. Beware, Ft. Myers!

National Hurricane CenterClick to embiggen.


Source
New hurricane forecast maps to show flood risk from storm surge, Reuters

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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New hurricane maps will show whether your house could drown

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Narrow Networks Are Going to Bite a Lot of Obamacare Customers

by JulianneR05 Posted on March 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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A few days ago, reader JF sent me an email about a problem he’s had with his new Obamacare policy:

I’m a single dad living in LA. I have been underemployed/unemployed for the past few years, and until January had been paying through the nose for an individual policy for myself and my son. I am very familiar with the ins and outs of health insurance and I’m used to checking with every provider beforehand to quantify out of pocket costs. It was a godsend to have affordable insurance as of January. I qualified for a heavily subsidized Silver plan. I want the ACA to work, and to work well.

It didn’t for me. Here’s what happened. The first time I sought care under my new policy it was in January for a standard annual checkup. I’m a healthy guy so for me it’s a few questions from the doctor and then they draw blood. My ACA plan allowed me to get this care with a co-pay of $3.

Then I got the bill from the blood lab for $800. The doctor sent it to a lab outside the ACA network. Yeah, I know, I could have double checked with the doc to make sure the blood was sent to an in-network lab (I had already checked once). Bottom line is that a CBC blood test is going to cost me EIGHT MONTHS worth of my subsidized insurance premiums.

Here’s the bad story on the horizon: Imagine what’s going to happen when millions of newly insured people, not savvy about how to police health care costs, start to get bills that far exceed what CoveredCA or healthcare.gov promised them? “My Obamacare policy cost me $800 for a blood test” is the next headline. It’s in line with the horror stories from Steven Brill last year.

I think progressives need to start talking about this because it should be addressed by our side, not just to avoid mid-term election embarrassment, but because poor folks can be harmed by it. Hand waving this away as “we got poor people insurance, our job is done” is a mistake.

How common are experiences like this? Common enough that a recent Commonwealth Fund report explicitly addresses this precise problem. Andrew Sprung saw the report, and it triggered his memory about a similar problem he had a few years ago when he checked himself into an ER with chest pains:

The ER team decided to keep me overnight and informed me that I would be checking out against advice if I left early. By the time I’d had two EKGs it was clear nothing was wrong with my heart, but I subjected myself to a CT-scan with stress test, an ultrasound, and a $20k tab of which we paid nothing except maybe a $100 deductible (and which the self-insured hospital network essentially paid itself, I suppose).

So I was weak and foolish — with one exception. At the beginning, I had to sign a release agreeing to pay for any out-of-network care I received in-hospital. The attending doctor was at hand at the time. I asked him if he was in-network. He said he didn’t know. I said, how can you not know? He said his office dealt with “hundreds” of insurance plans. He offered to check. I said please do. He came back a few minutes later and said he had confirmed that he accepted the insurance plan provided to employees of the hospital he was standing in.

So there are several lessons here. First, narrow networks aren’t unique to Obamacare. They’ve been a growing problem with private insurance plans for years (see chart on right). Second, it gets worse with Obamacare in some states because of the narrow networks supported by nearly all ACA insurers. JF confirmed to me that he had a Blue Shield plan, but that’s not the whole story. “The blood lab in question is in network for Blue Shield, but not for Blue Shield CoveredCA plans, as per everyone I’ve spoken to about it.”

Third, it’s really hard to be alert enough all the time to avoid this. You have to remember to ask every time. You have to ask every doctor, and you have to ask for every lab test. And most doctors don’t know, and don’t really want to be bothered finding out. So you have to be very, very persistent.

And most of us aren’t very, very persistent. Especially if, say, we’re in an ER worried that chest pains might be an indication of an oncoming heart attack.

How big a deal is this? I don’t have any way of knowing. But JF is certainly right that it’s the kind of thing that can give Obamacare a bad name if it happens often enough. Unfortunately, there’s no plausible legislative tweak to address this, since Republicans are implacably opposed to improving Obamacare in any way, shape, or form. At best, there might be a way to partially address it with HHS regulations.

In any case, buyer beware. If you have any kind of health coverage at all, this is probably something to keep in mind. If you have an Obamacare policy, especially in a narrow-network state like California, it’s something to keep doubly in mind.

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Narrow Networks Are Going to Bite a Lot of Obamacare Customers

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People Who Know the Koch Brothers Sure Don’t Like Them Much

by Celestinej5a Posted on March 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is apropos of nothing in particular, but Dave Weigel draws my attention today to a new GWU/Battleground poll that gives us approval/disapproval ratings for an eclectic bunch of people that happens to include the Koch brothers. It turns out that they’re more unpopular than anyone on the list. Weigel comments on what this means for the Democrats’ anti-Koch offensive:

I generally agree that the Koch focus (Kochus?) is a poor substitute for a positive Democratic agenda, if such a thing is possible, but I don’t see anything in the poll that contradicts the Democratic strategy. Charles and David Koch never, ever do TV interviews, choosing to exercise their influence behind the scenes of political groups, and they’re known by two out of five Americans?

Given their low profile, you’d hardly expect the Kochs to be a household name. And yet, nearly half of all American have heard of them, and among those who are in the know they’re very unpopular. So maybe the Democratic strategy of personalizing the robber-baron right by demonizing the Kochs is paying off. Give it another few months and maybe the Kochs will be a household name.

On the other hand, keep in mind how unreliable these polls are. It’s possible that half the people who claim to have heard of the Koch brothers think they’re the rap duo who performed at the Grammys a few weeks ago. Maybe if Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were less annoying, the Kochs would have done better in this poll.

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People Who Know the Koch Brothers Sure Don’t Like Them Much

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AFP Changes Obamacare Message, Still Gets It Wrong

by 4ko9dra Posted on March 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Koch-funded AFP has spent millions of dollars running ads that star real Americans who have been hurt by Obamacare. Each one has been systematically debunked. So AFP switched gears. In their latest ad, instead of focusing on a single case, they simply make the broad charge that “millions of people have lost their health insurance, millions of people can’t see their own doctors, and millions are paying more and getting less.” Take that, meddling fact checkers!

So Glenn Kessler took a look. Verdict: when you make broad statements, it is indeed harder to demonstrate that they’re concretely wrong. After all, some people have lost their health insurance, some people can’t see their own doctors, and some people are paying more and getting less. Nonetheless, Kessler concludes that AFP’s broad charges aren’t much more defensible than their bogus real Americans. Two Pinocchios.

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AFP Changes Obamacare Message, Still Gets It Wrong

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Conservatives Are the Big Roadblock to Improving Head Start

by Caroline73G Posted on March 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Robert Gordon and Sara Mead say that Head Start is better than a lot of its critics give it credit for:

But this much is true: Head Start could do better….Evaluations suggest that strong state preschool programs sustain gains in reading, math, or both in ways that Head Start doesn’t. There’s no reason to think Head Start can’t produce similar results. In fact, some individual Head Start programs already do: Kids in them achieve vocabulary gains more than twice the Head Start average. But it will require some changes.

Some of the program’s defenders may bristle at such talk, for fear that any questioning of Head Start’s effectiveness will reinforce the arguments of Paul Ryan and those eager to downsize or even eliminate the program. But now is the time to talk about improving Head Start. Replicating results from the best Head Start programs would be a big boost for our nation’s poorest youngsters, enabling many more of them to start school much better prepared.

This is the eternal problem. There are plenty of liberals who would like nothing more than to make Head Start—and pre-K programs in general—better than they are today. In fact, if there’s any group which should be most concerned about making sure that taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently and that social programs show real results, it’s liberals.

So why is there often so much resistance to improvement? Obviously inertia is part of it. Most of us tend to get a little lazy once we find a comfort zone. But there’s a more substantive reason too: As Gordon and Mead say, defenders of social welfare programs know that acknowledging problems won’t lead to kumbaya sessions with conservatives where we all agree on improvements. It merely gives conservatives fodder for arguments to cut spending on the poor.

This sounds simpleminded and uncharitable. So be it. But the plain truth is that there are vanishingly few conservatives who are genuinely dedicated to improving social welfare programs. They just want to cut taxes and cut spending. Sometimes this is out in the open. Sometimes it gets hidden in the language of “block grants.” Sometimes it’s buried even further in spending caps that obviously starve domestic programs without admitting that any particular program will ever get cut. But one way or another, it’s there.

So what’s the answer? I wish I knew. But as long as conservatives remain dedicated to using problems with social programs as nothing more than convenient excuses to get the Fox News outrage machine rolling, progress is going to be hard to come by.

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Conservatives Are the Big Roadblock to Improving Head Start

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Who Gets Special Access to Comcast’s Customers? Who Decides?

by DieterSkillern Posted on March 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Things that make you go “hmmm”:

Apple Inc. is in talks with Comcast Corp. about teaming up for a streaming-television service that would use an Apple set-top box and get special treatment on Comcast’s cables to ensure it bypasses congestion on the Web, people familiar with the matter say.

….Under the plan Apple proposed to Comcast, Apple’s video streams would be treated as a “managed service” traveling in Internet protocol format—similar to cable video-on-demand or phone service. Those services travel on a special portion of the cable pipe that is separate from the more congested portion reserved for public Internet access.

People familiar with the matter said that while Apple would like a separate “flow” for its video traffic, it isn’t asking for its traffic to be prioritized over other Internet-based services.

Making video-on-demand operate properly requires careful engineering. It doesn’t work if you just dump it out on the public internet and call it a day. However, that careful engineering costs money, and it’s not unfair for companies to demand reasonable compensation of some sort if they’re the ones who bear the costs.

But who decides what’s reasonable and what isn’t? In a competitive market, the market eventually decides. Price signals and competition do the heavy lifting with only light government regulation to set a level playing field and police the worst abuses. But when companies like Comcast have effective monopoly control over internet access in their territories, who decides then? There are no market forces to rely on. So, for example, when Netflix finally agrees to pay a fee to Comcast for delivery of its video content, the quality of Netflix transmissions miraculously goes up almost instantly. Apparently there were no infrastructure issues at all and no special buildout costs. It was just a matter of Comcast extorting some extra revenue from Netflix.

The Apple case is different in the details, but it raises the same basic principle: Who decides? Who gets special access to Comcast’s customer base? Who gets shut out? The market can’t provide any guidance because Comcast has little genuine competition in this space.

So who decides?

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Who Gets Special Access to Comcast’s Customers? Who Decides?

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What’s the Difference Between Barton Gellman and Glenn Greenwald?

by UXMAnnetta Posted on March 23, 2014

Mother Jones

Glenn Greenwald makes a point worth repeating today about the steady publication of stories based on the documents Edward Snowden provided to several media outlets last year:

(1) Edward Snowden has not leaked a single document to any journalist since he left Hong Kong in June: 9 months ago. Back then, he provided a set of documents to several journalists and asked that we make careful judgments about what should and should not be published based on several criteria. He has played no role since then in deciding which documents are or are not reported.

….(2) Publication of an NSA story constitutes an editorial judgment by the media outlet that the information should be public. By publishing yesterday’s Huawei story, the NYT obviously made the editorial judgment that these revelations are both newsworthy and in the public interest, should be disclosed, and will not unduly harm “American national security.” For reasons I explain below, I agree with that choice. But if you disagree — if you want to argue that this (or any other) NSA story is reckless, dangerous, treasonous or whatever — then have the courage to take it up with the people who reached the opposite conclusion: in this case, the editors and reporters of the NYT.

There’s more at the link, but it’s worth noting that although Greenwald himself is the subject of routine suggestions of treason-esque behavior, very rarely is the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman given the same treatment. But Gellman has been responsible for some of the biggest stories to date based on the Snowden documents.

Why the difference? Obviously Greenwald has placed himself in the public eye more than Gellman has, but that’s hardly sufficient explanation. What matters is what gets published. And the truth is that, as near as I can tell, nearly every single document that Greenwald has published so far would also have been published by the Post or the New York Times if they had gotten to it first. He hasn’t done anything that these pillars of American journalism haven’t done too.

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What’s the Difference Between Barton Gellman and Glenn Greenwald?

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What Are Your Favorite Comedies?

by RichelleButterf Posted on March 22, 2014

Mother Jones

They say you can tell more about a person by what he laughs at than by what he cries at. With that in mind, here are ten of my favorite film comedies in no particular order. As you can see, I basically like jokefests. There is little trace of sophistication here:

Real Genius
Life of Brian
Office Space
Groundhog Day
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Airplane!
This is Spinal Tap
Dodgeball
Galaxy Quest
The Big Lebowski

Marian and I both thought this Minute Maid commercial was funny. I remember telling her that it showed the difference in our senses of humor. I liked it for the first part; she liked it for the second part:

Among older, classic comedies, I would probably choose anything starring Cary Grant and let it go at that. What are your favorites?

JUST FOR THE RECORD: I limited my list to one film per actor/director. So only one Monty Python film, one Steve Martin film, one Abrahams/Zucker film, etc. There are no Mel Brooks films because I’m not really much of a Mel Brooks fan.

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What Are Your Favorite Comedies?

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