Tag Archives: thursday

Here’s Why Bank of America’s $17 Billion Settlement Probably Won’t Cost It That Much

by AngelinaLavater Posted on August 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, the Justice Department announced a record $17 billion settlement with Bank of America over accusations that the bank—as well as companies it later bought—intentionally misled investors who purchased financial products backed by toxic subprime mortgages. It’s the largest settlement the US government has reached with any company in history, and it is roughly equal to the bank’s total profits over the past three years. But as is the case with similar settlements involving Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America probably won’t end up paying that much.

Potential tax deductions and tricky accounting techniques in deals like this often hide the real cost to banks. The Associated Press explains:

Bank of America will pay $9.65 billion in cash and provide consumer relief valued at $7 billion…Whether cash payments are structured as penalties or legal settlements can determine whether targeted companies can declare them as tax-deductible business expenses. Also, consumer relief is an amorphous cost category: If Bank of America’s deal resembles the department’s previous settlements with JPMorgan and Citigroup, that part could be less costly to the company than the huge figures suggest.

…Much of the relief will come from modifying loans that the banks have already concluded could not be recovered in full. Reducing the principal on troubled loans often just brings the amount that borrowers owe in line with what the banks already know the loan to be worth.

Settlement math also affects the actual cost of the deals, allowing banks to earn a multiple for each dollar spent on certain forms of relief. Under Citi’s deal, for example, each dollar spent on legal aid counselors is worth $2 in credits, and paper losses on some affordable housing project loans can be credited at as much as four times their actual value.

Banks generally regard the consumer relief portion of settlements as “stuff they’re doing anyway,” banking analyst Moshe Orenbuch told the AP.

The Bank of America settlement resolves more than two dozen investigations by prosecutors around the country.

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Here’s Why Bank of America’s $17 Billion Settlement Probably Won’t Cost It That Much

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Montana Democrat Ends Senate Campaign Over Plagiarism

by YvetteSepulveda Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Republicans’ path to taking over the Senate just got a little bit easier. Sen. John Walsh (D-Mont.) announced on Thursday he would end his Senate campaign after the New York Times reported last month that he had plagiarized portions of his 2007 Army War College thesis. Walsh, a former lieutenant governor and adjutant general of the state national guard, was appointed to the seat vacated by Ambassador to China Max Baucus but struggled to generate much enthusiasm among voters. Montana Democrats have until August 20 to find a new nominee. But whoever wins the Democratic nod will have a tough row to hoe against GOP Rep. (and creationism advocate) Steve Daines, who held a 16-point lead in a CBS/New York Times poll taken lost month.

Don’t plagiarize, kids.

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Montana Democrat Ends Senate Campaign Over Plagiarism

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What You Need to Know About Hurricane Arthur, the July Fourth Party-Crasher

by RonnyRhmsqsr Posted on July 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

July 3, 12:30 pm: Hurricane Arthur is on track for an unwelcome tour of the East Coast this holiday weekend, already raining out fireworks celebrations and forcing beachgoers to flee for higher ground. First stop: North Carolina.

In its 11 a.m. update, the National Hurricane Center said Arthur’s sustained winds had strengthened to 90 mph—an upper-range Category 1 hurricane. The storm should strengthen further before landfall in the North Carolina Outer Banks later Thursday, and is now expected to reach mid-Category 2 status during its close approach there.

The storm is expected to hit hardest in North Carolina, where Gov. Pat McCrory has declared a state of emergency for coastal counties.

A mandatory evacuation of Hatteras Island in the vulnerable Outer Banks was underway on Thursday. With summertime tourism at its peak, and the forecast trending stronger and closer to the coast than earlier expectations, those remaining behind to ride out Arthur on North Carolina’s barrier islands may end up with a bit more storm than they bargained for.

Storm surge flooding is expected to reach five feet above ground level in some locations on the Outer Banks, creating the potential for road washouts. Wind gusts could top 100 mph during the early morning hours of July Fourth.

After its brush with North Carolina, Arthur will spend the rest of the Fourth of July traveling relatively quickly up the East Coast. Arthur’s passage should be at a safe enough distance to keep wind and flooding risk to a minimum, but close enough to create a wave of rain showers and dangerous beachfront currents. Arthur will make its closest approach to New England during the evening hours on Friday: perfect timing to make Independence Day there a washout.

As a result, Fourth of July fireworks will now take place a day early in Boston. Rain should clear out early enough on the Fourth for holiday celebrations in Washington, DC, to continue as planned. The weather will be a bit more borderline on Friday evening in New York City, but the current forecast should still allow for evening festivities. Arthur may also pose a serious threat to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland on Saturday as it transitions to a powerful extratropical cyclone.

This radar animation from Weather Underground shows Arthur’s progression over the last few days. Rain showers were already reaching the coast on Thursday morning:

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What You Need to Know About Hurricane Arthur, the July Fourth Party-Crasher

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Read the Supreme Court’s Decision on Obama’s Recess Appointment Power

by ShayneGooden Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, the Supreme Court struck a blow to the president’s ability to use recess appointments, rejecting his ability to sidestep pro-forma sessions of Congress. Read the court’s full opinion below:

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Supreme Court Recess Appointments Decision (PDF)

Supreme Court Recess Appointments Decision (Text)

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Read the Supreme Court’s Decision on Obama’s Recess Appointment Power

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GOP Front-Runner Compares Gay Marriage to Polygamy

by qdyedut Posted on June 23, 2014

Mother Jones

Last week, a top GOP House candidate in Washington state compared gay marriage to polygamy.

“Marriage is something more for religion to decide,” Republican front-runner Pedro Celis said Thursday when asked about his stance on same-sex marriage at a GOP candidate forum, the Seattle Times reported. “Is this marriage or not? Polygamy—is it fine or not? It’s a religion thing.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee has backed Celis, a former Microsoft engineer, to run against Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene in Washington’s first congressional district. DelBene is expected to hold onto her seat in November, but national Republicans are trying extra hard to change that. The NRCC recently bumped Celis into the highest tier of its candidate recruitment and training program. Celis is now a “Young Gun,” meaning that the committee considers him to be on a “clear path to victory.”

In 2012, Celis voted against Washington’s initiative to legalize gay marriage. He says same-sex marriage issues are best left to the states.

Celis wasn’t the only one to express interesting views on same-sex marriage at Thursday’s event. Another GOP contender, former county council staffer Ed Moats, said “homosexual marriage” is “anthropologically regressive.” The Republican primary will be held on August 5.

Before this event, Celis had said his campaign was focused on Obamacare and jobs.

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GOP Front-Runner Compares Gay Marriage to Polygamy

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Big Food is already suing Vermont over its GMO labeling law

by LottieLangston Posted on June 13, 2014

Genetically engineered lawsuit

Big Food is already suing Vermont over its GMO labeling law

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A Vermont law that will require manufacturers to label foods containing genetically modified ingredients won’t take effect for another two years, but industry groups are already attacking it in court.

Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) signed the bill on May 8, and a lawsuit against it landed on Thursday of this week, just 35 days later.

The suit was filed by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, Snack Food Association, International Dairy Foods Association, and National Association of Manufacturers. It argues that the labeling law exceeds Vermont’s authority under the U.S. Constitution, and that it would be “difficult, if not impossible,” for the groups’ members to comply with the requirements by the mid-2016 deadline.

“The State is compelling manufacturers to convey messages they do not want to convey, and prohibiting manufacturers from describing their products in terms of their choosing, without anything close to a sufficient justification,” states the 22-page complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court. “The State is forcing the costs of this experiment on out-of-state companies and citizens to which it is not politically accountable, and is undermining and impeding the federal government’s interest in uniform, nationwide standards for food labeling.”

The labeling law explicitly anticipates such a challenge, and establishes a legal defense fund. Attorney General William Sorrell told the Burlington Free Press on Thursday that he hadn’t yet reviewed the complaint, but that his office had already been “gearing up” for what is sure to be a “heck of a fight.”

The state won’t have to fight it alone. Organic producers and consumer groups are rushing to provide legal support. The Organic Consumers Association, for example, promptly fired off an email blast on Thursday asking its supporters to donate money to help the nonprofit defend Vermont’s law, and to push other states to introduce similar rules. The final ruling will influence whether states across the country — including Maine and Connecticut, which have passed similar laws during the past year, albeit with some caveats – can be free to impose their own GMO labeling laws in the absence of federal leadership on the issue.


Source
Trade groups sue VT over GMO labeling law, Burlington Free Press

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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Big Food is already suing Vermont over its GMO labeling law

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Ted Cruz Addresses Rally Organized By Doctor Who Says Gays Recruit Children

by PedroFljuqey Posted on June 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz Cruz spoke at an anti-gay marriage rally on Thursday hosted by Steven Hotze, a controversial doctor who has told women that birth control would make them unappealing to men and has warned that equality for gays would be a stepping stone to child molestation. Hotze, who runs an alternative medicine practice in suburban Houston and is suing the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act, organized the event through his political action committee, Conservative Republicans of Texas. Cruz was joined on stage fellow Sen. John Cornyn, and state Sen. Dan Patrick, the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor.

As I reported in April, Hotze’s opposition to gay rights stretches back to at least the early 1980s, when he told Third Coast magazine that gay people “proliferate by one means, and one means only, and that’s recruiting. And they recruit the weak. They recruit children or young people in their formative years.” With that, he was off:

Three years later, after overturning an anti-discrimination ordinance in Houston, Hotze organized a group of eight candidates he considered allies in the fight against homosexuality. He called them “the Straight Slate.” His preferred mayoral candidate said that the best way to fight AIDS was to “shoot the queers.” Hotze told a local newspaper reporter that he cased out restaurants before making reservations to make sure they didn’t have any gay employees and became such a divisive figure in local politics that for a brief period the Harris County Republican Party cleaved in two.

More recently, his PAC spent big bucks to oppose Annise Parker, a Democratic candidate who would become Houston’s first openly gay mayor in 2009. On Thursday, Cruz also signed onto an amicus brief in support of Hotze’s lawsuit against Obamacare, which he contends is unconstitutional because it did not originate in the House. But Hotze is an unusual mascot for politicians who fear Obamacare has ruined the health care system, because he operates largely outside of it. An investigation by the Houston Press raised questions about his medical practice, noting that he had inflated his credentials and touted the healing powers of treatments such as colloidal silver—which can turn patients’ skin permanently blue—which are not covered by health insurance and not backed up by studies.

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Ted Cruz Addresses Rally Organized By Doctor Who Says Gays Recruit Children

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Chemical banned in Europe is probably on your apple

by Glinda6958 Posted on April 25, 2014

Chemical banned in Europe is probably on your apple

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A dose of diphenylamine a day won’t keep the doctor away.

The pesticide is sprayed on American apples after they’re harvested so they can be stored for months on end and shipped around the world without turning too ugly for grocery store shoppers. Federal tests in 2010 found the chemical on 80 percent of apples in the U.S. Unless you only buy organic, the DPA is also in your apple juice, in your applesauce, and maybe on your pears and in your pear baby food.

The chemical was banned in Europe because of health concerns in 2012. So the nonprofit Environmental Working Group would like to know why it remains in widespread use in the U.S.

Of particular concern to the European authorities was the fact that DPA is thought to combine with nitrogen on the surface of apples to produce nitrosamines, a cancer-causing group of chemical compounds. “While it is not yet clear that DPA is risky to public health, European Commission officials asked questions that the chemicals’ makers could not answer,” EWG scientist Sonya Lunder said in a press release on Thursday. “The EC officials banned outright any further use of DPA on the apples cultivated in the European Union until they are confident it is safe. Europe’s action should cause American policymakers to take a new look at this chemical.”

In a statement, the EPA told Reuters that it would take action if new evidence emerges that the chemical is dangerous — but, for now, it will continue to rely on a 1997 assessment that found “reasonable certainty of no harm.”

From Thursday’s EWG press release:

The U.S. EPA has taken no action to respond to the European ban and nor to the concerns about nitrosamines expressed by European food safety officials. This year, scientists in the U.S. EPA Pesticide Office tasked with pesticide safety reviews told EWG they were unaware of the new European ban and import restrictions. …

EWG’s analysis of DPA and apples says that, according to USDA, Americans eat nearly 10 pounds per person of raw apples every year. Consequently, even low levels of nitrosamines on raw apples, or in apple juice and applesauce could potentially pose a risk to human health.

Diphenylamine is used because retailers place so much emphasis on the cosmetic qualities of fruit and because distributors are shipping apples so far from where they’re grown. If we had a more sane food system, there wouldn’t be reason to use it at all.


Source
Most U.S. Apples Coated With Chemical Banned In Europe, Environmental Working Group
Group asks U.S. to examine pesticide-coated apples banned by Europe, 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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Obama makes a push for solar power

by YMKNildadcbtfzo Posted on April 18, 2014

A bright idea

Obama makes a push for solar power

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Nellis Air Force Base

The White House threw a solar party on Thursday, and the streamers and ticker tape came in the form of millions of dollars of new support for solar projects. The Hill reports:

The Obama administration on Thursday announced a $15 million program to help state, local and tribal governments build solar panels and other infrastructure to fight climate change.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and White House counselor John Podesta announced the program at what the White House billed as a “solar summit” designed to push governments and private and nonprofit businesses to up their use of solar power.

Agence France-Presse elaborates:

Thursday, the White House launched a program to encourage federal agencies, military installations, and publicly-subsidized buildings in the Washington area to install more solar panels on roofs, covered parking garages and open land.

And, earlier in the week, the Energy Department guaranteed at least $2.5 billion in loans for “innovative” solar projects.

The Environmental Protection Agency also pledged Thursday to double the use of renewable energy at its network of 1,500 partners organizations — including schools, public buildings, and businesses — within the next 10 years.

Supporting solar energy isn’t just good for the climate and for air and water quality. It’s good for the economy. A White House fact sheet said the industry employs nearly 143,000 Americans — a number that has grown more than 50 percent since 2010.


Source
Obama puts $15M into solar power, The Hill
Obama launches measures to support solar energy in US, Agence France-Presse
FACT SHEET: Building on Progress – Supporting Solar Deployment and Jobs, The White House

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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EPA gives BP a big “welcome back” kiss

by MaximilianMaier Posted on March 14, 2014

EPA gives BP a big “welcome back” kiss

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Congratulations and best wishes are in order for BP. The federal government has decided that the Gulf-wrecking corporation was rehabilitated during less than 16 months in the reformatory and is now ready to be released back into American society.

Of course, corporations can’t be jailed, so BP’s punishment for its “lack of integrity” in allowing the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill was a multibillion-dollar fine and a ban on winning any new federal contracts, both imposed in late 2012.

On Thursday, following months of legal pressure from BP, the EPA lifted the ban. Reuters has the details:

The Environmental Protection Agency and BP said they reached an agreement ending the prohibition on bidding for federal contracts on everything from fuel supply contracts to offshore leases after the company committed to a set of safety, ethical and corporate governance requirements.

Shares of BP traded in the United States rose about 1 percent to $48.09 after the close of regular trading on the New York Stock Exchange, a sign investors were hopeful the company could now try to grow its U.S. offshore operations.

Some conditions were imposed on the company’s parole, as The Washington Post explains:

The five-year agreement announced Thursday requires BP to retain an independent auditor approved by the EPA who will conduct an annual review of BP’s compliance with a set of safety, ethics and corporate governance guidelines. The EPA said the agreement gives it the authority to “take appropriate corrective action in the event the agreement is breached.”

Not everybody is as eager as the EPA to see BP let loose on American taxpayers again.

“[T]he federal government’s decision that BP has somehow paid its debt and should once again be eligible for federal contracts is a disgrace,” blogged Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform, reflecting widespread anger amongst environmentalists over Thursday’s announcement. “Not only does it let BP off the hook, it sends an unmistakable signal to the rest of the energy industry: That no matter how much harm you do, no matter how horrid your safety record, the feds will cut you some slack.”


Source
U.S. lifts ban blocking BP from new government contracts, Reuters
EPA Declares BP a ‘Responsible Contractor’ Makes It Eligible Again for Federal Contracts in the Gulf, Center for Progressive Reform
BP regains ability to bid on leases for U.S. land, water, The Washington Post

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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