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What Are the Odds Your City Will Have a White Christmas?

by Shayna9349 Posted on December 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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The lighter the shade of blue, the higher the chance of a White Christmas. NOAA/NCDC

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

Those determined to have a White Christmas should grab crampons and a bottle of scotch and prepare for a tough slog. Many places in the lower 48 with a lock on holiday snow are located in rugged, altitudinous climes—the bony ridge of the Sierra Nevada, for instance, and the wind-burned peaks of the Rockies.

That much is clear in this delightful NOAA map plotting probabilities across the US for a White Christmas, defined here as a December 25 with more than an inch of snow on the ground. Based on three decades of climate normals from the National Climatic Data Center, the graphic shows a stark geographic divide when it comes to unwrapping presents in snow-globe conditions: A region of zero to 10 percent probability curves from Washington State through coastal California and then explodes in the deep South and Southeast. Parts of the Midwest also are likely to be snowless, with places like Kansas, Missouri, and lower Illinois having only an 11 to 25 percent chance of a White Christmas.

New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., have piddling shots at this charming weather, though their brethren higher on the East Coast fare better: Boston and Providence each have a 41 to 50 percent chance. Chicago racks a (considering its frosty reputation) low-sounding 41 to 50 percent chance, and Buffalo, home to sudden crashing currents of lake-effect snow, takes it up to 51 to 60 percent.

Aside from the West’s mountain ranges, NOAA says the best-performing powder points for December 25 are Maine, upstate New York, Minnesota, the highlands of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and almost “anywhere in Idaho.” But even these crystal-crusted locales could shake off the holiday snow this year, the agency says: “While the map shows the climatological probability that a snow depth of at least one inch will be observed on December 25, the actual conditions this year may vary widely from these probabilities because the weather patterns present will determine the snow on the ground or snowfall on Christmas day.”

Here’s another version of the map that’s less smooth, but clearer at delineating regional probabilities:

NOAA/NCDC

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What Are the Odds Your City Will Have a White Christmas?

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A Majority of Cop Killers Have Been White

by Aracely82H Posted on December 22, 2014

Mother Jones

As officials continue to investigate Saturday’s tragic killing of two NYPD officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, details have surfaced about the suspect, 28 year old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who allegedly shot a woman in Baltimore before traveling to New York. Anti-police posts he appears to have published on social media sites prior to the killings have lead many to connect his crime to protests that occurred in previous weeks, and some commenters have cast blame on officials including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Obama, all of whom have condemned the violence. (Read my colleague Kevin Drum’s response to that.)

But, while every killing of an officer is a tragedy, it is worth noting, as my colleague Shane Bauer reported in the context of another story, assaults and felony killings of police officers in the US are down sharply over the past two decades. Attention has also been focused on Brinsley’s race, but FBI data shows that, though African Americans are arrested and incarcerated at a higher rate than whites, the majority of assailants who feloniously killed police officers in the past year were white.

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A Majority of Cop Killers Have Been White

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We Should Respond to North Korea. But What If We Can’t?

by LinwoodConforti Posted on December 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over at the all-new New Republic, Yishai Schwartz sounds the usual old-school New Republic war drums toward North Korea. “The only way to prevent future attacks,” he says, “is for foreign governments to know that attacks against U.S. targets—cyber or kinetic—will bring fierce, yet proportionally appropriate, responses.” And time is already running out. We should be doing this now now now.

Right. So what’s the deal, Obama? Why all the dithering in the face of this attack? Are you just—oh wait. Maybe there’s more to this. Here’s the Wall Street Journal:

Responding presents its own set of challenges, with options that people familiar with the discussions say are either implausible or ineffective. North Korea’s only connections to the Internet run through China, and some former officials say the U.S. should urge Beijing to get its neighbor to cut it out…But the U.S. already is in a standoff with China over accusations of bilateral hacking, making any aid in this crisis unlikely, the intelligence official said.

Engaging in a counter-hack could also backfire, U.S. cyberpolicy experts said, in part because the U.S. is able to spy on North Korea by maintaining a foothold on some of its computer systems. A retaliatory cyberstrike could wind up damaging Washington’s ability to spy on Pyongyang, a former intelligence official said. Another former U.S. official said policy makers remain squeamish about deploying cyberweapons against foreign targets.

…North Korea is already an isolated nation, so there isn’t much more economic pressure the U.S. can bring to bear on them either, these people said. Even publicly naming them as the suspected culprit presents diplomatic challenges, potentially causing problems for Japan, where Sony is based.

I’d like to do something to stomp on North Korea too. Hell, 20 million North Koreans would be better off if we just invaded the damn place and put them all under NATO military rule. It’s one of the few places on Earth you can say that about. However, I’m sensible enough to realize that things aren’t that easy, and there’s not much point in demanding “action” just because the situation is so hellish and frustrating.

Ditto in this case. A US response would certainly be appropriate. And honestly, it’s not as if there’s really anyone taking the other side of that argument. But given the nature of the DPRK, a meaningful response would also be really hard. America just doesn’t have a whole lot of leverage against a place like that. What’s more, if we do respond, it’s at least even odds that it will be done in some way that will never be made public.

So let’s cool our jets. Armchair posturing might make us feel better, but this isn’t a partisan chew toy, and it’s not a matter of the current administration being insufficiently hawkish. It’s a matter of figuring out if there’s even a way to respond effectively. Like it or not, it might turn out that there isn’t.

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We Should Respond to North Korea. But What If We Can’t?

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Executions Just Hit a 20-Year Low

by MargariLaurens Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s some encouraging news this week in the usually gloomy realm of criminal justice. According to a new report from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), there were fewer executions this year than in any year since 1994—and fewer new death sentences imposed than any year since 1974. That may be of little comfort to the family of Robert Wayne Holsey, a low-functioning man whose severely alcoholic court-appointed lawyer sealed his ultimate fate—Georgia executed him earlier this month—but the numbers are certainly dwindling. In 2012, states put 43 people to death. In 2013, the number was 39. This year, it’s down to 35.

Perhaps more encouraging for foes of capital punishment: Only 72 new death sentences were imposed this year (a measure the DPIC considers a more accurate indicator of the trend). That’s a 77 percent decline since 1996, as more and more states have offered juries the option of imposing a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Death Penalty Information Center

In addition, an increasingly smaller group of states accounts for the majority of executions. Seven states put prisoners to death this year (down from 20 just 15 years ago)‚ but just three of them—Florida, Missouri, and Texas—accounted for 80 percent of all the executions. The number of states that sanction the death penalty may be waning, too. In 2014, the governors of Colorado, Oregon, and Washington all imposed moratoria. And for what it’s worth, 2014 was the first year since 1997 that Texas didn’t lead the country in executions. (It tied with Missouri, at 10 apiece.)

Death Penalty Information Center

Aside from the continued decline in public support for capital punishment—just over half of Americans were for it in 2014, as opposed to nearly two-thirds in 2011—some new factors may have contributed to this year’s numbers. Botched executions in Ohio, Arizona, and Oklahoma shed light on the untested drug cocktails states are now using for lethal injections, after European drugmakers cut off their supplies. Following widespread press coverage of these gruesome execution attempts—some of which appeared to violate the Eighth Amendment’s protection from cruel and unusual punishment—Oklahoma and Ohio halted executions for the rest of the year. (In response to the mishaps, the Justice Department is expected to release a major report next year.)

We’ve also seen increased scrutiny this year of states’ willingness to execute the mentally ill or intellectually disabled. Earlier in the year, the Supreme Court ruled in Hall v. Florida that Florida’s fit-for-execution standard—merely having an IQ exceeding 70 was enough—violated standards of decency. And the case of Scott Panetti, a schizophrenic man that Texas is determined to execute, put that state’s low standards on international display. (A federal court has temporarily stayed Panetti’s execution, a move even prominent conservatives have supported.)

Major battles lie ahead for death penalty opponents. More than 3,000 people are still on death row and 30 executions have been scheduled for 2015. Fourteen states, including some the ones that botched their executions, have pursued legislation that would shroud many aspects of the execution process in secrecy—particularly the details about what’s in their lethal cocktails.

But momentum against the death penalty is strong. “Overall, the decline in the use of the death penalty has been going on for 15 years, and is likely to continue,” explains Richard Dieter, the executive director of the DPIC and an author of the new report. “For the public, the death penalty has already receded as a significant part of the criminal justice process.”

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Executions Just Hit a 20-Year Low

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If We Can’t Stop This Tiny Alaskan Town From Falling Into the Sea, What Hope Is There for the Rest of Us?

by coolmathgamesn Posted on December 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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

It’s a Wednesday morning in late August, the first day of classes at the Shishmaref School. The doors of the pale blue building haven’t opened yet, and the new principal is hurriedly buttering toast in the kitchen for the students’ breakfasts. Teachers are scrambling to make last-minute adjustments to their classrooms, while anxious kids, ranging from pre-K students through high schoolers, wait on the porch, their jackets zipped against the chill of the early-morning air. It’s all so incredibly normal, you might not know that, just a few years ago, no one thought Shishmaref would be here anymore.

The remote village of 563 people is located 30 miles south of the Arctic Circle, flanked by the Chukchi Sea to the north and an inlet to the south, and it sits atop rapidly melting permafrost. In the last decades, the island’s shores have been eroding into the sea, falling off in giant chunks whenever a big storm hits.

The residents of Shishmaref, most of whom are Alaska Native Inupiaq people, have tried to counter these problems, moving houses away from the cliffs and constructing barriers along the northern shore to try to turn back the waves. But in July 2002, looking at the long-term reality facing the island, they voted to pack up and move the town elsewhere.

Relocation has proven much more difficult than that single vote, however. And 12 years later, Shishmaref is still here, ready to begin another school year.

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If We Can’t Stop This Tiny Alaskan Town From Falling Into the Sea, What Hope Is There for the Rest of Us?

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Elizabeth Warren Says Gay Men Should Be Able To Donate Blood

by RamonAlaniz Posted on December 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Elizabeth Warren and a host of Democratic lawmakers are demanding the Obama administration stand up for gay rights.

A coalition of 80 senators and House members spearheaded by the Massachusetts senator—alongside Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Reps. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—sent a letter Monday to Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, protesting the long-standing prohibition that bars men who have had sex with men from donating blood in the United States.

In 1983, the federal government instituted a lifetime ban for any man who has had sex with another man—even once—at any time after 1977. That rule went into effect during the early days of AIDS panic when the disease was largely unknown. Now, technology exists that can detect HIV within a few weeks of infection.

Last month, an HHS panel that handles blood policy advocated tossing out the lifetime ban—but argued for replacing it with a measure that would keep any sexually active gay man from contributing to the blood supply: a ban on donations from any man who had sex with another man within the past year.

To the Democrats in Congress, that slight improvement isn’t nearly enough. The letter calls both the lifetime ban and the one-year deferral policies “discriminatory” and “unacceptable.” The lawmakers urged an end to the lifetime ban by the “end of 2014,” while also pushing for a less-stringent restriction than the one-year celibacy requirement.

“The recommendation to move to a one-year deferral policy is a step forward relative to current policies; however, such a policy still prevents many low-risk individuals from donating blood,” the letter says. “If we are serious about protecting and enhancing our nation’s blood supply, we must embrace science and reject outdated stereotypes.”

The letter may have been better directed at the Food and Drug Administration. That agency’s Blood Products Advisory Panel met earlier this month to consider the one-year deferral proposed by HHS, but the panel of experts seemed more inclined to let the current policy stand rather than loosen the restrictions.

Here’s the full letter:

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Letter to HHS on blood donation ban (PDF)

Letter to HHS on blood donation ban (Text)

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Elizabeth Warren Says Gay Men Should Be Able To Donate Blood

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Here’s a List of People to Follow on Twitter for the Latest on the Australian Hostage Crisis

by FelipeWHKvsc Posted on December 15, 2014

Mother Jones

An armed assailant is holding an unconfirmed number of hostages in a cafe in downtown Sydney. Police have evacuated the area and are locking down a pedestrian thoroughfare, Martin Place. Here is a partial list of people and organizations you can follow on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the ongoing hostage crisis:

Buzzfeed Australia‘s breaking news reporter Mark Di Stefano is on the scene.
Channel 9 journalist Caroline Marcus is doing a great job covering the unfolding events.

Guardian Australia‘s Bridie Jabour has been running that site’s live blog and beta-testing the facts as they emerge.
Sydney police reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lucy Carter, is also on the scene and tweeting.

Jess Hill is also doing a great job fact-checking the news as it breaks.

Cath Turner, a reporter for Seven News, a television company with studios within walking distance of the cafe.
You should already be following the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Mark Colvin for everything Australia-related.
For political ramifications, Fairfax reporter Latika Bourke is a great go-to.
The Sydney Morning Herald
The ABC

The Australian Newspaper
The New South Wales police, who are taking the lead on operations

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Here’s a List of People to Follow on Twitter for the Latest on the Australian Hostage Crisis

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The Budget Deal Gives the Pentagon Just As Much Money As It Got During the Iraq War

by LauriMcClemens Posted on December 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Can’t Touch This: Why nobody in D.C. messes with the Pentagon budget.

Today’s the last day for Congress to pass a budget deal and avert a government shutdown. Part of the $1.1 trillion “Cromnibus” package is the 2015 defense budget. While there’s been some wrangling over pay and benefits for service members, finalizing the Pentagon budget has been relatively uncontentious.

That’s because the Pentagon is one of the few recipients of discretionary spending that most budget-slashing tea partiers and entitlement-friendly Democrats are reluctant to touch. If the current deal passes, the Pentagon’s total funding in the 2015 fiscal year, including war-fighting costs, will come in at around $554 billion—close to what it got during the height of the Iraq War.

To be fair, the Pentagon is making do with less. Its total budget has shrunk more than 20 percent since it recently peaked in 2010. The bipartisan sequestration deal that went into effect in 2013 is supposed to keep it on a diet for the foreseeable future. However, those budget caps are looking more and more like irksome suggestions rather than requirements. Congress gave the military a partial reprieve from the caps last year, and even President Obama has spoken out against “the draconian cuts that are called for in sequestration.”

The Pentagon’s proposed 2015 base budget comes in under the spending caps; yet its 2016 budget will face tighter constraints—if lawmakers stick to them. There’s already talk that the administration’s next defense budget will exceed the caps by $60 billion. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the Pentagon’s base budget will exceed the spending caps by more than $300 billion over the next six years.

One workaround for the budget caps is the Pentagon’s war-fighting budget, A.K.A. Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO). Since it’s not part of the base budget subject to automatic caps, some critics have described it as “an off-budget war chest slush fund.” The current defense budget before Congress authorizes more than $63 billion for overseas operations, including ongoing operations in Afghanistan, the air campaign against ISIS, and the military response to Ebola in West Africa. There is no similar safety valve for non-defense discretionary programs, whose funding has dropped 15 percent since 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

And just to keep things in perspective: Even with sequestration and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, defense spending remains close to its highest level since World War II.

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The Budget Deal Gives the Pentagon Just As Much Money As It Got During the Iraq War

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Citigroup Wrote the Wall Street Giveaway Congress Just Snuck Into a Must-Pass Spending Bill

by BethBolendjcmjr Posted on December 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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A year ago, Mother Jones reported that a House bill that would allow banks like Citigroup to do more high-risk trading with taxpayer-backed money was written almost entirely by Citigroup lobbyists. The bill passed the House in October 2013, but the Senate never voted on it. For months, it was all but dead. Yet on Tuesday night, the Citi-written bill resurfaced. Lawmakers snuck the measure into a massive 11th-hour government funding bill that congressional leaders negotiated in the hopes of averting a government shutdown. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the legislation.

“This is outrageous,” says Marcus Stanley, the financial policy director at the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform. “This is to benefit big banks, bottom line.”

As I reported last year, the bill eviscerates a section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act called the “push-out rule”:

Banks hate the push-out rule…because this provision will forbid them from trading certain derivatives (which are complicated financial instruments with values derived from underlying variables, such as crop prices or interest rates). Under this rule, banks will have to move these risky trades into separate non-bank affiliates that aren’t insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and are less likely to receive government bailouts. The bill would smother the push-out rule in its crib by permitting banks to use government-insured deposits to bet on a wider range of these risky derivatives.

The Citi-drafted legislation will benefit five of the largest banks in the country—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. These financial institutions control more than 90 percent of the $700 trillion derivatives market. If this measure becomes law, these banks will be able to use FDIC-insured money to bet on nearly anything they want. And if there’s another economic downturn, they can count on a taxpayer bailout of their derivatives trading business.

In May 2013, the New York Times reported that Citigroup’s proposed language was reflected in more than 70 lines of the House financial services committee’s 85-line bill. Mother Jones was the first to publish the document showing that Citigroup lobbyists had drafted most of the legislation. Here is a side-by-side of a key section of the House bill:

The bill—sponsored by two Dems and two Republicans—passed easily out of the House financial services committee on a 53-6 vote. The six no votes came from Democrats. In October 2013, the measure passed the Republican-controlled House 292-122. Seventy Dems voted in favor, but that was far fewer than expected, partly due to press coverage of Citi’s involvement in the bill’s drafting.

Back then, the bill’s chances of becoming law seemed dim. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew voiced his opposition to the measure, saying it would be “disruptive and harmful.” Obama signaled to lawmakers that he opposed it. It never came up for a vote in the Senate.

And the legislation was left on the table for corporate-friendly lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to now sneak into the pending spending bill. But Democratic leadership is raising concerns about the Wall Street-friendly provision. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted out a statement Wednesday morning slamming the provision for allowing “big banks to gamble with money insured by the FDIC.” And Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is calling on the House to strike the Citi-written language from the spending bill.

“I am disgusted,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House financial services committee, said in a statement. “Congress is risking our homes, jobs and retirement savings once again.”

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) issued an even more dire warning, calling the bill “a good example of capitalism’s death wish.”

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Citigroup Wrote the Wall Street Giveaway Congress Just Snuck Into a Must-Pass Spending Bill

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Why Is Texas So Gung Ho to Execute This Delusional, Mentally Ill Man?

by OpalSkillen Posted on December 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Almost no one wants to see Scott Panetti put to death. Conservatives such as Ron Paul and Ken Cuccinelli and evangelical leaders have spoken up on his behalf. The European Union has protested his pending execution, which is temporarily on hold thanks to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Even some of Panetti’s victims don’t believe he should be killed by the state.

The Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot execute a mentally ill person who lacks a rational understanding of the nature of his punishment. Panetti fits that standard: He insists that Texas wants to kill him to prevent him from preaching the Gospel. And yet the state has gone to great lengths to ensure that Panetti gets the needle. Right up until December 3, when the 5th Circuit temporarily halted Panetti’s execution with hours to spare, the state has deployed legal gamesmanship that seems more appropriate for patent litigation than a death penalty case.

Panetti’s schizophrenia has been apparent since 1978, when he was 20 years old. By 1986, the Social Security Administration had declared him disabled by his brain disorder and therefore eligible for federal benefits. Six years later, after a series of hospitalizations and bizarre incidents—in one case he buried demon-possessed furniture in his yard—Panetti shot and killed his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado.

His criminal case was a theater of the absurd from the outset, thanks to a series of puzzling legal decisions by Texas and federal judges. It began when Kerr County District Judge Stephen Ables, still on the bench today, permitted Panetti to represent himself at trial over the objections of the state. He showed up wearing what a friend of the family later described as a 1920s-era cowboy outfit: “It looked idiotic. He wore a large hat and a huge bandana. He wore weird boots with stirrups, the pants were tucked in at the calf,” she testified in an affidavit. “He looked like a clown. I had a feeling that Scott had no perception how he was coming across.” Thus clad, standing before the jury, Panetti called himself “Sarge” and rambled incoherently for hours with little interruption from the judge—who did, however, argue with the defendant over the relevance of belt buckles and whether he could discuss the TV show Quincy. As part of his defense, Panetti issued a stream-of-consciousness description of his crime, from Sarge’s perspective:

Fall. Sonja, Joe, Amanda, kitchen. Joe bayonet, not attacking. Sarge not afraid, not threatened. Sarge not angry, not mad. Sarge, boom, boom. Sarge, boom, boom, boom, boom. Sarge, boom, boom.

Sarge is gone. No more Sarge. Sonja and Birdie. Birdie and Sonja. Joe, Amanda lying kitchen, here, there, blood. No, leave. Scott, remember exactly what Sarge did. Shot the lock. Walked in the kitchen. Sonja, where’s Birdie? Sonja here. Joe, bayonet, door, Amanda. Boom, boom, blood, blood.

Demons. Ha, ha, ha, ha, oh, Lord, oh, you.

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Why Is Texas So Gung Ho to Execute This Delusional, Mentally Ill Man?

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