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1 Percent of America’s Power Plants Emit 33 Percent of Energy Industry’s Carbon

by maciao85 Posted on September 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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Less than 1 percent of US power plants produce nearly a third of the energy industry’s carbon emissions, according to a new report released Tuesday. “If the 50 most-polluting U.S. power plants were an independent nation,” reads the report from Environment America Research & Policy Center, an independent nonprofit, “they would be the seventh-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, behind Germany and ahead of South Korea.” The vast majority of the top 100 offenders—98 of them in fact—are coal plants.

The report, which comes in advance of a Environmental Protection Agency proposal on emissions standards for new power plants expected later this month, claims that cleaning up the biggest polluters could have an outsized impact on reducing greenhouse gases. A March EPA proposal suggested capping carbon production at 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour produced for new plants. That’s well below the 3,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour the dirtiest existing plants produce. Standards for existing plants are in the works, too—the EPA’s proposal is supposed to be submitted by June 2014 and finalized the following year. Even if the standards are weakened in the approval process, the average coal plant still produces more than twice as much carbon than allowed by the cap. That means new coal plants are “highly unlikely” to meet the EPA’s target, according to the report.

Today, the 50 dirtiest plants in the United States—all coal-fired—account for 2 percent of the world’s energy-related carbon pollution each year. That’s equal to the annual emissions from half of America’s 240 million cars. The 100 dirtiest plants—a tiny fraction of the country’s 6,000 power plants—account for a fifth of all US carbon emissions. According to the report, curbing the emissions of the worst offenders in the United States “is one of the most effective ways to reduce U.S. global warming pollution…reducing the risk that emissions will reach a level that triggers dangerous, irreversible climate change impacts.”

The United States has been trending away from coal, and a recent spate of bankruptcies and closings have thrown the future of coal-fired plants, and their potential for profit, into question. If the new EPA standards don’t change the US energy landscape, it’s possible that glut of cheap natural gas and looming expensive upgrades for coal plants will.

Here are the top 10 dirtiest plants in the states, and their yearly emissions:

  1. Georgia Power Co.’s Scherer Coal plant, Georgia (21.3 million metric tons)
  2. Alabama Power Co.’s James H. Miller Jr. plant, Alabama (20.7 million metric tons)
  3. Luminant Generation Company’s Martin Lake plant, Texas (18.8 million metric tons)
  4. Union Electric Co.’s Labadie plant, Missouri (18.5 million metric tons)
  5. NRG Texas Power’s W.A. Parish plant (17.8 million metric tons)
  6. Duke Energy Indiana Inc.’s Gibson plant (16.9 million metric tons)
  7. Ohio Power Co.’s General James M. Gavin plant (16.6 million metric tons)
  8. FirstEnergy Generation Corp.’s FirstEnergy Bruce Mansfield plant (16.4 million metric tons)
  9. Detroit Edison Co.’s Monroe plant (16.4 million metric tons)
  10. Salt River Project’s Navajo plant (15.9 million metric tons)

â&#128;&#139;â&#128;&#139;You can see the full list here.

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1 Percent of America’s Power Plants Emit 33 Percent of Energy Industry’s Carbon

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Obama and the Syria Deal: Deter, Not Punish

by gjrrkjujp Posted on September 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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In search of popular and congressional support for a limited and narrow strike on Syria, President Barack Obama has contended that the aim of military action would be to punish Bashar al-Assad’s regime for its presumed use of chemical weapons and deter it from the further use of such horrific arms. The possible Russia-brokered deal that has emerged in the face of Obama’s threatened attack—Syria submitting its chemical weapons to international control—could prevent a US assault on Syria and yield Obama a diplomatic victory. But he would have to settle for an incomplete win. Assad would presumably not be able to launch another massive chemical weapons attack, but the Syrian dictator would not be truly punished for his military’s use of chemical weapons.

Under the no-details-yet arrangement being pursued by Washington, Moscow, and the United Nations, Assad would presumably give up control of his chemical weapons stock. How that happens remains to be seen. Will he hand over these arms to the UN or another international agency for destruction? Will he allow inspectors to monitor and guard his storage facilities? Will he truly honor the agreement and not stash some chemical weapons in a hiding place? But any regimen would certainly make it difficult, if not impossible, for Assad to once again use chemical weapons against his foes. Moreover, Vladimir Putin and Russia would now be on the hook, essentially guarantors that Assad would not again resort to such arms. And given that Russia is Assad’s No. 1 sponsor, Assad could not afford to tick off Moscow. So no matter how imperfect the international control system might be, there will be plenty of incentive for Assad to keep his hands off chemical weapons—and for Russia to lean on him. (Of course, in extreme circumstances—say, a situation in which the survival of the regime is at stake—Assad and his Russian pals might rejigger their calculations.) Consequently, a deal would likely achieve what Obama has sought: deterring Assad from further chemical weapons attacks.

Yet the accord in the works has no punitive aspect. Assad will not be held accountable for the August 21 attack near Damascus that killed 1400 civilians, including many children. And he will be able to continue slaughtering others with conventional means. Will other tyrants get the message that using chemical weapons will not be accepted by the international community?

Still, the possible unintended consequences of a punitive strike on Syria remain: civilian casualties, shifting the balance of power in favor of Al Qaeda-connected rebels, and creating more chaos and conflict in Syria and the region. Is punishing Assad worth potentially destabilizing the country further? (A collapse of the Syrian regime could lead to a WMD free-for-all there.) If this deal solidifies—and that’s a good-sized if—Obama might have to accept deterrence as the net gain. Afterward, he can focus on the tougher challenge of resolving the Syrian conflict and bringing Assad to justice.

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Obama and the Syria Deal: Deter, Not Punish

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Congress to the Rescue on Syria? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

by abram Posted on September 9, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Sometimes history happens at the moment when no one is looking. On weekends in late August, the president of the United States ought to be playing golf or loafing at Camp David, not making headlines. Yet Barack Obama chose Labor Day weekend to unveil arguably the most consequential foreign policy shift of his presidency.

In an announcement that surprised virtually everyone, the president told his countrymen and the world that he was putting on hold the much anticipated US attack against Syria. Obama hadn’t, he assured us, changed his mind about the need and justification for punishing the Syrian government for its probable use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. In fact, only days before administration officials had been claiming that, if necessary, the US would “go it alone” in punishing Bashar al-Assad’s regime for its bad behavior. Now, however, Obama announced that, as the chief executive of “the world’s oldest constitutional democracy,” he had decided to seek Congressional authorization before proceeding.

Obama thereby brought to a screeching halt a process extending back over six decades in which successive inhabitants of the Oval Office had arrogated to themselves (or had thrust upon them) ever wider prerogatives in deciding when and against whom the United States should wage war. Here was one point on which every president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush had agreed: on matters related to national security, the authority of the commander-in-chief has no fixed limits. When it comes to keeping the country safe and securing its vital interests, presidents can do pretty much whatever they see fit.

Here, by no means incidentally, lies the ultimate the source of the stature and prestige that defines the imperial presidency and thereby shapes (or distorts) the American political system. Sure, the quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are classy, but what really endowed the postwar war presidency with its singular aura were the missiles, bombers, and carrier battle groups that responded to the commands of one man alone. What’s the bully pulpit in comparison to having the 82nd Airborne and SEAL Team Six at your beck and call?

Now, in effect, Obama was saying to Congress: I’m keen to launch a war of choice. But first I want you guys to okay it. In politics, where voluntarily forfeiting power is an unnatural act, Obama’s invitation qualifies as beyond unusual. Whatever the calculations behind his move, its effect rates somewhere between unprecedented and positively bizarre—the heir to imperial prerogatives acting, well, decidedly unimperial.

Obama is a constitutional lawyer, of course, and it’s pleasant to imagine that he acted out of due regard for what Article 1, Section 8, of that document plainly states, namely that “the Congress shall have power… to declare war.” Take his explanation at face value and the president’s decision ought to earn plaudits from strict constructionists across the land. The Federalist Society should offer Obama an honorary lifetime membership.

Of course, seasoned political observers, understandably steeped in cynicism, dismissed the president’s professed rationale out of hand and immediately began speculating about his actual motivation. The most popular explanation was this: having painted himself into a corner, Obama was trying to lure members of the legislative branch into joining him there. Rather than a belated conversion experience, the president’s literal reading of the Constitution actually amounted to a sneaky political ruse.

After all, the president had gotten himself into a pickle by declaring back in August 2012 that any use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar al-Assad would cross a supposedly game-changing “red line.” When the Syrians (apparently) called his bluff, Obama found himself facing uniformly unattractive military options that ranged from the patently risky—joining forces with the militants intent on toppling Assad—to the patently pointless—firing a “shot across the bow” of the Syrian ship of state.

Meanwhile, the broader American public, awakening from its summertime snooze, was demonstrating remarkably little enthusiasm for yet another armed intervention in the Middle East. Making matters worse still, US military leaders and many members of Congress, Republican and Democratic alike, were expressing serious reservations or actual opposition. Press reports even cited leaks by unnamed officials who characterized the intelligence linking Assad to the chemical attacks as no “slam dunk,” a painful reminder of how bogus information had paved the way for the disastrous and unnecessary Iraq War. For the White House, even a hint that Obama in 2013 might be replaying the Bush scenario of 2003 was anathema.

The president also discovered that recruiting allies to join him in this venture was proving a hard sell. It wasn’t just the Arab League’s refusal to give an administration strike against Syria its seal of approval, although that was bad enough. Jordan’s King Abdullah, America’s “closest ally in the Arab world,” publicly announced that he favored talking to Syria rather than bombing it. As for Iraq, that previous beneficiary of American liberation, its government was refusing even to allow US forces access to its airspace. Ingrates!

For Obama, the last straw may have come when America’s most reliable (not to say subservient) European partner refused to enlist in yet another crusade to advance the cause of peace, freedom, and human rights in the Middle East. With memories of Tony and George W. apparently eclipsing those of Winston and Franklin, the British Parliament rejected Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to position the United Kingdom alongside the United States. Parliament’s vote dashed Obama’s hopes of forging a coalition of two and so investing a war of choice against Syria with at least a modicum of legitimacy.

When it comes to actual military action, only France still entertains the possibility of making common cause with the United States. Yet the number of Americans taking assurance from this prospect approximates the number who know that Bernard-Henri Lévy isn’t a celebrity chef.

John F. Kennedy once remarked that defeat is an orphan. Here was a war bereft of parents even before it had begun.

Whether or Not to Approve the War for the Greater Middle East

Still, whether high-minded constitutional considerations or diabolically clever political machinations motivated the president may matter less than what happens next. Obama lobbed the ball into Congress’s end of the court. What remains to be seen is how the House and the Senate, just now coming back into session, will respond.

At least two possibilities exist, one with implications that could prove profound and the second holding the promise of being vastly entertaining.

On the one hand, Obama has implicitly opened the door for a Great Debate regarding the trajectory of US policy in the Middle East. Although a week or ten days from now the Senate and House of Representatives will likely be voting to approve or reject some version of an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), at stake is much more than the question of what to do about Syria. The real issue—Americans should hope that the forthcoming congressional debate makes this explicit—concerns the advisability of continuing to rely on military might as the preferred means of advancing US interests in this part of the world.

Appreciating the actual stakes requires putting the present crisis in a broader context. Herewith an abbreviated history lesson.

Back in 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would employ any means necessary to prevent a hostile power from gaining control of the Persian Gulf. In retrospect, it’s clear enough that the promulgation of the so-called Carter Doctrine amounted to a de facto presidential “declaration” of war (even if Carter himself did not consciously intend to commit the United States to perpetual armed conflict in the region). Certainly, what followed was a never-ending sequence of wars and war-like episodes. Although the Congress never formally endorsed Carter’s declaration, it tacitly acceded to all that his commitment subsequently entailed.

Relatively modest in its initial formulation, the Carter Doctrine quickly metastasized. Geographically, it grew far beyond the bounds of the Persian Gulf, eventually encompassing virtually all of the Islamic world. Washington’s own ambitions in the region also soared. Rather than merely preventing a hostile power from achieving dominance in the Gulf, the United States was soon seeking to achieve dominance itself. Dominance—that is, shaping the course of events to Washington’s liking—was said to hold the key to maintaining stability, ensuring access to the world’s most important energy reserves, checking the spread of Islamic radicalism, combating terrorism, fostering Israel’s security, and promoting American values. Through the adroit use of military might, dominance actually seemed plausible. (So at least Washington persuaded itself.)

What this meant in practice was the wholesale militarization of US policy toward the Greater Middle East in a period in which Washington’s infatuation with military power was reaching its zenith. As the Cold War wound down, the national security apparatus shifted its focus from defending Germany’s Fulda Gap to projecting military power throughout the Islamic world. In practical terms, this shift found expression in the creation of Central Command (CENTCOM), reconfigured forces, and an eternal round of contingency planning, war plans, and military exercises in the region. To lay the basis for the actual commitment of troops, the Pentagon established military bases, stockpiled material in forward locations, and negotiated transit rights. It also courted and armed proxies. In essence, the Carter Doctrine provided the Pentagon (along with various US intelligence agencies) with a rationale for honing and then exercising new capabilities.

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Congress to the Rescue on Syria? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

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Season Four of "Boardwalk Empire": More Great Characters, Sleazy Politics, and Racial Tensions

by Mstyslava7ju Posted on September 8, 2013

Mother Jones

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As much critical acclaim as Boardwalk Empire has garnered over the last three years, there’s an argument to be made that the HBO drama remains underrated. The series dialogue is consistently some of the sharpest and memorable on television, almost on a casual basis. The casting, production values, music, and 1920s gangland confrontations are superb. The effortlessness with which the Boardwalk crew juggles seemingly dozens of intersecting storylines is admirable. And the creative involvement of Martin Scorsese (who executive-produced and directed the $18-million pilot episode), author Dennis Lehane, and Terence Winter certainly doesn’t hurt.

It’s all too easy to take the show’s greatness for granted at this point. The fourth season (premiering Sunday, September 8 at 9 p.m. ET/PT) shrewdly advances and improves upon the rich character development and Prohibition-era power struggles of the excellent third season. Nucky (Steve Buscemi), “Chalky” (Michael Kenneth Williams), Capone (Stephen Graham), Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg), Gillian (Gretchen Mol), and company are back performing another act of their seedy opera of money, sex, booze, and spilled blood. The first five episodes of the new season are as stirring in the hushed violence of tense conversation as they are in the decidedly louder violence of slain mobsters. The season’s fifth episode includes one of the most riveting, jaw-dropping death scenes in the history of television.

And Boardwalk Empire has always featured a healthy serving of political content, inspired by true stories of Jazz Age corruption and presidential, federal, and local politics. James Cromwell guest-starred last season as an exceedingly grumpy Andrew Mellon, who was Treasury Secretary under presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. The series also depicts Gaston Means (Stephen Root), a real-life con artist who was tied to crooked politicos during the Harding era.

Season four draws from a similarly shady political history. Al Capone is shown subverting democracy before he becomes the infamous Chicago boss—Capone and his brother Frank (Morgan Spector) harass working-class residents of Cicero, Illinois, to ensure the election of a Republican mayor. It’s an exciting subplot based on something that actually happened in the mid-’20s. From History.com:

In 1923, when Chicago elected a reformist mayor who announced that he planned to rid the city of corruption, Johnny Torrio and Capone moved their base beyond the city limits to suburban Cicero. But a 1924 mayoral election in Cicero threatened their operations. To ensure they could continue doing business, Torrio and Capone initiated an intimidation effort on the day of the election, March 31, 1924, to guarantee their candidate would get elected. Some voters were even shot and killed.

Even Chicago’s tongue-in-cheek political saying, “vote early and vote often,” has been attributed to Capone.

This season also introduces Dr. Valentin Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright, a terrific actor who played Colin Powell in W. and blues legend Muddy Waters in Cadillac Records), a Trinidad-born, Harlem-based crime lord who is as ruthless as he is cultured and sophisticated. Narcisse refers to black Americans as “Libyans” and white Americans as “Nordic.” He works at the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a once-influential fraternal organization founded by the black nationalist Marcus Garvey. Narcisse is a charismatic criminal with “well-formed, proto-black-power politics,” as Slate notes. Here’s Wright talking to GQ about his character, and the racial politics that come with the territory:

Dr. Narcisse is a doctor of divinity, vice, and chaos. So, he walks into the room and he stirs things up but he’s an equal opportunity troublemaker…But his relationship to Chalky is one that’s based in the intra-racial relations of the time to a wonderfully detailed extent—at that time, there was something of a great debate within African-American society, among the great thinkers of the past: W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and within the Harlem Renaissance, about what was the way forward. Within that debate were some pretty vicious personal attacks over complexion, politics, between urbane and rural—a lot of those dynamics are fleshed out within the relationship between Dr. Narcisse and Chalky. It even further immerses the storyline in real history.

I’ll leave you with the season-four “Kings” trailer, which features Narcisse prominently:

Click here for more TV and film coverage from Mother Jones.

To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.

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Season Four of "Boardwalk Empire": More Great Characters, Sleazy Politics, and Racial Tensions

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Why Americans Can’t Die With Dignity

by 0c4g78x Posted on September 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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As recently as the 1960s, “medicine did not routinely stave off death among the very old,” journalist Katy Butler points out in Knocking On Heaven’s Door, her new book about modern medicine’s tendency to overtreat, particularly at the end of people’s lives. Butler chronicles the deaths of her parents—her father’s slow decline after a debilitating stroke and her mother’s refusal to succumb to “Hail Mary” surgeries—and in so doing offers an unflinching look at the “perverse economic incentives” that reward doctors for procedures over humane care.

An expansion of Butler’s 2010 New York Times Magazine piece about her family’s attempts to get her father’s pacemaker turned off after a stroke leaves him increasingly incapacitated, the book deftly toggles between her family’s relationships and end-of-life struggles, and the history of our shifting attitudes towards death and rise of technologies that are meant to extend life but often lead to suffering. Butler also offers an antidote of sorts—a Slow Medicine movement that emphasizes “care over cure.” I caught up with the author to talk about her daughterly regrets and tackling a subject that most of us would rather to avoid.

Mother Jones: People are often told they should have these conversations about how they want to die before they are medically incapacitated. But what if they change their minds after the fact?

Katy Butler: I don’t think people ever were free of fear of death, but clinging to life and being so unprepared for it is a modern experience. Our ancestors actually read books about how to prepare for death. It was considered your moral obligation to be prepared for your deathbed and to able to face it with equanimity. We offer such false hopes to people that every medical problem can be fixed even when you’re starting to deal with an 80- or a 90-year-old body that is breaking down in multiple ways and doesn’t have that resilience. And so it doesn’t surprise me that someone who is completely unprepared for death may say, “Doc, do everything.”

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Why Americans Can’t Die With Dignity

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Meet the Man Confronting Iran’s "Chain Murders"

by Olesiacei Posted on September 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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Among artists who defy totalitarian regimes, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is both magnificently and horrifically situated to convey how art can be used to confront oppression.

Since serving a one-year prison sentence in 2010 for attempting to make a film in support of the pro-reform Green movement, the 40-year-old has lived a paradoxical existence. On the one hand, he is a renowned director, the recipient of two top prizes from the Cannes Film Festival and a Hamburg fellowship that allowed him and his family to escape the country. On the other hand, he is “a man whose head is chopped off from his body,” as he put it recently at the 40th Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

“My body may have been in Hamburg for the last few years,” said Rasoulof, “but my mind and heart—everything I think and want to feel—are in Iran. One thing I’m really afraid of is to be disconnected in that way for a long time. It’s the most fearful prospect I can think of.”

Rasoulof was in Telluride for the US premiere of his clandestinely made “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” his fifth feature. It could easily land him back Tehran’s notorious Evin prison if he were to return home. The film is based on the 1988-1998 Chain Murders, when a series (or chain) of more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens were killed by government operatives for criticizing the Islamic Republic.

Mohammad Rasoulof

“Manuscripts Don’t Burn” is Rasoulof’s most realistic and directly political film so far, a significant departure from more allegorical and metaphorical movies like “Iron Island” (2005) and “The White Meadows” (2009). The story centers on a poet and novelist in Tehran who, in their quest to publish a book about one grizzly incident of the Chain Murders, are terrorized by a fellow intellectual turned state security henchman. The story is also about the working class purveyors of government terror, particularly a blank-faced man named Khosrow, whose day job as a murderer of dissident artists allows him to pay his ailing son’s hospital bills.

Rasoulof explains that the character of Khosrow was inspired by an experience in prison. Rasoulof’s habit is to get up every morning and drink a cool glass of water. That ritual ceased in prison. But one day, he woke and found his burning hot cell intolerable. Rasoulof rang the bell for the guard, asked for water, and was rebuked. When the next guard came on shift, he tried again. Not only did the second guard bring him a glass of water, he did so every time he arrived for work at the prison.

“I came to see that those working as the prison guards and executioners in this system are human, too,” Rasoulof said. “They don’t have horns. They aren’t animals. There must be some reason why they do what they do.”

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Meet the Man Confronting Iran’s "Chain Murders"

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Study: Global Warming Worsened 2012’s Extreme Weather

by Beatriz Kasser Posted on September 6, 2013

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the Guardian website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Half of last year’s extreme weather—including the triple-digit temperatures of America’s July heat wave—were due in part to climate change, new research said on Thursday.

The study, edited by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the UK Met Office, detected the fingerprints of climate change on about half of the 12 most extreme weather events of 2012.

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Study: Global Warming Worsened 2012’s Extreme Weather

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Watch: How Climate Change Became the "Killing Fields" of Australian Politics

by Dermian Fizalian Posted on September 6, 2013

Mother Jones

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As you watched last year’s US election, did you find yourself aggrieved by the lack of big climate change talk from your leaders? Well, I have an election you’re going to want to watch. This weekend, a nation gripped to the point of near-hysteria over carbon abatement policies (yes, there is such a country) will finally put to rest an epic struggle that has rolled on for years. Well, that’s the plan, anyway.

In my home country, Australia, carbon pricing has been the “killing fields” of politics, says Lenore Taylor, political editor for The Guardian Australia. In an extraordinary couple of years of drama in Canberra, the usually sedate (read: dull) capital, three leaders—including two sitting prime ministers—have been toppled and replaced by their own parties, partly due to disagreements over climate change.

Saturday’s national election, if we’re to believe the opposition’s rhetoric, will be a referendum on the future of the carbon tax that was introduced by the Labor Party that has been in power for the last six years. Tony Abbott, the head of the conservative opposition is leading opinion polls. In the likely scenario he wins, he has promised to repeal the carbon pricing legislation.

Climate change is by no means the only issue in this campaign: immigration, leadership and economic management have played big. But the election will nonetheless be the culmination of a long and heated national debate about climate change, one unlike any other in the world.

In 2009, the conservative opposition party (called the Liberal Party) replaced its leader Malcolm Turnbull, who was a proponent of an emissions trading scheme, with Tony Abbott, a man who is vehemently opposed to a market-based solution. The following year, Julia Gillard replaced sitting Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, her boss, as Prime Minister, only to be challenged and defeated by a resurgent Kevin Rudd in 2013. The names and pace of change might be hard to follow, but the message is simple: carbon pricing has cut to the quick of Aussie politics and become a symbol for deep ideological divides. Politicians enthusiastic about putting a price on carbon in other countries must be looking on in horror.

When a carbon tax was finally introduced by the Gillard government in 2011, it faced immediate, vitriolic opposition from an invigorated conservative opposition party led by Tony Abbott, and a fear campaign run by talk radio around the country, which labeled the “toxic tax” as a broken promise. Before the 2010 election, Julia Gillard had said she wouldn’t introduce a tax. In reality, the carbon tax was the fruit of an elaborate negotiation between Gillard, independents and Greens to preserve her vulnerable coalition government (the tax will eventually become a trading scheme). The price she paid was fatal. The opposition has been ruthlessly committed to its mantra ever since: dump this toxic tax. When this pitiless campaign sunk her polling numbers to sub-survival territory, her own party dumped her.

I wouldn’t be so sure this issue will go away after Saturday. Abbott’s bill to repeal the tax would have to be passed by the Senate, Australia’s upper house, which will be hard given the delicate numbers game played between independents and the Greens party. If he’s not successful in ditching the tax, he has said he will fully dissolve both houses of parliament next year, plunging the country into another election. In doing so, he would yet again wed his fate to the policy problem no Australian leader seems able to escape: climate change.

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Watch: How Climate Change Became the "Killing Fields" of Australian Politics

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Laid-Off Workers: Ken Cuccinelli’s Campaign Tricked Us Into Appearing in GOP Attack Ad

by oliwia_konarzewska@o2.pl Posted on September 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the campaign of Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who is running for governor in Virginia, released a new TV ad hammering Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe for investing in the fiber-optics company Global Crossing. When Global Crossing filed for bankruptcy in January 2002, hundreds of workers were laid off and many current and former employees saw their 401(k) accounts and severance pay packages wiped out. “Yet political insider and investor Terry McAuliffe cashed in,” Cuccinelli’s ad says. McAuliffe banked $8 million on an investment of $100,000.

The new ad features three former Global Crossing workers. Like last year’s powerful ads featuring middle-class workers talking about Mitt Romney’s business record, the ex-Global Crossing employees give the ad its emotional resonance. But here’s the catch: Two of the three employees tell Mother Jones that they were never told their words would be used in a political attack ad appearing in a state some 400 miles away.

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Laid-Off Workers: Ken Cuccinelli’s Campaign Tricked Us Into Appearing in GOP Attack Ad

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Alyssa Milano Weighs In on Her "Sex Tape" About the Bloodshed in Syria

by Thorzar Posted on September 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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No, you don’t get to see actress Alyssa Milano have sex. Yes, you get to hear some depressing bullet points on the bloodshed in Syria.

Early Wednesday morning, Funny or Die—Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s comedy website—posted a “leaked!” sex tape of the 40-year-old Milano (who’s famous for her roles on the TV shows Who’s the Boss? and Charmed). The video is, of course, a staged comic bit. Milano and a handsome man start getting it on right as their camera “accidentally” swivels to a TV broadcasting an evening news report on the crisis in Syria, and the Obama administration’s push for military intervention. The TV set is mounted next to a mirror, in which the viewers can see limbs flopping and a bed sheet moving.

“I think it was a really fun way to get people to realize that there are important issues our country is dealing with right now,” Milano tells Mother Jones. “If people end up learning something about the crisis in Syria that’s a good thing—even if I had to do a sex tape to lure them in.”

The video ends with Milano saying to her lover, “This is boring, change the channel, put it on the Swamp People,” referring to the History channel’s reality TV series that documents the lives of alligator hunters.

To promote the “Syrian sex tape,” Milano tweeted out the following on Wednesday:

Funny or Die’s Nick Corirossi, one of the writers and directors of the “sex tape,” is keeping up a similar act. “I was the tape’s finder,” Corirossi says. “Funny or Die every once in a while tries to purchase sex tapes…but this time it was more boring than ever. It was all about all this Syrian stuff. It’s the most boring sex tape debacle I’ve ever been involved in.” (Corirossi did say that he does not believe the video takes a political position on intervention, but does serve as “an update” on Syria news.)

Milano has dabbled in political fare before. Since 2003, she has been (along with a bunch of other celebs) a UNICEF ambassador, and has traveled with the UN program to Kosovo, India, and Angola. She’s voiced her support for same-sex marriage. And she starred in a 2010 Funny or Die video (Ron Livingston, Gillian Jacobs, and many more) urging Americans to vote. Funny or Die posts a lot of political satire and content—and has done fake celebrity sex tapes before, as well.

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Alyssa Milano Weighs In on Her "Sex Tape" About the Bloodshed in Syria

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