Mother Jones
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Here is this week’s Flint water report. As usual, I’ve eliminated outlier readings above 2,000 parts per billion, since there are very few of them and they can affect the averages in misleading ways. During the week, DEQ took 905 samples. The average for the past week was 10.63.
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Mother Jones
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In response to my post yesterday about the tradition of truthtellers in Democratic primaries,1 a reader emails: “Offhand my guess would be that a lot of Bernie supporters think Obama proves that an outsider/rebel/truthteller can both win and end up a very successful president.” Another reader tweets the same sentiment:
.@kdrum Is Obama the one bold truthteller who actually succeeded?
— Over Koalified (@OverKoalified)
Hmmm. I don’t think either of these is true. Obama didn’t run in the truthteller tradition. He ran more in the JFK/Clinton tradition: a young guy bringing the voice of a new generation to the White House. Obama was inspiring and wildly popular, but he didn’t spend his time explaining that we all had to face up to endemic corruption or tidal waves of money or demographic Armageddon. Just the opposite. He mostly sanded the rough edges off that kind of stuff. It was all hope and change and ending the partisan bickering in Washington.
As for Bernie supporters, I don’t think they view Obama as a rebel or a truthteller. Bernie himself is careful not to criticize Obama, but a lot of his supporters see Obama as basically a disappointment: just another squishy centrist who made some incremental progress and called it a day. In the end, we still don’t have universal health care; the banks are still running things; the Republican Party continues to obstruct; and rich people are still rich. That’s the very reason we need a guy like Bernie in the Oval Office.
This is certainly my impression, anyway. Am I wrong?
1A theme that Jamelle Bouie touches on in a much longer, more nuanced piece here about the Bernie insurgency. It’s well worth a read.
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Mother Jones
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The latest labor dispute between the World Cup-winning US women’s national soccer team and the US Soccer Federation has illuminated an issue for workers throughout the country: the gender pay gap. On Thursday, five high-profile players filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing the soccer federation of gender-based wage discrimination.
“This is the strongest case of discrimination against women athletes in violation of law that I have ever seen,” Jeffrey Kessler, the players’ lawyer, told the New York Times.
Numbers cited in the EEOC filing show just how vast the divide is. Despite projections that the women’s team will bring in $5 million in profit in the coming fiscal year and nearly $18 million in revenue, the players allege that they are paid four times less than their male counterparts. If the women win 20 exhibition matches, the minimum number the team is expected to play annually, they would earn $99,000 each. Men’s team members would earn $352,500 for doing the same—and would earn $100,000 even if they lost all 20.
US Soccer told the Times that it hadn’t seen the complaint and was “disappointed” by the players’ actions.
“It’s just completely unbalanced,” goalkeeper Hope Solo, who has signed on to the action, told Mother Jones in December. “The argument is, well, women should not get paid as much as men, because they don’t bring in as much revenue. We hear it all the time. Our argument back is that we have the best television ratings between the men’s team and the women’s team, and had we gotten more marketing dollars, we would have more ticket revenue.”
Here’s a look at the gender pay gap between the men’s and women’s national teams, according to the players’ complaint.
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Women’s Soccer Is Raking in Cash. Why Do US Players Get Embarrassingly Low Pay?
Mother Jones
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Sigh. Yet another news cycle for Donald Trump:
NEW Trump to @msnbc: “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions but he has yet to determine what that should be.
— Ali Vitali (@alivitali)
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Toxic chemicals are abound in many of the most common products we use every day. From breast cancer and reproductive failure to attention deficit disorder and various birth defects, we know that toxic chemicals can harm our health and impact future generations.
Though some laws are already on the books to reduce our exposure to these dangerous compounds, much more is needed to keep us safe and healthy. Here are three laws Congress can and should pass that would reduce our toxic exposures.
Overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act – “TSCA” (pronounced toss-ka) was passed in 1976 to regulate the chemicals used in everyday products. However, when TSCA was passed, we knew far less about the impact chemicals have on our bodies, and there were fewer chemicals in circulation. Today, there are over 80,000 chemicals on the market. Only 200 have been tested for safety, reports Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. And current law allows chemical manufacturers to keep the ingredients in some compounds secret, so it’s hard for consumers to know what they’re actually exposed to. A broad coalition of health, environmental and consumer organizations is urging Congress to reform TSCA by:
* Clearly requiring the law to protect the public and the environment from unsafe chemicals
* Require the Environmental Protection Agency to assess various chemicals and empower EPA to order companies to test the toxicity of their chemicals.
* Expedite the regulation of particularly toxic chemicals which bioaccumulate in our bodies, with a particular focus on PFOA, the chemical in Teflon-type products and asbestos
* Give consumers the right to know what they’re exposed to.
You can read a complete description of the demands the public is making to strengthen TSCA here.
Pass a strong Personal Care Products Safety Act – Currently, the personal products we use, like shampoo, soap and cosmetics, are regulated by provisions of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which was passed over 75 years ago in 1938. The law was engineered by the cosmetics and personal care products industry so thatthe US Food and Drug Administration was NOT given the authority to require ingredients used in these products to be tested for safety. “As a result,” says Jamie McConnell, Director of Programs & Policy at the non-profit research organization Women’s Voice for the Earth, “today it is perfectly legal for cosmetics to contain harmful ingredients like formaldehyde (a known carcinogen), toluene (linked to birth defects), phthalates (also linked to birth defects and reproductive harm), styrene (a carcinogen), and even lead (a potent neurotoxin).”
Women’s Voices and many other health advocacy groups are urging Congress to pass a strong Act that:
* Gives the FDA the authority to get unsafe products off the shelves
* Directs the FDA to assess the safety of a minimum of 5 cosmetic chemicals a year, including those that contain formaldehyde
* Requires full ingredient disclosure, as well as a domestic telephone number or email on product labels to make it easy for consumers to find out what’s in the products they buy.
You can see a complete rundown of the recommended strong provisions for the Act here.
Require GMO Labeling – Right now, companies are not required to let consumers know when the food they produce is made with ingredients tainted by genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Earlier this year, industry attempted to pass legislation dubbed the “DARK” act, because it would have explicitly “Denied Americans the Right-to-Know.” That legislation was defeated, but companies still don’t have to disclose the presence of GMOs in their products. Several states, including Vermont, Connecticut and Maine, and 65 countries around the world, including all of the European Union, Russia and even China, require labeling. Polls show that nearly 90 percent of Americans support labeling to indicate the presence of GMOs.
Legislation has been introduced in the Senate that would ensure that consumers can find GMO ingredient labeling on food packaging. The “Biotechnology Food Labeling Uniformity Act” would specifically:
* Enable Americans to see whether a food has been prepared with GMO ingredients
* Require manufacturers to disclose the presence of GMOs
You can learn more about the benefits of GMO labeling, and keep abreast of the status of legislative action, on the Just Label It website.
Related
5 Shocking Facts about Your Cosmetics
4 Potential Health Risks of Eating GMO Foods
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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Mother Jones
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What’s the secret to being a highly-paid CEO of a Fortune 500 company? Sales growth? Earnings growth? Impressive return to shareholders? Visionary leadership?
According to a new study from Institutional Shareholder Services the real key is simpler: set your own pay. Or better yet, have a friend set it. According to ISS, in companies that have an insider as chairman of the board, CEOs earned a little over $15 million during the past three years. But in companies with an independent outsider as chairman, CEOs made only $11 million.
Did anything else matter? Revenue did: bigger companies pay their CEOs more. But that was it. Shareholder return was insignificant, as were several other variables. Bottom line: if you want a big payday, run a big company and make sure an insider is setting your pay.
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Here’s the Secret of Being a Highly-Paid CEO: Have a Friend Set Your Salary
Ken Cuccinelli. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
By Katie Herzogon 8 Mar 2016commentsShare
Republicans in Virginia celebrated International Women’s Day on Tuesday by nominating Ken Cuccinelli to the state Supreme Court. A former state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate, Cuccinelli has tried to defund Planned Parenthood and ban RU-486 and abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, or serious threats to the life of the mother. Not just a misogynist, Cuccinelli is also known for his deep disgust of gay people, whom he thinks lack souls. And he has supported a ban on oral sex — even for straight people! You’d think a man with the word “cooch” in his name would be a little more fun.
Cuccinelli is also, of course, a rabid climate denier. As Virginia’s attorney general, he famously wasted taxpayer dollars in a long-running attempt to discredit respected climate scientist Michael Mann, a campaign that The Washington Post called a “witch hunt.” Mann, as you would expect, is aghast at the prospect of Cuccinelli on the court:
Cuccinelli also repeatedly challenged federal environmental rules during his tenure as AG, even while accepting large contributions from the Koch brothers and their ilk.
Cuccinelli lost the 2013 race for governor to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, and has been out of office most of the time since. Now McAuliffe and the Republican-controlled state legislature are in a standoff over who should fill a vacancy on the state Supreme Court, and Senate Republicans today nominated Cuccinelli for the seat. Cuccinelli is “somebody, I think, who’s not been politicized,” state Sen. Glen Sturtevant (R) actually said.
It’s not yet clear whether Senate Republicans will succeed in getting Cuccinelli on to the bench. (We’ll spare you the convoluted details of the whole tussle.) Democrats are already mounting a campaign against the nomination, reviving the hashtag #KeepKenOut, which was used to oppose Cuccinelli during his run for governor. It worked last time. Maybe — hopefully — it will this go-round too.
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Virginia Republicans nominate climate-denying misogynist for state Supreme Court
Mother Jones
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Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. On the Republican side, Donald Trump continues to hold a commanding lead both nationally and in nearly every state being contested. No surprise there. But what happened on February 15 or thereabouts?
The Pollster chart on the right shows the state of play over the past few weeks. Since February 15, the non-Trump part of the field has gone nowhere. They attract almost exactly the same aggregate share of the vote today as they did two weeks ago. Trump, by contrast, has gained more than five points.
Is this a bandwagon effect, in which Trump has been picking up undecided voters who felt like they had permission to take him seriously after he won New Hampshire? Is it because Trump is picking up nearly all of the votes of the candidates who have dropped out of the race? Is it somehow related to the death of Antonin Scalia on February 13?
It’s a bit puzzling. Trump’s sudden spike comes after two months of holding pretty steady in the national polls. So what happened on February 15?
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Mother Jones
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Donald Trump “explains” why he declined to denounce David Duke and the KKK yesterday:
“I’m sitting in a house in Florida with a very bad earpiece they gave me and you could hardly hear what he was saying,” Mr. Trump said on the “Today” show on Monday, after about 24 hours of condemnation from Democrats and Republicans.
The transcript makes it crystal clear that Trump heard the question just fine. He just didn’t want to disavow the support of white supremacists on national TV. And Laura Ingraham thinks that’s peachy:
We know what’s going on here. David Duke is repugnant, but, frankly, it’s also repugnant to not talk about the issues that really matter to Americans….And the old games of gotcha politics, they’re going to do it, but it’s really not going to help any black American get a job. It’s not going to help any Hispanic American get a job or any poor white guy from West Virginia to get a job.
Yeah, that’s gotcha politics for you. How dare the liberal media play these kinds of games?
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Are unauthorized immigrants “pouring across the southern border”? Since Donald Trump said it, there’s automatically a strong chance that it’s a lie, and sure enough, it is.
According to Pew Research, the population of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico peaked in 2007 at 6.9 million and has been dropping ever since. Currently it stands at 5.6 million. As the chart on the right shows, net migration from Mexico has been negative every year since 2008. But maybe the ones that are here are disproportionately murderers and rapists, as Trump also says. Nope. The number of unauthorized immigrants in US prisons is relatively small, and the bulk of the available research suggests that they’re incarcerated at lower rates than US citizens. It’s just another lie.
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