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The Feds Just Got Sued for Letting Nestlé Bottle Water in California’s Drought Country

by LeonoreOuthwait Posted on October 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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A group of environmental organizations sued the US Forest Service on Tuesday, claiming that it allowed Nestlé to illegally divert millions of gallons of water from California’s San Bernadino National Forest to use for Arrowhead brand bottled water while the state struggles through a historic drought.

Nestlé has had rights to bottle water from the forest’s Strawberry Creek for decades, but a Desert Sun investigation in March of this year found that the company’s permit to use a four-mile pipeline that transports the water to the bottling plant expired in 1988. A month later, the agency announced it was investigating the permit.

Other popular bottled water brands like Aquafina and Dasani also source from catastrophically dry regions.

The plaintiffs—the Center for Biological Diversity, the Story of Stuff Project, and the Courage Campaign Institute—are calling on the Forest Service to shut down use of the pipeline and conduct an environmental review immediately. They contend that the Forest Service is breaking its own policies by allowing the bottling operation to continue, as the siphoning of water from already depleted water source is harming local habitats and wildlife.

“Recent reports have indicated that water levels at Strawberry Creek are at record lows,” said the plaintiffs in a statement yesterday. “In exchange for allowing Nestlé to continue siphoning water from the Creek, the Forest Service receives just $524 a year, less than the average Californian’s water bill.”

After a Mother Jones investigation found that Starbucks bottled Ethos brand water in Merced, California, the company announced it would move its operations out of state due to concerns about the drought. When asked if Nestlé would stop bottling California water, CEO Tim Brown replied, “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would.”

Brown argues that his company’s permit has not expired, since it it still being reviewed by the Forest Service. Furthermore, the amount of water used at the company’s five California bottling plants—about 1.9 million gallons per day—is not contributing to California’s drought, he wrote earlier this year: “To put that amount in perspective, this is roughly equal to the annual average watering needs of two California golf courses.”

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The Feds Just Got Sued for Letting Nestlé Bottle Water in California’s Drought Country

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Monsanto’s Stock Is Tanking. Is the Company’s Own Excitement About GMOs Backfiring?

by KLWDolliectvpb Posted on October 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pity Monsanto, the genetically modified seed and agrichemical giant. Its share price has plunged 25 percent since the spring. Market prices for corn and soybeans are in the dumps, meaning Monsanto’s main customers—farmers who specialize in those crops—have less money to spend on its pricey seeds and flagship herbicide (which recently got named a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health organization, spurring lawsuits).

Monsanto’s long, noisy attempt to buy up rival pesticide giant Syngenta crumbled into dust last month. And Wednesday, Monsanto reported quarterly revenues and profits that sharply underperformed Wall Street expectations. For good measure, it also sharply lowered its profit projections for the year ahead.

In response to these unhappy trends, the company announced it was slashing 2,600 jobs, 12 percent of its workforce, and spending $3 billion to buy back shares. Share buybacks are a form of financial (as opposed to genetic) engineering—they magically boost a company’s earnings-per-share ratio (a metric closely watched by investors) simply by removing shares from the market. And buybacks divert money from things like R&D—or keeping a company’s workforce whole—and into the pockets of shareholders.

In a conference call with investors (transcript), Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant put a positive spin on the company’s prospects. “Our germplasm performance has never been better, our trait technology has continued to leap and our market position and pipeline remains strong,” he declared. But later, he hit upon a theme that became obvious when Monsanto was stalking Syngenta: that Monsanto’s leadership feels the company is too invested in high-tech seeds, and underinvested in old-fashioned pesticides. (The market for Syngenta owns the globe’s leading position.)

In the call, Jeff Zekauskas, an analyst with JP MorganChase, asked Grant whether Monsanto was still interested in boosting its pesticide portfolio by buying a competitor. Grant’s answer was essentially yes: “We still believe in the opportunity of integrated solutions,” i.e., selling more pesticides along with seeds. He added:

We’ve got a 400 million acre seed technology footprint. We’ve seen time and time again that we can increase revenue and improve grower service by bringing chemistry up on that footprint.

Translation: Our patented seeds and traits are sown on 400 million acres worldwide (about four times the size of California), and if we could sell more pesticides (chemistry) to the people who farm those acres, we could make more money. Later, he noted:

We continue to see duplication in R&D in the sector. We continue to see the low effectiveness of R&D with some of our competitors and we continue to think that consolidation in this space is inevitable.

Translation: Research-and-development investments in the ag-biotech/agrichemical sector aren’t paying off—not enough blockbuster new products—so the few companies remaining in the field (there are six) are going to start swallowing each other up.

Massive layoffs, share buybacks, dreams of buying up the pesticide portfolios of competitors—these aren’t characteristics of a company confident in the long-term profitability of its core technology: the genetic modification of crops.

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Monsanto’s Stock Is Tanking. Is the Company’s Own Excitement About GMOs Backfiring?

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Here’s One Simple Rule For Deciding Who the Media Covers

by JayEastham Posted on October 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Paul Waldman notes today that Marco Rubio is the latest beneficiary of the media spotlight. Why?

If history is any guide, the “outsider” candidates will eventually fall, and Rubio is the only “insider” candidate whose support is going up, not down. Scott Walker is gone, Jeb Bush is struggling, and none of the other officeholders seem to be generating any interest among voters. Rubio has long had strong approval ratings among Republicans, so even those who are now supporting someone else don’t dislike him. He’s an excellent speaker both with prepared texts and extemporaneously. When you hear him talk he sounds informed and thoughtful, and much less reactionary than his actual ideas would suggest. He presents a young, Hispanic face for a party that desperately needs not to be seen as the party of old white guys.

This is all true, but it gives the media way too much credit. Here’s the rule they use for deciding who to cover:

If you’re leading or rising in the polls, you get coverage.

That’s it. All the other stuff about Rubio has been true all along, and nobody cared about him. Now he’s rising in the polls and is currently in about fourth place. So he’s getting coverage.

This happened first to Donald Trump, then to Ben Carson, then to Carly Fiorina, and now to Rubio. Bernie Sanders, oddly enough, remains fairly immune. Maybe this rule only applies to Republicans this year.

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Here’s One Simple Rule For Deciding Who the Media Covers

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The Science of Why Pumpkin Beer Arrived So Early This Year

by SallieAguirre Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Atlantic and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It was scorching in Oregon this summer. So hot the autumn pumpkins ripened early.

Which meant the brewers at Rogue, best known for Dead Guy Ale, found themselves picking pumpkins five weeks ahead of schedule and concocting their annual pumpkin-flavored beer long before the dog days slipped away. (Last year, Rogue’s Pumpkin Patch Ale wasn’t released until October 7.)

“Oregon’s heat-wave sped up the growing process this year, giving us ripe pumpkins in the middle of August,” Rogue said in an announcement on its website, in early September. Pumpkins weren’t the only crop affected. Malting barley ran late, while hops and corn grew early.

The release of pumpkin beers, like the appearance of candy corn and Christmas lights, have become yet another disorienting marker of the passage of time, often arriving before people are emotionally ready for it. Given the blazing temperatures in Oregon, Rogue was lucky its pumpkins fared so well. Excessive heat, like excessive rain, can decimate a pumpkin crop, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

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The Science of Why Pumpkin Beer Arrived So Early This Year

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The Boy Scouts Are No Longer Welcome at This Anti-Gay Jamboree

by EmelyJonathan Posted on September 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Poor Boy Scouts. Earlier this year, their leadership made a fairly dramatic change in policy to allow gay people to become troop leaders, following on the heels of last year’s decision to stop kicking out gay Scouts. The move to end discrimination has cost the organization some members and donations from religious groups that were outraged about the change. But it’s also suffered smaller, pettier indignities—like its banishment from this weekend’s Values Voter Summit, the premier political conference for evangelical Christians.

The DC summit, organized by the conservative Family Research Council Action, is headlined by no fewer than seven GOP presidential candidates. For many years, the Boy Scouts have had a place of honor at the event, presenting the American flag as the color guard. This year, though, the Scouts are nowhere to be found. In their place are boys from Trail Life USA, the outdoor adventure and character development group created last year as a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts. Joining them were American Heritage Girls, the religious alternative to the Girl Scouts.

Trail Life was founded by a religious-right activist from Florida, associated with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, who was active fighting the Boy Scout policy change. The group’s official policy on gays says:

We believe that homosexuality is sinful and immoral, as is any sexual activity outside of the sanctity of marriage between a Man and a Woman. Consistent with this belief, we have specific policies that address membership and sin in both youth and adult members.

Trail Life also excludes Mormons and Jews because they don’t subscribe to the group’s particular theology.

A spokeswoman for the summit’s organizers didn’t respond to a request for comment. But Trail Life CEO Mark Hancock, at his booth in the convention hall, said his group was invited to replace the Boy Scouts color guard because of “the direction the Boy Scouts have taken. They think we’re a better fit.” Asked specifically if it was because of the acceptance of gays, Hancock demurred, saying it was simply the Boy Scouts’ “general departure from their traditional values” that prompted their exclusion.

Kim Luckabaugh, the DC-area coordinator for the more established American Heritage Girls, said her group replaced the Boy Scouts at the conference last year, when Trail Life was just getting off the ground, because “we are aligned ministerially. We are aligned in our values.” She says the FRC organizers have “been very kind and gracious to us.”

The booting of the Boy Scouts from the event isn’t all that surprising. The Family Research Council, which sponsors the Values Voter Summit, has been an ardent opponent of the Boy Scouts’ acceptance of gays. Earlier this year, FRC head Tony Perkins lamented that the Boy Scouts were moving “away from their moral standard of being morally straight and clean and moving into open homosexuality.” He claimed that both the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts “are done” as organizations because of their acceptance of gays.

A regular speaker at the event, Mat Staver, with the legal group Liberty Counsel, said last month that the change in policy at the Boy Scouts meant that “you are going to have all kinds of sexual molestation. This is a playground for pedophiles to go and have all these boys as objects of their lust. This is insane, and we need to literally abandon the Scouts because the Scouts, unfortunately, have abandoned us.”

The Values Voter Summit has long been a hotbed of anti-gay activism, but this year, organizers are going to great lengths to honor people who’ve personally discriminated against LGBT people, such as Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who refused to follow the Supreme Court edict and issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples; a florist who dissed her friend and refused to do flowers for his gay wedding; and a pair of bakers who refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding. The organizers’ exclusion of the Boy Scouts seems only fitting, but perhaps they’ve done them a favor: The boys will be spared from associating with people who will be remembered on the wrong side of history.

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The Boy Scouts Are No Longer Welcome at This Anti-Gay Jamboree

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We’re Obliterating Global Temperature Records, and There’s No End in Sight

by MalcolmSpell Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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One after another, each of 2015’s summer months have been among the hottest ever recorded on Earth. And a trio of new studies out this week, from three different countries, confirms that temperature records just keep tumbling—falling victim to an unusually massive El Niño climate event gathering strength in the Pacific, as well as unrelenting man-made climate change, which is cooking the entire system.

On Monday, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said that this August was the hottest August worldwide since 1891, when its records begin. August was 0.81 degrees above the 1981-2010 average, smashing 2014’s record.

Data from Japan’s Meteorological Agency shows 2015’s August was the hottest August in more than 120 years. JMA

Also on Monday, NASA confirmed that scientists have never recorded a hotter summer than this year’s. When taken together, temperatures for June, July, and August were 1.4 degrees hotter than the long-term average, passing the previous hottest summer, 1998. Unlike Japan’s study, NASA says this August was very narrowly the second hottest August on record (behind 2014).

And finally, major research from the United Kingdom’s Met Office released this week concluded that 2015’s overall temperatures are running at or near record levels (at about 0.684 degrees above the 1981-2010 average)—which suggests the next two years could be the hottest on record around the world.

“We know natural patterns contribute to global temperatures in any given year, but the very warm temperatures so far this year indicate the continued impact of (manmade) greenhouse gases,” said Stephen Belcher from the Met Office, in a news release. “With the potential that next year could be similarly warm, it’s clear that our climate continues to change.”

The Met Office says this year’s El Niño— the global climate event that occurs every five to seven years, bringing drought to places like Australia while heaping rain on the western United States—is likely contributing to record temperatures. (Sadly, it’s unlikely to help quench California enough to break the drought.)

The El Niño itself could break records. “Recent oceanic and atmospheric indicators are at levels not seen since the 1997–98 El Niño,” Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said on Tuesday, adding that the big climate event is unlikely to subside before early 2016.

El Niño is also probably contributing to the unusually active hurricane season in the Pacific. The Met Office says tropical cyclone activity across the northern hemisphere this year is about 200 percent above normal. Six hurricanes have crossed the central Pacific, more than in any other year on record.

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We’re Obliterating Global Temperature Records, and There’s No End in Sight

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Are the F-Bombs Getting Worse Here at Mother Jones? An Exclusive Investigation.

by Kyung Wilhoite Posted on September 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Apropos of my suggested response this morning to the most obnoxious kinds of gotcha questions, David Bailey writes in comments:

Recommended answer: “Oh, go fuck yourself.”

This is off-topic, and I may not be the first to bring it up, but it seems as if Kevin’s posts have been a bit saltier recently. I have a hard time believing he would have written this a year ago.

Not complaining or criticizing, but I just thought it was interesting.

Come on. This was an homage to Dick Cheney, people! Do our schools teach nothing these days?

But am I in fact using the word fuck more often than in the past? This is surprisingly difficult to get a handle on. The problem is that my readers are all such potty mouths. According to Google, there have been 6,330 F-bombs on this blog since its move to Mother Jones, but as near as I can tell, 6,314 of them have been from commenters. Still, that leaves 16 for me. Let’s tot them up.

It turns out that David is right: I’ve already set a new personal best this year. At my current rate I’ll double my previous most obscene year (2010). The deeply researched chart on the right tells the tale, and as a personal favor to Swami Bhut Jolokia, I’ve even labeled the y-axis.

In my defense, I should point out that this total represents only about 0.15 percent of my blog posts, an average of just a bit over two per year. Not bad! What’s more, many of those were quotes of illustrious public servants like Dick Cheney. Still, I admit that if it were solely up to me these numbers would be far higher. However, (a) I know that casual F-bombs can put people off, and (b) my mother reads this blog. So I try to stay family-friendly most of the time.

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Are the F-Bombs Getting Worse Here at Mother Jones? An Exclusive Investigation.

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Kansas Republicans May Have Just Shut Down the State’s Court System

by OmerNGAosnffx Posted on September 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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What happens to a legal appeal when there’s no court to hear it?

That’s the tricky question before Kansas Republicans today as they grapple with the results of their own law, which threatens to shutter the state court system.

On Wednesday night, a district judge in Kansas struck down a 2014 law that stripped the state Supreme Court of some of its administrative powers. The ruling has set off a bizarre constitutional power struggle between the Republican-controlled legislature and the state Supreme Court. At stake is whether the Kansas court system will lose its funding and shut down.

Last year, the Kansas legislature passed a law that took away the top court’s authority to appoint chief judges to the state’s 31 judicial districts—a policy change Democrats believe was retribution for an ongoing dispute over school funding between the Supreme Court and the legislature. (Mother Jones reported on the standoff this spring.) When the legislature passed a two-year budget for the court system earlier this year, it inserted a clause stipulating that if a court ever struck down the 2014 administrative powers law, funding for the entire court system would be “null and void.” Last night, that’s what the judge did.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt warned that last night’s decision “could effectively and immediately shut off all funding for the judicial branch.” That would lead to chaos. As Pedro Irigonegaray, an attorney for the Kansas judge who brought the legal challenge against the administrative law, put it, “Without funding, our state courts would close, criminal cases would not be prosecuted, civil matters would be put on hold, real estate could not be bought or sold, adoptions could not be completed.”

Both parties in the case have agreed to ask that Wednesday’s ruling remain on hold until it can be appealed to the state Supreme Court, so that there is a functioning court to hear the appeal. On Thursday, a judge granted the stay. Meanwhile, lawyers involved in the case and advocates for judicial independence are preparing a legal challenge to the clause of the judicial budget that withholds court funding. Sometime in the next few months, the state Supreme Court is likely to rule on whether the legislature has the right to strip the Supreme Court of its administrative authority, and whether it can make funding for the courts contingent on the outcome of a court case.

“We have never seen a law like this before,” Randolph Sherman, a lawyer involved in fighting the administrative law, said in a statement, referring to the self-destruct mechanism in the judicial budget. “It is imperative that we stop it before it throws the state into a constitutional crisis.”

This story has been updated.

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Kansas Republicans May Have Just Shut Down the State’s Court System

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Rand Paul’s Desperate Gamble to Keep His Senate Seat

by MagaretRusso Posted on August 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Cash in not an abundant resource for Rand Paul’s struggling presidential campaign these days. But the Republican Kentucky senator seems prepared to buy his way out of his most recent problem, promising to pay for an early Kentucky presidential primary vote in order to save his chances of keeping his Senate seat if the presidential bid falls through.

Under Kentucky law, a candidate cannot appear on the same ballot for two offices, and if Kentucky’s Republican Party holds its primary in May, as planned, Paul would have to give up either his bid for the White House or his bid to retain his Senate seat. The dilemma gets even thornier, because if Paul chooses to give up his Senate bid but doesn’t give the Kentucky GOP time to recruit a alternative candidate, it could cost the GOP a sure Senate seat. By May, Paul must either be confident enough of his chances in the presidential race to risk not running for Senate, or be sure he wants to return to the Senate. And to have a realistic shot at the presidential nomination, he will have to win Kentucky. Kentucky Democrats have already blocked Paul’s attempts to change the Kentucky law banning two simultaneous runs, and so Paul is left with one option if he doesn’t want to drop out of either race: moving the Kentucky presidential vote. Even if he has to pay for it himself.

In a letter to the state party earlier this month, Paul laid out his pitch in simple terms: I want the date of the vote moved up, and here’s a pile of money to do it. Specifically, Paul promised his campaign would foot the estimated bill of $450,000 to $500,000, starting with an immediate payment, even though the money wasn’t immediately needed. He wrote:

I wanted to formally ask you once again to vote for this plan. Before you do, I wanted you to hear straight from me about the plan to fund it. … I mentioned earlier this year that I would make sure it was fully funded without funding by the Republican Party of Kentucky or counties. … In order to makes sure that happens, I have transferred $250,000 in an RPK account to begin the funding. Very little of that funding is needed this August, but I wanted to make sure there was plenty in there as we move forward.

Paul said he would transfer another $250,000 and pointed out that if the caucus charged campaigns $15,000 per candidate, it could bring in several hundred thousand dollars more—in other words, it could actually turn a profit.

This is no small commitment for Paul, whose fundraising has been lackluster. Based on campaign finance filings made by nearly all the campaigns and super-PACs in July, Paul ranks ninth of the 21 candidates (Republican and Democratic) who filed fundraising numbers. He reported having just $4.2 million in cash on hand. Considering that three other Republican candidates had at least twice that much in their coffers, Paul’s financial situation is precarious. He’s not getting much help from outside, either. The largest super-PAC supporting Paul is America’s Liberty PAC, which has raised just $3.1 million. That’s $100 million less than the amount Jeb Bush’s super-PAC has raised. And two weeks ago, the super-PAC’s top two operatives were indicted on campaign finance charges. (They pleaded not guilty yesterday.)

This plan does appear to be legal. A primary or caucus is organized by the party itself, and the party is free to choose its candidate however it wants, legal experts say. But there is another potential wrinkle in the plan: Paul hasn’t actually paid the money. Or at least that’s what local GOP officials have told Kentucky media outlets. Paul’s campaign told one Kentucky newspaper that the money is indeed set aside, just not available for use by the state party until the caucus plan is approved.

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Rand Paul’s Desperate Gamble to Keep His Senate Seat

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State Department Officials Overruled Their Own Human Trafficking Experts

by ArdenHatchett Posted on August 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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The State Department inflated the grades of diplomatically sensitive countries in its yearly assessment of human trafficking around the globe, according to an investigation published by Reuters on Monday.

A negative ranking in the department’s annual “Trafficking in Persons Report” can shame offending nations, and even lead to sanctions. And while it isn’t unusual for the rankings to be reviewed by officials outside the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons—the State Department unit home to analysts who investigate countries’ trafficking records—Reuters suggests that this year’s report was subject to unprecedented interference from senior officials. As the investigation explains:

The analysts, who are specialists in assessing efforts to combat modern slavery—such as the illegal trade in humans for forced labor or prostitution—won only three of 17 disputes with senior diplomats outside the Office, the worst ratio in the 15-year history of the unit…As a result, not only Malaysia, Cuba and China, but countries such as India, Uzbekistan and Mexico, wound up with better grades than the State Department’s human-rights experts wanted to give them.

The State Department denies that the ratings issued in the final report were politically motivated. But countries that at the moment are particularly diplomatically strategic for the United States were given higher grades than the human trafficking analysts originally recommended. The experts were shot down, for example, when they tried to put Malaysia, Cuba, and China on the Tier 3 “blacklist,” a level reserved for countries with the worst records that can trigger sanctions. (Instead, they were placed on the Tier 2 “watch list,” a category for countries needing special scrutiny but still judged to be making significant efforts to meet minimum standards.) Reuters explains:

The Malaysian upgrade, which was highly criticized by human rights groups, could smooth the way for an ambitious proposed U.S.-led free-trade deal with the Southeast Asian nation and 11 other countries. Ending Communist-ruled Cuba’s 12 years on the report’s blacklist came as the two nations reopened embassies on each other’s soil following their historic détente over the past eight months. And for China, the experts’ recommendation to downgrade it to the worst ranking, Tier 3, was overruled despite the report’s conclusion that Beijing did not undertake increased anti-trafficking efforts.

For Malaysia, where dozens of suspected mass migrant graves were discovered this spring, placement on the Tier 2 watch list was particularly important: As the Washington Post reports, if the Southeast Asian country had been put in Tier 3, it could not have participated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the controversial trade and investment deal that the Obama administration has been trying to push through Congress this year.

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State Department Officials Overruled Their Own Human Trafficking Experts

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