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Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah Just Got Indicted. Here’s What He’s Accused Of.

by HyeNelmsamd Posted on July 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Department of Justice dropped 29 federal racketeering charges on Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) and a handful of close associates this morning, claiming that he diverted campaign and charitable funds to cover the cost of a failed mayoral run and to pay off his son’s student loans. Investigators have been circling Chattah for years. Last year, a top aide pleaded guilty to helping Fattah divert the money towards his son’s student loan debt, and Fattah’s son is awaiting trial on federal charges of his own in connection to the scheme.

Fattah is the second Democratic member of Congress to be indicted on corruption charges by the Department of Justice this year. New Jersey’s Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted in April, stemming from accusations he helped a campaign donor obtain benefits from the federal government in exchange for favors. Fattah, who was first elected in 1995, is the third sitting member of Congress to be indicted on corruption charges in the last two years. Former Republican Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), who represented Staten Island, was charged with fraud and tax evasion in April 2014 and was sentenced to eight months in prison earlier this month.

In this case, Fattah and his associates face a slew of charges, including mail fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. In announcing the charges, the DOJ assembled a laundry list of alleged misdeeds, including:

Using a secret $1 million loan from a wealthy supporter to back his 2007 run for mayor of Philadelphia.
Repaying the donor’s loan through a nonprofit Fattah controlled that had received funding from the federal government.
Attempting to steer a $15 million federal grant to a political consultant who Fattah’s campaign owed $130,000.
Using campaign funds to pay a consulting company, which then paid off $23,000 in student loans for Fattah’s son.
Taking an $18,000 bribe from an associate in exchange for attempting to secure him an ambassadorship and masking the bribe in the form of a fake car sale.

Fattah and his alleged co-conspirators could face decades in prison if convicted.

Fattah represents Pennsylvania’s 2nd congressional district, an overwhelmingly Democratic district that encompasses much of the city of Philadelphia and its close suburbs. Despite his son’s indictment and the guilty plea by his aide last summer, Fattah easily won reelection last fall with 88 percent of the vote.

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Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah Just Got Indicted. Here’s What He’s Accused Of.

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Study: Juvenile Detention Not a Great Place to Deal With Mental Health Issues

by ChasityLizotte Posted on July 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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If you land in the hospital as an incarcerated teen, it’s more likely for mental health reasons—psychiatric illnesses, substance abuse, depression, or disruptive disorders—than for any other factor, says a new study.

Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine examined nearly 2 million hospitalizations in California of boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 18 over a 15-year period. They found that mental health diagnoses accounted for 63 percent of hospital stays by kids in the justice system, compared with 19 percent of stays by kids who weren’t incarcerated, according to their study published Tuesday in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Arash Anoshiravani, said it seems likely that many locked-up kids developed mental health problems as a result of earlier stressful events during their childhoods, such as being abused or witnessing other acts of violence. “We are arresting kids who have mental health problems probably related to their experiences as children,” he said in a statement. “Is that the way we should be dealing with this, or should we be getting them into treatment earlier, before they start getting caught up in the justice system?”

Even if someone enters detention without a major mental health problem, she has a good chance of developing one once she’s there. The World Health Organization cites many factors in prison life as detrimental to mental stability, including overcrowding, physical or sexual violence, isolation, a lack of privacy, and inadequate health services. And the problem is obviously not just limited to juvenile offenders: Earlier this year, a study by the Urban Institute found that more than half of all inmates in jails and state prisons across the country have a mental illness of some kind.

In the California study, kids in detention and hospitalized were disproportionately black and from larger metropolitan counties like Los Angeles, Alameda, and San Diego. Among children and teens in the justice system, girls were more likely than boys to experience severe mental health problems, with 74 percent of their hospitalizations related to mental illness, compared with 57 percent of boys’ hospitalizations. (Boys, on the other hand, were five times more likely to be hospitalized for trauma.)

Earlier mental health interventions could lead to major savings, the researchers added: Detained youth in their study had longer hospital stays than kids outside the justice system, and a majority of them were publicly insured.

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Study: Juvenile Detention Not a Great Place to Deal With Mental Health Issues

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Disability Insurance Is Going to Be a Big Deal In Next Year’s Presidential Campaign

by KathiPumpkin5 Posted on July 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Another year, another report from the Social Security Trustees. Here’s the basic chart, which shows the combined Social Security Trust fund becoming insolvent in 2034, one year later than last year’s projection. At that point, if nothing is done, benefit checks will be reduced about 25 percent.

There’s not much change since 2014, as you’d expect since this stuff doesn’t change a lot from year to year. The bigger news is that if you pull apart OASI (old age benefits) from DI (disability), it turns out that DI is going to be insolvent next year. Everyone has known this for a while, so it’s no big shock. But next year is an election year, which means Congress either needs to come up with a fix this year, while everyone is mesmerized by Donald Trump, or else put it off until next year, when they’ll have to do it under the blazing white klieg lights of a presidential campaign.

It’ll probably be next year, since Social Security traditionally doesn’t get fixed until it’s literally a few days away from not sending out checks to people. That should make this a great campaign issue between Republicans, who think DI is going broke because too many lazy bums are gaming the system, and Democrats, who mostly think it’s going broke because boomers are retiring and the economy is still weak.

So who wins this argument? Republicans have a story that will appeal to their base audience, but when you finally get to the point where checks to disabled people are being reduced—or not being sent out at all—that tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Public opinion will likely end up on the side of the disabled, especially since the usual fix (moving a bit of money from OASI to DI) is cheap and painless.

But we’ll see. In any case, this is a fight that can’t be avoided. You can count on it becoming a focal point of next year’s campaign.

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Disability Insurance Is Going to Be a Big Deal In Next Year’s Presidential Campaign

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The Rent Is Too Damn High in San Francisco, and It’s Putting People on the Street

by BridgetteKesteve Posted on July 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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A new report shows that San Francisco is still struggling to house its homeless. According to the 2015 Point in Time Count—an in-person tally conducted in cities around the country every two years—the city’s homeless population has remained roughly constant over the past decade, even as the numbers of chronically homeless people continue to decline. This shift, homeless advocates say, points to a disturbing link between homelessness and the skyrocketing cost of housing in the city.

More Coverage of Homelessness


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Here’s What It’s Like to Be a Homeless Techie in Silicon Valley


Hanging Out With the Tech Have-Nots at a Silicon Valley Shantytown

From 2013 to 2015, San Francisco’s homeless population increased by around 200 people to a total of 6,686. The number of chronically homeless has, however, decreased by 12 percent since 2013 and has fallen close to 60 percent in the past six years. (Chronically homeless refers to those who have spent more than a year on the streets, often with a disabling condition like mental illness or substance abuse.) Close to half of the homeless people surveyed by the city said they lost their housing because they could not afford rent; an additional 17 percent said they could not find housing.

“Housing instability is a trend we have been hearing a lot about nationwide, particularly in high-cost areas like San Francisco,” says Elina Bravve, a Senior Research Analyst at the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), an advocacy and research organization. After the recession, she explains, more people began renting. Now higher-income renters are driving up demand and price. “That puts a lot of pressure on the low-income market,” she says. “It is definitely a problem that will continue over the next few decades.”

According to a NLIHC report released earlier this year, a person needs to make more than to $31 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the city and around $40 an hour for a two-bedroom. At $12.21 an hour, the local minimum wage is higher than average but it doesn’t even come close. The problem isn’t limited to expensive cities. The same NLIHC report finds that the 2015 national “Housing Wage” for a two-bedroom apartment is $19.35—more than double the federal minimum wage and far out of reach for renters earning the average wage of $15.16.

The Obama administration has set a goal of eradicating chronic homelessness by 2017. But Bravve says fixes for the non-chronic homeless population are subject to the ebbs and flows of political will, especially when budgets are tight and most federal and local programs don’t target this population. In Los Angeles County, for example, rental prices have risen more four times faster than wages since 2000. The LA Times reported in January that city funding for affordable homes had fallen by $82 million between 2008 and 2014. In May, the county’s count found a 12 percent increase in its homeless population. It also found an 86 percent spike in numbers of tents, makeshift shelters, or people sleeping in vehicles, which it attributed in part to housing affordability.

Chronic homelessness is declining largely because of the effectiveness of “Housing First” programs that provide permanent housing to individuals who need the most (and most expensive) services. The strategy, which enabled Utah to house nearly all of its chronically homeless people can also provides a huge boon to local budget, saving around $43,000 a year per person.

However, this strategy isn’t designed to help low-income people who are not chronically homeless. Housing First’s savings start to dry up when it comes to housing people who don’t require the same level of services. This is one reason why analysts like Bravve emphasize the need for cities to invest in affordable housing. In San Francisco, she says, that doesn’t just mean increasing the supply of housing but “preserving what already exists and making sure that it doesn’t end up turning into condos.” The Housing Balance Report, released last week, showed that even though the city built thousands of new affordable housing units between 2004 and 2014, it only had a net gain of more than 1,100 new affordable units.

Just south of San Francisco, Santa Clara County has made housing affordability a priority—and it has paid off. Like San Francisco, the home of Silicon Valley has one of the most expensive rental markets in the nation. The wages necessary to rent a typical one-bedroom are close to three times as much as the local minimum wage. San Jose, like San Francisco, ranks among the top ten cities with the highest numbers of homeless people.

But this year, San Jose saw a 15 percent drop in its homeless population. “San Jose has been a leader in building affordable housing over the past 15 years,” says Ray Bramson, the homeless response manager for the San Jose Department of Housing. “We have 17,000 units in our portfolio and we have great low-income housing for working families and folks who need support in the community.” With more than 6,500 people still on the streets, he says the city remains committed to creating more affordable housing.

This year the county has issued 1,000 project-based vouchers that provide funds for contractors to produce affordable housing units, is working to convert more hotels and motels into low-income housing, and is looking into models like temporary tiny homes to house people coming off the streets, while more units are being built. It also invested $91.5 million in on housing and homeless services, and an earmarked an additional $6.7 million specifically for permanent supportive housing.

They still have a long way to go—more than 6,500 people are still without homes. But Bramson says the numbers show that the strategies are working. “I think if we can show that we can create affordability in a community like San Jose and areas of Silicon Valley,” he says, “we have great potential to house people anywhere in this country.”

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The Rent Is Too Damn High in San Francisco, and It’s Putting People on the Street

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It Takes How Much Electricity to Power an NFL Game?

by ChandaBlakeley Posted on July 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over the last few years, pro sports teams across the United States, often at the urging of environmentalist Allen Hershkowitz, have tried to go green.

Solar panels installed at Seattle’s CenturyLink Field in 2011 generate enough power for 95 homes. The Miami Heat have invested in efforts to reduce energy consumption at American Airlines Arena while cutting costs and combating the blistering heat. This year’s US Open Championship took place at Chambers Bay, a gravel mine turned public park that includes a world-class golf course planted with drought-resistant grass and irrigated with reused wastewater.

But what kind of impact can these efforts actually have? Here’s a look at pro sports’ environmental footprint and some recent attempts to shrink it:

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It Takes How Much Electricity to Power an NFL Game?

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Solar Power Is Mostly for the Affluent. Here’s Obama’s Plan to Spread the Wealth Around.

by DarinRRZscwoob Posted on July 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Rooftop solar power systems cost a lot less these days than they did five or 10 years ago, and with many solar companies now offering leases and loans, it’s safe to say that going solar is more affordable than even before. That trend goes a long way to explaining why solar, while still making up less than 1 percent of the total US energy mix, is the fastest-growing power source in the country.

But access to solar power is still overwhelmingly skewed toward affluent households. Of the roughly 645,000 homes and business with rooftop solar panels in the US, less than 5 percent are households earning less than $40,000, according to a report earlier this year from the George Washington University Solar Institute. The typical solar home is 34 percent larger than the typical non-solar home, according to energy software provider Opower.

President Barack Obama wants to change that. On Monday the White House announced a package of initiatives to make solar more accessible for low-income households. The plans include a new solar target for federally subsidized housing and an effort to increase the availability of federally insured loans for solar systems.

Low-income households face a number of barriers to going solar. They’re less likely to own their own roof, less able to access loans or other financing options for solar, and more likely to have subsidized utility bills that don’t transfer the financial benefits of solar to the homeowner. And yet, in many ways low-income households stand to benefit the most from producing their own energy: The proportion of their income spent on energy is about four times greater than the national median, according to federal statistics. And because lower-income households tend to use less electricity overall than higher-income households, a typical solar setup covers more of their demand. The GW study found that a 4 kilowatt solar system, about the average size for a house, would cover more than half of a typical low-income household’s energy needs and that if all low-income households went solar, they would collectively save up to $23.3 billion each year.

“This is aimed at taking directly on those challenges and making it easier and straightforward to deploy low-cost solar energy in every community in the country,” senior White House climate advisor Brian Deese told reporters in a call yesterday.

The initiative starts by tripling the target for solar on federally subsidized housing to 300 megawatts by 2020, as well as directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide technical guidance for state and local housing authorities on how to go solar. The White House also announced more than $520 million in commitments from private companies, investors, NGOs, and state and local governments to pay for energy efficiency and solar projects for low-income households. The initiative places particular emphasis on so-called “community” solar, in which groups of households pool resources to build and maintain a shared solar system in their neighborhood.

Some states and power companies are already angling to support solar for low-income housing. Arizona Public Service, a Phoenix-area utility, recently launched a $28.5 million program to install its own solar panels on rooftops in its service area, specifically targeting low-income households. And New York’s electricity regulators recently bolstered incentives for power companies that invest in energy efficiency and renewables. Con Ed, the power company serving most of New York City, plans to spend $250 million on such upgrades in Brooklyn and Queens, as an alternative to a $1 billion upgrade to the old natural gas-fired electric grid.

The president’s plan builds on a commitment he announced earlier this year to train 75,000 workers for the solar industry (which is already adding jobs 10 times faster than the overall economy). It also dovetails neatly with Obama’s larger climate objectives, especially his hotly-contested plan to reduce the nation’s energy-related carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030, as well as the economy-wide climate targets that form the US bargaining chip for this year’s UN climate negotiations in Paris.

For all those promises to work, “the question is how states and utilities can reduce their emissions, and the buildings that they serve are a critical part of that system,” said Natural Resources Defense Council financial policy analyst Philip Henderson. “Making those buildings more efficient and using less energy from dirty power plants is a direct and essential way to meet those goals.”

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Solar Power Is Mostly for the Affluent. Here’s Obama’s Plan to Spread the Wealth Around.

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Meryl Streep Is Pushing Congress to Finally Revive the Equal Rights Amendment

by nortom23 Posted on June 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Meryl Streep sent all 535 members of Congress a letter urging them to bring back the Equal Rights Amendment in order to finally ratify it into the Constitution.

“I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality—for your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife or yourself—by actively supporting the Equal Rights Amendment,” the letter read.

Accompanying Streep’s letter was a copy of “Equal Means Equal” written by EPA Coalition president Jessica Neuwirth.

“The ERA is not just a women’s rights issue—it will have a meaningful benefit for the whole human family,” she added.

Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment back in 1972 and thirty-five states ratified it but that was three ratifications short of the constitutional requirement.

Streep, who will be starring as British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst this October, has long been a vocal advocate for women’s rights and has also spoken out against rampant ageism against women in Hollywood. During Patricia Arquette’s impassioned acceptance speech at this year’s Oscars, Streep was seen cheering enthusiastically in support of Arquette’s call for gender equality.

In her letter on Tuesday, the Oscar-winning actress called on Congress to revive the issue for a “whole new generation of women and girls are talking about equality—equal pay, equal protection from sexual assault, equal rights.”

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Meryl Streep Is Pushing Congress to Finally Revive the Equal Rights Amendment

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Goldman Sachs to Summer Interns: Don’t Stay in the Office Overnight

by Tracee3261 Posted on June 17, 2015

Mother Jones

By Olivia Oran

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc has told its summer investment banking interns not to stay in the office overnight in a bid to improve working conditions for its junior staff.

The move, according to company sources and confirmed by a Goldman spokesman, illustrates how Wall Street banks are seeking to curb excessive hours worked by young employees who see internships and entry-level jobs as a chance for a lucrative investment banking career.

Goldman has told its new crop of summer banking interns they should be out of the office between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m. during the week.

Goldman and other banks have taken steps over the last several years to encourage junior employees, known as analysts and associates, to take time off in a profession notorious for all-nighters and 100-hour work weeks.

The moves came after the death of a Bank of America Corp intern in London in 2013 fueled concerns over working excessive hours. It was later revealed the intern died of natural causes.

Soon after, Goldman told its junior bankers to take Saturdays off and also formed a task force to address quality of life issues.

Bank of America said at the time it would recommend junior employees take off a minimum of four weekend days per month.

Wall Street summer interns are typically college juniors who work as analysts and business school students who serve as associates.

Goldman has more than 2,900 summer interns this year.

Goldman ranked as the top worldwide M&A adviser last year, according to Thomson Reuters data. The bank advised on 449 deals with a total value of $983.9 billion.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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Goldman Sachs to Summer Interns: Don’t Stay in the Office Overnight

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Louisiana Ran Out of Money. You Won’t Believe What They Did Next.

by CarrolDaulton Posted on June 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bobby Jindal has become such an increasingly pathetic figure that I find it hard to work up the nastiness to even mock him in a blog post these days. But Jordan Weissmann links today to a piece in the Baton Rouge Advocate that’s truly mind bending. Jindal desperately needs to raise revenue this year because he’s left Louisiana in a huge budget hole thanks to his true-believer tax-cutting mania. But Grover Norquist won’t allow him to raise revenues. What to do? Here’s the Advocate explaining the Jindal/Norquist-approved SAVE program:

It would assess a fee of about $1,500 per higher education student and raise about $350 million total, but only on paper. Students wouldn’t have to pay anything because an offsetting tax credit for the $1,500. Nor would universities receive any new money.

However, the SAVE fund would create a tax credit for the $350 million that Jindal could use to offset $350 million of the new revenue that legislators are proposing to raise.

I’m not sure that’s entirely clear, but I think I understand what’s going on. Let’s break it down:

  1. SAVE raises $350 million in revenue to help close the budget hole.
  2. It also creates a tax credit that—in theory—offsets the new revenue with a $350 million tax cut. So far this is kosher because there’s no net tax increase.
  3. However, SAVE also creates $350 million in new student fees.
  4. Then the tax credit is used—in actual practice—to offset the student fees so students don’t have to pay any more than they did before.
  5. The net result is $350 million in new revenue that’s not offset.

WTF? All these years Grover Norquist has been terrorizing Washington with his no-new-taxes pledge, but it turns out that this is all it takes to wiggle your way around it? If we’d known this we sure could have avoided an awful lot of stubborn confrontation on Capitol Hill over the past couple of decades. I can think of a hundred ways we can use this dodge in the future.

You know, I live in California and we’ve engaged in a whole lot of budget smoke and mirrors over the years. So I hardly need smelling salts when I hear about state governments pushing the envelope during budget season. But this truly boggles the mind when it comes to sheer dumbness. Maybe next they’ll just start minting their own Louisiana bucks and paying for stuff that way.

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Louisiana Ran Out of Money. You Won’t Believe What They Did Next.

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Who is climate change killing this week?

by LelandCruz Posted on June 5, 2015

Who is climate change killing this week?

By on 5 Jun 2015 3:54 pmcommentsShare

California sea lion pups and New England moose — that’s who!

Let’s start with the moose. According to National Geographic, the moose population in New Hampshire went from about 7,500 in the late 90s to about 4,500 by 2013. In Maine, where about 60,000 moose make up the densest moose population in the lower 48, scientists also suspect a decline (although data is scarce).

The culprit? Our old enemy, climate change, which is giving a boost to another old enemy, bloodthirsty ticks, says National Geographic:

The reason is likely climate change, biologists say, which is ushering in shorter, warmer winters that are boosting the fortunes of winter ticks. The tiny creatures latch on to moose here in staggering numbers: One moose can house 75,000 ticks, which are helping to drive a troubling rise in moose deaths, especially among calves.

Warning: Things are about to get horrifying.

When a moose gets covered in ticks, it can turn into something called a “ghost moose” — what National Geographic describes as “an animal so irritated by ticks that it rubs off most of its dark brown hair, exposing its pale undercoat and bare skin. […] With their skinny necks, emaciated bodies, and big, hairless splotches, these moose look like the walking dead as they stumble through the forest.”

Dan Bergeron / NH Fish and Game

And now, in equally devastating news: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that the number of sea lion pups that have shown up stranded on the beaches of southern California so far this year has already surpassed the total number of beachings between 2004 and 2012.

We’ve already covered this tragedy, which is likely due to rising ocean temperatures driving away sea lion prey, but if you want to see how scientists are trying to help these pups, check out the video below from Vice. In it, marine mammal biologist Colleen Weiler speculates about what’s causing these warm waters:

“It is an El Niño year, but it’s a weak El Niño. it could be a larger ocean cycle thing that we just don’t understand yet. It could be climate change related. That’s the big question — what’s causing these warmer temperatures that’s pushing all the fish really far offshore?”

Source:
California’s Sea Lion Die-Off

, Vice.

What’s a Ghost Moose? How Ticks Are Killing an Iconic Animal

, National Geographic.

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Who is climate change killing this week?

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