Inside the Koch data mine

Meet the guys building the right’s new machine.

By Mike Allen and Kenneth P. Vogel, 12/8/14 5:32 AM EST

The Koch brothers and their allies are pumping tens of millions of dollars into a data company that’s developing detailed, state-of-the-art profiles of 250 million Americans, giving the brothers’ political operation all the earmarks of a national party.

The move comes as mainstream Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, are trying to reclaim control of the conservative movement from outside groups. The Kochs, however, are continuing to amass all of the campaign tools the Republican National Committee and other party arms use to elect a president.

The State of Workers’ Wages Around the World

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Some of this Real News Network interview with Richard Wolff, who is currently a visiting professor at the New School, on a new ILO report on workers’ wages covers familiar ground. Wage growth in advanced economies has been much slower than that in emerging economies, in large measure due to multinational moving jobs overseas to exploit lower labor costs. But the interesting part of the conversation is Wolff’s argument on why this is in fact not defensible conduct and what countries like the US ought to do about it.

Wolff praises Germany at the end. Not everyone would agree with this assessment. Germany implemented a series of labor market reforms known as the Hartz reforms from 2003 through 2005. Here are two discussions: German labour reforms: Unpopular success and Hartz IV reform did not reduce unemployment in Germany.

Warmer Pacific Ocean could release millions of tons of seafloor methane

Off the West Coast of the United States, methane gas is trapped in frozen layers below the seafloor. New research from the University of Washington shows that water at intermediate depths is warming enough to cause these carbon deposits to melt, releasing methane into the sediments and surrounding water.

Researchers found that water off the coast of Washington is gradually warming at a depth of 500 meters, about a third of a mile down. That is the same depth where methane transforms from a solid to a gas. The research suggests that ocean warming could be triggering the release of a powerful greenhouse gas.

Why the Founding Fathers Thought Banning Torture Foundational to the US Constitution

by Juan Cole

I have argued on many occasions that the language of patriotism and appeal to the Founding Fathers and the constitution must not be allowed to be appropriated by the political right wing in contemporary America, since for the most part right wing principles (privileging religion, exaltation of ‘whiteness’ over universal humanity, and preference for property rights over human rights) are diametrically opposed to the Enlightenment and Deist values of most of the framers of the Unites States.

We will likely hear these false appeals to an imaginary history a great deal with the release of the Senate report on CIA torture. It seems to me self-evident that most of the members of the Constitutional Convention would have voted to release the report and also would have been completely appalled at its contents.

You're Likely to Be a Lot Poorer Than You Were a Few Years Ago—And It's All By Design

By Les Leopold

December 5, 2014 | The typical American is even poorer than his or her equivalent in Greece. The median Australian is four times wealthier. The Canadians are twice as wealthy. The U.S. continues to lead the world in billionaires [3] (571 in 2014, with China a distant second at 190). But after decades of financial deregulation and attacks on employee rights, Americans rank 26th in median wealth (defined as assets owned, minus debts owed for the person on the middle rung of the wealth ladder).

All by Design

During the Cold War, our working class was the envy of the world. We argued that our free-enterprise system, not communism, created the best conditions for a rising standard of living for all. Indeed, there was much to boast about. Real wages were increasing year after year. American workers were free to go on strike and did. Most importantly, the children of working people could climb the economic ladder—upward mobility was real.

Paul Krugman: Recovery at Last?

Last week we got an actually good employment report — arguably the first truly good report in a long time. The U.S. economy added well over 300,000 jobs; wages, which have been stagnant for far too long, picked up a bit. Other indicators, like the rate at which workers are quitting (a sign that they expect to find new jobs), continue to improve. We’re still nowhere near full employment, but getting there no longer seems like an impossible dream.

And there are some important lessons from this belated good news. It doesn’t vindicate policies that permitted seven years and counting of depressed incomes and employment. But it does put the lie to some of the nonsense you hear about why the economy has lagged.

Study finds early warning signals of abrupt climate change

A new study by researchers at the University of Exeter has found early warning signals of a reorganisation of the Atlantic oceans' circulation which could have a profound impact on the global climate system.

The research, published today in the journal Nature Communications, used a simulation from a highly complex model to analyse the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), an important component of the Earth's climate system.

Why Poor People Stay Poor

Saving money costs money. Period.

By Linda Tirado

I once lost a whole truck over a few hundred bucks. It had been towed, and when I called the company they told me they’d need a few hundred dollars for the fee. I didn’t have a few hundred dollars. So I told them when I got paid next and that I’d call back then.

It was a huge pain in the ass for those days. It was the rainy season, and I wound up walking to work, adding another six miles or so a day to my imaginary pedometer. It was my own fault that I’d been towed, really, and I spent more than a couple hours ruing myself. I finally made it to payday, and when I went to get the truck, they told me that I now owed over a thousand dollars, nearly triple my paycheck. They charged a couple hundred dollars a day in storage fees. I explained that I didn’t have that kind of money, couldn’t even get it. They told me that I had some few months to get it together, including the storage for however long it took me to get it back, or that they’d simply sell it. They would, of course, give me any money above and beyond their fees if they recovered that much.

Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General

SUBHEADINGGOESHERE

By ERIC LIPTON, DEC. 6, 2014

The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.

But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.

Jane Dough Gets a Pitch for a Private Equity “Senior Housing Fund”

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This description of a senior housing fund play lets mere mortals get a taste of what private equity would like to do to you down the road, provided you live long enough for them to target you for rent extraction.

By Jane Dough, who grew up in the suburbs of an industrial city, went to college, worked a few years, inherited a buttload of money, and retired. This is what it’s like to be closeted, conflicted, unheroic, and rich. Originally published at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

“A lot of the buffalo have been shot and you’ve got to get really creative out there to get opportunities. Memory care is a fantastic opportunity… It’s low-hanging fruit.” — Senior Housing News

- – -

In early November I received a pitch document offering me the opportunity to invest in a private equity fund in the area of “senior housing.” I also got a 300-plus-page legal document, called an “investor kit” so that I could act fast on this tremendous investment opportunity! I can’t actually quote from these documents or refer to the buyout firm or senior housing fund by name or someone will come and take me away in the night. All names are fictional.

– – –

To: David Smith, CEO

Buyout Investment Group

The Conundrum Fund

Dear Mr. Smith:

Thank you for the information about your “senior housing” private equity fund. I’m leaning towards taking a pass. If I may, I’d like to explore with you why that might be.

First, a disclaimer: In your pitch booklet you call me a “sophisticated investor,”2 but in fact I’m pretty clueless about private equity. I had to read numerous articles just to be able to write you this letter, and even then I’m on shaky ground.

Having said that …

You have grandmothers, right? Older parents? Elderly relations in general?

Zinn Coeditor: That All "Voices" Make History Is a "Dangerous Idea to Those in Power"

By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview

Mark Karlin: "Voices of a People's History" is so expansive and revelatory, it is only appropriate to begin by discussing a normally undisclosed aspect of the colonial revolt against Britain. The book has a section devoted to documenting the economic and social inequality that existed among the colonial settlers and the revolutionary army. That, I am sure, comes as quite a surprise to many schooled on the myth of a nation founded as egalitarian, don't you think?

Anthony Arnove: Howard was attentive to many aspects of US history that tend to be ignored or deliberately downplayed. But he was especially attuned to class conflict. The common metaphor of the United States as a family conceals sharp divisions that have always existed. And, as you point out, it wasn't just that those conflicts existed between the colonial settlers and the indigenous population, whom they systematically dispossessed and slaughtered, or between the colonial population and the millions of slaves they forcibly brought here to work and die under the most brutal conditions.

Conservative lobby group Alec plans anti-environmental onslaught

- Corporate lobbying network plans to draft bills attacking protections - Bills will reportedly aim to expand offshore oil drilling and cut EPA budget

Suzanne Goldenberg

The corporate lobbying network American Legislative Exchange Council, commonly known as Alec, is planning a new onslaught on a number of environmental protections next year when Republicans take control of Congress and a number of state legislatures.

The battle lines of Alec’s newest attack on environmental and climate measures will be formally unveiled on Wednesday, when the group begins three days of meetings in Washington DC.

Thomas Frank: Ann Coulter and David Brooks play a sneaky, unserious class card

Post-Ferguson and Staten Island, conservatives are trying to divide with the snob card again. Too bad Dems let them

A few days ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks took the occasion of the outrage in Ferguson, Missouri, to call for a national effort to combat “classism,” an unfortunate form of prejudice that, he says, results from widening inequality. Nowadays, Brooks asserted, “classism intertwines with racism” to produce a truly monstrous complex of attitudes toward the people at society’s bottom.

If you are a newcomer to the culture-war labyrinth, you might be surprised to hear a leading conservative deplore “classism,” because it’s the right’s beloved free-market system that has opened the yawning crevasse between the classes—between the people who work and the people who own. But in truth class grievance is central to the cosmology of modern conservatism. They love nothing more than to denounce snobbery—just as long as they are able to attribute that vice to scholarly liberal weaklings who disdain the plainspoken ways of middle America. David Brooks himself wrote one of the best-known iterations of this stereotype, back in the days when people were just beginning to associate red states with proletarian authenticity and blue states with upper-class pretension. (And back in October, he argued against the scourge of “partyism”.)

In world first -- UNSW researchers convert sunlight to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency

UNSW Australia's solar researchers have converted over 40% of the sunlight hitting a solar system into electricity, the highest efficiency ever reported.

The record efficiency was achieved in outdoor tests in Sydney, before being independently confirmed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at their outdoor test facility in the United States.

Toiletry chemicals linked to testicular cancer and male infertility cost EU millions, report says

Nordic Council calls on EU to ban damaging compounds found in household products that cost millions due to their harmful impact on male reproductive health

Damian Carrington

The hormone-mimicking chemicals used routinely in toiletries, cosmetics, medicines, plastics and pesticides cause hundreds of millions of euros of damage to EU citizens every year, according to the first estimate of their economic impact.

The endocrine disruptor compounds (EDCs) are thought to be particularly harmful to male reproductive health and can cause testicular cancer, infertility, deformation of the penis and undescended testicles.

Chemicals Released During Natural Gas Extraction May Harm Human Reproduction and Development

Scientists draw conclusions after review of more than 150 studies; suggest further scientific study

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Unconventional oil and gas (UOG) operations combine directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to release natural gas from underground rock. Recent discussions have centered on potential air and water pollution from chemicals used in these processes and how it affects the more than 15 million Americans living within one mile of UOG operations. Now, Susan C. Nagel, a researcher with the University of Missouri, and national colleagues have conducted the largest review to date of research centered on fracking byproducts and their effects on human reproductive and developmental health. They determined that exposure to chemicals released in fracturing may be harmful to human health in men, women and children and recommend further scientific study.

Big Changes in Fine Print of Some 2015 Obamacare Plans

By Charles Ornstein, Lena Groeger and Ryann Grochowski Jones, ProPublica | Report

At first glance, the 2015 health plans offered by the Ohio nonprofit insurer CareSource look a lot like the ones it sold this year, in the Affordable Care Act's first enrollment season.

The monthly premiums are nearly identical, and the deductibles are the same.

But tucked within the plans' jargon are changes that could markedly affect how much consumers pay for health care. Generic drugs will soon be free, but the cost of expensive specialty medications will increase. Co-payments for visits to primary-care doctors will go down, but those for emergency room trips will be higher.

400 Reasons Our Lives Feel Squeezed

Sam Pizzigati

We don’t know who exactly filed the tax returns with America’s 400 largest incomes in 2010. The IRS won’t reveal any of these 400 individually by name.

But a just-released new IRS annual report on America’s highest incomes has revealed just about everything else about these top 400, from how much they claim in deductions to how much their incomes have swelled over time.

US Government Study Predicts TPP Trade Agreement Will Produce Practically No Extra Growth For Anyone

from the just-like-TAFTA/TTIP dept

by Glyn Moody
Fri, Dec 5th 2014 1:04am

As their name suggests, free trade agreements are designed to help trade flourish between the countries involved. The hope is that when trade increases, society as a whole benefits. One of the key metrics for assessing that outcome is to look at changes in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which provides one index of economic activity in a country. It does not, of course, measure other things that may be important to people, such as public services or quality of life, but it's widely used.

GDP growth is one of the main benefits that will flow from US-EU TAFTA/TTIP, according to its supporters. They point to a study from the CEPR group in London, which was conducted on behalf of the European Commission as part of the preparations for negotiating a trade agreement with the US.

Paul Krugman: The Inequality Connection

In early December, I'm supposed to talk at a Columbia University conference on inequality and its consequences. One issue I'll have to address is the ongoing question of whether rising inequality makes countries more vulnerable to financial crises, makes it harder to recover from such crises, or in some other way degrades performance.

I've been wary of this line of argument, in part because it appeals so much to my general leanings: Inequality worries me a lot, and it would be great if it was bad on the macroeconomics side, too. So I bend over backward not to buy into that proposition too easily.

Now they’re trying to steal 2016: The demented GOP schemes to rewire the Electoral College and elect a Tea Party president

Republicans know they can't win the popular vote. You won't believe sick schemes they've launched to get around it

Paul Rosenberg

Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once in the last 25 years, a steep decline in their fortunes from the period from 1972 to 1988, when they won the popular vote every time but one–1976, the aftermath of Watergate. Add to that massive policy failures and demographic trends against them, and the motivations to cheat are overwhelming.

Voter suppression seemed promising at first—and it’s helpful in many downticket races—but it’s not going to be enough to secure the White House. So they’ve been working on another idea as well—make the popular vote totally irrelevant by leaving red states just as they are, with statewide winners getting all the electoral votes, while making electoral votes more or less proportional in as many blue states as possible—many of which the GOP controls at the state level. If they can rewrite the rules fast enough, they could even win in 2016, with no more votes than Mitt Romney received.

Wall Street to Workers: Give Us Your Retirement Savings and Stop Asking Questions

Big banks are more than happy to take workers' retirement funds—as long as those workers don't want to know what those banks are doing with the money.

BY David Sirota

If you are a public school teacher in Kentucky, the state has a message for you: You have no right to know the details of the investments being made with your retirement savings.

That was the crux of the declaration issued by state officials to a high school history teacher when he asked to see the terms of the agreements between the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System and the Wall Street firms that are managing the system’s money on behalf of him, his colleagues and thousands of retirees.