Obama Loses Xmas Tree Lobby

Christmas tree farmers are up in arms that the White House caved so quickly in the face of an 'Internet rumor' over a "Christmas tree tax". [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/-83xAbGS5BA/obama_loses_xma
s_tree_lobby.php

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

"Stereotype breakers."

A friend of mine from the islands is literally a rocket scientist. Dude has a PhD in aerospace engineering from Cornell University, and he is a big wig at some large company. (Northrop Grumman, I think)

Anyway, he doesn't fit the stereotype of what a some folks think that a rocket scientist should look like, which, to me, is a beautiful thing. It's always great to see stereotypes shattered.

I love Eminem, Jeremy Wariner, and Mick Hucknall. I also love Tiger Woods, Jerome Iginla, and Darius Rucker. 

A white rapper who can spit with the best of them, a white boy who has some serious pipes (listen to a Simply Red track when you get a chance), and a white boy that can get down on the quarter mile like Michael Johnson. On the other side; a black man who kicks ass in golf, (or used to) one whose moves on the ice are "Sid the Kid" like, and one who can sing Country & Western well enough to make the most hard core redneck cry. These are all stereotype "shatterers" and all are welcome additions to the human race as far as I am concerned.

I am writing about this because of a story I saw today about Packers wide receiver Jordy Nelson. Dude is a straight beast at the wide out position, and he is a white boy. What I loved about the story was how candid he was about the fact that he uses being white to his advantage. Why? Because defensive backs are letting stereotypeitis (don't look for that word grammarians, I made it up) throw them off their game.   

"A Super Bowl hero is crediting his eye-popping success this season to old-school racial stereotypes.

Green Bay Packers receiver Jordy Nelson, who is white, has become one of quarterback Aaron Rodgers' favorite targets and believes his skin color has been somewhat of an asset.

Nelson broke into the spotlight a year ago by scoring a crucial touchdown in his team's Super Bowl XLV win over the Steelers, becoming just the fourth NFL wide receiver ever to post nine catches for 140 yards and a score in the Super Bowl.
Other Packers receivers joke that Nelson is the beneficiary of being the only white receiver on the team, suggesting opposing defensive backs don't think of Nelson as a big a threat.

Nelson tells the Green Bay Press Gazette that he's used this racial bias to his advantage. "Honestly, I think it is (a factor)," Nelson told the Press Gazette. "As receivers, we've talked about it. I know (cornerbacks coach) Joe Whitt tells me all the time, when all the rookies come in, he gives them the heads up, 'Don't let him fool ya.' That's fine with me."

Packers teammate Greg Jennings, who is black, believes Nelson isn't like other white pass catchers who've played in the NFL. "It's easy for someone to say, 'Oh yeah, he?s like one of those other white receivers,'" Jennings said. "He's not. I'm sorry. He's not. He knows how I feel about it. Maybe I'm a little biased because he is a teammate, but from watching him day one to right now, totally different player."

Among the top 15 NFL wide receivers in yardage, only New England Patriots star Wes Welker, the league leader in receptions and yards, is white.

Jennings went on to tell the Green Bay Press Gazette that race is indeed part of the story. "He uses that to his advantage," Jennings said. "Don?t put this out there because that?s our secret. But no, seriously, he has taken full advantage of every position that he?s been in whether it be special teams with the kick return game, now being the No. 2 ... however you want to put it, he's taken full advantage of it. It?s not because he didn?t put the time in. It's not because he's the white guy. A lot of it has to do with the fact that guys look at him say, 'OK, yeah, he's the white guy, he can't be that good. 'Well, he is that good. He's proven to be that good, and it's because of the work and the time that he's put on not only on the field but in his preparation off the field."

Apparently people have been underestimating Nelson for a while. He went from being a walk-on safety as a freshman in 2003 to posting the most prolific single season in Kansas State history, with 122 receptions for 1,606 yards in 2007.
Rodgers, the favorite to win league MVP honors, joined the conversation about racial perceptions with a teammate during Green Bay's blowout win over the Vikings on Monday night. "I was talking to 'Wood' (Charles Woodson) in the fourth quarter and he said, 'When you see Jordy out there, you think, 'Oh well, he's a white wide receiver. He won't be very athletic.' But Jordy sort of breaks all those stereotypes," Rodgers said during his weekly radio show in Milwaukee this week. "I am not sure why he keeps sneaking up on guys."

He wouldn't sneak up on me, I don't have stereotypeitis. If I see Jordy lining up across the field from me in the National Football League I would know that he belongs. {Story} 

Sadly for some of my color aroused friends, they just can't say the same thing. 

Read The Full Article:
http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2011/11/stereotype-breakers.html

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Steve Jobs And The Indeterminacy Of Success

Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography is a tremendous narrative but doesn’t offer a ton in the way of efforts at analysis. This is probably for the best, since it lets the rest of us talk about it at great length. But to me, one of the most astounding things about Jobs’ life is something Isaacson barely mentions ? he made most of his money making animated feature films.

If you’d heard about two different people, one of them a rich guy who investment a few million dollars in Pixar in the mid-to-late ’80s and handled the big picture dealmaking with Disney without playing a substantial role in the company’s movies and the other Steve Jobs who brought us the Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, you’d think it was ridiculous that the Pixar angel investor made more money than the genius consumer electronics designer. This would probably count as an example of how weird it is that the economy seems to do more to reward people who just shuffle money around than people who invent and create stuff. The fact that they’re actually the same guy makes the life story more interesting, but doesn’t actually change the main point. Inventing successful products is lucrative. Spearheading a successful corporate turnaround is lucrative. But in strict financial terms, it really doesn’t compare to well-timed investment decisions. And yet we all know that the ratio of skill-to-luck involved in industrial design is much higher than in investment timing.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Report: The Billions Corporations Avoided Paying
In Taxes Would Have Created Over 100,000 Jobs In Education

With income inequality in the U.S. at its highest level since the Great Depression, Americans from every end of the income spectrum are clamoring for corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes. But because of the numerous tax loopholes and credits worked into the tax code, corporate taxes are at historical lows.

Bank of America paid nothing in federal taxes in 2009. While earning billions in profit, companies like Boeing, Exxon-Mobil, and Wells Fargo also paid nothing in recent years. Other corporations, like Google and Pfizer, dramatically lower their tax rates by deferring profits they make overseas. After making more than $14 billion in profits last year, General Electric not only got a pass on paying any corporate income taxes, but actually received a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

Thanks to this propitious tax code, corporations kept $222.7 billion in federal revenue from 2008 to 2010. But the loss of that revenue comes at a cost, a cost being paid by middle class and low-income Americans who are already reeling from a sluggish economy — most notably, students. According to a new report from the National Education Association, $9.8 billion of the lost revenue from corporation would have gone to public schools and colleges over the same period. Those funds would have added over 100,000 jobs in public education and ensured that an extra 400,000 kids living in poverty could enroll in preschool. NEA breaks down that $9.8 billion by the numbers:

– $1,092: The average amount in extra academic support to help 9 million students in poverty catch up to their peers.

– $1,474: The average savings for school districts for each disabled student as a result of greater federal cost sharing.

– $1,276: The average amount in additional financial aid to ensure 7.7 million students in need continue or complete their post-secondary studies.

– 446,655: The number of additional children in poverty enrolled in preschool.

– 126,568: The number of jobs created in the field of education.

With that $9.8 billion, Ohio would have gained 4,363 jobs, Virginia would get 2,794 jobs, Kentucky would have 2,175 jobs, and Arizona would see more 4,094 jobs. Incidentally, these states are also home to Republican leaders in Congress who are singularly dedicated to maintaining this corporate welfare.

As TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo reported, Republican lawmakers continue to aid and abet corporate tax avoidance by protecting offshore profit deferral, which allows corporations to claim domestic tax credits for profits they earn overseas; by proposing to gut the Internal Revenue Service, whose every dollar used to audit tax cheats brings in more than $10 in revenue; by pushing for tax havens in free trade agreements; by enacting repatriation holidays that allow corporations to bring money earned overseas back into the country at a drastically lower rate, even with its negligible effect on job creation; by endorsing taxpayer giveaways like big oil subsidies; and by publicly defending corporate tax dodgers.

Working on behalf of corporations at the expense of American students and families is quickly becoming part of the Republican orthodoxy. This, however, should not be surprising because after all, for Republicans, “corporations are people too.”

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Martin Luther King III: Alabama’s
Immigration Law Is Like ‘Jim Crow’

Calling it “Jim Crow Revisited,” Martin Luther King III and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka lay out similarities between the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr. helped lead in Alabama and the draconian anti-immigrant law in the same state. “The passage of Alabama’s anti-immigrant legislation, HB 56, invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South,” they write. “And the police state it has created is equally cruel.” In the op-ed, King and Trumka call on President Obama to stop immigration programs that lead to racial profiling, “including collaboration between state and local law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.” After a New York Times editorial compared HB 56 and the civil rights movement, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) said earlier this week that it was an “insult” to compare the law and the movement. However, it’s more likely that Martin Luther King Jr.’s son is the more authoritative source on if the two struggles are similar.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

IPCC Extreme Weather Report Another Missed
Opportunity to Explain What’s Coming If We Keep Doing Nothing

Fortunately, the public already understands that global warming makes extreme weather more severe, as new polling reveals:

September polling by ecoAmerica found that 57% of Americans already understand “If we don’t do something about climate change now, we can end up having our farmland turned to desert.”  Duh:

The Palmer Drought Severity Index on a ?moderate? warming path (via NCAR, click to enlarge). ?A reading of -4 or below is considered extreme drought.? During the 1930s Dust Bowl, the PDSI spiked briefly to -6 but rarely exceeded -3.  We probably can’t stop this, but we can avert far, far worse post-2050 (see below).

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is coming out Friday with its umpteenth watered down report on climate science, in this case on extreme weather.  The thing to remember about IPCC reports is that pretty much everyone involved has to sign off on every word, so it is inevitably a least common denominator document.

The actual scientific literature from 2011 is far more useful than this report– see “Study Finds 80% Chance Russia?s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming” and “NOAA Study Finds Human-Caused Climate Change Already a Major Factor in More Frequent Mediterranean Droughts.”  I will provide the links to as many recent studies as possible in this post.

Indeed we already know from a major 2011 study that “human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.”  As predicted, the warming has put more water vapor in the air, making deluges more intense.  Climatologist Kevin Trenberth explains:

There is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It?s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms,

Obviously, since it’s getting hotter, we’re worsening extreme heat waves — both in intensity and duration and scale (the area the heat wave covers).  For the same reason, we know humans are making droughts worse — in intensity, duration, and scale.  The earlier snow melts also makes summer droughts worse.   And actual observations reveal that since 1950, the global percentage of dry areas has increased by about 1.74% of global land area per decade (see here).  Heck, our best scientists are already using global warming to help them predict dangerous extreme weather (see “USGS Expert Explains How Global Warming Likely Contributes to East Africa?s Brutal Drought“).

The reinsurance industry understands all this (see Munich Re: ?The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change?).

Again, much if not most of the public appear to have a better sense of what’s happening right now than you’ll find in the summaries of a typical IPCC report, to go by Yale’s 2011 polling and the September poll from ecoAmerica quoted at the top, which also found:

69% of Americans Know “Weather Conditions (Such as Heat Waves and Droughts) Are Made Worse by Climate Change”

The American public can’t miss the extreme weather because it is everywhere now and increasingly off the charts (see “A New Record: 14 U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters in 2011“) and links below.

Of course, what’s to come is the real issue, since we still have control over that.  Unfortunately, the IPCC continues conflating uncertainty in future emissions of greenhouse gases with uncertainty in the climate’s sensitivity to those emissions.  This means they present a very large range of possible overall impacts — and that allows the deniers to trumpet the low range with their powerful fossil-fuel-funded megaphone and induces the media to provide “balance” in their stories between the mid-range and the low range.

The reality is we are on the highest emissions trends (see “Biggest Jump Ever in Global Warming Pollution in 2010 means “levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago”).  And the latest science and observation points towards the high end of the climate’s sensitivity (see Journal of Climate: New cloud feedback results ?provide support for the high end of current estimates of global climate sensitivity?).

Most climate scientists know what is coming if we don’t act quickly– and more and more are shedding their reticence to speak out, even if that is not yet reflected in bland, least-common-denominator IPCC reports (see Lonnie Thompson on why climatologists are speaking out: ?Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization?).

And as long as the inactivists and climate ignorati rule, inaction is assured, which means that we are risking extreme weather beyond imagination, extreme events on top of an average warming this century that could hit 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic:

This is business-as-usual (“no policy”) warming — see Royal Society Special Issue on Global Warming Details ?Hellish Vision? of 7°F (4°C) World. “In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.?

This would be the worst-case for the 2060s, but is, in any case, close to business as usual for 2090s.  See also M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F.

Remember, this is just average warming.  If you want to know what the extremes would be, well, must imagine the worst drought or wildfire or heatwave of today — and then add, say, 15°F!  Even on a moderate warming path, the ?Monster crop-destroying Russian heat wave of 2010 is projected to be a once-in-a-decade event by 2060s (or sooner).?

If we look at just the moderate warming scenario the National Center for Atmospheric Research considered in its literature review and analysis, ?Drought under global warming: a review,? (See NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path), Dust-Bowlification overwhelms the planet in the second half of the century:

The large-scale pattern shown in Figure 11 [of which the figure above is part] appears to be a robust response to increased GHGs. This is very alarming because if the drying is anything resembling Figure 11, a very large population will be severely affected in the coming decades over the whole United States, southern Europe, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Chile, Australia, and most of Africa.

NCAR notes ?By the end of the century, many populated areas, including parts of the United States, could face readings in the range of -8 to -10, and much of the Mediterranean could fall to -15 to -20. Such readings would be almost unprecedented.?

• The UK Met Office came to a similar view four years ago in their analysis, projecting severe drought over 40% of the Earth?s habited landmass by century?s end (see ?The Century of Drought?).

• In 2007, Science (subs. req?d) published research that ?predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest? — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. And they were also only looking at a 720 ppm case.

The heat and drought drives wildfires.  Here?s a National Academies figure from a presentation made by the President?s science adviser Dr. John Holdren in Oslo last year, about conditions projected for mid-century:

As I concluded in my recent Nature piece, ?Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced.?  We could stave off the worse if we acted quickly, but the task is all but hopeless if we keep listening to the inactivists and confusionists.

Future generations will be cursing our names and wondering how the most prestigious institutions could put out such bland scientific reports — and how the media could treat those reports as the worst-case scenario when they were in fact mostly best-case scenarios.  We have ended up with this chart (via Michael Tobis) where the “fat tail” of catastrophe at the end gets fatter ever year we delay, but the “debate” in the press never budges.

The time to act was a long time ago, but further delay is suicidal  — see IEA?s Bombshell Warning: We?re Headed Toward 11°F Global Warming and ?Delaying Action Is a False Economy?

Related Posts.

• Texas Drought Worst in Centuries: State Beats U.S. Record for Hottest Summer by  1.6°F
• ?No One on the Face of This Earth has Ever Fought Fires in These Extreme Conditions?
• Virginia Deluge Was an ?Off the Charts Above a 1000-year Rainfall,? Says National Weather Service
• ?An extreme rainfall event unprecedented in recorded history has hit?
• “The most devastating weather event ever to hit the region”

• Study: Global warming is driving increased frequency of extreme wet or dry summer weather in southeast, so droughts and deluges are likely to get worse
• The year of living dangerously. Masters: ?The stunning extremes we witnessed gives me concern that our climate is showing the early signs of instability?
• Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment
• Nature Publishes My Piece on Dust-Bowlification and the Grave Threat It Poses to Food Security

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Corporate Art As TLC Takes On Southwest

We talk a lot about overly cozy relationships between business and government, and about the creep of cost-saving measures like products into art, lending it a corporate cast. But it’s rare to see something as blatant as TLC’s planned show about Southwest Airlines. I’ll reserve final judgment until I see the show, of course. But it does seem to me that if you want to make a show about the experience of air travel as a whole, you need to include a lot of people who aren’t employed by specific airlines, particularly air traffic controllers, Transportation Security Administration officers, and ground crew, who are not always affiliated with specific airlines. And it seems like good documentary principal, even if you wanted to make a show about what it’s like to run an airline, to include representatives of multiple companies so viewers can see what the common challenges are and what problems are specific to individual companies and their policies. I understand the desire to make cheap entertainment: these aren’t easy times. But extended looks at individual businesses risk coming across as boring commercials, a la DC Cupcakes, a veteran of the same network.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

UFCW Workers Prepare for Upcoming Battle with
Giant and Safeway

Members of the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400 are preparing and training in advance of a collective bargaining fight with grocery chains Giant and Safeway in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. The current contract ends in March of 2012, but the union has requested an early start to negotiations, only to be rejected by the grocery chains. The fight looks to be a tough one:

?Yes, there are reasons to expect that negotiations will be difficult,? [UFCW Local 400 President Tom] McNutt said. ?What?s happened in Southern California this year is a perfect example,? he added.

McNutt said contract talks in California earlier this year were characterized by sharp tensions, including threats of a strike or lockout. A coalition of union locals there struggled for nearly a year with three large grocery chains in the area?including Safeway?over wages, health care benefits and pensions, he said.

?We need an early start to avoid the problems we saw in California. I?m hopeful Giant and Safeway will agree before it is too late,? McNutt said.

The corporations are saying that they are facing tough times and that concessions will be necessary from the employees. But the facts show otherwise:

Giant, which is owned by Royal Ahold NV, a Netherlands-based company, raked in profits of $29.5 billion euros, up 4.4 percent from last year?s total sales. The company?s CEO, Dick Boer, made $2.7 million euros in total compensation last year and CFO Kimberly Ross received nearly $3 million euros. The bulk of Ahold?s profits are generated by the company?s unionized American workers. Last year, Safeway also survived the recession with an increase in sales to $41.5 billion dollars, which meant the company and its shareholders enjoyed $1.2 billion in profits, while CEO Steve Burd?s compensation increased to nearly $11 million.

Meanwhile, half of the employees at these companies make $10 an hour or less. President McNutt recently rallied the members for the coming battle:

?We?ve got to stand together as one,? Local 400 President Tom McNutt told the stewards, ?because we?re up against greedy, amoral multinational corporations that care about nothing other than their bottom line, and we?re up against global economic and domestic political forces arrayed against us.

?That might sound intimidating, but we can do it,? McNutt said. ?Because there is strength in numbers and power in our collective will.

?We?re looking to you to engage our members one on one, to hold meetings among all your sisters and brothers at your store, and to fully participate in all union-wide events, too,? McNutt explained. ?Talk to our members, listen to them, engage them, motivate them, energize them, activate them. Help them understand how we?re all in this together, and how much of a profound difference in their lives they will make by playing an active role in this round of bargaining.

?For we are family,? he said. ?One big family. Just like family, we?ve got to have each other?s backs. We?ve got to treat an attack on one like it?s an attack on all. And we?ve got to always put our family first.?

Hundreds of UFCW members recently went through training seminars to prepare them for the organizing efforts for rallying co-workers and public support for the negotiations.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

#OccupySupply: Over $100,000 Raised to Support
Occupations Everywhere

We did it! With your help we've now raised over $104,000 to purchase and distribute supplies to the occupations! Thanks to everyone who has supported the fund - this was all you.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/pYf7rz8DcuU/

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Review of White House Ozone Decision Shows Clout
of Bill Daley

John Broder looks back today at the Obama Administration's decision to delay ozone standards. As has been reported several times before, he finds the meddling hands of Cass Sunstein and Chief of Staff Bill Daley. At least Sunstein, the head of OIRA,[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/dgTBAUXg_DM/

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!