Opinion
Sorry, conservatives: The global warming 'pause' doesn't mean what you think it means
Posted on 18 October 2013 by dana1981 In their study of media coverage of the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Media Matters for America found that nearly half of print media stories discussed that the warming of global…
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Does global warming 'pause' mean what you think it means?
In their study of media coverage of the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Media Matters for America found that nearly half of print media stories discussed that the warming of global…
How the Koch brothers' beer offensive against Obamacare fell flat
A Koch-funded front is using free beer to entice students away from health exchanges. But Obamacare is made of stronger stuff
What's a family values conservative to do when every effort to protect millions of Americans from the scourge of affordable healthcare fails?
Break out the beer, of course. The latest campaign to kill off Obamacare in its infancy is now playing out on college campuses where a conservative group known as Generation Opportunity (GO), who are funded in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, is using the lure of free beer and "opt out" beer koozies to persuade young students not to buy health insurance – or, at least, not to buy it from the Obamacare exchanges.
Traditionally, one might expect God-fearing conservatives to be warning youth about the dangers of alcohol consumption, rather than plying them with free liquor, but these are desperate times. The determined Koch brothers have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to derail the president's healthcare law. So far, though, despite their best efforts, Obamacare has proved as "invincible" as the young people it needs to enroll. While it's unlikely that the beer exchanges, shall we call them, will be the game-changer, the Kochs may well end up driving many of us to drink with their relentless and futile vendetta to undo the law – not just the college students.
Nearly every movement to "educate the public" about the "dangers" of Obamacare can be linked in some way to the Koch brothers, and this latest college campus effort is no different. Last month, Politico revealed that GO has received $5.04m from the Koch-funded entity known as Freedom Works. This "grassroots" movement is now about to embark on an "Opt Out" tour of 20 college towns across the country as part of its effort to steer young people away from the Obamacare exchanges. As GO's 29-year-old president, Evan Feinberg, put it:
What we're trying to communicate is, 'No, you're not actually required to buy health insurance' … you might have to pay a fine, but that's going to be cheaper for you, and better for you.
After coming under criticism for this statement, Feinberg (who previously worked at the Charles Koch Institute) has since clarified that GO is not trying to persuade young people to opt out of buying insurance altogether, just from buying it through the healthcare exchanges.
Maybe, I'm naive to think that most young Americans will not fall for this cynical ploy, no matter how much free beer they are plied with. It seems to me that any campaign that is based on a false premise – in this case, that young people could get cheaper insurance before Obamacare or since – seems destined for failure.
According to a report released in September by the Department of the Health and Human Services, 56% of the people who are applying for health insurance today will be able to get coverage through the health insurance marketplace for less than $100 a month. This means that a large percentage of the youth market that GO are targeting would be able to get comprehensive health coverage under Obamacare for a very low rate.
If Feinberg or any other GO employee genuinely knows about better insurance deals than that for students, it would be really helpful if they listed them on their Opt Out website. Surely, that would be a far better use of their Koch dollars than buying more crates of beer?
As it is, the Opt Out website contains no information beyond vague and unsubstantiated claims about Obamacare being a "bad deal", and two embarrassingly poorly made ads featuring a "Creepy Uncle Sam" character who pops up between a woman's legs as she undergoes a gynaecological exam and asks a young man to roll over while he pulls on a surgical glove. The message – that government should stay out of healthcare – is about as subtle as Miley Cyrus' recent sledgehammer licking antics.
Whether Creepy Uncle Sam and his creepier backers will succeed in bringing down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) remains to be seen, but the prognosis is not good. Since the ACA was signed into law in 2010, it has miraculously managed to withstand "Hitler death panel" comparisons, state by state efforts to block its implementation, a US supreme court challenge to its constitutionality and, most recently, a defunding effort that led to the federal government shutdown.
As the New York Times recently reported, the Koch brothers have been heavily involved in all of these separate efforts through their generous funding of groups like Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, Heritage Action and, of course, Generation Opportunity. But so far, their efforts have been in vain. Not only is Obamacare still the law of the land, but the law has actually gained a major bump in support since the shutdown stand-off.
As it happens, even the Koch brothers have begun to realize that their attempts to stop the ACA are getting them nowhere. Last week, a representative of Koch Industries sent a letter to members of the Senate distancing the company from efforts to defund Obamacare, while still making it clear that Koch really does not like the law.
Does this mean the Koch brothers are done with their various and multifaceted efforts to bring it down? Probably not, but if they at least scale back their efforts to just distributing free beers, that might not be such a bad thing.
After what they have put us all through, we deserve one.
Don't rule out the Democrats winning back the House in 2014
I don't believe the Democrats will win back the House of Representatives in 2014. President Obama's low approval rating, combined with the usual midterm loss and normal movement away (pdf) from the White House party on the national House ballot, should keep Republicans in control. Yet, there's a difference between thinking whether the Democrats "will" win back the House or whether they "can" win it back.
Right now, the Democrats hold a lead of about 4-5pt per the HuffPollster and Real Clear Politics average. Many have concluded that this lead would not be enough to take back the House, if the election were held today. However, I believe that it quite likely would be enough.
How so? Let's address a bunch of reasons people expect that a 4-5pt Democratic lead on the national House ballot would result in Republicans still holding the House – and then show why I think those could be wrong.
1. A uniform shift of 4-5pt on all House seats would still leave Republicans winning a majority of seats
North Carolina Republican Congressman Robert Pittenger was the "median" representative in 2012. Half the races were decided by more than his 6.1pt margin and half were decided by less. Given that Democrats won the national House vote by 1.4pt, a uniform swing across all districts would imply that Democrats would need to win the national House vote by 7.5pt to take back the House.
Count me as one of the people who does not believe in uniform swings. It's not that the uniform swing is uninformative; it's that it is very inexact. There are many factors that go into House races, including challenger quality, money spent, and whether or not the incumbent is running for re-election. Most of those are unknown at this point for key races.
You only need to look at the 2006 election to get an idea. Back in 2004, Republicans won the national House vote by 2.6pt. They won the median district by a little over 10pt. In other words, there was that same 7.5pt pro-Republican bias between the national House vote and the median district in 2004 as there was last year.
When we examine 2006, we see the bias simply didn't hold. Democrats only won the national House vote by 8pt, which should have given them the thinnest of majorities per a uniform swing. Instead, they took 233, or 13 more, seats than a uniform swing implied.
The 218th seat won by the Democrats belonged to Leonard Boswell, who had actually taken the seat easily in 2004. He had health problems, which led to a closer than expected re-election campaign. Boswell, with a winning margin of 5.4pt, might have survived even if the national Democratic margin had been closer to 3pt.
My own math, taking into account redistricting in 2011, says a 3pt Democratic win in the national vote and a takeover of the House would not be nearly as likely as in 2006; but a 4 or 5pt victory would probably do the trick.
2. The experts say there are very few seats up for grabs
The indispensable Cook Political Report has only has 13 Democratic-held seats listed in the relatively competitive tossup or "lean" category. Of course, Democrats need to take 17 seats to win the House. The ratings reflect, among other things, a lack of strong challengers for the Democrats and lack of retirements by Republicans.
The thing is that expert ratings (like most polling) are not all that predictive a year out from an election. At this point in the 2006 cycle, there were 17 Republican seats in the lean or tossup categories (pdf). That's well short of the 30 seats that Democrats would ultimately take from Republicans. At this point in the 2010 cycle, there were 28 Democratic seats in the lean or tossup category. Republicans, of course, went onto gain 63 seats in 2010.
It's not until later in the cycle when individual seat rankings become quite useful. That's when potential challengers and incumbents read the national environment and decide to run or not. Chances are that if the 4-5pt Democratic lead holds, the individual seat rankings will reflect that edge. For now, individual seat ratings probably aren't all that helpful to understanding which way and how hard the wind is blowing.
3. The Abramowitz model says Democrats need something like a 13pt margin on the national House ballot
Alan Abramowitz's national House ballot to seats model seems to have unusual sway among some. The model is elegant in the sense that it does a good job of trying to map the midterm penalty and how much exposure the majority party has, in a minimalistic fashion. The problem is that some don't seem to quite understand how the model should work.
It's not a straight national vote-to-seat equation. It's built for early September of a midterm year. Abramowitz isn't saying that a 13pt Democratic margin in the national House ballot on election day is what Democrats need to take over the House. What he is saying is that a 13pt lead in September is likely to shrink because of the natural movement away from the White House party on the national House ballot during the course of the election year.
Moreover, the model is inexact. It would be within the margin of error of the model for Democrats to take back the House with a 2pt September lead on the national House ballot. In 2010, the model forecasted a Republican gain of 45 seats per my calculation. That was 18 seats off the final Republican gain of 63 seats.
Abramowitz's forecast is a good starting-point for understanding how uphill is the Democrats' task in taking back the House, but it is far from perfect.
4. The final national House ballot surveys are biased against Republicans
Charlie Cook has a rule that you subtract 2pt from the Democratic margin on the final national House ballot to know how the national House vote is actually going to pan out. That may have worked over five years ago, though it doesn't seem to work anymore. In 2008, 2010, and 2012, the Real Clear Politics average of the national House ballot underestimated the actual Democratic standing in the national House vote. So, there's no reason to think the final national House ballot will overstate the Democrats' standing in 2014.
Conclusion
There are plenty of reasons the Democrats won't win back the House. But it's not impossible that they will. If the same national environment that is producing a 4-5pt on the national House ballot still exists in a year's time, Democrats may very well win back the House.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
Tea Party’s war memorial rally was another ‘Let him die!’ moment
On Sunday, several hundred – or perhaps a couple of thousand – tea party activists, led by such luminaries of the right as Sarah Palin, Rep. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), hijacked a march organized by a non-partisan veterans’ group…
Despite GOP's wishful thinking, Cory Booker is set to be the next senator from New Jersey
There seems a belief in some quarters that Republican Steve Lonegan has gained momentum against Democrat Cory Booker in the US Senate special election in New Jersey this Wednesday. Beyond the fact that a Tea Party candidate stands little chance of defeating a Democrat in a state that went for President Obama by nearly 18pt in the last election, the numbers really don't suggest any trouble for Booker.
Booker holds a 12pt lead per the Real Clear Politics average, with a little over two days to go. I can't think of a single campaign polled this extensively in the past decade, in a non-primary, major statewide election, that had a greater than 12pt error. That's hundreds and hundreds of races. But this is a special election, you might say, where turnout is going to be low.
We can look back to the 2013 Senate special election race in Massachusetts, just a few months ago, for a similar example. Turnout in Massachusetts was low. The polls, however, remained accurate. Democrat Ed Markey led by 12.3pt in the Real Clear Politics average and went on to win by a little over 10pt.
It's not that low turnout doesn't increase the chance of a polling error; it's that any error is not likely to be large enough to allow a Lonegan victory.
The reason is that any good pollster (pdf) is already accounting for the low turnout typical of an election taking place on a Wednesday in the middle of October. They are projecting who is going to vote and who isn't. That's potentially a part of the reason why Booker is leading by 12pt, instead of 15 or 20pt.
Isn't there a chance the pollsters are way-off? But even when pollsters don't do a good job modeling the electorate, 12pt is still too big a hill to climb. Consider the 2010 Nevada Senate race, where it was clear pollsters simply couldn't figure out what was going on with Latino voters. The final polls had Harry Reid down by a little less than 3pt. He won by 5.5pt – an 8pt polling error. That's still far short of 12pt.
What about pollster accuracy when a candidate is cutting the lead, as Lonegan has (from 16pt to 13pt, to 10pt, in the last three Monmouth surveys)? We can look to the case of Scott Brown in 2010. That was also a special election taking place at an odd time (the middle of January) and in which the Republican candidate in a blue state came up dramatically from behind.
The problem for Lonegan is that the late movement for Scott Brown had already occurred by this point. Every poll conducted by a legitimate pollster in the final week of that campaign had Brown leading. There hasn't been a single poll in the 2013 New Jersey Senate race that has had anything but a Booker margin of at least 10pt.
The biggest obstacle for the Lonegan comeback story, though, is that any "momentum" he has gained isn't coming at the expense of support for Booker. The last four Monmouth surveys have Booker holding steady at 53%, 54%, 53%, and 52% respectively. There is no statistically significant difference between these percentages. The last two Quinnipiac polls of likely voters also have Booker at 53%.
The only percentage that has changed is Lonegan's, which is nice and all for him, but it doesn't cut it when your opponent is over 50%. Even if Lonegan picked up every undecided voter (and my guess is many won't vote), he would lose by half-a-dozen points. Chances are, however, that Steve Lonegan is not going to pick up every undecided voter.
The smart bet here is to average the Monmouth and Quinnipiac surveys to project an 11pt Booker win. That's certainly disappointing to some Booker supporters, as is a campaign that has revealed Booker as more neoliberal and less accomplished than some of his supporters like to believe.
Yet, a win is a win. And Cory Booker is poised to win a spot as the next United States senator from New Jersey.
Forced student labor is central to the Chinese economic miracle
China has an army of student labour making Apple products, PlayStation consoles and other gadgets for the west. The teenagers' stories make upsetting reading
You'll hear a lot of pieties about China this week. As George Osborne and Boris Johnson schlep from Shanghai to Shenzhen, they'll give the usual sales spiel about trade and investment and the global race. What they won't talk much about is Zhang Lintong. Yet the 16-year-old's story tells you more about the human collateral in the relationship between China and the west than any number of ministerial platitudes.
In June 2011, Zhang and his teenage classmates were taken out of their family homes and dispatched to a factory making electronic gadgets. The pupils were away for a six-month internship at a giant Foxconn plant in the southern city of Shenzhen, a 20-hour train ride from their home in central China. He had no say in the matter, he told researchers. "Unless we could present a medical report certified by the city hospital that we were very ill, we had to go immediately."
As a first-year student at a secondary vocational school, it was illegal for Zhang (not his real name) to be sent on any kind of internship. And under Chinese law work-placements have to be directly related to a pupil's studies. Zhang was an arts major and a fan of the work of Russian realist painters. He was to spend half a year turning out iPhones and other consumer electronics.
The only child of a peasant family in the Chinese countryside, Zhang's first experience of pitching up at a mega-factory was to be split up from his equally bewildered classmates. They were forced to sleep in different factory dormitories, among adult strangers. Given the same uniforms as the regular workers, the interns' training was rudimentary. And then there was the work: Zhang performed one or two small tasks over and over again while standing for hours on end in a huge line turning out Apple products. "It's tiring and boring," he told researchers outside work. "I very much want to quit but I can't."
Incredible as it sounds, Zhang's story is actually typical. As the number one supplier to Apple and manufacturer for a host of other consumer-electronics firms, Foxconn is one of the largest employers in China – and among the biggest users of student labour. In October 2010, the company estimated that, at times, up to 15% – or 150,000 – of its million-strong workforce were students. More than 28,000 were estimated to be interning for Apple alone. Last year, academics reported that 70% of the staff at a Honda gearbox factory were from secondary schools
Nor is such exploitation merely the stuff of recent history: just last week, Foxconn admitted that it had broken the law by making schoolchildren work overtime and night shifts. More than a thousand of them had reportedly been building the soon-to-be released PlayStation 4 games consoles.
Zhang's interview was one of 63 with student interns collected over two years in a forthcoming book by Jenny Chan, Pun Ngai and Mark Selden. The children's stories make upsetting reading. A 16-year-old girl suffers menstrual disorders in the middle of her internship. The pains continue for months, and she thinks they're caused by the night shifts and the stress of the factory: "We don't have breaks whenever we're behind on the production targets." The stranded girl is understandably reluctant to discuss the issue with her male line manager, yet her parents are so far away they can only offer suggestions over the phone.
Such tales aren't just a series of regrettable one-offs. Zhang and his classmates and the hundreds of thousands of teenagers like them are at the heart of one of the most powerful economic relationships at work today. They are part of a trading relationship in which Chinese children are forced into a manufacturing machine, with the connivance of both major employers and local government, to produce shiny things to be sold by billion-dollar multinationals to western consumers.
What do I mean by the connivance of government? The summer before Zhang was packed off to a Foxconn plant, a city in his home province of Henan ordered all its vocational schools to send their students to a Foxconn factory in the same city of Shenzhen. Those who had placements elsewhere were to break them off and rush south.
Chan and her colleagues believe this was to have a ready-trained workforce for the imminent opening of an iPhone plant in Henan. Far from being kept secret, the directive was press released and the provincial governor oversaw its implementation. Official recruitment targets were issued and the local government was offered a £1.6m subsidy to get Foxconn the workers it needed. And teachers went with their classes, paid by Foxconn to make sure their children worked hard and don't leave.
In one factory, the students complained about stomach aches, about choking – and they'd ask about the safety of their workplace. How did their teacher respond? As he later told the researchers, he invoked the nuclear disaster at Fukushima: "Take a moment to think about the selflessness of the scientists and the medical teams [at Fukushima] when Japan reported the tragic radiation leak. None of the Japanese withdrew from rescue work. So everyone of us should take responsibility for the good of humanity." Through this system western consumers get amazing new gadgets year after year. Apple will tell you that the inhumane conditions at its Chinese supplier factories are now safely in the past, even though it admits that some of the internships are still "poorly run". It requires a convenient blindness to believe that. A report by Apple's auditors in May 2013 "found no interns has been engaged at Chengdu [a city in mid-western China] since September 2011". Yet an HR official for Foxconn told Chan in September 2011 that more than 7,000 student interns were working in the Chengdu factory – over 10% of the entire staff.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
The Right's Obamacare rhetoric is completely detached from reality
The old saying that ‘everyone’s welcome to their own opinions but not their own facts’ seems quaint in today’s political environment. We are a nation divided not only by partisan loyalty and ideology, but also by wildly divergent factual understandings…
Congratulations, Malala, on failing to win the Nobel Peace Prize
Who wants to be forever associated with the EU or Kissinger? No, as with Gandhi, the real honor is being ignored by Oslo
You have to love the Nobel peace prize committee. No, literally you do – I think it's an international law or something. Yesterday, they opted against awarding their honour to one of the most obviously inspiring and extraordinary people of the age, 16-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, instead conferring it on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Still, even Malala's most passionate advocates will concede the committee's decision is an improvement on last year's brave nod to the European Union.
I've certainly got nothing against the entirely admirable OPCW – but then, most of us would tick the "strongly disagree" box as far as chemical weapons go. And despite the immensely valuable and successful job the organisation does, it is, you know, their job. The Nobel committee has awarded the prize to an international agency for being an international agency, and while that doesn't quite constitute bonus-culture-gone-to-Oslo, it feels rather thin on inspiration.
Admittedly, it's better than rewarding someone for what they might ideally end up doing, as seems to have happened with Barack Obama in 2009. But whenever some entity like the EU allows itself to be feted for performing what should be the duties of its office, I can't help thinking of that famously edgy Chris Rock routine about the African American men who brag "about stuff a normal man just does". "They'll say something like, 'yeah, well I take care of my kids'. You're SUPPOSED to, you dumb motherfucker. 'I ain't never been to jail'. Whaddya want? A cookie? You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectations-having motherfucker!"
And so with the EU or the leader of the free world accepting plaudits for promoting peace and diplomacy between nations. They're SUPPOSED to promote peace and diplomacy between nations. Whadda they want? A prize?
Yes, seems to be the answer – just as Angelina Jolie has been thrilled to accept a staggering total of humanitarian awards, most inaugurated just for her, when those who toil at the coalface of the problems to which she gives attention between making movies will never be garlanded in a million years.
Of course, it could be worse. In 1996 Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta won the Nobel peace prize for what the committee called "their work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor" – with the committee bizarrely missing the opportunity to add: "A conflict that, by the way, was a direct result of the actions of our Class of '73 winner, Mr Henry Kissinger. Let's keep it in the family, laureates!"
You would have thought the Kissinger win would have been the autoparodic act that rendered the prize a terminal joke, ushering in as it did a slightly unfair school of thought that says no politico's trophy cabinet is compete unless they've done the double, and scooped both a Nobel peace prize and an invitation to The Hague.
Yet in the peace-giving west, the award remains significantly venerated – a testament, surely, to being a dynamite idea in principle (if you'll forgive the cliched reference to Alfred Nobel's other gift to the world) but a mostly damp squib in practice. Understandably, it is less revered in the sort of countries to which peace tends to be done.
As for Malala, shot not in the line of duty, but in the line of living her 15-year-old life – that ordeal and the thing of wonder she has turned it into were perhaps a little too peace-prizey to win the peace prize. It's not the most enormous surprise. Thanks in large part to the committee making it so, the honour has long been seen as so political that damp-squibbery seems to be increasingly what is regarded as expedient. Perhaps the committee's admiration for Malala was tempered by fretting that giving her the prize could see non-peaceful protests in Pakistan. Add to that its pretensions to nation-building and the rather woolly hope that this will persuade the likes of South Sudan and North Korea to sign up to the chemical weapons treaty, and the OPCW was a shoo-in.
That said, the lesson of Nobel history is that the peace prize committee occasionally finds ways round its most idiotic howlers. Gandhi never won the award – despite being nominated several times – in what is widely regarded as a bit of an oversight, considering he was a textbook case. Thus in 1989, when the prize went to the Dalai Lama, the committee declared that the award was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi" – a somewhat excruciating bit of tap-dancing that calls to mind those pontifical pillocks at the academy wheeling out Mr Sidney Poitier to get an honorary academy award in the same year Denzel Washington won best actor and Halle Berry best actress at the Oscars. One suspected a point was being made, though of course the lightness of touch was such that it was impossible to put one's finger on it.
So perhaps, at some distant point in the future, the Nobel committee will find a crass way to play politics at the same time as giving a retroactive nod to Malala – unless she has become president of Pakistan: in which case she'll finally be in the sort of day job that tends to catch their eye.
Twitter: @marinahyde
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