Christie’s Waterloo

The George Washington Bridge fiasco is a deeply damning window on the governor's administration

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The presumptive presidential candidate is facing criticism for his alleged role in the political scandal.

In the best possible light, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie built a top staff of lying thugs who threatened lives and safety to serve his political ends. If not, Christie is a lying thug himself.

Emails and text messages among his close aides made public Wednesday documented that in September they gleefully engineered George Washington Bridge lane closures to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for failing to endorse their boss’ reelection.

Local officials say the gridlock they caused delayed ambulances in responding to four calls, including one involving an unconscious 91-year-old woman who later died.

Christie’s presidential ambitions are all but kaput, as he will be lambasted and lampooned as a man of low character and horrible judgment — again viewing him in the most favorable way.

RELATED: CHRIS CHRISTIE 'EMBARRASSED, HUMILIATED' BY BRIDGE SCANDAL

The Port Authority’s sudden, unannounced closing of bridge entrance lanes produced hours-long backups for four days. They ended only after Executive Director Patrick Foye discovered the shutdowns, which were later traced to rogue orders issued by Christie PA appointee David Wildstein, a high school buddy, and to a cover-up by Bill Baroni, Christie’s top person at the bistate agency.

Bill Bramhall/New York Daily News

For months, responsibility remained clouded. During that time, Christie made light of the charges. He joked that the press was suggesting he had moved traffic cones personally. Last month, he described the affair as “not that big a deal.” He supported Baroni’s story that the lane closures were part of a traffic study.

His aides’ communications, made public Wednesday, put the lie to that.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly wrote to Wildstein on Aug. 13, starting the chain of irresponsible actions.

RELATED: 'WORST EXAMPLE OF PETTY POLITICAL VENDETTA': SOKOLICH ON CHRISTIE GW BRIDGE CLOSINGS

“Got it,” Wildstein replied.

He closed the lanes on Sept. 9, bringing traffic to a standstill. Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich then began pressing Baroni for help.

Mel Evans/AP

Christie will address the press on Thursday after emails and text messages revealed his administration may have closed highway lanes to exact political retribution.

“Presently we have four very busy traffic lanes merging into only one toll booth,” he texted. The bigger problem is getting kids to school. Help please. It’s maddening.”

That provoked a cold-hearted exchange among Christie’s people.

RELATED: PRESIDENT CHRISTIE? CROSSING THAT BRIDGE

“Is it wrong that I am smiling?” an unidentified aide texted Wildstein.

“No,” he wrote back.

And he added: “They are the children of Buono voters,” referring to Christie’s Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono.

John Moore/Getty Images

Lane closures along the George Washington Bridge in September were political retaliation against a Chris Christie opponent, personal emails suggest.

When Foye began to undo the closures, Wildstein wrote Kelly, “The New York side gave Fort Lee back all three lanes this morning. We are appropriately going nuts. Samson helping us to retaliate.”

Wildstein was referring to PA Chairman David Samson, Christie’s appointee.

Also looped in to lie about what had happened were Christie’s press secretary, Michael Drewniak, and campaign manager Bill Stepien. Late Wednesday, Christie said:

“I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge.

“This type of behavior is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it, because the people of New Jersey deserve better. This behavior is not representative of me or my administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions.”

Give full credit to his statement, and Christie stands as a hardball-playing governor who horribly misjudged or distorted the character of those around him and compounded the felony by trying to skate by their wrongdoing without full investigation. Take his denials of knowledge with skepticism, and the man is a monster.

Emails Linking Chris Christie To Illegal Retaliation Scandal Threatens To Sink 2016 Hopes

By Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario

Governor Chris Christie is in hot water over emails definitively linking his staff to the Fort Lee lane closures scandal. Buh-bye 2016! – Image: DonkeyHotey @ Flickr

Well crap! Looks like NJ Governor Chris Christie’s goon squad foolishly left an email trail implicating themselves in the Fort Lee lane closures scandal.

Quick summary if you haven’t been following the story:

Over the summer, the mayor of Fort Lee declined to endorse Chris Christie for re-election. Then, on the first day of school in September, “someone” closed three lanes leading from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge, turning the town into a parking lot. Governor Christie, of course, denied any involvement with the lane closures. But, unsurprisingly, his staff was so full of hubris they sent a number of emails pretty much announcing they were, indeed, retaliation:

A series of newly obtained emails and text messages shows that Gov. Chris Christie’s office was closely involved with lane closings on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge in September, and that officials closed the lanes in what appeared to be retribution against the mayor whose town was gridlocked as a result.

Mr. Christie has insisted that his staff and his campaign office had nothing to do with the local lane closings, and said that they were done as part of a traffic study.

But the emails show that Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff in Mr. Christie’s office, gave a signal to the Port Authority to close the lanes about two weeks before the closings occurred.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” she emailed David Wildstein, Mr. Christie’s close friend from high school, and one of his appointees at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge.

Just how clear are we that the Fort Lee lane closures were retaliation by Chris Christie?

It’s very clear that Fort Lee was being punished. The reaction of Chris Christie’s cronies to the NY Port Authority undoing the lane closures is pretty much the final nail in the coffin:

After the lane closures were reversed by New York officials at the Port Authority, New Jersey officials expressed panic that their plan was not causing enough trouble.

“The New York side gave Fort Lee back all three lanes this morning. We are appropriately going nuts,” Mr. Wildstein wrote to Ms. Kelly. “Samson helping us to retaliate.”

“What??” she emailed back.

“Yes, unreal. Fixed now,” he emailed

You don’t go “nuts” and “retaliate” over a “traffic study” being disrupted. Seriously, to have this much of a concerted effort going on to maintain lane closures and claiming the Governor Christie DIDN’T know that Fort Lee was being screwed strains credulity. So yeah, Chris Christie’s in deep political hot water and that’s not good.

Chris Christie not running in 2016 is bad for America.

I’m actually really pissed off about this. Not because I liked Christie (I don’t) but because he would have been skinned alive in the primaries. I know that sounds strange but let me explain.

I don’t like the governor for his economic policies but his social policies are not in line with the GOP’s rabid bigotry. At all. Chris Christie refused to demonize Muslims, hasn’t dropped jokes about Obama being black and while he didn’t support marriage equality, he didn’t jump up and down about how gays are destroying the country.

The spectacle of Governor Christie being annihilated for not being a rabid bigot would have been epic because he would have gone down swinging. The “liberal” media likes to pretend the GOP is not overflowing with hate, but it would have been impossible for them to gloss over the rage that would have been thrown at Christie.

And Chris Christie is the not the kind to keep his mouth shut for party unity. He would have been on every talk show complaining, loudly, that the party has been taken over by fanatics and idiots. What a glorious sight that would have been.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates rips Obama in memoir

 

Sony PlayStation 2 'Resident Evil Outbreak' Series Online Multiplayer Servers Revived 10 Years Later

By Cauterize

Although the Sony PlayStation 2 never really boasted that many online experiences, what was on offer was an early example of what we've all grown so accustomed to today. The Resident Evil: Outbreak games brought along some fantastic multiplayer survival carnage - something you can enjoy once more through all new unofficial servers.

The recently launched Outbreak Server is now allowing anyone who happens to have access to the Japanese versions of the games to get their PlayStation 2 back online. According to the server's frequently asked questions, all you need to do is simply change the DNS records within the game's network settings menu and log in with your Outbreak Server details.

If the thought of enjoying one of Capcom's early online titles again (or even for the first time) sounds tempting, then make sure you have either a PlayStation 2 capable of playing Japanese releases with a PS2 Network Adapter (if your console is the original fat model), or a suitable emulator. The Japanese versions of the games can be easily found on eBay too.

Crack smoking mayor wants 4 more years

Earning the title of Ed Schultz's Pretender tonight, shamed Toronto Mayor Rob Ford files for re-election, forgetting all of his terrible & entertaining actions.

Meet the Americans Who've Lost Their Unemployment Benefits: "I'm Thoroughly Petrified"

By Dana Liebelson

When Congress reconvenes next week, lawmakers will have to decide whether to extend federal unemployment benefits for about 1.3 million Americans. These emergency benefits—which Congress let expire shortly after Christmas—are part of a 2008 program that allows workers who have been out of the job for more than six months to receive an emergency extension on their payments up to 47 weeks.

If Congress fails to renew these benefits, only a quarter of jobless Americans will be receiving any benefits at all, according to the Huffington Post.

As these charts show, the United States is looking at the worst long-term unemployment crisis since soup kitchen lines peaked during the Great Depression. Americans who have been unemployed for more than six months are often hit with major financial and personal hardship. Around 10 percent must file for bankruptcy, more than half report putting off medical care, and many say they have, "lost self-respect while jobless."

But who are these Americans who have lost their benefits? Some reached out to Mother Jones. Here are their stories:

Name: Anonymous
State: New York

"My benefits run out this week. I'm thoroughly petrified…I am the nice girl you went to high school with who was in the advanced classes, graduated with an A average, and went on to college. I'm the girl who always worked through high school, college, law school, and grad school. I never thought I would end up a welfare mother, but here I am. I want you to know how I got here and why I can't get out. I want you to realize that your nasty comments on social media about the losers demanding entitlements and benefits and hand-outs as compared to your 'hard-earned money,' hurt more than you know. Those comments may also be hurting your friend or colleague or relative. I'm not alone in this situation. I do not want benefits, or hand-outs, or entitlements. I want a job. I want to be able to pay my own way. I want to be self-sufficient again and earn the money I receive through hard work. I don't want to lose my house or have to talk to another debt collector. But in the meantime, I am grateful that some of our lawmakers saw fit to protect the vulnerable in times of need."

Maureen "Momo" Kallins

Name: Maureen "Momo" Kallins
State: Washington

"I am 65 years old. For three years I worked as the General Manager and the Business Manager of a small public access television station in Washington State. I lost that job in January 2013, which supported half of our household. (I have two sons, 26 and 24, and I live with my husband.) I was awarded unemployment insurance of less than half of my salary that month, which was extended after six months. I have applied for numerous jobs but never even get an interview. A friend of mine in the film business said recently, 'When you apply for a job at 50 people laugh at you. When you apply for a job at 65 people just look at you like you are crazy.' Presently I am adding to my video resume and trying to build a business. I sincerely hope that the members of Congress can agree to extend these benefits and throw us a lifeline."

Name: Carol Watterston
State: Nevada

"After being laid off after seven years [at my job], I have now been unemployed since November 9, 2012. I job hunt for full-time employment everyday. I've been to multiple interviews and nothing has worked out. I've even attempted going back to school but I have bad credit and can't afford it…I'm already struggling to pay my rent, my bills, my car insurance and feed myself and my pets. I have never been one that expects or wants any kind of charity, and this situation I'm in is degrading and shameful, but I have to do whatever is necessary for survival. However, I have a lot more than other people on this planet. I have a roof over my head, I have food in my fridge, I have a car, and I have a very supportive family, which I'm thoroughly thankful for."

Tara Dublin

Name: Tara Dublin
State: Washington

"I was a very popular DJ on the radio in Portland. When I lost that job, I could not find another job in local media. The radio station that fired me has not replaced me. As a single mom of two sons (15 and 10 years old), it was imperative to me that I show my kids that we don't roll over and die when bad things happen; we fight. And I've been fighting for the last four and half years. In the time since I lost that dream job, I've had small opportunities, but nothing long term. I'll get a voice-over gig just when a bill is due…I worked holiday retail sales at Nordstrom but wasn't rehired for this season, and despite applying for every retail and waitress job I can find, I have yet to be hired. I'm on the verge of losing my house yet again, and I am terrified, I don't ask for a lot out of life—just to be in a job that makes me happy and pays my bills."

Name: Anonymous
"I lost my marketing communications specialist position in April and have not landed a job in nine months of looking, despite working at it diligently and investing in expensive job-hunt strategy and technique classes. I am 61. I believe my age and the reasonably good salary I was earning were factors in losing my job. I was replaced by a 20-something who could be paid a lower salary. I just do not get the assertion I see in so many news stories that eventually, long-term unemployed people just stop looking for work. Who can afford to do that? How can they live?"

Name: Jeff
State: Indiana

"I have an associate degree in hotel and restaurant administration. Right now I live in an old mobile home in pretty bad condition, but at least it is a sheltering place. I do not have a high standard of living, so really my only worry about not having a job and losing my unemployment benefits is becoming homeless. I only have rent, car payment and insurance, utilities, and food as expenses. I also worry about my three cats because I don't want to see them suffer because of what is happening to me. I have pretty much been taking care of myself since I was 13, and the thought of not having a roof over my head is terrifying…I do think Congress needs to extend benefits, because people are suffering and it would be a catastrophe to let all those who are hurting slip even lower."

Name: Anonymous
State: Washington

"I had a baby in July 2012. I was on unpaid maternity leave until November 2012. I was informed that I would be getting laid off in October 2012. I was in a unionized position but I got bumped by a more senior union member. We had insurance through my work. So we went on COBRA for $1800 a month. The unemployment benefits extension was covering the COBRA payment. Now we'll be paying for COBRA out of pocket. And we have another baby on the way. I know I'm one of the lucky ones out there. I have enough in savings and an overall family income that I can make a choice to stay with the expensive COBRA, so that I don't have to deal with this hassle [of changing to Medicaid] mid-pregnancy."

And here are some stories from other news outlets:

• David Davis, Virginia: "That’s one goal, to avoid living on the street or in my car." (The New York Times )
• Adaline Irizarry, New Jersey: "If I don’t get an extension, I’m screwed. I think a lot of people are in that situation." (The Star-Ledger)
• Celeste, New York: "I don’t buy books; I get everything from the library. We go to maybe one movie a year." (Buzzfeed)
• Kaitlyn Smith, California: "I have to keep the house at 55 degrees even though I have two little girls, ages 2 1/2 and 1 1/2." (Los Angeles Times)
• Mary Lowe, Ohio: "We didn't do anything for Christmas—50 bucks for our daughter, that was it." (CBS News)

Hey, Liz Cheney - SEE YA!

CNN: She's Outta Here!

By Susie Madrak January 5, 2014 9:06 pm

CNN reports that Liz Cheney is withdrawing from Wyoming's Republican primary.

Who knew that Liz and Caribou Barbie had so much in common?

New York (CNN) - Liz Cheney, whose upstart bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family, is dropping out of the Senate primary, sources told CNN late Sunday.

Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, began telling associates of her decision over the weekend and could make an official announcement about the race as early as Monday.

Cheney's surprising decision to jump into the race, an announcement made in a YouTube video last summer, roiled Republican politics in the Wyoming, a state Dick Cheney represented in Congress for five terms before moving up the Republican food chain in Washington.

Enzi was a low-key presence in Washington who was elected in 1996 and, with few blemishes, amassed a conservative voting record in the Senate. He expressed public annoyance at Cheney's decision to mount a primary challenge. A number of his Senate colleagues quickly rallied to his side and pledged support for his re-election bid.

There was little public polling of the race, but two partisan polls released last year showed Enzi with a wide lead, an assessment mostly shared by GOP insiders watching the race.

The California GOP's fake health care website

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

In this wicked world of woe, there are hucksters, flim flammers, plain ol' crooks… and Republican members of the California Assembly.

This last bunch of scoundrels went out of their way to monkey wrench the rollout of President Obama's new health care law. Obama's computer geniuses were making a hash of the initial rollout in October, but the sign-up was finally smoothing out – and with any Obama success, GOP lawmakers automatically start tossing monkeywrenches.

This time, the tool they tossed is a fake website created by California Republican legislators in August to look like the state's official health exchange site, where people can sign up to get coverage under the Affordable Care Act. When things finally got worked out on the national health care exchange in November, the Repubs mailed a pamphlet to their constituents, directing them to the decoy site, calling it a "resource guide" to "help" them navigate the ACA sign up process.

Far from help, however, the faux site is a trap. It's filled with boilerplate Republican propaganda against the law, gimmicks to discourage viewers from even applying for the health care they need, and a rash of distortions and outright lies. There's so much bunkum on the site that its fine print includes a disclaimer saying they don't vouch for "the quality, content, accuracy, or completeness of the information" it provides.

The silliest thing about the lawmakers' blatantly political ploy is that even if it convinces some people to forgo the ACA's benefits, who does that hurt? Not Obama – but their own constituents! I know there's no IQ requirement to be a state legislator, but what were they thinking?

We can laugh at their low comedy, but if you're a California taxpayer, congratulations: You paid for the GOP's bogus website and mailings.

"A bogus Health care website, courtesy of the GOP," www.msnbc, December 4, 2013.

"California Republicans Defend Fake Obamacare Site," www.abcnews.com, December 3, 2013.

"California GOP creates fake health care website to discourage constituents from obtaining insurance," www.dailykos.com, December 2, 2013.

"Email from Ed H." December 16, 2013.

Prego Italian Sauce Recalled for Possible Spoilage

By News Desk | January 1, 2014

The Campbell Soup Company is recalling around 300 cases of 24-ounce jars of Prego Traditional Italian sauce because of possible spoilage.

The products were delivered to retailer distribution centers in Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

The recalled products were manufactured on Dec. 15, 2013, and have an expiration date of June 16, 2015. The time code on the top of the lid range from “CT BJ ZV 0330” to “CT BJ ZV 0449.”

Consumers who have purchased a recalled product are advised not to eat it and to return it to the place of purchase for a refund.

No other Campbell products are affected and no illnesses have been reported in connection with the product. However, due to the time involved in tracing an illness back to a specific food product, it is impossible to say if any illnesses have occurred.

How local police departments are spying on us now, too

It's not just the NSA anymore. Here's how local law enforcement collects your call data, even if unrelated to crime

By Michael Price

By now, it’s well known that the National Security Agency is collecting troves of data about law-abiding Americans. But the NSA is not alone: A series of new reports show that state and local police have been busy collecting data on our daily activities as well — under questionable or nonexistent legal pretenses. These revelations about the extent of police snooping in the U.S. — and the lack of oversight over it — paint a disturbing picture for anyone who cares about civil liberties and privacy protection.

The tactics used by law enforcement are aggressive, surreptitious and surprising to even longtime surveillance experts.  One report released last month made front page news: an investigation by more than 50 journalists that found that local law enforcement agencies are collecting cellphone data about thousands of innocent Americans each year by tapping into cellphone towers and even creating fake ones that act as data traps.

A new report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law details how police departments around the country have created data “fusion centers” to collect and share reports about residents. But the information in these reports seldom bears any relation to crime or terrorism. In California, for example, officers are encouraged to document and immediately report on “suspicious” activities such as “individuals who stay at bus or train stops for extended periods while buses and trains come and go,” “individuals who carry on long conversations on pay or cellular phones,” and “joggers who stand and stretch for an inordinate amount of time.” In Houston, the criteria are so broad they include anything deemed “suspicious or worthy of reporting.” Many police departments and fusion centers have reported on constitutionally protected activities such as photography and political speech. They have also demonstrated a troubling tendency to focus on people who appear to be of Middle Eastern origin.

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Like the NSA – their heavy-handed Big Brother – these fusion centers cast a wide net and risk civil liberties for paltry returns. And all of it is happening without sufficient oversight or accountability. In other words, no one is watching Little Brother.

How did it come to this?  In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, all levels of government – federal, state and local – embarked on a massive effort to improve information sharing. Federal taxpayer dollars fueled the transition into a new role for state and local police as the eyes and ears of the intelligence community.

The ad hoc system that has developed — of individual police departments feeding information to federal authorities — has been plagued by vague and inconsistent rules. For one thing, there’s a lack of agreement about what counts as “suspicious activity” and when that information should be shared.
The goal, in theory, is to reveal potential terrorist plots by “connecting the dots” of disparate or even innocuous pieces of information. But in practice, such programs often infringe on civil liberties and threaten safety, producing a din of data with little or no counter-terrorism value. In Boston, for example, the regional fusion center fixated on monitoring peace activists and Occupy Boston protesters but may have been unaware that the FBI conducted an assessment of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev based on a tip from Russia, or that local authorities had implicated him in a gruesome triple homicide on the anniversary of 9/11.

In fact, a 2012 report by the Senate Homeland Security Committee found that much of the information produced by fusion centers was not only useless, but also possibly illegal. Indeed, more than 95 percent of so-called suspicious activity reports are never investigated by the FBI.

We can do better. First and foremost, there must be a consistent, transparent standard for state and local intelligence activities based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity – the traditional bar for opening an investigation. The federal government should make this standard a prerequisite for sharing suspicious activity reports on its networks. State and local police should adopt it as well.

Second, stronger oversight and accountability is necessary across the board. At the federal level, Congress should tie continued funding for fusion centers to regular, independent and publicly available audits to assess compliance with privacy rules. State and local elected officials should also consider creating an independent police monitor, such as an inspector general, to safeguard privacy and civil rights.

To be sure, cooperation between levels of government is essential, and state and local law enforcement have an important role to play in keeping Americans safe. But the current system is ineffective, wasteful and harmful to constitutional values.

It is time to recalibrate the system and make the state and local role in national security efficient, rational and fair.

Michael Price is counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

  More Michael Price.

Speaking to the 70% doesn't work for Jake Tapper

Earning the title of Ed Schultz's Pretender, CNN's Jake Tapper began the new year by criticizing new NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio for not reaching out to righties.

 

Duck Dynasty or Dollar Dynasty?

A&E Network has ended Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson suspension after his hateful remarks. Michael Eric Dyson and Mike Papantonio discuss the networks decision to bow to dollars over morals.

Pet Food Safety: When Pet Food Makes Pets and Humans Sick

By James Andrews | December 30, 2013

Between late 2011 and spring 2012, dozens of people across 20 U.S. states and Canada were falling ill with apparent Salmonella infections all coming from the same source. For nearly six months, the illnesses slowly cropped up around North America, with health investigators unable to connect the dots with how they were being caused.

It wasn’t until April 2012 that the puzzle finally came together, when the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development performed a routine test on a retail product that came up positive for Salmonella. When they checked the exact strain against a federal disease database, they realized the food had been sickening people for half a year.

But the food in question was not something like raw chicken or leafy greens — it was dry dog food.

More specifically, Diamond Naturals Lamb Meal & Rice, produced at a Diamond Pet Foods plant in South Carolina.

Soon after, the Ohio Department of Agriculture found another contaminated bag of a different formula. And then the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found more when inspecting the South Carolina facilities.

The plant-wide contamination resulted in one of the largest pet food recalls in recent history and actually encompassed nine brand names, including Canidae and Natural Balance. The company expanded the recall eight times — eventually including cat food — and FDA inspectors found additional contamination at another Diamond plant in Missouri.

Ultimately, 49 humans tested positive for Salmonella from the pet food. But the actual number ill could have been closer to 1,500. (For every person who actually tests positive for Salmonella, another 30 are estimated to have been infected, according the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

That outbreak was a reminder that contaminated pet food poses a threat to not just dogs and cats, but their owners as well. A few years earlier, in 2007, at least 62 people fell ill in a Salmonella outbreak linked to pet food manufactured by Mars Petcare, which owns brand names such as Pedigree and Whiskas.

When a new pet food outbreak makes headlines, readers often ask how humans end up getting sick.

Pet owners don’t need to eat kibbles to get sickened by contaminated food.

Most people who fall ill from pet food do so by handling contaminated food or having contact with infected animals. Thorough hand washing after serving pet food or touching pets is always recommended to avoid potential pathogen transmission.

Of course, food-borne illness outbreaks can work both ways. Among the patients testing positive for Salmonella in the 2008-2009 peanut butter outbreak was one dog.

Because dogs and cats are almost never tested for food-borne pathogens such as Salmonella or E. coli, it’s impossible to know how many get sickened when big outbreaks strike a pet food product.

Only two dogs were tested positive for Salmonella in the Diamond outbreak, for instance.

When dogs or cats do become infected with a food-borne illness, they typically suffer the familiar symptoms, such as diarrhea (sometimes including blood or mucus), vomiting, dehydration and lethargy. But some pets may serve as carriers without showing any symptoms, shedding the pathogen in their stools or harboring it on their fur or saliva.

Parents are often advised to take extra precaution with pets around young children for this reason, due to children having developing immune systems that are especially susceptible to pathogenic transmission. Of the patients in the Mars Petcare outbreak, 39 percent were less than one year old.

It’s possible that children could crawl on floors where pets have been eating contaminated food or treats, or simply come into contact with a pet that has fecal contamination in its fur.

These pet-to-human contamination scenarios are one of the many reasons the FDA is proposing to overhaul safety rules on pet food manufacturing as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Read more on Food Safety News about the changes FDA is proposing, the reactions FDA has received, and 10 changes that have been recommended by experts.

The pet food safety series on Food Safety News is sponsored by ABC Research, a company that conducts testing on pet food products. Read more about ABC Research pet food testing on the company blog.

McDonald's: Low-paid workers, high-flying execs

By Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

In this season of generosity, I'm sure that you get as much joy and deep internal satisfaction as I do just by knowing that we – all of us taxpayers together – contribute day-in and day-out to a very big global cause: Super-sizing McDonald's.

The world's largest hamburger chain is a needy charity case, because without your and my generous tax support, the Big MacBosses in charge would have to pay a living wage to their 800,000-plus American workers.

But, thanks to us, the $27 billion-a-year hamburger-flipping flim flammers can get away with paying poverty wages – then send their workforce to get food stamps, Medicaid, child welfare payments, public housing, and other tax-funded poverty benefits. This public subsidy of the Golden Arches adds up to a very golden $1.2 billion a year. What a creative business plan! Who says giant corporations aren't enterprising?

Well, sniff the chain's top executives, we operate on razor-thin profit margins, so we can't afford to throw money at workers. Really? Last year's $5.6 billion in profits doesn't sound thin to me. Also, note that McDonald's more than tripled the pay of its new CEO last year, elevating him from $4.1 million to $13.8 million.

But what really galls its workers (whose low wages and forced part-time schedules mean they average less than $12,000 a year) is that the taxpayer-subsidized profiteer laid out a fat $35 million in October to add a brand new executive jet to its corporate fleet. This one is a "Bombardier 605" with the full package of luxurious amenities, and it cost $2,500 an hour to fly it.

Just flying one hour on the Bombardier cost more than the combined hourly wages of more than 300 McDonald's workers. Remember, you're subsidizing this. To tell the chain's CEO that this is immoral, go to www.OurFuture.org.

"McDonald’s Wants Another Corporate Jet, Not Raises For Low Wage Workers," www.alternet.org, October 24, 2013.

"Tell McDonalds to Stop Buying Luxury Jets Until They Pay Workers a Living Wage," www.ourfuture.org, October 2013.

"Supersize Those Wages, McDonald's," www.huffingtonpost.com, August 13, 2013.

"The rebellion of restaurant workers is challenging the deplorable low-wage ethic of the fast-food behemoths" www.hightowerlowdown.org, November 2013.

The Benghazi fable is unraveling like cheap thread

The year began and ended with Benghazi

 

The GOP’s Benghazi obsession began and ended the year of 2013, with tense hearings on Capitol Hill in January and now, a new report in the New York Times that seriously challenges many of the right-wing conspiracy theories on the attack. The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons and Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert discuss.

 

 

 

Ted Cruz denies he caused the government shutdown

Monsanto's scary new scheme: Why does it really want all this data?

As biotech giant pays huge sums for data analysis about farms, many are terrified about how it might be harnessed

By Lina Khan

(Credit: Nejron Photo, Fotokostic via Shutterstock/Salon)

Imagine cows fed and milked entirely by robots. Or tomatoes that send an e-mail when they need more water. Or a farm where all the decisions about where to plant seeds, spray fertilizer and steer tractors are made by software on servers on the other side of the sea.

This is what more and more of our agriculture may come to look like in the years ahead, as farming meets Big Data. There’s no shortage of farmers and industry gurus who think this kind of “smart” farming could bring many benefits. Pushing these tools on to fields, the idea goes, will boost our ability to control this fiendishly unpredictable activity and help farmers increase yields even while using fewer resources.

The big question is who exactly will end up owning all this data, and who gets to determine how it is used. On one side stand some of the largest corporations in agriculture, who are racing to gather and put their stamp on as much of this information as they can. Opposing them are farmers’ groups and small open-source technology start-ups, which want to ensure a farm’s data stays in the farmer’s control and serves the farmer’s interests.

Who wins will determine not just who profits from the information, but who, at the end of the day, directs life and business on the farm.

One recent round in this battle took place in October, when Monsanto spent close to $1 billion to buy the Climate Corporation, a data analytics firm. Last year the chemical and seed company also bought Precision Planting, another high-tech firm, and also launched a venture capital arm geared to fund tech start-ups.

In November, John Deere and DuPont Pioneer announced plans to partner to provide farmers information and prescriptions in near-real time. Deere has pioneered “precision farming” equipment in recent years, equipping tractors and combines to automatically transmit data collected from particular farms to company databases. DuPont, meanwhile, has rolled out a service that analyzes data into “actionable management strategies.”

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Many farmers are wary that these giants could use these tools to win unprecedented levels of insight into the economics and operational workings of their farms. The issue is not that these companies would shower the farmers with ads, as Facebook does when it knows you’re looking to buy sneakers. For farmers, the risks of big data seem to pierce right to the heart of how they make a living. What would it mean, for instance, for Monsanto to know the intricacies of their business?

Farm advocacy groups are now scrambling to understand how — if given free rein — these corporations could misuse the data they collect. “We’re signing up for things without knowing what we’re giving up,” said Mark Nelson, director of commodities at the Kansas Farm Bureau. In May, the American Farm Bureau Federation, a national lobbying group, published a policy brief outlining some potential risks around these data-driven farm tools.

For farmers, the most immediate question is who owns the information these technologies capture. Many farmers have been collecting digitized yield data on their operations since the 1990's, when high-tech farm tools first emerged. But that information would sit on a tractor or monitor until the farmer manually transferred it to his computer, or handed a USB stick to an agronomist to analyze. Now, however, smart devices can wirelessly transfer data straight to a corporation’s servers, sometimes without a farmer’s knowledge.

“When I start storing information up on the Internet, I lose control of it,” said Walt Bones, who farms in Parker, S.D., and served as state agriculture secretary.

Justin Dikeman, a sales representative with DuPont, said farmers continue to own whatever data they collect on their operations. A spokesman for John Deere also said farmers own their data, and that farmers have the opportunity to opt-out of the company’s cloud services. Monsanto did not reply to a comment request.

Details on who owns what at which stage of the analytics process is less clear, though. Even if a contract guarantees that farmers own the raw data, for instance, it’s not obvious whether farmers will be able to access that data in a non-proprietary format. Nor is it evident how easily farmers can stop these devices from collecting and transmitting data.

How corporations use the information is another central concern. One worry is the giants will harness the data to engage in price discrimination, in which they charge some farmers more than others for the same product. For example, details on the economic worth of a farm operation could empower Monsanto or DuPont to calculate the exact value the farm derives from its products. Monsanto already varies its prices by region, so that Illinois farmers with a bumper crop might be charged more for seeds than Texas farmers facing a drought. Bigger heaps of data would enable these companies to price discriminate more finely, not just among different geographic regions but between neighbors.

Another issue is how the value of this information will be determined, and the profits divided. The prescription services Monsanto and DuPont are offering will draw on the vast amounts of data they amass from thousands of individual farms. Farmers consider much of this information – such as on soil fertility and crop yields – confidential, and most view details about particular farming techniques as akin to personal “trade secrets.” Even if the corporations agree not to disclose farm-specific information, some farmers worry that the information may end up being used against them in ways that dull their particular competitive edge.

“If you inadvertently teach Monsanto what it is that makes you a better farmer than your neighbor, it can sell that information to your neighbor,” said John McGuire, an agriculture technology consultant who runs Simplified Technology Services and developed geospatial tools for Monsanto in the late-1990s. And if the corporation gathers enough information, “it opens the door for Monsanto to say, ‘We know how to farm in your area better than you do,’” he said.

There are also no clear guidelines on how this information will be used within commodity markets. Real-time data is highly valuable to investors and financial traders, who bet billions of dollars in wheat, soybean and corn futures. In a market where the slightest informational edge makes the difference between huge profits and even bigger losses, corporations that gather big data will have a ready customer base if they choose to sell their knowledge. Or they could just use it to speculate themselves.

“If this real time yield data goes into the cloud and a lot of market investors get into it, there is potential for market distortion,” said Kyle Cline, policy advisor for national government relations at the Indiana Farm Bureau. “It could destabilize markets, make them more volatile,” he said.

John Deere has stated it will not share data with anyone it believes will use it to influence or gain an advantage in commodity markets. Monsanto, DuPont and other firms have not, however, issued similar public statements.

Some farmers and smaller manufacturers also worry that data analytics will give conglomerates like Monsanto and DuPont more power to compel farmers to buy other lines of products. Monsanto, for example, has proven highly adept at leveraging its wide suite of products to support one another.

How Monsanto used its dominance in one business (genetic traits) to benefit others (seeds, fertilizer) was the focus of a three-year antitrust investigation by the Justice Department. (DOJ closed the probe last November without taking any action).

In recent years, Monsanto, DuPont and John Deere have also expanded into selling farmers a variety of financial services and insurance. John Deere, for one, acknowledges that its financial division may consult data from a farmer’s machinery, if the farmer permits.

Other private corporations are also competing for a share of the big data pie. Established equipment manufacturers like AgCo and Case IH have been expanding their data analytics services, and some high-tech upstarts are also joining the game. The Climate Corporation, the weather data and insurance company Monsanto bought in October, for example, was founded by a former Google employee.

Open-source groups attempting to provide farmers with some similar technologies include ISOBlue, a project based at Purdue University, which teaches farmers how to capture and independently store their own data. FarmLogs, a Michigan-based company backed by Silicon Valley money, sells software and data analytics that let farmers fully control the information collected. “We’re pushing back against the monopoly on information” that some existing vendors create, said FarmLogs founder Jesse Vollmar, who grew up on a farm.

What is not clear is whether these smaller open-source companies will be able to keep up with the established giants over the long run.

“Monsanto has its fingers awful deep within our industries,” McGuire said. “Its expansion [into data analytics] should scare a lot of people.”

To be sure, much depends on how widely farmers adopt the privately-designed “decision-support” services. Monsanto has estimated this to be a $20 billion market, but there is no proof yet whether the company will be able to process these reams of data into profitable farming and business strategies.

Whether Monsanto’s bet will pay off is “tough to validate,” said Paul Massoud, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.

Some experts question whether relying on prescription-based services is in farmers’ best interest at all. “I don’t see farmers themselves crunching numbers, so [I] doubt they’ll be learning anything more about how to farm well,” said Bill Freese, expert on agricultural biotech and science policy analyst with Center for Food Safety. “Monsanto’s scheme does not really represent farmers embracing data analytics, but Monsanto embracing it to better sell the seeds it wants to sell with a pseudo-scientific rationale.”

A new group called the Grower Information Services Cooperative thinks the best way farmers can protect their interests during the transition to big data is to organize. Formed in west Texas last December, GISC is pushing a model where farmers would store their data in a repository through the co-op, and companies would pay the group a fee to access it. The system would give farmers technical as well as legal ownership, and provide a way for them to share in its monetary value, said Mark Cox, controller and communications director for GISC.

“Growers need to be proactive in how their information is managed,” Cox said. “Otherwise all that economic power will consolidate to these corporations and the grower will be at even more of a disadvantage. We don’t want the grower to become a tenant on his own farm.” GISC began accepting members this month, and is meeting with farm bureaus around the country to publicize its mission.

Soil sensors and seed planting algorithms may be a game-changer. Whether farmers fully reap the fruits of that harvest, though, will depend not on technologies but on the legal technicalities that bind their use.

Lina Khan reports on the effects of concentrated economic power with the Markets, Enterprise, and Resiliency Initiative at the New America Foundation.

Why the Tea Party Isn't Going Anywhere

By Theda Skocpol

The demise of the Tea Party was loudly announced right after Congress voted on October 16 to lift the debt ceiling and reopen the federal government. “Finally! The Republican Fever Is Broken,” exulted Jamelle Bouie atThe Daily Beast, while Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson proclaimed President Obama’s “victory” over the Tea Party just as “devastating as Sherman’s march through the South.” With most Americans telling pollsters they do not like the Tea Party and its tactics, the GOP will eventually have to pivot back to the median voter, explained Noah Feldman in his Bloombergcolumn, “How the Tea Party Will Die.”

Other optimists placed greater emphasis on the supposed new will of business interests and Republican Party elders to recapture party control. Offering reassurance, supporters of Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner told the pre-eminent inside-the-Beltway gossip site Politico that their guy was more effectively in charge of his raucous GOP caucus following the shutdown debacle. Karl Rove vowed to block far-right Tea Party challengers in GOP primaries, and the Chamber of Commerce started to make noises about supporting some supposed “moderates” against Tea Party candidates in 2014 GOP primaries.

But we have heard all this before. The Tea Party was supposed to be dead and the GOP on the way to moderate repositioning after Obama’s victory and Democratic congressional gains in November 2012. Yet less than a year after post-election GOP soul-searching supposedly occurred, radical forces pulled almost all GOP House and Senate members into at least going along with more than two weeks of extortion tactics to try to force President Obama and Senate Democrats to gut the Affordable Care Act and grant a long laundry list of other GOP priorities suspiciously similar to the platform on which the party had run and lost in 2012. The Tea Party’s hold on the GOP persists beyond each burial ceremony.

In 2011, Vanessa Williamson and I published our book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, which used a full panoply of research—from interviews and local observations to media and website analysis and tracking of national surveys—to explain the dynamics of this radical movement. We showed how bottom-up and top-down forces intersect to give the Tea Party both leverage over the Republican Party and the clout to push national politics sharply to the right.

At the grassroots, volunteer activists formed hundreds of local Tea Parties, meeting regularly to plot public protests against the Obama Administration and place steady pressure on GOP organizations and candidates at all levels. At least half of all GOP voters sympathize with this Tea Party upsurge. They are overwhelmingly older, white, conservative-minded men and women who fear that “their country” is about to be lost to mass immigration and new extensions of taxpayer-funded social programs (like the Affordable Care Act) for low- and moderate-income working-aged people, many of whom are black or brown. Fiscal conservatism is often said to be the top grassroots Tea Party priority, but Williamson and I did not find this to be true. Crackdowns on immigrants, fierce opposition to Democrats, and cuts in spending for the young were the overriding priorities we heard from volunteer Tea Partiers, who are often, themselves, collecting costly Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' benefits to which they feel fully entitled as Americans who have “paid their dues” in lifetimes of hard work.

On the other end of the organizational spectrum, big-money funders and free-market advocacy organizations used angry grassroots protests to expand their email lists and boost longstanding campaigns to slash taxes, shrink social spending, privatize Medicare and Social Security, and eliminate or block regulations (including carbon controls). In 2009, groups such as FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, and Tea Party Express (a renamed conservative GOP political action committee) leapt on the bandwagon; more recently, the Senate Conservative Action Fund and Heritage Action have greatly bolstered the leveraging capacities of the Tea Party as a whole. Elite activities ramped up after many Tea Party legislators were elected in 2010.

Here is the key point: Even though there is no one center of Tea Party authority—indeed, in some ways because there is no one organized center—the entire gaggle of grassroots and elite organizations amounts to a pincer operation that wields money and primary votes to exert powerful pressure on Republican officeholders and candidates. Tea Party influence does not depend on general popularity at all. Even as most Americans have figured out that they do not like the Tea Party or its methods, Tea Party clout has grown in Washington and state capitals. Most legislators and candidates are Nervous Nellies, so all Tea Party activists, sympathizers, and funders have had to do is recurrently demonstrate their ability to knock off seemingly unchallengeable Republicans (ranging from Charlie Crist in Florida to Bob Bennett of Utah to Indiana’s Richard Lugar). That grabs legislators’ attention and results in either enthusiastic support for, or acquiescence to, obstructive tactics. The entire pincer operation is further enabled by various right-wing tracking organizations that keep close count of where each legislator stands on “key votes”—including even votes on amendments and the tiniest details of parliamentary procedure, the kind of votes that legislative leaders used to orchestrate in the dark.

The 2010 elections were a high watermark for Tea Party funders and voters. Amid intense public frustration at the slow economic recovery, only two of five U.S. voters went to the polls. The electorate skewed toward older, whiter, wealthier conservatives; and this low turnout allowed fired-up Tea Party Republicans to score many triumphs in the House and state legislatures. And the footholds gained are not easily lost. Once solid blocs of Tea Party supporters or compliant legislators are ensconced in office, outside figures like Dick Armey of FreedomWorks (in 2011) and Jim DeMint of Heritage Action (in 2013) appoint themselves de facto orchestrators, taking control away from elected GOP leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.

In the latest such maneuver during the summer of 2013, radical-right Texas Senator Ted Cruz put himself forward as a bold Tea Party strategist calling for a renewed all-out crusade to kill Obamacare long after it was assured survival by the Supreme Court and the 2012 presidential election. With his strong ties to far-right funders and ideologues, plus a self-assured, even arrogant, pugnaciousness that thrills much of the GOP electorate, Cruz could direct a chunk of House Republicans to pressure a weak Boehner into proceeding with the government shutdown and debt brinkmanship. Apologists say Boehner was “reluctant,” but what difference does that make? He went along.

After the immediate effort flopped and caused most Americans to further sour on Republicans, Cruz remained unbowed. And why not? After all, Cruz gained near-total name recognition and sky-high popularity among Tea Party voters. He now appears regularly on television, and his antics have allowed elite Tea Party forces to lock in draconian reductions in federal spending for coming rounds of budget struggles. Americans may resent the Tea Party, but they are also losing ever more faith in the federal government—a big win for anti-government saboteurs. Popularity and “responsible governance” are not the goals of Tea Party forces, and such standards should not be used to judge the accomplishments of those who aim to undercut, block, and delay—even as Tea Party funders remain hopeful about holding their own or making further gains in another low-turnout midterm election in November 2014.

The bottom line is sobering. Anyone concerned about the damage Tea Party forces are inflicting on American politics needs to draw several hard-headed conclusions.

For one, at least three successive national election defeats will be necessary to even begin to break the determination and leverage of Tea Party adherents. Grassroots Tea Partiers see themselves in a last-ditch effort to save “their country,” and big-money ideologues are determined to undercut Democrats and sabotage active government. They are in this fight for the long haul. Neither set of actors will stand down easily or very soon.

Also worth remembering is that “moderate Republicans” barely exist right now. Close to two-thirds of House Republicans voted against bipartisan efforts to reopen the federal government and prevent U.S. default on loan obligations, and Boehner has never repudiated such extortionist tactics. Tea Partiers may not call for another shutdown right away, but they will continue to be able to draw most GOP legislators and leaders into aggressive efforts to obstruct and delay. In the electorate, moreover, more than half of GOP voters sympathize with the Tea Party and cheer on obstructionist tactics, and the remaining Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are disorganized and divided in their views of the likes of Ted Cruz.

Speaking of which, Cruz is very well positioned to garner unified Tea Party support in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries. During the last election cycle, no far-right candidate ever consolidated sustained grassroots Tea Party support, as those voters hopped from Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich to Rick Santorum. But this time, Cruz may very well enjoy unified and enthusiastic grassroots Tea Party support from the beginning of the primary election season. In the past, less extreme GOP candidates have always managed to garner the presidential nomination, but maybe not this time. And even if a less extreme candidate finally squeaks through, Cruz will set much of the agenda for Republicans heading into 2016.

When it comes to “reining in” the Tea Party, business associations and spokespeople may talk bigger than they will act. They have lots to say to reporters, but they show few signs of mounting the kind of organized, sustained efforts it would take to counter Tea Party enthusiasm and funding. Groups like the Chamber of Commerce have spent decades using right-wing energy to help elect Republicans, who, once elected, are supposed to focus on tax cuts and deregulation. It used to be relatively easy to con Christian-right voters with flashy election symbolism and then soft-pedal their preferences once Republicans took office. Today’s far right is unmistakably another cup of tea. Even as business funders realize this, however, they will be tempted to keep replaying the old strategies, because turning to Democrats will usually not seem acceptable, and it will be almost impossible in many states and districts to mount GOP primary challenges from the middle-right without improving Democratic prospects in general election contests.

Finally, Democrats need to get over thinking that opinion polls and media columns add up to real political gains. Once the October 2013 shutdown ended in supposed total victory for President Obama and his party, many Democrats adopted a cocky swagger and started talking about ousting the House GOP in 2014. But a clear-eyed look shows that Tea Party obstruction remains powerful and has achieved victories that continue to stymie Democratic efforts to govern effectively—a necessary condition for Democrats to win enthusiastic, sustained voter support for the future, including in midterm elections. Our debates about federal budgets still revolve around degrees of imposed austerity. Government shutdowns and repeated partisan-induced “crises” have greatly undercut U.S. economic growth and cost up to a year’s worth of added jobs. Real national challenges—fighting global warming, improving education, redressing extreme economic inequalities, rebuilding and improving economic infrastructure—go unaddressed as extreme GOP obstructive capacities remain potent in Washington and many state capitals.

True, the events of October 2013 helped millions of middle-of-the-road voters—and even quite a few complacent political reporters—grasp the dangers of the sabotage-oriented radicalism in today’s Republican Party. But it will take a long and dogged struggle to root out radical obstructionism on the right, and the years ahead could yet see Tea Partiers succeed by default. Unless non-Tea Party Republicans, independents, and Democrats learn both to defeat and to work around anti-government extremism—finding ways to do positive things for the majority of ordinary citizens along the way—Tea Party forces will still win in the end. They will triumph just by hanging on long enough to cause most Americans to give up in disgust on our blatantly manipulated democracy and our permanently hobbled government.

This article originally appeared in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, an Atlantic partner publication.

10 Reasons That Long Term Unemployment Is a National Catastrophe

By Kevin Drum

Unemployment is bad. Obviously long-term unemployment is worse. But it's not just a little worse, it's horrifically worse. As a companion to our eight charts that describe the problem, here are the top ten reasons why long-term unemployment is such a national catastrophe:

1. It's way higher than it's ever been before. When the headline unemployment rate peaked in 2010, it was actually a bit lower than the peak during the 1980 recession and only a point higher than the 1973 recession. As bad as it was, it was something we'd faced before. But the long-term unemployment rate is a whole different story. It peaked at a rate nearly double the worst we'd ever seen in the past, and it's been coming down only slowly ever since.
2. It's widespread. There's a common belief that long-term unemployment mostly affects older workers and only in certain industries. In fact, with the exception of the construction industry, which was hurt especially badly during the 2007-08 recession, "the long-term unemployed are fairly evenly distributed across the age and industry spectrum."
3. It's brutal. Obviously long-term unemployment produces a sharp loss of income, with all the stress that entails. But it does more. It produces deep distress, worse mental and physical health, higher mortality rates, hampers children’s educational progress, and lowers their future earnings. Megan McArdle summarizes the research findings this way: "Short of death or a debilitating terminal disease, long-term unemployment is about the worst thing that can happen to you in the modern world. It’s economically awful, socially terrible, and a horrifying blow to your self-esteem and happiness. It cuts you off from the mass of your peers and puts stress on your family, making it likely that further awful things, like divorce or suicide, will be in your near future."
4. It's long-lasting. Cristobal Young reports that "job loss has consequences that linger even after people return to work. Finding a job, on average, recovers only about two thirds of the initial harm of losing a job....Evidence from Germany finds subjective scarring of broadly similar magnitude that lasts for at least 3 to 5 years."
5. It dramatically reduces the prospect of getting another job. There's always been plenty of anecdotal evidence that employers don't like job candidates who have long spells of unemployment, but recent research suggests that this attitude has become even worse in the current weak economy. Rand Ghayad, a visiting scholar at the Boston Fed, sent out a bunch of fictitious resumes for 600 job openings. Each batch of resumes was slightly different (industry experience, job switching history, etc.), and all of these things had a small effect on the chance of getting a callback. But one thing had a huge effect: being unemployed for six months or more. If you were one of the long-term unemployed, it was all but impossible to even get considered for a job opening.
6. It turns cyclical unemployment into structural unemployment. What we've mostly had during the Great Recession and the subsequent recovery has been cyclical unemployment. This is unemployment caused by a simple lack of demand, and it goes away when the economy picks up. But structural unemployment is worse: it's caused by a mismatch between the skills employers want and the skills workers have. It's far more pernicious and far harder to combat, and it's what happens when cyclical unemployment is allowed to metastasize. "Skills become obsolete, contacts atrophy, information atrophies, and they get stigmatized," says Harry Holzer of Georgetown University." Economists call this effect "hysteresis," and there's plenty of evidence that we're suffering from it for perhaps the first time in recent American history.
7. It hurts the economy. A recent study, which Paul Krugman called the "blockbuster paper" of last month's IMF research conference, concludes that "by tolerating high unemployment we have inflicted huge damage on our long-run prospects." How much? The authors suggest that not only has it cut GDP growth, it's even cut potential GDP growth. They estimate the damage at about 7 percent per year—which represents a loss of roughly $3,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country.
8. Cutting off unemployment benefits makes things even worse. Cutting off benefits obviously hurts the unemployed in the pocketbook. But there's more to it than that. Since you have to keep looking for a job to qualify for benefits, many discouraged job seekers have less incentive to keep looking when their benefits run out. This means they drop out of the official numbers and are no longer counted as formally unemployed. In other words, because we've allowed unemployment benefits to expire for so many people, the real long-term unemployment rate is probably even worse than the official figures say it is.
9. There still aren't enough jobs to go around. In a normal economy, there might be good reason to keep unemployment benefits short: it motivates people to go out and look for work. But that's not the problem right now. The number of job seekers for every open job has declined since its 2009 peak, but there are still three job seekers for every available job, which means that this simply isn't a matter of incentives. It's a matter of there being too few jobs for everyone. Conservative scholar Michael Strain uses a simple analogy to get this point across: "If you look at the long-term unemployed, a good chunk of them have children. A good chunk are married. A good chunk are college-educated or have had some college and in their prime earning years....It strikes me as implausible that this person is engaged in a half-hearted job search."
10. Practically everyone, liberal and conservative alike, agrees that this is a catastrophe. And yet, we continue to do nothing about it. Republicans in Congress have declined to extend unemployment benefits further, and they show no sign of changing their minds when Congress reconvenes in January. Democrats have a plan to fight for further benefits by linking them to a farm bill that Republicans want to pass, and right now that's pretty much the best hope we have to offer the workers who have been most brutally savaged by the Great Recession.

Tom Steyer: Liberals' Answer to the Kochs?

By Evan Halper

The California billionaire is building a vast political network and inserting himself into elections nationwide, with a focus on fossil fuels and global warming.

Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, is spending some of his fortune on liberal and environmental issues like fighting the Keystone XL pipeline. (David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / December 4, 2013)

Tom Steyer is standing upright near the corner of a small, beige meeting room at Georgetown University, arms at his sides, eyes shut intently. Half a dozen ministers and priests surround him, laying hands on his torso.

Together, the pastors begin to pray, asking for divine help in shaping public opinion: "Soften them.... Open them to you … for your purpose.... Claim the promise made to Moses."

It is a curious warmup for a technical conference about an oil pipeline.

But like many other environmentalists concerned that America is dawdling as the world burns, these ministers, each a leader in efforts to mobilize churchgoers against climate change, see Steyer as, quite literally, a godsend.

Heady stuff, even for a 56-year-old billionaire.

For years, liberals have fretted about the power of ultra-wealthy people determined to use their billions to advance their political views. Charles and David Koch, in particular, have ranked high in the demonology of the American left.

But in Steyer, liberals have a billionaire on their side. Like the Kochs, he is building a vast political network and seizing opportunities provided by loose campaign finance rules to insert himself into elections nationwide. In direct contrast to them, he has made opposition to fossil fuels and the campaign against global warming the center of his activism.

The former financier is an unlikely green icon. Steyer built his fortune with a San Francisco-based hedge fund of the sort that drove protesters to occupy Wall Street. Some of the investments that landed him on the Forbes list of America's wealthiest went into companies he now says are destroying the planet. Adversaries and, in private, at least some erstwhile allies call him a dilettante.

Yet, unlike many others in a parade of super-rich Californians who have made forays into politics, Steyer has proved himself skilled at bringing attention to his cause and himself.

He has amassed impressive victories: helping persuade recession-weary Californians to pass a $1-billion annual tax hike; creating a gusher of money for energy efficiency; and this year playing a star role in destabilizing plans for the Keystone XL Pipeline with a campaign that has sown doubt about the project inside the administration and mobilized influential Democratic donors and business leaders against it.

Opponents of the pipeline, designed to move hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily along a 1,200-mile route from Canada's tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries, say it would contribute greatly to global warming.

"Normally, in the American system, people yell and scream and holler and nothing happens, and then something happens and it gets fixed," Steyer said in a recent interview. "That happened with acid rain, with the hole in the ozone layer. That is normally what happens."

Global warming, "for whatever reason, was not getting addressed," he said. "And it is the biggest issue."

It was Keystone that brought Steyer and the pastors together at Georgetown. In June, President Obama said in a speech at the university that he could approve the pipeline project, which needs a federal license because it crosses an international boundary, only if backers could prove it would not contribute to global warming.

Six months later, Steyer returned to the campus with a panel of anti-Keystone scientists to host a conference aimed at proving that test could not be met.

John Podesta, President Clinton's former chief of staff, who recently joined the Obama White House as a senior advisor, says he used to give Keystone a 90% chance of winning approval from the administration. Then Steyer and grass-roots activists like Bill McKibben of 350.org launched their campaigns against it. Now, he gives it even odds, Podesta said in an interview shortly before his new post was announced.

"I doubt the President travels very much where he doesn't hear about this now, particularly with core supporters," Podesta said. "What he hears has got to make him take a few deep breaths before moving forward with it."

Steyer "is good at organizing the people the president knows and cares about," he added.

Defenders of the project call Steyer and fellow anti-Keystone activists misguided.

"It is an absolute calamity that it was not approved long ago," former Secretary of State George P. Shultz said of the Keystone project. Shultz was Steyer's co-chairman on the $1-billion tax hike campaign and another successful effort to protect California's global warming law against a ballot initiative, but he disagrees deeply with Steyer about the pipeline.

"With energy, we always need to keep in mind three objectives: security, economics, and the environment," he said. "Oil that comes from Keystone does not go through the Strait of Hormuz. It is secure oil."

But fellow opponents of Keystone hail Steyer's efforts. Steyer "understands that climate change is an existential challenge we face," Gov. Jerry Brown said in an e-mail. "He's doing something about it."
All that, plus a large team of consultants, has built and promoted the Steyer brand. There is constant speculation about whether he plans to run for governor. Or maybe the U.S. Senate. The White House also has its eye on him.

"There was serious discussion about him joining the administration," Podesta said.

What remains less clear, however, is whether Steyer has made progress on his larger goal of persuading average Americans that climate change is a menace that should drive their choices at the voting booth.

"If you are not talking about it at the kitchen table, you don't really care about it," Steyer said over lunch at a casual restaurant popular with Washington's moneyed elite. There were plenty of stylish suits, designer accessories and bling to be found there. Just not on Steyer, who dined in his tired tweed jacket, worn khakis and signature unfashionable argyle tie.

About a third of Americans polled say they see global warming as a "very serious" problem — a figure that has not changed much in recent years, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center.

A major focus of Steyer's political operation, which is run by Chris Lehane, a veteran of the Clinton White House, has been to prove that climate change can play a decisive role in elections. This fall his group, NextGen Climate Action, put an eye-popping $8 million into Virginia's election for governor, which Lehane called a "beta test to inject climate into an election and see if it will play a decisive role."

The results were mixed. The campaign hit hard against the Republican candidate, Ken Cuccinelli. It polled, it canvassed, and it scrambled to track down climate-anxious voters who normally sit out off-year elections.

"We flagged voters who are climate voters and targeted them," Lehane said. "We are confident we turned out a minimum of 65,000 of them."

Cuccinelli lost by less than 60,000 votes. But Lehane's claim that voters activated by NextGen made the difference is inherently hard to prove.

The Republican was a weak candidate — an outspoken conservative in a moderate state. The election took place just days after Cuccinelli's fellow Republicans in Washington shut down the federal government, endangering the livelihoods of the federal workers who make up a large share of Virginia's voters. The margin of victory for Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee, was not much smaller than the one Barack Obama enjoyed over Mitt Romney a year earlier.

Earlier in the year, Steyer intervened in the race for Massachusetts' open U.S. Senate seat, demanding in an open letter that one of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination "act like a real Democrat and oppose Keystone's dirty energy" by "high noon" one Friday in March or face a torrent of campaign money against him.

The ultimatum gave the candidate, Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, a former ironworker, a campaign issue: Radical California billionaire bullies local candidate. The Boston Globe editorialized that Steyer should "back off." Lynch's primary opponent, then-congressman Edward J. Markey — who ultimately won the race — asked Steyer to bow out.

Fellow environmentalists are loath to publicly criticize Steyer; many groups have actively sought his money. But some who have been in the trenches far longer privately say they see hubris behind his aw-shucks demeanor.

Steyer brushes aside such complaints. The big, established environmental groups, he says, have been doing "incredible" policy work but have a tendency to approach electoral politics with tactics more befitting of the "Yale-Harvard debating society."

"We hear an awful lot about theoretically how people would like us to engage voters," he said. "But we actually want to engage them."
evan.halper@latimes.com