Currently viewing the tag: "Cites"
ABC News’ David Kerley and Jon Garcia report: For the first time since launching attacks against Libyan targets, President Obama defended his actions to reporters and said the allies needed to act quickly to avoid atrocities. He believes U.S. military…
Political Punch
Chicago Tribune |
State Cites Notre Dame Violations in Student Death
ABC News AP By HASAN DUDAR AP A four-month investigation into a student's death has found the University of Notre Dame did not maintain safe working conditions and failed to heed wind warnings when the hydraulic lift he was standing on to film football practice … wsbt-a-statement-from-the-sullivan-family-concerning-the-iosha-findings-20110315 Notre Dame fined in Long Grove student's death Probe: Notre Dame at fault in student's death |
Washington (CNN) - The impeached former Illinois governor, who’d previously been accused of trying to sell President Obama’s senate seat, filed a motion on Wednesday to dismiss a second trial that was set to begin April 20.
In the motion, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich asked a federal judge to instead sentence him on the single conviction from his first trial. The former governor said that doing so will save taxpayer money - and save him money from mounting legal fees.
CNN obtained a copy of the motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
“The government’s continued prosecution of this case should cease,” the document states. “This case was tried once, at a full trial which lasted over two months.”
Last August, Blagojevich was found guilty of lying to the FBI, but escaped convictions on 23 other counts.
“While Blagojevich still maintains his innocence on every charge, he stands convicted, after the first trial, of the offense of making a false statement,” Blagojevich’s motion continues. “He must be sentenced on that conviction. This offense carries a potential significant jail sentence.”
The one count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
It goes on to say that a second trial would be “an irresponsible use of taxpayer funds in light of the current economic crisis.” The first trial was paid for by a legal defense fund for Blagojevich. The second trial would be funded by taxpayers.
Blagojevich would face 17 public corruption-related charges in any second trial.
Perhaps most telling in the motion is an apparent admission about Blagojevich’s own economic situation.
Regarding a possible second trial, the motion states, “To date, defense counsel have been working on the Blagojevich case for almost nine months without pay. This has caused a significant hardship and has deprived Blagojevich of his right to effective assistance of counsel.”
It also mentions that money to fight the first trial ran out near the end. Lawyers “received only partial compensation (one-fifth of payment) for the last month of trial, July 2010.”
The claim that Blagojevich tried to sell the president’s old U.S. seat was never proven. That and other accusations against him helped lead to his January 2009 impeachment as the governor of Illinois.
As Lachlan noted earlier, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller claimed at the National Press Club that NPR isn't a left-wing sandbox. But the transparent fakery of this became even more transparent when she boasted that in a world drowning in punditry, NPR deals in fact, and then quoted leftist smackdown artist James Wolcott of Vanity Fair for honoring NPR as "The Sound of Sanity."
Schiller also proclaimed the firing of Juan Williams was a mistake, but didn't note that Wolcott's reaction to the firing last October was ecstatic, and very uncivil: "Well, now he can Uncle Tom to his heart's content and feel like he's Solzhenitsyn."
Schiller also quoted Wolcott's "sanity" line in a November 2010 speech at the USC Annenberg School, where she also claimed NPR was as unbiased as any human enterprise could ever be:
Listeners appreciate the dignity, craftsmanship, balance and impartiality of fact and reporter-based news coverage [on NPR] at a time when many other news organizations are going in a very different direction.
They value hearing a range of opinions, but in the context of civil dialogue, and they appreciate our respectful approach to news — challenging common assumptions while always striving to treat newsmakers and sources fairly. Most encouragingly, our digital community appreciates these very same values.
An article about NPR in this month’s Vanity Fair by one of the most acerbic and eloquent critics around, James Wolcott, was titled, “The Sound of Sanity.” I love that.
In her remarks Monday, Schiller began her conclusion:
At a time when our industry is cutting back; when punditry is drowning real news and thoughtful analysis, NPR is moving continuously forward with quality reporting and storytelling delivered with respect for the audience — what columnist James Wolcott recently called "The Sound of Sanity."
But Wolcott was slamming conservatives and Christians in the very first paragraph of his Vanity Fair piece. Did Schiller love that, too? Does Wolcott have any respect for the American audience? Or just the snobby liberal NPR audience? He began:
It isn’t until I leave New York City and turn on the car radio or the creaky one in the motel room that NPR’s distinctive, coherent, cadenced qualities press to the forefront: its commitment to informing and entertaining an educated audience like adults speaking to other adults while every other hothead and hysteric on the dial hops up and down on the pogo stick of the outrage du jour. Or, conversely, reaches out from the speaker to soothe thy troubled brow, a ghostly comforter which turns out to be the radio ministry of a Jesus station requesting a prayer offering payable by check or credit card. Right-wing or religious, radio packs a ton of nuts into every listening bite.
How can Schiller say the world is drowning in incivility, and then quote this pie-throwing sourpuss? How can she cite as her beacon of civility the magazine with the "Authoritative Trig Palin Conspiracy Timeline"? In his ode to "sanity," Wolcott blatantly shilled for the official NPR propaganda book This Is NPR, and added:
Unlike nearly all the rest of talk radio, which divides civilization into us and our Churchillian allies and Everybody Else (ungrateful bastards who haven’t thanked us in the last five minutes for winning World War II), NPR is cognizant of a whole world out there that isn’t the United States and is worth knowing, even if we’re not dropping bombs on them at the moment.
This is why Schiller loves his "acerbic and eloquent" writing. Wolcott also praised the presence of so many women on the air at NPR, and insisted that their feminism also makes NPR superior:
It isn’t that NPR is matriarchal but that it has dedicated itself to not being patriarchal in its outlook and presentation, stipulating from the outset that its headline voices would not resound across the fruited plains from big male bags of air sent from Mount Olympus.
The big male bags of air have been puffing at NPR from the outside, trying to blow the house down. And blowhards don’t come any blowhardier than Newt Gingrich, who, upon being elected Speaker of the House following the Republican takeover of 1994, pronounced his intention “to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” putting it on a starvation diet that would have wiped dozens of smaller stations off the airwaves that depended on grant moneys from the C.P.B. and reduced others to skeleton crews, recounts This Is NPR.
This animus against public radio first gained rhetorical traction on the right during the “Reagan Revolution,” as so many ideologically driven crusades did, when NPR was christened “Radio Sandinista” for what the contra-backing Reaganites considered its slanted-left Nicaragua coverage. Gingrich railed against the elitism of NPR, proclaiming that the popularity of Rush Limbaugh represented the real face of public broadcasting, but as usual Gingrich’s grandiosity was greater than his grip on political reality, and his plan fell as flat as his Speakership after the first flush of giddiness.
In This Is NPR, Gingrich is quoted as graciously conceding in 2003 that he no longer considers the network an enemy within. “NPR is a lot less to the left … or I’ve mellowed. Or some combination of the two.” Or a third alternative: in the era of Sarah Palin Superstar, bashing NPR no longer gets the primitive, tribal juices going on the right, not with such a bumper crop of Muslims and illegal immigrants for Tea Party panderers to sink their gums into.
Gingrich has mellowed, but NPR and Wolcott have not. These people take taxpayer money, but see it as their right to take that money and professionally hate conservatives and "Jesus freaks." This kind of sassy leftism is exactly why other lobbyists for the leftist sandbox like Free Press also linked up to the "genius" of Wolcott. This is just another NPR executive unsubtly winking at the Obama's-way-too-centrist, MoveOn crowd that supports them.
Vivian, your slip is showing.
As Lachlan noted earlier, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller claimed at the National Press Club that NPR isn't a left-wing sandbox. But the transparent fakery of this became even more transparent when she boasted that in a world drowning in punditry, NPR deals in fact, and then quoted leftist smackdown artist James Wolcott of Vanity Fair for honoring NPR as "The Sound of Sanity."
Schiller also proclaimed the firing of Juan Williams was a mistake, but didn't note that Wolcott's reaction to the firing last October was ecstatic, and very uncivil: "Well, now he can Uncle Tom to his heart's content and feel like he's Solzhenitsyn."
Schiller also quoted Wolcott's "sanity" line in a November 2010 speech at the USC Annenberg School, where she also claimed NPR was as unbiased as any human enterprise could ever be:
Listeners appreciate the dignity, craftsmanship, balance and impartiality of fact and reporter-based news coverage [on NPR] at a time when many other news organizations are going in a very different direction.
They value hearing a range of opinions, but in the context of civil dialogue, and they appreciate our respectful approach to news — challenging common assumptions while always striving to treat newsmakers and sources fairly. Most encouragingly, our digital community appreciates these very same values.
An article about NPR in this month’s Vanity Fair by one of the most acerbic and eloquent critics around, James Wolcott, was titled, “The Sound of Sanity.” I love that.
In her remarks Monday, Schiller began her conclusion:
At a time when our industry is cutting back; when punditry is drowning real news and thoughtful analysis, NPR is moving continuously forward with quality reporting and storytelling delivered with respect for the audience — what columnist James Wolcott recently called "The Sound of Sanity."
But Wolcott was slamming conservatives and Christians in the very first paragraph of his Vanity Fair piece. Did Schiller love that, too? Does Wolcott have any respect for the American audience? Or just the snobby liberal NPR audience? He began:
It isn’t until I leave New York City and turn on the car radio or the creaky one in the motel room that NPR’s distinctive, coherent, cadenced qualities press to the forefront: its commitment to informing and entertaining an educated audience like adults speaking to other adults while every other hothead and hysteric on the dial hops up and down on the pogo stick of the outrage du jour. Or, conversely, reaches out from the speaker to soothe thy troubled brow, a ghostly comforter which turns out to be the radio ministry of a Jesus station requesting a prayer offering payable by check or credit card. Right-wing or religious, radio packs a ton of nuts into every listening bite.
How can Schiller say the world is drowning in incivility, and then quote this pie-throwing sourpuss? How can she cite as her beacon of civility the magazine with the "Authoritative Trig Palin Conspiracy Timeline"? In his ode to "sanity," Wolcott blatantly shilled for the official NPR propaganda book This Is NPR, and added:
Unlike nearly all the rest of talk radio, which divides civilization into us and our Churchillian allies and Everybody Else (ungrateful bastards who haven’t thanked us in the last five minutes for winning World War II), NPR is cognizant of a whole world out there that isn’t the United States and is worth knowing, even if we’re not dropping bombs on them at the moment.
This is why Schiller loves his "acerbic and eloquent" writing. Wolcott also praised the presence of so many women on the air at NPR, and insisted that their feminism also makes NPR superior:
It isn’t that NPR is matriarchal but that it has dedicated itself to not being patriarchal in its outlook and presentation, stipulating from the outset that its headline voices would not resound across the fruited plains from big male bags of air sent from Mount Olympus.
The big male bags of air have been puffing at NPR from the outside, trying to blow the house down. And blowhards don’t come any blowhardier than Newt Gingrich, who, upon being elected Speaker of the House following the Republican takeover of 1994, pronounced his intention “to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” putting it on a starvation diet that would have wiped dozens of smaller stations off the airwaves that depended on grant moneys from the C.P.B. and reduced others to skeleton crews, recounts This Is NPR.
This animus against public radio first gained rhetorical traction on the right during the “Reagan Revolution,” as so many ideologically driven crusades did, when NPR was christened “Radio Sandinista” for what the contra-backing Reaganites considered its slanted-left Nicaragua coverage. Gingrich railed against the elitism of NPR, proclaiming that the popularity of Rush Limbaugh represented the real face of public broadcasting, but as usual Gingrich’s grandiosity was greater than his grip on political reality, and his plan fell as flat as his Speakership after the first flush of giddiness.
In This Is NPR, Gingrich is quoted as graciously conceding in 2003 that he no longer considers the network an enemy within. “NPR is a lot less to the left … or I’ve mellowed. Or some combination of the two.” Or a third alternative: in the era of Sarah Palin Superstar, bashing NPR no longer gets the primitive, tribal juices going on the right, not with such a bumper crop of Muslims and illegal immigrants for Tea Party panderers to sink their gums into.
Gingrich has mellowed, but NPR and Wolcott have not. These people take taxpayer money, but see it as their right to take that money and professionally hate conservatives and "Jesus freaks." This kind of sassy leftism is exactly why other lobbyists for the leftist sandbox like Free Press also linked up to the "genius" of Wolcott. This is just another NPR executive unsubtly winking at the Obama's-way-too-centrist, MoveOn crowd that supports them.
Vivian, your slip is showing.
On Tuesday's World News, ABC's David Wright highlighted actress Jane Russell's "botched back-alley abortion in high school," which led her to push "hard to expand adoption," but he failed to mention that she described herself as "vigorously pro-life," and that she was a conservative activist.
Wright's report aired at the end of the evening news program. The correspondent spent most of the segment on Russell's movie career, specifically her roles in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and "The Outlaw." Near the end, however, Wright noted that the actress was "also politically active," and continued with the abortion issue: "She wrote in her memoirs that a botched back-alley abortion in high school left her unable to have children. Throughout her life, she fought hard to expand adoption."
Michael Thurston of Agencee France-Presse took a similar path in his Tuesday report on the movie star, but more explicitly noted that Russell was not only pro-life, but also a conservative:
…In famously liberal Hollywood, and despite her sex symbol image, she was a rare defender of Christian and Republican values.
Russell described herself as vigorously pro-life, after having undergone a botched abortion at 18 that left her unable to have children. She and her first husband, American footballer Bob Waterfield, adopted three children.
In the 1950s, she founded the World Adoption International Fund to help match families with children at a time when adopting foreign children was uncommon in the United States.
"I was born to be married. A family life helps everything, and also my belief in Jesus," she told Britain's Daily Mail newspaper in a 2007 interview.
She jokingly told Christianity Today in 2009 that she could be described as "a mean-spirited right-wing conservative Christian bigot."
"I'm not bigoted about race at all, I am bigoted about those idiots that are trying to take the Ten Commandments off the wall (in courtrooms), the Bible out of school, and prayer even out of football games."
The AP's obituary for Russell ended by mentioning that "in lieu of flowers the family asks that donations be made in her name to either the Care Net Pregnancy and Resource Center of Santa Maria or the Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Barbara County." Care Net is a national network of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers. Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog also highlighted that the actress participated in a panel discussion at CPAC in 2003.
It's not surprising, given how Wright fretted earlier in 2011 that the crowds at a gun show consisted of customers, not protesters, in the wake of the shootings in Tucson, that he would omit these details about Jane Russell.
The full transcript of David Wright's report from Tuesday's World News:
DIANE SAWYER: And finally tonight, the secret side of a sensational icon, one of America's first pinup girls. Actress Jane Russell died yesterday at the age of 89, and David Wright learned more about her real life.
JANE RUSSELL (singing, taken from the movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"): Bye-bye baby, remember you're my baby when-
DAVID WRIGHT (voice-over): 'Gentlemen prefer blonds,' except when the brunette is a bombshell.
RUSSELL (singing): I'm not in condition to wrestle-
WRIGHT: Jane Russell was that and then some-
RUSSELL: I like a man who can run faster than I can.
WRIGHT: Well-able to hold her own opposite Marilyn Monroe, the two got their stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame side-by-side the same day. Jane Russell was a preacher's daughter, who, for years, led a Bible study group here in Hollywood. And yet-
RUSSELL (taken from the movie "The Outlaw") Billy, you mustn't. You'll hurt yourself.
WRIGHT: She was also 'mean, moody and magnificent,' the tagline for her role in 'The Outlaw,' a picture so racy, the censors banned it for two years. The movie's director, billionaire Howard Hughes, famously used his knowledge of fuselage engineering to design a bra for her.
RUSSELL (from 1989 BBC interview): It was a contraption, you know, and it was not comfortable and it was not wearable at the time. So, I just wore my own bra.
WRIGHT: After her acting career ended, she marketed herself as an expert on the topic.
RUSSELL (from TV commercial): You've got to try the Jane Russell bra.
WRIGHT: She was also politically active. She wrote in her memoirs that a botched back-alley abortion in high school left her unable to have children. Throughout her life, she fought hard to expand adoption. And, she kept performing in supper clubs until the very end.
RUSSELL (singing, from YouTube video): With my baby by and by
WRIGHT: But her fans will always remember her when-
RUSSELL (singing, taken from the movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"): With my baby by and by
WRIGHT: David Wright, ABC News, Hollywood.
On Tuesday's World News, ABC's David Wright highlighted actress Jane Russell's "botched back-alley abortion in high school," which led her to push "hard to expand adoption," but he failed to mention that she described herself as "vigorously pro-life," and that she was a conservative activist.
Wright's report aired at the end of the evening news program. The correspondent spent most of the segment on Russell's movie career, specifically her roles in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and "The Outlaw." Near the end, however, Wright noted that the actress was "also politically active," and continued with the abortion issue: "She wrote in her memoirs that a botched back-alley abortion in high school left her unable to have children. Throughout her life, she fought hard to expand adoption."
Michael Thurston of Agencee France-Presse took a similar path in his Tuesday report on the movie star, but more explicitly noted that Russell was not only pro-life, but also a conservative:
…In famously liberal Hollywood, and despite her sex symbol image, she was a rare defender of Christian and Republican values.
Russell described herself as vigorously pro-life, after having undergone a botched abortion at 18 that left her unable to have children. She and her first husband, American footballer Bob Waterfield, adopted three children.
In the 1950s, she founded the World Adoption International Fund to help match families with children at a time when adopting foreign children was uncommon in the United States.
"I was born to be married. A family life helps everything, and also my belief in Jesus," she told Britain's Daily Mail newspaper in a 2007 interview.
She jokingly told Christianity Today in 2009 that she could be described as "a mean-spirited right-wing conservative Christian bigot."
"I'm not bigoted about race at all, I am bigoted about those idiots that are trying to take the Ten Commandments off the wall (in courtrooms), the Bible out of school, and prayer even out of football games."
The AP's obituary for Russell ended by mentioning that "in lieu of flowers the family asks that donations be made in her name to either the Care Net Pregnancy and Resource Center of Santa Maria or the Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Barbara County." Care Net is a national network of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers. Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog also highlighted that the actress participated in a panel discussion at CPAC in 2003.
It's not surprising, given how Wright fretted earlier in 2011 that the crowds at a gun show consisted of customers, not protesters, in the wake of the shootings in Tucson, that he would omit these details about Jane Russell.
The full transcript of David Wright's report from Tuesday's World News:
DIANE SAWYER: And finally tonight, the secret side of a sensational icon, one of America's first pinup girls. Actress Jane Russell died yesterday at the age of 89, and David Wright learned more about her real life.
JANE RUSSELL (singing, taken from the movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"): Bye-bye baby, remember you're my baby when-
DAVID WRIGHT (voice-over): 'Gentlemen prefer blonds,' except when the brunette is a bombshell.
RUSSELL (singing): I'm not in condition to wrestle-
WRIGHT: Jane Russell was that and then some-
RUSSELL: I like a man who can run faster than I can.
WRIGHT: Well-able to hold her own opposite Marilyn Monroe, the two got their stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame side-by-side the same day. Jane Russell was a preacher's daughter, who, for years, led a Bible study group here in Hollywood. And yet-
RUSSELL (taken from the movie "The Outlaw") Billy, you mustn't. You'll hurt yourself.
WRIGHT: She was also 'mean, moody and magnificent,' the tagline for her role in 'The Outlaw,' a picture so racy, the censors banned it for two years. The movie's director, billionaire Howard Hughes, famously used his knowledge of fuselage engineering to design a bra for her.
RUSSELL (from 1989 BBC interview): It was a contraption, you know, and it was not comfortable and it was not wearable at the time. So, I just wore my own bra.
WRIGHT: After her acting career ended, she marketed herself as an expert on the topic.
RUSSELL (from TV commercial): You've got to try the Jane Russell bra.
WRIGHT: She was also politically active. She wrote in her memoirs that a botched back-alley abortion in high school left her unable to have children. Throughout her life, she fought hard to expand adoption. And, she kept performing in supper clubs until the very end.
RUSSELL (singing, from YouTube video): With my baby by and by
WRIGHT: But her fans will always remember her when-
RUSSELL (singing, taken from the movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"): With my baby by and by
WRIGHT: David Wright, ABC News, Hollywood.
One would think a scathing criticism on the National Institute of Health from NIH director Francis Collins would be enough to stop misuse of his book, the Language of God. However, not so for a relatively new Latter Day Saint sexual reorientation organization called Foundation for Attraction Research. Writing in the Salt Lake City Tribune, FAR Board members Dennis V. Dahle, John P. Livingstone and M. Gawain Wells provide the same quote that led Collins to rebuke the American College of Pediatricians.
As to science, contrary to a source cited by Hansen that same-sex attractions are of purely biological origin, Dr. Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the current director of the National Institutes of Health, reached a very different conclusion. Collins, in addressing the etiology of homosexuality in his book, The Language of God, offers the conclusion that homosexuality is “genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.”
Exgaywatch first reported on the misuse of Collins’ words back in 2008. At that point, Dr. Collins wrote to me in order to verify his communication with David Roberts, editor at XGW.
Then, the American College of Pediatricians cited Collins in an effort to establish the mutability of sexual orientation. Collins did not take kindly to their citation and wrote the following on the NIH website.
Statement from NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., in Response to the American College of Pediatricians
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
DirectorApril 15, 2010
“It is disturbing for me to see special interest groups distort my scientific observations to make a point against homosexuality. The American College of Pediatricians pulled language out of context from a book I wrote in 2006 to support an ideology that can cause unnecessary anguish and encourage prejudice. The information they present is misleading and incorrect, and it is particularly troubling that they are distributing it in a way that will confuse school children and their parents.”
Now the Foundation for Attraction Research takes up the same line of argumentation, although in a somewhat more subtle manner. While the first quote from Collins is clearly about homosexuality and represents Collins views about that specific trait, the second one is not. The FAR authors write:
Collins offers the following additional insight on homosexuality: “There is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits. For virtually none of them is heredity ever close to predictive. Environment, particularly childhood experiences, and the prominent role of individual free will choices have a profound effect on us. Scientists will discover an increasing level of molecular detail about the inherited factors that undergird our personalities, but that should not lead us to overestimate their quantitative contribution. Yes we have all been dealt a particular set of cards, and the cards will eventually be revealed. But how we play the hand is up to us.”
While the quote is in Language of God, the statement leading up to it - “Collins offers the following additional insight on homosexuality” - is not. In the book, Collins makes a general statement about the role of genetics and environment but does not offer this view specifically about homosexuality. He does not suggest that “free will” or “childhood experiences” have anything to do with homosexual attraction. The authors want you to think that he does but he does not.
Regarding sexual reorientation which seems to be the real issue for FAR, Collins said this to Roberts and me in the earlier correspondence:
The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable. (emphasis mine)
No one knows what sexual attractions to be directed toward the same sex. Collins does not opine on these factors in his book beyond saying that they may not be strongly related to genetics. There are other biological factors besides genes that could be involved. Whatever those factors turn out to be does not mean that they are alterable.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
The House Financial Services Committee today held a hearing on the derivatives title of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The new derivatives regulations in Dodd-Frank are key to bringing regulation and oversight to this huge ($ 600 trillion) and largely unregulated market.
Republicans fought the new derivatives regulations, and Dodd-Frank more generally, tooth and nail, falsely claiming that regulating derivatives would have a detrimental effect on everything from energy prices to the makers of Snickers bars.
Today, Republicans broke out a new piece of evidence meant to dissuade the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — which has been charged with implementing the derivatives title of Dodd-Frank — from actually following through with the law’s requirements. They cited “a recently released report, backed by pro-business groups, that claims a hypothetical three percent margin requirement [for derivatives trades] could cost 130,000 jobs.” Here’s Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL):
One study, released just yesterday, concludes that upwards of 130,000 jobs could be lost if U.S. regulators impose new restrictions on derivatives transactions too broadly. Others may not see a loss of jobs, but will see increased costs because of these regulations — costs that will be passed along to consumers.
For one thing, Republicans are trying to convince regulators to exempt non-financial companies from derivatives requirements when such exemptions already exist. But for another, they are relying on a thoroughly discredited study circulated by, among others, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, two of the banking industry’s chief apologists.
The study, conducted by Keybridge Research on behalf of the Coalition for Derivatives End Users, which is an umbrella group that includes the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce, claims that derivatives regulation will cause 130,000 jobs to be lost. As MIT professor John Parsons wrote, the calculation left out a key step:
A regulation that requires using cash instead of credit costs the company on one side, but loosens its constraints on the other. The net effect on the company’s free cash flow is zero. Keybridge’s oversight here is a first order mistake. One could argue that the cash requirement is costlier than credit, but then you would have to figure out by how much. That would be an extra, very difficult step in the calculation, and any reasonable estimate for the differential would drive the headline number down enormously, possibly to zero.
“This is not any kind of research. This is people who want to overleverage and risk the system — because, once again, they will get the upside and taxpayers/all citizens get the downside,” added MIT’s Simon Johnson.
In fact, the firm that the Chamber and Roundtable relied upon has been touting its affiliation with various scholars — including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz — without those scholars knowing it. As the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin noted, “As I made calls about the relationship between Keybridge and the academics, names mysteriously disappeared from the group’s site.” Stiglitz himself said of Keybridge’s study: “The argument they make is particularly foolish…Companies are sitting on $ 2 trillion of cash. It’s just an embarrassment that they’d use that argument in the current context.”
This paper quantifies the global impact of climate change from several extreme events: local storms, heat waves, cold spells, floods, and droughts…. [C]limate change is calculated to increase the damages from these five extreme events by between $ 11 and $ 16 billion [sic] a year by 2100…. Summing the damages in this report with tropical cyclone and severe storm damages from the literature suggests that climate change may increase the overall damage from extreme events by $ 84 billion or 0.015 percent of world GDP.
Yes, two ‘leading’ economists, Robert Mendelsohn and Gokay Saher, actually wrote an entire paper for the World Bank that came to such a conclusion. It would be laughable were the potential consequences of such misanalysis not so serious.
For the record, when actual climate scientists and agricultural experts look at these and other damages they naturally come to a very different view (see Scientists find “net present value of climate change impacts” of $ 1240 TRILLION on current emissions path, making mitigation to under 450 ppm a must).
Coincidentally, another just-released study, “The Last Drop: Climate Change and the Southwest Water Crisis,” that actually looks in some detail at the scientific literature for just one region, finds that drought and reduced precipitation in the U.S. SW alone could cost up to $ 1 trillion by century’s end.
I don’t know who is going to be disdained more by future generations devastated by humanity’s apparent inability to preserve a livable climate — the fossil-fuel-friendly World Bank or the why-bother-reading-the-scientific-literature economics community.
For the umpteenth time, Memo to economists: Please read the scientific literature before opining on the impacts of global warming.
You would think that in any rational world, an “ultimate damage” analysis by the World Bank on “The global impact of climate change on extreme events” including droughts would include multiple citations to the significant scientific literature on droughts and the impacts of reduced precipitation. Or even cite one damn paper.
You would be wrong. The mainstream economics community has been taken over by a form of circular benchmarking, a self-delusion where everybody cites each other and ignores the scientific literature. I would note that the Mendelsohn and Saher cite multiple articles by proponents of traditional cost-benefit analysis for climate impacts, they don’t cite Harvard economist Martin Weitzman’s well-known work calling such an approach into question in this arena (see my post Harvard economist: Climate cost-benefit analyses are “unusually misleading,” warns colleagues “we may be deluding ourselves and others”).
I single out droughts here for one particular reason. I was chatting recently with one of the World Bank’s leading experts on development, someone who ran one of the in-country offices of a big developing country. I was commenting to him about the devastating impact of the intense deluges that hit developing countries in the past year. He told me he thought that the impact of extended drought was far worse than deluges because they lasted so long and went to the heart of the country’s ability to feed itself.
I believe that Dust-Bowlification — combined with the impact on food insecurity of Dust-Bowlification combined with other extreme events — is the single biggest impact that climate change is likely to have on most people for most of this century (until sea level rise gets serious in the latter decades).
Let me run through some of the scientific literature that Mendelsohn and Saher — and whoever reviewed the paper at the World Bank — didn’t deem worthy enough to include in their paper on “The global impact of climate change on extreme events” — even though they saw fit to cite their own work three times and Roger Pielke Jr.’s five times.
- NOAA: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe. This January 2009 PNAS paper finds
…the climate change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop…. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450-600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the ”dust bowl” era
The irreversible precipitation changes hit the U.S. Southwest, Southeast Asia, Eastern South America, Western Australia, Southern Europe, Southern Africa, and northern Africa.
Note also that this is only 450 to 600 ppm. We’re on track for 800 to 1000 ppm this century on our current emissions path — a path we are sure to stay on if we listen to the likes of Mendelsohn and Saher (see “Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!” and M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F).
The NOAA analysis is hardly the only drought analysis available to Mendelsohn and Saher.
- Back in October, the National Center for Atmospheric Research published a complete literature review, “Drought under global warming: a review,” (See NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path). That study makes clear that Dust-Bowlification may be the impact of human-caused climate change that hits the most people by mid-century, as the figure below suggests (click to enlarge, “a reading of -4 or below is considered extreme drought”):
The PDSI [Palmer Drought Severity Index] in the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl apparently spiked very briefly to -6, but otherwise rarely exceeded -3 for the decade (see here).
The large-scale pattern shown in Figure 11 [of which the figure above is part] appears to be a robust response to increased GHGs. This is very alarming because if the drying is anything resembling Figure 11, a very large population will be severely affected in the coming decades over the whole United States, southern Europe, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Chile, Australia, and most of Africa.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research notes “By the end of the century, many populated areas, including parts of the United States, could face readings in the range of -8 to -10, and much of the Mediterranean could fall to -15 to -20. Such readings would be almost unprecedented.”
But hey, Mendelsohn and Saher say droughts will only be contributing a few billion dollars a year to damages in 2100.
Now I suppose these two economists are free not to believe the scientific literature — but then they are obviously the wrong people to do such an analysis. In any case, to not even cite the literature even to dispute it demonstrates a willful ignorance of arguably the greatest threat to most of humanity.
For the record, the NCAR study merely models the IPCC’s “moderate” A1B scenario — atmospheric concentrations of CO2 around 520 ppm in 2050 and 700 in 2100. We’re currently on the A1F1 pathway, which would takes us to 1000 ppm by century’s end, but I’m sure with an aggressive program of energy R&D we could keep that to, say 900 ppm.
- The UK Met Office came to a similar view four years ago in their analysis, projecting severe drought over 40% of the Earth’s habited landmass by century’s end (see “The Century of Drought“).
The impact of just the heat stress on agriculture has also been studied in the scientific literature:
- “Half of world’s population could face climate-driven food crisis by 2100“: That headline is from the University of Washington news release on a January 2009 study in Science, “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat.” The study’s powerful final sentence is:
“Ignoring climate projections at this stage will only result in the worst form of triage.”
The release explains:
Rapidly warming climate is likely to seriously alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century and, without adaptation, will leave half the world’s population facing serious food shortages, new research shows….
“The stresses on global food production from temperature alone are going to be huge, and that doesn’t take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures,” said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.
Yes, the Science study is an underestimation of what is likely to happen since it ignores drought and Dust-Bowlification (so yes, technically, this isn’t a drought paper, it is a heat-wave paper, but the World Bank analysis was supposed to include the impacts of heat waves).
The projection of extended if not endless drought for the US Southwest has been studied a great deal:
- In 2007, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. And they were also only looking at a 720 ppm case.
- In December 2008, the Bush Administration quietly released a US Geological Survey stunner: SW faces “permanent drying” by 2050, which found:
The serious hydrological changes and impacts known to have occurred in both historic and prehistoric times over North America reflect large-scale changes in the climate system that can develop in a matter of years and, in the case of the more severe past megadroughts, persist for decades. Such hydrological changes fit the definition of abrupt change because they occur faster than the time scales needed for human and natural systems to adapt, leading to substantial disruptions in those systems. In the Southwest, for example, the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that reaches the level of aridity seen in historical droughts, and a quarter of the projections may reach this level of aridity much earlier.
An unprecedented combination of heat plus decades of drought could be in store for the Southwest sometime this century, suggests new research from a University of Arizona-led team….
“The bottom line is, we could have a Medieval-style drought with even warmer temperatures,” [lead author Connie] Woodhouse said.
- A new Environmental Research Letters article, “Characterizing changes in drought risk for the United States from climate change,” comes to a similar conclusion as the NCAR study, “Drought frequencies and uncertainties in their projection tend to increase considerably over time and show a strong worsening trend along higher greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, suggesting substantial benefits for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.” See especially Figure 4C.
And, as noted above, a new detailed review and analysis of the literature on just the SW alone finds drought and reduced precipitation cost up to $ 1 trillion by century’s end.
CONCLUSION
The World Bank paper by Robert Mendelsohn and Gokay Saher, “The global impact of climate change on extreme events,” is GIGO (Garbage in, Garbage out). While they don’t cite a single one of the major studies listed above, they reference Roger Pielke, Jr. 5 times, papers authored or coauthored by Richard Tol 3 times (see “TolGate“), William Nordhaus twice [still need to do my debunking post on his work], and Mendelsohn himself three times!
While they don’t reference one single scientific study focused on drought, even though that is one of the 5 extreme events they are supposed to be examining the impacts of, they have a dozen references on hurricanes and tropical cyclones (over 40% of all their references), although that is not one of those five.
The conclusions are laughable, though deadly serious, and the whole effort is another serious blow to the credibility of an institution still widely criticized for favoring fossil fuel projects over low-carbon projects. The paper notes:
This paper is a product of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, Finance Economics and Urban Department. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world.
It is a major embarrassment to everyone who was involved in this project, including the authors, for letting such GIGO be published under the imprimatur of the World Bank.
 ESPN (blog) |
Kobe cites Bynum's value to Lakers
OCRegister BOSTON — Asked about the importance of Andrew Bynum to the Lakers, Kobe Bryant said: “That's our biggest strength … our size.” Bynum, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom form a rare three-headed monster in the Lakers' frontcourt, although only two … Special teams on the stage Lakers long for big win Lakers look to pay back Celtics |
ESPN (blog) |
Kobe cites Bynum's value to Lakers
OCRegister BOSTON — Asked about the importance of Andrew Bynum to the Lakers, Kobe Bryant said: “That's our biggest strength … our size.” Bynum, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom form a rare three-headed monster in the Lakers' frontcourt, although only two … Special teams on the stage Lakers long for big win Lakers look to pay back Celtics |
ESPN (blog) |
Kobe cites Bynum's value to Lakers
OCRegister BOSTON — Asked about the importance of Andrew Bynum to the Lakers, Kobe Bryant said: “That's our biggest strength … our size.” Bynum, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom form a rare three-headed monster in the Lakers' frontcourt, although only two … Special teams on the stage Lakers look to pay back Celtics Lakers long for big win |
ESPN (blog) |
Kobe cites Bynum's value to Lakers
OCRegister BOSTON — Asked about the importance of Andrew Bynum to the Lakers, Kobe Bryant said: “That's our biggest strength … our size.” Bynum, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom form a rare three-headed monster in the Lakers' frontcourt, although only two … Special teams on the stage Lakers look to pay back Celtics Lakers long for big win |
As the Administration boosts the profile of the Cabinet, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is headed to the West Coast for a couple of appearances pushing back on the House Republican efforts to cut funding to the United Nations, and I spoke to her about it earlier this afternoon:
United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice said today that the success America has had in using sanctions against Iran should give pause to Republicans who want to weaken U.S. ties to the institution.
The new House majority has renewed pressure on the United Nations, seeking to cut some U.S. funding for the body and to tie further funding to reform efforts.
“A lot of the [GOP] members that are leading on this issue have had long-standing positions critical of the United Nations,” Rice told POLITICO in an interview Wednesday. “I think it’s important for them to recall the importance of this institution for our national security interests.”
For conservatives who want to maintain pressure on Iran, she said, "it would be a lot harder to do it with any efficacy without the ability to do it multilaterally through the Security Council to get the tough sanctions that we did last year."
The U.N. process, she said, also was critical in keeping Russian anti-aircraft systems out of Iranian hands, as well as preventing Chinese investment in the country’s oil industry and European investment in its financial sector.
