‘Boardwalk Empire’ Open Thread: Loss

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Nov 28, 2011 at 6:38 pm

This post contains spoilers for the Nov. 20 and Nov. 27 episodes of Boardwalk Empire.

I apologize for the delay in writing last week’s recap, but in a sense I’m glad I get to consider both of these episodes, in their predictability and very strong moments together. I also appreciate a chance to highlight Matt Zoller Seitz’s excellent essay on Boardwalk Empire‘s misplaced priorities when it comes to gender, privileging fairly conventional if convoluted gangster stories over the richer domestic dramas that the show mostly uses as pretty window dressing.

Working backwards, I agree with him that Angela’s death at the hands of Manny Horvitz, who has arrived in Atlantic City intending to kill Jimmy and shoots Louise, stealing a clandestine night with Angela, instead, was emotionally striking. Manny’s shock, and his recovery via the intensely cold like, “Your husband did this to you,” was one of the more precisely-executed emotional moments of the season. And yet, I’m disgruntled by the decision on two levels. First, it’s the equivalent of J.K. Rowling killing Remus and Tonks in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a moment when a piece of art needs some deaths to winnow the cast and illustrate emotional costs, but its creators don’t have the guts to lower a truly devastating blow on the audience by killing a main character. Second, there’s something really distasteful about the show’s regression to the norms of the past, where gay relationships inevitably end in death. It’s of a piece, I suppose, with the show’s generally punitive attitude towards sex. But I resent both the specific decision to kill off Angela and with her, one of the show’s legitimately interesting avenues of social exploration, and the general decision to default to killing the depressed lesbian.

The decision to have one of Margaret’s daughters struck down by polio seems to come from a similarly vengeful place. Whether she needs to confess that she’s sheltering with the man who murdered the father of her children, or that she’s betraying Nucky, Margaret clearly believes her sin is responsible for her misfortune. But at least that plotline gives rise to a more interesting speculation: in living with Nucky, has Margaret lost not just the health of one child, but the moral direction of another? Teddy plays a cruel joke on her when he pretends he’s stricken, too, and earns himself a slapping for it, while a weeping Margaret tells Nucky, “God help me, but he has his father’s cruelty,” only to have Nucky insist that he just wants attention, and knowing that his sister’s hospitalized “isn’t the same as understanding” the true magnitude of what’s befallen his family. But on their father-son trip to New York, Nucky realizes that something deeper than genetics or the loneliness of a little boy may be at play when Teddy reveals that he witnessed Nucky burn his own father’s house down, a poisonous revelation that ends with a deceptively sweet, “Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t tell.” Maybe Teddy’s just a child. But maybe in Nucky’s house, he’s learned that secrets are powerful, that there is something to be earned by keeping them.
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Economy

Rick Scott Says ‘I Care Completely’ About Homelessness After He Proposed Cutting All Funding For Homeless Programs

By Tanya Somanader on Nov 28, 2011 at 6:35 pm

Photo Credit: Naples News

In a state that is near the top of the national chart in food insecurity, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) took time this holiday to pass out Thanksgiving dinner to about 1,000 families at a shelter in East Naples. The shelter’s program fed about 7,000 families last week, with roughly 200 volunteers packing and distributing meals.

“I care completely about all these programs,” said Scott while handing out food. However, he possesses a singular way of showing it, as his sweeping budget cuts this year “slashed funding to some veteran and farm surplus programs that helped the homeless.” To justify those cuts, Scott simply explained, “all the programs are very important, but nobody wants their taxes to go up”:

“I care completely about all these programs,” said Scott, whose budget cuts earlier this year slashed funding to some veteran and farm surplus programs that helped the homeless.

“All the programs are very important, but nobody wants their taxes to go up,” Scott explained, noting that businesses also can help spur the economy. “They’ve got to grow. We’ve got to make this a place people can do well.”

One Jacksonville homeless shelter official noted that Scott “zeroed out all homeless funding” — $7 million worth — in his budget proposal. That funding supported programs dedicated to homelessness prevention, housing initiatives, and programs that “re-house” people once they’re on the street. “Not only that, he took out the line items so it can never be funded again,” said the official.

To show how much he cares about the homeless, Scott went further by vetoing $12 million in funding that state legislature had passed to support homeless veterans. There are an estimated 17,000 homeless veterans in Florida — the second highest in the nation. Overall, a record 17.2 million Americans went hungry last year.

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Security

Cain On Libya Stumble: ‘Yes, I Was Embarrassed By That’

By Ben Armbruster on Nov 28, 2011 at 6:04 pm

GOP presidential contender Herman Cain was on CNN today defending against another charge of an inappropriate relationship with a woman other than his wife, this time, an alleged 13-year affair with a woman whom Cain said “is an acquaintance who I thought was a friend.”

But also during the CNN interview, host Wolf Blitzer asked Cain about his infamous rambling and incoherent response to a question from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about where he stands on Libya. Cain claimed the Sentinel “pulled out 40 seconds” from his answer (actually it was five minutes) and conceded the incident was “embarrassing”:

CAIN: Was it embarrassing? Yes. Was I caught off guard? Yes. Because of a number of factors. That was a forty minute interview and they pulled out 40 seconds to embarrass me and they did. Yes I was embarrassed by that but that doesn’t mean that I did not know the answer. What I was doing was gathering my thoughts so I wouldn’t state anything incorrectly.

No one has said I said something wrong, they just questioned the pause and the fact that, yeah I was exhausted I was probably too tired to do that particular editorial board that particular day. And it ended up biting me and I ended up having a very embarrassing moment that went all over the place.

Watch the clip:

Cain has used the “I was probably too tired” defense with many of his embarrassing foreign policy gaffes throughout the campaign, raising suspicions as to whether he’d be ready for that “3 A.M phone call.” But if Cain wins, he says he’ll get a chance to sleep it off and start fresh. “The day after the Election Day, when I win the presidency, the day after, I’m gonna take a nap,” he said recently.

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Climate Progress

Radiation Covers 8% of Japan, Fukushima Crisis “Stunting Children’s Growth” (Though Not Directly Due to Radiation)

By Joe Romm on Nov 28, 2011 at 5:52 pm

NOTE: I am updating this post to reflect some of the comments, further research, and input by experts.

Japan’s science ministry says 8 per cent of the country’s surface area has been contaminated by radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

It says more than 30,000 square kilometres of the country has been blanketed by radioactive cesium.

The science ministry defines places with a concentration of more than 10,000 becquerels per square meter as “areas affected by the nuclear accident”…. The science ministry fine-tuned its methods by subtracting levels of naturally existing background radiation.

Fukushima, like most international stories, has a very short half life in the U.S. media — a lot shorter than that of radioactive cesium. As the NY Times noted back in March, “Over the long term, the big threat to human health is cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years.”

So the two stories that make today’s mash up headline come from ABC — the Australian Broadcasting Company, that is. The lead story is “Radiation covers 8pc of Japan”:

The ministry says most of the contamination was caused by four large plumes of radiation spewed out by the Fukushima nuclear plant in the first two weeks after meltdowns.

The government says some of the radioactive material fell with rain and snow, leaving the affected areas with accumulations of more than 10,000 becquerels of caesium per square metre.

As you can see from the map above (posted here), a large fraction of the affected area received 60,000 to 600,000 becquerels per square meter, which is a range that, I think, should cause concern. If you are in that zone, it is probably prudent to take steps to determine if you live, work or send your kids to school in places at the high end of that range — and, if so, take steps to avoid prolonged outdoor exposure.

As you can see on page 24 of “Fukushima Accident: Radioactive Releases and Potential Dose Consequences,” 300,000 becquerels per square metre is 5 milliSieverts in the first year and the 10 year dose is 19 mSv — considerably higher than 1 mSv per year. The International Atomic Energy Agency clearly states, in its “Radiation Safety” booklet:

The dose limits for practices are intended to ensure that no individual is committed to unacceptable risk due to radiation exposure. For the public the limit is 1 mSv in a year, or in special circumstances up to 5 mSv in a single year provided that the average does over five consecutive years does not exceed 1 mSv per year.

It is true that people do not spend all of their time outdoors and the additional cancer rates at these levels are quite small.

But based on my conversations with experts, including NRDC’s Tom Cochran, anybody who lives in that area of 60,000 to 600,000 becquerels per square metre has a legitimate cause for concern — since they don’t really have any way of knowing whether they are in the low range zone or the high range zone. They should certainly take steps to acquire more information about the radiation exposure for themselves and their family, and then make decisions on their own about the risk they are willing to take. I will do a post on this later in the week.

The NYT noted the danger of cesium:

Cesium-137 mixes easily with water and is chemically similar to potassium. It thus mimics how potassium gets metabolized in the body and can enter through many foods, including milk. After entering, cesium gets widely distributed, its concentrations said to be higher in muscle tissues and lower in bones.

Climate Progress previously reported on one of the impacts of all that radiation (see Fukushima Surprise: Radioactive Rice “Far Exceeding” Safe Levels Found in Japan).

It must be pointed out that according to the best scientific evidence, it is prudent to avoid even low levels of radiation:

A preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even low doses of ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays and X-rays, are likely to pose some risk of adverse health effects, says a new report from the National Academies’ National Research Council.

Now, ABC reports, “Fukushima crisis ‘stunting children’s growth’ ” — but the cause may surprise you:

“Thousands of children living in the fallout zone are confined indoors because of radiation fears” (Photo: Reuters)

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OR COMMENT

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Justice

Newt Gingrich’s Latest Assault On The Constitution: Drug Test Americans Before They Get ‘Any Kind Of Federal Aid’

By Tanya Somanader on Nov 28, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Across the country, Republican governors are pushing policies that mandate drug-testing for all welfare recipients and marginalize low-income Americans in the process. Now, the latest GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich is trying that idea on the national stage. When asked by Yahoo News’ Chris Moody for his thoughts on how to reform the U.S.’s failed war on drugs, Gingrich declared that “we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user.” His first and foremost step? Drug test Americans “before you get any kind of federal aid“:

[MOODY:] Speaking of Ron Paul, at the last debate, he said that the war on drugs has been an utter failure. We’ve spent billions of dollars since President Nixon and we still have rising levels of drug use. Should we continue down the same path given the amount of money we’ve spent? How can we reform our approach?

[GINGRICH:] I think that we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user. It could be through testing before you get any kind of federal aid. Unemployment compensation, food stamps, you name it.

It has always struck me that if you’re serious about trying to stop drug use, then you need to find a way to have a fairly easy approach to it and you need to find a way to be pretty aggressive about insisting–I don’t think actually locking up users is a very good thing. I think finding ways to sanction them and to give them medical help and to get them to detox is a more logical long-term policy.

Gingrich’s first step would likely run headlong into the Constitution. As UCLA Professor Adam Winkler noted, random drug testing is a “suspicion-less search” and “the Supreme Court has upheld the ability of government to mandate random drug tests in a few limited circumstances,” most often in “high-risk public safety environments.” In fact, courts have struck down such policies again and again.

The fact that Gingrich’s first thought regarding drug users points to federal aid recipients should not be surprising given his low opinion of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. He once insisted that an unemployed mechanic receiving jobless benefits was made lazy by that “welfare.” Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have been unable to find work for a year or more. And yet, to Gingrich, “it is fundamentally wrong” to give these people jobless aid “for doing nothing.” Unless, of course, we drug test them first.

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Alyssa

Gay Americans, Censorship, And ‘After The Gold Rush’ At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Nov 28, 2011 at 5:23 pm

I spent a day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York over the holiday, and saw two terrific exhibits: the reopened Islamic art wing, about which much more to come, and “After the Gold Rush,” a contemporary photography show. Two pieces in the latter exhibit struck me in particular.

First, Philip-Lorca diCorcia took his 1991 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and used it to tweak conservatives who were hysterical over NEA funding for a traveling show of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work. He parceled out the money in small sums to male prostitutes and drug addicts, paying them posing fees and producing a series of tender, lovely portraits. In my favorite, a young man named Todd M. Brooks, appears washed in blue through a cheap motel window, framed in red window trim, and against a patterned blue bedspread. It’s not Picasso, and diCorcia’s approach isn’t a perfect solution to the problem of artists exploiting vulnerable subjects. But it’s a creative political stunt, with better results than usually come from those sorts of origins.

In the second, Robert Gober superimposes a man’s hand between two newspaper articles, clipped neatly and placed on a shell-strewn beach. Below his hand, the article refers to Matthew Shepard’s death. Above it, a letter to the editor argues that “Orthodox Jews, conservative Christians and others have a right to speak out against homosexuality without being placed in the category of thuggery.” While the piece obviously precedes Jonathan Rauch’s provocative and important piece in the December issue of the Advocate arguing that gay people should tolerate a certain amount of anti-gay sentiment as a sign that they’re legally and socially secure enough to practice tolerance, it’s a useful encapsulation of the dilemma behind that argument. It’s hard to cast off past threats if you’re not entirely sure they’re past.

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NEWS FLASH

Berkeley Police Defend Actions By Sensationally Claiming Protesters Could’ve Used Lethal Violence | On Nov. 9, UC Berkeley campus police used heavy-handed tactics to suppress protests that ended up injuring numerous students. In a statement released today, the UC Berkeley Police Officers’ Association sensationally rationalized these tactics by saying that the protesters could have used lethal force:

Society has changed significantly since 1964 when peaceful UC Berkeley student protesters organized a 10-hour sit-in in Sproul Hall and 10,000 students held a police car at bay – spawning change and the birth of our nation’s Free Speech Movement.

However proud we can all be of UC Berkeley’s contribution to free speech in America, no one can deny this: Our society in 2011 has become an extremely more violent place to live and to protect. No one understands the effects of this violence more than those of us in law enforcement.

Disgruntled citizens in this day and age express their frustrations in far more violent ways – with knives, with guns and sometimes by killing innocent bystanders. Peaceful protests can, in an instant, turn into violent rioting, ending in destruction of property or worse – the loss of lives. Police officers and innocent citizens everywhere are being injured, and in some instances, killed.

In the back of every police officer’s mind is this: How can I control this incident so it does not escalate into a seriously violent, potentially life-threatening event for all involved?

While students were calling the protest “non-violent,” the events on November 9th were anything but nonviolent. In previous student Occupy protests, protesters hit police officers with chairs, bricks, spitting, and using homemade plywood shields as weapons – with documented injuries to officers.

At a moment’s notice, the November 9th protest at UC Berkeley could have turned even more violent than it did, much like the Occupy protests in neighboring Oakland.

Noticeably absent from this rationalization is any evidence that student protesters were on the verge of using lethal violence against police officers.

LGBT

Ultra-Orthodox ‘Torah Declaration’ Calls For Ex-Gay Therapy For All Who ‘Struggle’ With Homosexuality

By Zack Ford on Nov 28, 2011 at 5:15 pm

Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky

A group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders have secretly passed around a “Torah Declaration” on “The Torah Stance on Homosexuality.” It rebukes homosexuality as being “not an acceptable lifestyle or a genuine identity” and assumes that gays are by definition “unable to find happiness in a loving relationship.” To abide by the Torah, the Declaration stridently demands ex-gay therapy, including of teenagers, to repair “childhood emotional wounds”:

We emphatically reject the notion that a homosexually inclined person cannot overcome his or her inclination and desire. Behaviors are changeable. The Torah does not forbid something which is impossible to avoid. Abandoning people to lifelong loneliness and despair by denying all hope of overcoming and healing their same-sex attraction is heartlessly cruel. [...]

The therapy consists of reinforcing the natural gender-identity of the individual by helping him or her understand and repair the emotional wounds that led to its disorientation and weakening, thus enabling the resumption and completion of the individual’s emotional development…There is no other practical, Torah-sanctioned solution for this issue. [...]

It requires tremendous bravery and fortitude for a person to confront and deal with same-sex attraction. For example a sixteen-year-old who is struggling with this issue may be confused and afraid and not know whom to speak to or what steps to take. We must create an atmosphere where this teenager (or anyone) can speak freely to a parent, rabbi, or mentor and be treated with love and compassion. Authority figures can then guide same-sex strugglers towards a path of healing and overcoming their inclinations.

This declaration is incredibly more dismissive of the lives of gays and lesbians than the more affirming Statement of Principles many Modern Orthodox rabbis signed in July 2010. These theology-based therapies, along with the notion that gays are incapable of love and doomed to loneliness, present an incredible potential for harm to young people. Jayson Littman, who published the declaration publicly for the first time today, shared a quote from ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Rapoport: “I am not obligated to believe in a failed therapy because it fits my theology better.” Point in fact, these rabbis are using their theology to deny decades worth of scientific knowledge, oblivious to the incredible threat they pose to young people’s mental health in doing so.

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Climate Progress

Erratic, Extreme Day-to-Day Weather Puts Climate Change in New Light and Creates Potential New Amplifying Feedback

By Climate Guest Blogger on Nov 28, 2011 at 4:59 pm

JR: Here’s yet more research on how our weather is becoming more extreme and how that could lead to higher CO2 levels than expected.

Princeton researchers found for the first time that day-to-day weather conditions have become more erratic in the past generation. Days have increasingly fluctuated between sunny and dry, and cloudy and rainy with little in-between, which can have negative consequences for ecosystems, plants, solar-energy production and other factors that depend upon consistent weather. From 1997 to 2007, rainfall became highly erratic for much of the globe, particularly in tropical areas. Green areas indicate that the day-to-day variability increased so that those areas experienced more days at one extreme or another, either dry or a downpour with little weather variation in-between.

by Morgan Kelly, Princeton University

The first climate study to focus on variations in daily weather conditions has found that day-to-day weather has grown increasingly erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall affecting more than a third of the planet.

Princeton University researchers recently reported in the Journal of Climate that extremely sunny or cloudy days are more common than in the early 1980s, and that swings from thunderstorms to dry days rose considerably since the late 1990s. These swings could have consequences for ecosystem stability and the control of pests and diseases, as well as for industries such as agriculture and solar-energy production, all of which are vulnerable to inconsistent and extreme weather, the researchers noted.

The day-to-day variations also could affect what scientists can expect to see as the Earth’s climate changes, according to the researchers and other scientists familiar with the work. Constant fluctuations in severe conditions could alter how the atmosphere distributes heat and rainfall, as well as inhibit the ability of plants to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, possibly leading to higher levels of the greenhouse gas than currently accounted for.

Economy

Congress Tries To Undercut Wall Street Reform Provision Aimed At Regulating Risky Financial Instruments

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 28, 2011 at 4:50 pm

For months, Republicans have been trying to undermine the Dodd-Frank financial reform law — passed in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis — by cutting budgets for market regulators, obstructing nominees, and advancing bills that would weaken the law’s key provisions. But sometimes efforts to dismantle the law take on a more bipartisan flavor.

One of the key sections of the Dodd-Frank law has to do with swaps, the complex financial instruments that felled, among others, insurance giant American International Group. Before the 2008 financial crisis, the swaps market was totally opaque, giving neither customers nor regulators any sense of what the instruments actually cost or how much risk was building up in the financial system.

Dodd-Frank brings transparency to this market by forcing swap trades onto open exchanges — where they can be seen by everyone — rather than allowing backroom wheeling and dealing in the instruments to continue. But a bill authored by Reps. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), as the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgensen explained, would take these bits of the bill out at the knees:

Representative Scott Garrett , a New Jersey Republican, has teamed up with Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat, to introduce the Swap Execution Facility Clarification Act. It would bar the Securities and Exchange Commission and the C.F.T.C. from requiring swap execution facilities to have a minimum number of participants or mandating displays of prices. Both mechanisms promote transparency.

Mr. Garrett said the bill directed regulators “to provide market participants with the flexibility” they need to obtain price discovery. This means maintaining the old system that can keep prices in the shadows.

On Nov. 15, a House subcommittee approved the bill by a voice vote.

As Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler — whose agency is charged with regulating swaps under Dodd-Frank — explained, “economists for decades have shown that transparency lowers margins, leads to greater liquidity and more competition in the marketplace.” “Transparent pricing is also a critical feature of lowering the risk at the banks, and at the derivatives clearinghouses as well,” he said.

As David Min and I explained back in April, 2010, opacity in the swaps market “means that no one — regulators, investors, or even the dealers themselves — has a good handle on the systemic risk these instruments pose, or who is bearing the risk. This prevents regulators from being able to take steps to reduce systemic risk and creates the conditions for financial panics.” Dodd-Frank did a lot to deal with this problem, but Congress now seems to be aiming to undo that progress.

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