On May 5th, Environment America and the Sierra Club released a joint report, Summer Gas Prices: Beating the Heat with Clean Cars, that evaluates the impact of higher federal fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. CAP’s Valeri Vasquez and Junayd Mahmood have the story
I’m going to put this in my unlikely to work file:
Factories making sought-after Apple iPads and iPhones in China are forcing staff to sign pledges not to commit suicide, an investigation has revealed. [...] After a spate of suicides last year, managers at the factories ordered new staff to sign pledges that they would not attempt to kill themselves, according to researchers.
In a genuinely unrelated move, I yesterday got my first Android-powered phone after having been an iPhone user since their first week of availability. The big picture in the factories is that Apple’s ability to sell iPads appears to be primarily constrained by their ability to get the necessary components at an adequate scale and yet doesn’t want to raise prices presumably for reasons of longer-term strategy. The result is incredible stress at the point of production that you have to assume will end with higher Chinese wages soon enough.
-I want to hear Lady Gaga and The Boss do a duet of her latest single.
-I do hope The Dark Tower comes through as a multi-media project, but it’s not looking good.
-I wonder if JDate’s new film club‘s going to include Keeping the Faith in the selections list.
-Kathryn Bigelow is going to send an Australian dude to kill (or perhaps fail to kill, if the script isn’t updated) Osama bin Laden.
-I’m reading a book that kind of explains why there are so many father-daughter crime movies all of a sudden, although I’m not sure that’s what Dr. Peggy Drexler intended me to take away from it.
Americans know who’s to blame for spiking gas prices: Big Oil and Wall Street.
As oil prices have skyrocketed, sending gas prices surging to $4 a gallon or more around the nation, American families have suffered. Although the surging prices threaten the national economic recovery as Americans cut back their household spending and driving, oil companies and commodity speculators have reaped billion-dollar payouts. Fossil-funded conservatives blame environmental regulations and President Obama, but a new poll by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN shows that the American public, no matter what party, know that they can just follow the money to find who’s to blame. Nine out of ten Americans believe that oil companies and speculators are to blame for the recent increase in gas prices:
– 89 percent of Americans believe oil companies deserve a great deal of (61 percent) or some (27 percent) blame for the recent increase in gas prices.
– 90 percent of Americans believe Wall Street speculators deserve a great deal of (59 percent) or some (31 percent) blame for the recent increase in gas prices.
Remarkably, the poll found that a majority of Americans of every ideological stripe — Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative — believe that oil companies and speculators deserve a great deal of blame for gas prices. Only self-identified Tea Party supporters break with the rest of the American public, with about 4 in 10 putting the onus on Big Oil and Wall Street.
By comparison, only a quarter of Americans believe that Obama, Republicans, or environmental policies deserve a great deal of blame. (About half of Tea Partiers put most of the blame on Obama and environmental regulations.)
Goldman Sachs, a top commodity speculator, smashed investor estimates with its first-quarter profits, just after admitting a speculative bubble was driving up oil prices and hurting the US economy. Exxon made $5 million an hour the first three months of this year, while complaining that Congress is considering taking away the tax subsidies that have allowed it to pay zero income taxes. Koch Industries, as a top oil distributor, refiner, and trader, is funneling a fraction of its billion-dollar profits to conservative politicians and lobbyists who fight oil market regulation. Glencore, the world’s largest diversified commodities trader, is planning one of the largest IPOs in history, creating four new billionaires and several hundred millionaires.
Republicans in Congress are now fighting attempts to rein in speculators and end subsidies for oil companies.
Sarah Palin’s family has already seen two big paydays from their participation in reality television shows, and they’re about to add a third. The BIO Channel (currently airing four primetime hours of programming about American criminals) has signed Bristol Palin for ten episodes of a half-hour show chronicling her move to Los Angeles to room with her fellow Dancing with the Stars finalist and Disney star Kyle Massey and his brother Christopher.
Here’s what the Palins have raked in so far:
Sarah Palin’s Alaska, $2 million: TLC paid Palin $250,000 per episode for eight episodes of her nature-adjacent reality show, below the $1-$1.5 million per episode rate Palin was apparently looking for when she started shopping the program. When Sarah Palin’s Alaska premiered strong, the former Governor reportedly pursued a contract renewal that would have brought her up to the $1 million level. But after ratings declined significantly, and the show’s hunting scenes sparked controversy, TLC declined to renew it.
Dancing With the Stars, at least $365,000: Networks are loath to confirm reality show salaries publicly, but in 2009, Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson’s contract with the show was leaked, providing a sense of the DWTS salary structure, which paid participants a base rate of $125,000 no matter how far they make it in the competition, and an escalating per-week rate as they survive elimination. Under the terms of that contract, Bristol Palin earned at least $365,000 for making the finals, and could have made more if the terms of the contract have been renegotiated more favorably since then.
Dan Silberman, BIO’s Vice President for Publicity, told ThinkProgress by email that the company won’t release details about Palin’s new salary. “It is a company policy that we do not disclose financial matters,” he said.
Bristol Palin’s reality salary is hard to calculate: she’ll come into her new show more famous and with more of a track record than people like the cast of the Real Housewives franchise, who make roughly $30,000 per episode, but not as famous as someone like Ozzy Osbourne, whose family started out their reality series with salaries of $5,000 per episode when the genre was still fairly new and ended up banking $1 million a pop. But a conservative estimate might put Bristol Palin at $50,000 per episode, the same as what Donald Trump made during his first two seasons with The Apprentice, bringing her $500,000 for the whole run of the show.
If our estimate is accurate, that would bring the Palin’s collective income from reality television alone to nearly $3 million since September 2010.
By Alyssa Rosenberg
Over the weekend, pursuant to both my thinking about what constitutes a racially progressive movie, and my general weakness for romantic comedies, my friend Tyler and I went to go see Jumping the Broom. As is often the case with these kinds of ensemble movies, the flick works better at the margins than at the center: Paula Patton and Laz Alonso are very attractive people without much in the way of discernable acting talent, but Loretta Devine and Angela Bassett go at their feud with terrific energy, Romeo has grown up cute and funny as a college guy with a taste for older women, particularly the warm and wry Tasha Smith.
The movie’s politics are fairly confused. The main character’s pledge that she won’t sleep with another man until she marries is more an excuse for megachurch pastor T.D. Jakes to give the movie his blessing (he marries Patton and Alonso on-screen) than the product of any real religious conviction. The wealthy family in the movie has secrets, but it’s the working-class one that actively causes the most trouble, whether Devine’s character is delivering a venomous non-blessing at a wedding rehearsal dinner or forcible unearthing buried family history. There’s something uncomfortable about a story that makes some obnoxious members of the talented tenth out to be the victim of a postal clerk who cares about preserving traditional elements of African-American wedding ceremonies.
But honestly, the most revealing thing for me about the movie was the mix of trailers before it played, which included Zoe Saldana’s revenge flick Colombiana; Courageous, the latest movie out of Sherwood Pictures, a production company that’s actually an outreach effort of Sherwood Baptist Church in Georgia; and Captain America. Which is to say it was a weirdly tonally uneven mix, attempting to appeal to wildly disparate impulses in the Mother’s Day crowd that showed up for a Christian-tinted romcom. There’s something weird about the fact that 12.6 percent of the American population somehow counts as a niche audience, that we’ve got enough superhero movies to fill the 15-odd minutes before the latest Marvel flick starts, but not enough movies with African-American stars and ensemble casts to produce a thematically coherent slate of trailers before a movie aimed at black people.
House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) explained in December that, in his view, Washington’s role is “to serve the banks.” The rest of the Republicans on his committee have embraced that mantra wholeheartedly, trying to roll back key parts of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law while collecting big donations from the financial services industry.
To that end, Republicans are riding to the aid of the country’s biggest mortgage servicers, which are currently negotiating a settlement with a bi-partisan group of attorneys general over abuses that came to light during the foreclosure fraud scandal (including the widespread use of “robo-signers“).
The AGs have suggested having the banks pay a penalty by reducing loan principal for troubled homeowners by a certain amount (potentially $20 billion). But Republicans in both the House and the Senate, as well as eight Republican attorneys general, have sided with the banks against homeowners, saying that the banks should not be forced to pay for their past misdeeds.
Previously, Republicans just derided the proposed settlement as a “shakedown,” but now they have a new reason for supporting the interests of banks over homeowners. According to a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder by four Republicans on the Financial Services Committee, reducing loans for troubled homeowners could impede the economic recovery:
“The settlement approach being pursued — which ignores Congressional prerogatives and bypasses the legislative process — is unwise policy and potentially unlawful,” the lawmakers said in the letter…“We have concerns about the potential terms of the servicing settlement because, among other things, we believe that a $20 billion principal reduction fund will create incentives to default that could worsen the housing crisis and impede economic recovery.“
However, as Center for American Progress housing policy consultant Alon Cohen noted, a foreclosure costs a servicer roughly $59,000 in filing fees, legal services, and maintenance of the foreclosed-upon property. Each foreclosure, in addition to the obvious damage to the former homeowner, also causes surrounding homes to lose one to 1.5 percent of their value and lowers tax revenue for the community. Keeping homeowners in their homes prevents all of those negative consequences, and a recent report from the International Monetary Fund showed that the effect of more aggressive loan reductions on bank balance sheets “is likely to be limited.”
At the moment, nearly 30 percent of homeowners are underwater on the mortgages — meaning they owe more than their home is currently worth — and housing prices last quarter showed their largest drop since 2008. Clearly, foreclosure relief is desperately needed, but House Republicans are siding with the banks, potentially leaving homeowners with one less avenue for aid.
After a wave of Republicans came out for ending billions in taxpayer subsidies to big oil companies, first quarter profits showed major oil companies like Shell and ExxonMobil made about $35 billion in profits. Although observers expected that news of record profits might mean the end of some $70 billion in taxpayer subsidies, fiscal conservatives were disappointed last week when the Republicans voted in lockstep to extend oil subsidies.
ThinkProgress spoke with Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC), a freshman Republican who voted to preserve the subsidies, at a Republican Party dinner in South Carolina on Friday. Asked if giving taxpayer money to massively profitable companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron is “fair,” Scott danced around the issue. “Fair is a relative word,” Scott claimed, before launching into a discussion about more domestic drilling:
FANG: Government’s obviously spending billions every year in oil subsidies and it was just found out this week that in the first quarter, the big oil companies, Exxon, Chevron, whatever, made thirty five billion. And they’re still getting taxpayer money. What do you think of that? Is that fair?
SCOTT: Well, A) I have not seen the report so I can’t tell you whether it’s fair or not. I think everybody — fair is a relative word.
Watch it:
Republicans have made cutting funds for NPR, regulators for Wall Street, the EPA, and Pell Grants a priority. While they rail about the national debt, none of these programs come close to the amount of money taxpayers are forced to give to big oil companies. As Rep. Scott said, “fair is a relative word.”
Scott tried to change the topic by talking about drilling. But as the Energy Information Agency has explained, new domestic drilling would not change prices at the pump. If anything, the push for new drilling, along with extending oil subsidies, is another ploy to boost the profits of big oil businesses.
I’ve seen a bunch of approving links to Oliver Reichenstein’s article advocating a “business class” pricing model for online media. The idea is that the information is free, but paying customers get a superior user experience. It’s a nice idea, but I actually question the analogy. Consider the question he started with:
But the flight industry is a tough environment too, and they found ways. So tell me: Why do people fly Business Class? In the end, an airplane brings me to the same place regardless of whether I fly Economy or Business Class and the massive price-increase I pay doesn’t compare the difference in value.
Two issues here. One is that despite extensive subsidies and regulatory protections, it’s not at all clear that “legacy” airlines actually have found a way. The number of these firms keeps shrinking (witness the United-Continental merger) over time. But more to the point, it seems to me that relatively few business class fliers actually do pay for it. Instead airlines are basically living off principle-agent problems. When lawyers at nice firms travel for work, they fly business class and charge the airfare to the client. Or people fly coach for work, racking up frequent flier miles, and then use the miles to buy upgrades. In those cases, it seems likely that if the individual enjoying the business class seat could pocket the price difference as cash they might. But they can’t so they don’t. Either way, it’s called “business class” in part because of the expectation that you won’t actually be paying for it out of pocket.
This model works in media, too. Nobody buys a Bloomberg terminal or a National Journal subscription, instead they work at places that pay the fee. Anyone who can get themselves into that kind of “this counts as a legitimate business expense” is well-positioned to make money. Selling directly to consumers is much harder.
It should be said that this isn’t just a matter of third party payment, it’s also about taxes. If your firm buys me business class airfare, that’s a tax deduction for you. If you paid me the same amount of money, then I’d have to pay taxes on it and wouldn’t be able to afford the business class ticket.
Lez Get Real’s Paul Brooks reports that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is leading the Navy to allow gay couples to marry on Navy bases in the five states that allow same-sex marriage. “The changes came in the form of an April 13 advisory memo issued to all chaplains which said the Chaplain Corps was revising its Tier I DADT Repeal training manuals, which had previously indicated that same-sex marriages are not authorized on federal property”:
Regarding the use of base facilities for same-sex marriages, legal counsel has concluded that generally speaking, base facility use is sexual orientation neutral. If the base is located in a state where same-sex marriage is legal, then base facilities may normally be used to celebrate the marriage….Facility usage is determined by local policies…This is a change to previous training that stated same-sex marriages are not authorized on federal property. [...]
[A] chaplain may officiate a same-sex, civil marriage: if it is conducted in accordance with the laws of a state which permits same-sex marriages or union; and if the chaplain is, according to applicable state and local laws, otherwise fully certified to officiate that state’s marriages.
It’s unclear if the other branches of the Armed Forces will issue similar rulings, but the sticking point here seems to be that the use of a chapel is determined by the federal government and that it doesn’t extend a benefit to a gay couple and is thus not in violation of the Defense of Marriage Act.
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