Matt Yglesias has left ThinkProgress to join Slate, where he writes the “Moneybox” blog. You can check it out here.
We wish Matt continued success and thank him for nearly three years of insightful blogging here at ThinkProgress.
NEWS FLASH
Calling Keystone XL Opponents ‘Naive,’ Austan Goolsbee Bets On Climate Destruction | Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, believes the activists who successfully opposed the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline are “naive.” “It’s a bit naïve to think the tar sands would not be developed if they don’t build that pipeline,” Goolsbee said today in Toronto at the Economic Club of Canada, reports Bloomberg. “Eventually, it’s going to be built. It may go to the Pacific, it may go through Nebraska, but it’s going to be built somewhere.” Goolsbee’s bet that the carbon bomb of Canada’s tar sands will be developed is a bet for climate destruction.
Update
According to the Financial Post, it’s Goolsbee who is naive. “The reality is that anything short of a go-ahead in December for Keystone XL would plunge the oil sands sector into disarray until new solutions move forward,” Canada’s top business magazine wrote just before President Obama spiked the pipeline.
NEWS FLASH
Santorum Signs Pledge Defending Christian Influence Over Society | Right Wing Watch notes that Rick Santorum is so far the only presidential candidate to sign Open Doors Ministry’s “Pledge for Religious Freedom.” The pledge claims that “religious freedom includes the right to employ religious arguments…when contending for or against laws and policies, such as laws designed to protect the unborn and traditional marriage.” Likely referencing Catholic Charities’ adoption services, it also demands “the right of individuals and of religious communities not to be forced to participate in, or to forfeit their employment because of refusal to participate in, activities that deeply offend their religious conscience.” It’s no surprise Santorum signed the pledge without hesitation, given he has frequently called for laws to be bound by religious morals, even if people suffer in the Christian tradition.
NEWS FLASH
Kansas Still Criminalizes ‘Unnatural’ Sex Eight Years After This Law Was Declared Unconstitutional | Eight years ago, in its landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court held that it is almost never the government’s business what consenting adults do in the bedroom. Among other things, this law sounded the death knell to so-called sodomy laws that criminalized same-sex coupling. Nevertheless, the state of Kansas has yet to repeal its unconstitutional law criminalizing “‘unnatural’ sexual activities, like oral and anal sex.” In response, a civil rights group known as the Kansas Equality Coalition is petitioning Gov. Sam Brownback to erase this blight on his state’s legal code. Given Brownback’s long history of anti-gay activity, however, it is unlikely that he will be swayed by something as insignificant as the Constitution.
Global Warming Hates Beer
Like coffee and chocolate, beer is one of the common pleasures of life being damaged now by global warming. Good beer depends on water, barley, and hops — all of which are being disrupted by greenhouse pollution from burning fossil fuels. Jenn Orgolini, sustainability director for Colorado’s New Belgium Brewery, the third-largest craft brewing company in the United States, warns that climate change is hurting beer quality today:
This is not a problem that’s going to happen someday, and this is not a problem that’s just going to impact some industries. If you drink beer now, the issue of climate change is impacting you right now.
“For our brewery, growth depends on abundant clean water and quality barley and hops—and climate change puts those ingredients at risk. Our supply chain—including barley, hops and water—is especially vulnerable to weather in the short-term and to climate change in the long-term,” Orgolini told Forbes.
Heavy rains in Australia and drought in England have hurt malting barley crops this year.
Climate change has caused the quality and yield of Saaz hops — the key ingredient in Czech pilsner lager — to decline. Global warming pollution will cause further declines, scientists found in 2009. Yields of malting barley will also decline in coming years as droughts increase because of carbon pollution.
‘The Walking Dead’ Open Thread: Suffer The Little Children
This post contains spoilers through the Nov. 27 episode of The Walking Dead.
I’ll admit to having felt like this season of The Walking Dead has spent a lot of time with the characters, human and formerly human, stewing in the same juices: the endless hunt for Sophia, the secrets of Hershel’s farm, the insecurities of Dale, Glen, Darryl and Andrea, the question of whether Rick or Shane is better suited to lead and to love Lori. Fortunately, the stunning final scene of this episode tied all of those threads neatly together. After massacring the walkers in the barn, who they’ve convinced themselves aren’t human, one more emerges: Sophia, changed and ravening. And Rick finds a bridge between Shane’s harsh moral view of the apocalypse and Hershel’s idealism, shaped by isolation from the outside world, and shoots the girl in an act of self-protection and mercy.
I thought the scene did a wonderful job of giving everyone a human moment that addressed, if not resolved, their arc. Glenn steps up to protect Maggie, and she protects her father, grieving with him, but doesn’t try to stop her lover. Darryl, after rejecting Carol’s profession of affection with a brutal, “Leave me be. Stupid bitch,” earlier in the episode, holds her as she sees what’s become of her daughter, and as she witnesses her death. Carl, who told his mother, “I’m not leaving until we find Sophia…I was thinking, she’s going to like it here, this place. It could be a home,” who tried on a man’s cursing to go with a man’s hat earlier in the episode, is reduced to childhood by his friend’s transformation and execution, sobbing in Lori’s arms. Andrea steps up to the front lines with Shane, unaware that Shane’s emotions and his move to start the massacre are deeply engaged with Lori, who is off to the side here. T-Dog is, for once, unconflicted and part of the firing line. And Dale is late to the slaughter, protected from his own dehumanization by fate if not design.
So is the conclusion that Rick is right? Do the reasons you do things matter as much as the fact that you do them? Does Hershel’s determination to see the humanity in the walkers redeem the risks he’s taken, his denial of outside reality? Does the murder Rick commits out of a profound sympathy for the little girl his community’s lost mean something different than the brutal executions carried out by the other members of that community? And does Lori’s declaration to Shane that “Even if it’s yours, it’s not gonna be yours. And it’s never gonna be yours. And there’s nothing you can do to change that,” actually make it so? The Walking Dead is very good at posing moral questions, though I’m not sure it’s as good at knowing what its own answers to them are. Even if the show doesn’t reveal them to us all at once, I’d like a sense that they have a coherent and decisive worldview.
NEWS FLASH
In First Interview Since Injury, Iraq Vet Scott Olsen Urges Movement To Stay Peaceful | In October, Iraq veteran Scott Olsen was directly hit with a tear gas canister fired by the Oakland Police Department, suffering a head injury. Earlier this month, Olsen was finally released from hospitalization. Indybay.org’s David Id interviewed Olsen in his first public appearance at Occupy Oakland since his injuries. He explained that he is still recovering (his speech slurs at several points during the interview) and at the end urges the movement to stay peaceful despite police brutality. Watch it:
College Students Across Florida Rally Against Gov. Rick Scott’s ‘Relentless Attack On Higher Education’
Throughout this week, Florida college students will hold rallies to protest Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) hostility to higher education and proposed tuition hikes:
Across the state this week students at seven college campuses will gather to protest what they call a “relentless attack on higher education” by Gov. Rick Scott.
Scott has been a vocal skeptic of the liberal arts emphasis of traditional higher ed. [...] Last month he sent out a lengthy probe out to leaders of all 11 public universities, seemingly asking them to justify themselves by providing information about their costs, programs and graduates’ chosen fields and salaries.
According to the protesters’ press release, “Along with the Florida Legislature, Gov Scott has taken aim at students through countless bills. The tuition of all state universities is poised to rise 15 percent each year for up to a decade.” They also note that the state’s academic scholarship, Bright Futures, is covering less each year, and the program could lose funding all together. Additionally, “this attack on public education comes within the context of an economic downturn affecting hard working middle class Floridian families.”
Florida’s public university system has already seen a 24 percent drop in state funding over the last four years. Yet Scott wants to make more deep cuts to Florida’s public school liberal arts programs, needlessly politicizing academic disciplines and devaluing the skills of millions.
Scott caused an uproar last month when he said the state didn’t need any more anthropology majors, arguing that liberal arts fields should receive less state funding because, he claimed, they don’t help “create jobs” or spur the economy. (Ironically, Scott paid $18,000 a year for his own daughter to major in anthropology in college.)
In March, Scott faced protests from students, teachers, and parents after he unveiled a state budget proposal that slashed $3.3 billion from all levels of schools statewide, which many said would wipe out music, art, and language programs. Education was the main target of Scott’s $5 billion in proposed spending cuts — part of his plan to gut and voucherize public education. Public school officials said his 10 percent cut to education would reduce spending by $703 for each student, cut the average teacher’s salary by $2,335, and result in thousands of teacher layoffs.
Koch-Fueled Americans for Prosperity Spends $2.4 Million on Solyndra Attack Ad (VIDEO)
This campaign season, the airwaves will be filled with more hot air than ever before.
According to a recent New York Times story, political candidates and other organizations are expected to spend around $3 billion on television ads for the 2012 race. Already in the past six months, conservatives have spend $13 million on ads — with some of them, like a recent outright lie from the Romney campaign, getting “pants on fire” ratings from the fact-checking organization PolitiFact.
So it’s probably no surprise that Americans for Prosperity, backed by the Koch brothers, has already been spent millions of dollars on a Solyndra ad that PolitiFact labels “mostly false”:
Bachmann’s Plan To Deport 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants Would Cost U.S. Economy $2.6 Trillion
Determined to distinguish herself with the most draconian immigration position in the GOP field, today Michele Bachmann elaborated on her plan to deport every single undocumented immigrant in the country:
[P]residential candidate Michele Bachmann called for 11 million illegal immigrants to be deported from the United States in steps. [...]
Asked by radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday about an earlier statement she made differentiating between immigrants who had recently entered the country illegally from those with longstanding ties to the United States, Bachmann said she was never referring to legalization.
“What I’m talking about is the order of deportation, the sequence of deportation,” Bachmann replied. “It is almost impossible to move 11 million illegal immigrants overnight. You do it in steps.” Bachmann said deporting those convicted of crimes would be the first step.
Despite the sheer impracticality (and sinister connotations) of somehow identifying, rounding up, and transporting each and every undocumented immigrant to their country of origin, experts say that such a radical move would be utterly calamitous for the U.S. economy. A Center for American Progress analysis estimated that the cost of deporting the undocumented population would total $285 billion over five years.
It costs $23,148 for each person to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and transported out of the country. A deportation-only policy would amount to $922 in new taxes for “every man, woman, and child in this country” — an exorbitant price tag for the satisfaction of appearing tough on immigrants.
Furthermore, mass deportation would reduce the country’s GDP by 1.46 percent, which would amount to $2.6 trillion in cumulative losses over 10 years. It would also cripple several essential industries, like agriculture, that depend on immigrant labor — which is why the farmers and business owners Bachmann claims to represent have been vehemently opposed to such a plan.
Harsh immigration laws in states like Alabama have already resulted in a mass exodus of migrant workers that many farmers say will drive them out of business by next year. Crops are rotting in the field without migrant workers to harvest them.
All of this is to say nothing of the human toll of needlessly separating families and overwhelming the foster care system with the American-born children of the deported. Not that Bachmann cares about that — she once said proudly that she wouldn’t do “anything” to help the children of undocumented immigrants. She has also sponsored legislation to repeal birthright citizenship — a blatant violation of the 14th amendment — to strip these children of their legal status.
