ThinkProgress Logo

LGBT

National Organization For Marriage Clings To Plateaued ‘Dump Starbucks’ Boycott

By Zack Ford on Jul 6, 2012 at 4:20 pm

The National Organization for Marriage is still clinging to its “Dump Starbucks” boycott, objecting to the company’s support for marriage equality. Earlier this week, they tried to claim they’d found a “neutral” coffee alternative in Jitters & Bliss, a small coffee company that proceeded to censor pro-equality comments on its Facebook wall. (J&B’s Facebook page has remained inactive since Tuesday.) Even though DumpStarbucks’ momentum plateaued many weeks ago, the anti-gay group continues to boast petition signature numbers on Twitter:


Date Signatures
July 4, 2012 45,414
June 26, 2012 45,136
June 19, 2012 44,772
June 11, 2012 44,194
June 7, 2012 43,800
June 1, 2012 43,064
May 30, 2012 41, 908
May 25, 2012 39,982
May 17, 2012 39,268
May 14, 2012 38,057
May 7, 2012 35,858


Compare these numbers to the 640,000 people who thanked Starbucks in a counter-campaign back at the beginning of April. Even though the “Thank You Starbucks” campaign essentially ended then, the numbers still climbed to over 650,000. And Starbucks’ stock has only benefited from its support of marriage, reaching its highest value ever during the height of NOM’s boycott in late March and April.

NOM is now applying this same failed strategy to General Mills. A week after NOM launched “Dump General Mills,” the food company boosted its dividend by 8 percent. Its stock remains unfazed by the week of protests.

The strategy of boycotting pro-equality companies seems an odd choice for NOM. They complain when LGBT groups threaten to protest anti-equality businesses, claiming victimhood and religious oppression, yet seem to have no problem employing the same tactic. They are obviously inconsistent — and thus devoid of integrity — in regards to their targets, ignoring companies like Microsoft, Google, and Nike whose products aren’t pourable. And this notion that they side with “neutral” businesses is a blatant farce, because any company that agrees to treat the LGBT community as invisible or unwelcome is anything but “neutral.”

For as large as NOM has grown in the mere five years of its existence, it’s compelling that they would now invest so heavily in doomed campaigns in a desperate attempt for media relevance. These failed boycotts exemplify how out of touch NOM is with the swift national momentum toward equality and justice for same-sex couples and their families.

Security

USA Today Promotes Industry Claim That Military Spending Cuts Hurt The Economy

By Eli Clifton on Jul 6, 2012 at 4:11 pm

Military contractors are eager to promote the theory that cuts in military spending — and the resulting decrease in government contracts for their businesses — will slow the economic recovery. A large part of their strategy has focused on promoting statistics showing the oversized effect of cuts in military spending on economic growth.

But statistics about the role of military spending in the U.S. economy are often used to misrepresent the importance of military contractors. Yesterday, USA Today ran an article titled, “Defense Cuts Starting To Pinch Economy.” It said:

Military defense spending fell by about $12 billion, or 3%, from October through May compared with the same period in the previous federal budget year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which measures defense-related spending more broadly, said last week that weaker defense spending shaved half a percentage point off first-quarter growth. Instead of growing 2.4%, the economy grew 1.9%

Instead of turning to an objective source, USA Today turned to Lockheed Martin to interpret the data. “Already, defense contractors are feeling the effects. Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens said recently that his company’s workforce is 18% smaller than three years ago, and “‘the pace of our hiring has slowed considerably,’” the article says.

Indeed, war spending has gone down slightly as the U.S. completed its withdrawal from Iraq but the Pentagon’s core budget has actually gone up. Furthermore, the article fails to address the fact that had war funding not decreased, revenue would have to be raised through taxes, cutting other programs, or increasing the deficit. All three options would have negative effects on the economy.

But what goes unmentioned is that the Pentagon’s budget for contractors, like Lockheed, actually increased over those three years. Lockheed’s reduction in work force is far more easily explained by the company’s mismanagement of the Joint Strike Fighter program which has been delayed for five years and labeled “acquisition malpractice” by the Defense Department.

What military contractors fail to address is the fact that defense spending is not a jobs program. Defense spending “is a collective effort to address the facing the country, assure our national security, and secure our interests abroad,” write the Center for American Progress’ Lawrence J. Korb, Alex Rothman and Max Hoffman. “Therefore, the level of defense spending should be dictated by our national strategy and fiscal capacity, both of which point towards a drawdown.”

If job creation is the desired outcome, as outspoken proponents military spending now argue, then far better returns can be enjoyed from funding domestic priorities such as education health care and clean energy. Those sectors create at least 50 percent more jobs per dollar of public spending.

NEWS FLASH

Oregonians Will Not Support Radical Anti-Abortion Measure | In a victory for pro-choice advocates, a proposed ballot measure to block federal funding for abortion services in Oregon is not going to make it onto the state’s ballot this year. According to an email from the measure’s sponsor, “With just two days left to deliver signed petitions to the Secretary of State, we’ve got only about 70,000 signatures in hand — less than half of our 150,000 signature goal.” Anti-choice groups have chosen not to focus their time or money on Oregon, and without outside funding the measure could not get off the ground. This shows a growing trend of voters rejecting extreme anti-abortion laws — much like the rejection of so-called personhood initiatives across the country.

Justice

Yet Another Supreme Court Leak Emerges

By Ian Millhiser on Jul 6, 2012 at 3:40 pm

Over at the Grio, an African-American news site run by NBC News, Joy-Ann Reid reveals that the Supreme Court has sprung yet another leak:

A source with knowledge of the deliberations confirms to theGrio that Roberts, possibly as late as mid-June, was prepared to strike down the individual mandate, siding with his fellow conservative justices, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Libertarian-leaning Justice Anthony Kennedy. The source also confirms other elements of Crawford’s story — namely that intense pressure was being placed on Roberts by the conservatives to strike down the entire law.

Once again, the most important news here is not the revelation that Roberts may have been unsure of his vote until just a couple of weeks before he largely upheld the Affordable Care Act, although that fact does speak well about how the Court’s deliberative process often enables justices to think through erroneous views and realize that they are unsound. Rather, the most important news here is that yet another reporter has found a leak in the Supreme Court’s cone of silence.

As ThinkProgress explained on Tuesday, this kind of thing would not happen in a perfect world. Although there is some marginal value to learning right away what sort of alliances and negotiations occur within the Supreme Court’s marble palace, the fact remains that the Court’s deliberations rest on the assumption that justices can openly exchange ideas without fear that those conversations will later be used to embarrass them. If this assumption dies, the very deliberative process that may have enabled Roberts to realize his initial impression of the health care case was mistaken would suffer a serious wound.

Alyssa

The Escalating Campaign Against Anita Sarkeesian And The Long-Term Weakness of Sexist Trolls

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jul 6, 2012 at 3:36 pm

I can’t even bring myself to embed it here: some trogolodytes have created a game that lets players beat up Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist video blogger who’s been subject to an unremitting campaign of harassment since she created a Kickstarter to support a project to explore tropes of female characters in video games. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: anyone who thinks that feminists who push back hard against online harassment are being oversensitive needs to understand that we’re all trying to keep ourselves from becoming Anita Sarkeesians. No matter how strong you are, and no matter how much support you have, this kind of concentrated campaign of harassment affects the targets of it. And the goal of these campaigns is to terrorize people into silence. It’s not disagreement. It’s not creative trolling. It’s deployment of a weapon.

And even though it’s frightening, ugly stuff, the campaign waged against Sarkeesian illustrates the fundamental cowardice and weakness of the people attacking her. If you so lack confidence in your ideas, if you’re so uncomfortable defending your appreciation for problematic things (which, by the way, is tricky but not that tricky) that you can’t even put your hands over your ears and sing loudly and ignore them, that you have to actually go out and try to prevent anyone from from saying anything that could make you remotely uneasy, you are a coward. That’s cold comfort to folks like Sarkeesian who have to go through this now. But it’s why, long-term, angry, petty sexists are going to lose, and why it’s important to throw up bulwarks against trolls who try to venture out of their holes and take over mainstream conversations. These ideas don’t stand-up to discussion and debate. And sexist trolls can’t shut down all of those debates, no matter how hard they try.

NEWS FLASH

Ukraine Shelves ‘Gay Gag’ Bill After Worldwide Outcry | Lawmakers in Ukraine have shelved a bill that would have banned any promotion of homosexuality, including “holding meetings, parades, actions, demonstrations and mass events aiming at intentional distribution of any positive information about homosexuality.” There has been worldwide outcry about the proposed measure, which would have conflicted with Ukraine’s ability to join the European Union. Still, anti-gay sentiments remain strong in the former Soviet republic as evidenced by the violent counter-reaction to a Pride march in May.

Economy

Public Sector Job Losses Have Disproportionately Hurt Women

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 6, 2012 at 3:10 pm

Women have been disproportionately affected by the public sector layoffs that have become an unfortunate mainstay of the sluggish economic recovery, according to the National Women’s Law Center. The public sector has shed some 700,000 jobs in the last three years — which are the three worst years for public employment on record — and women have born the brunt of those cuts, while not seeing a large share of private sector job gains:

Since the start of the recovery three years ago, women have gained 908,000 net private sector jobs — and lost 396,000 net public sector jobs. Men have gained 2,304,000 net private sector jobs — and lost 231,000 net public sector jobs. In the last three years, women have a net gain of 512,000 jobs; men have a net gain of 2,073,000 jobs.

Men have gained enough jobs in the last three years to equalize the unemployment rate between the sexes. As Bryce Covert explained at Forbes, “Some of this is making up for the disproportionate number of jobs that men lost during the recession itself as construction and manufacturing collapsed. But given that men have experienced over four times the job gains made by women, that can’t account for all of it.”

Public sector layoffs have also disproportionately affected African-Americans. If public employment had simply grown at the historic rate during the recession, instead of shrinking dramatically, the unemployment rate would be a full percentage point lower.

Climate Progress

King Coal’s Throne Under Threat? U.S. Natural Gas Generation Rivaled Coal In April

By Stephen Lacey on Jul 6, 2012 at 2:50 pm

Historically supplying the majority of America’s electricity, the coal industry has long been called “King Coal.” But this king’s throne is now under threat.

For the first time in U.S. history, natural gas electricity generation equaled coal generation, according to preliminary April figures from the Energy Information Administration:

EIA provides more context to the preliminary data (which is subject to change):

Recently published electric power data show that, for the first time since EIA began collecting the data, generation from natural gas-fired plants is virtually equal to generation from coal-fired plants, with each fuel providing 32% of total generation. In April 2012, preliminary data show net electric generation from natural gas was 95.9 million megawatthours, only slightly below generation from coal, at 96.0 million megawatthours.

As shown in the chart above, there are strong seasonal trends in the overall demand for electric power. In April 2012, demand was low due to the mild spring weather. Also in April, natural gas prices as delivered to power plants were at a ten-year low. With warmer summer weather and increased electric demand for air conditioning, demand will increase, requiring increased output from both coal- and natural gas-fired generators.

As the agency points out, there are a variety of factors that contribute to the changes in generation such as seasonal variability, changes in prices, age of infrastructure, and rising or falling inventories. But looking at the chart above, we can see a clear longer-term trend: use of coal is declining steadily and natural gas is filling in the gap.

In fact, recent data from the EIA showed that generation from coal dropped 19 percent between the first quarter of 2011 and first quarter of 2012 — moving from 44.6 percent to 36 percent. If this preliminary data is correct, that means that coal generation fell another 4 percent between March and April of this year.

This is a mixed blessing from an emissions perspective. The fall in coal generation means we’ll likely see a decline in CO2 emissions from the fossil fuel sector by 3 percent this year, according to EIA. That will add to the 1.9 percent drop seen in 2011.

However, a large-scale switch to gas is no environmental panacea. Along with local air and water-quality concerns from natural gas fracking, scientists and environmental regulators are increasingly warning about lifeycle methane emissions from gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. While there is still no definitive study on the methane intensity of natural gas, recent research suggests that leakages in the drilling and transport of gas could make it more harmful than coal.

Reacting to the concerns about methane leakages, a group of investors worth $20 trillion in assets recently penned a letter to the oil and gas industry calling on companies to proactively address the problem. Craig McKenzie, Head of Sustainability for the Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, told Climate Progress that his organization believes natural gas does play a role in the current energy transition — but not without controls on methane:

Read more

Health

STUDY: Uninsured In Republican-Controlled Southern States Would Benefit Most From Medicaid Expansion

By Guest Blogger on Jul 6, 2012 at 2:45 pm

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) plans to reject the Medicaid expansion

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that southern states would see the most dramatic reduction in their uninsured populations because of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. The study found that all states would benefit from the expansion, but southern states — many run by conservative governors who have pledged to opt out of the measure — would see their adult uninsured populations drop by about 50 percent. According to the report:

Overall, the Medicaid expansion is expected to result in a decrease in the number of uninsured of 11.2 million people, of 45 percent of the uninsured adults below 133 percent of poverty. States with low coverage levels and higher uninsured rates will see larger reductions (Alabama 53.2 percent and Texas 49.4). [...]

If states fall short of implementation expectations, fewer individuals will be covered and more individuals will remain uninsured. Under this scenario, states would also forgo large sums of federal funding tied to the coverage of those made newly eligible under reform.

With its ruling, the Supreme Court put the fate of millions of uninsured Americans in the hands of the states, and many southern governors have pledged to refuse the expansion of their state programs. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has promised to reject the Medicaid expansion, denying 1 million Floridians health insurance who would have otherwise been covered.

Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion would provide health insurance for 15.1 million previously uninsured Americans. About 11 million of the newly eligible adults have incomes below the poverty level and would therefore not be able to receive any additional help obtaining health insurance coverage under Obamacare should their state not expand its Medicaid program.

While a few southern Republicans are flexing their gubernatorial muscles against the “cost” of Obamacare, the Urban Institute estimates that 21 to 45 states would actually save money by taking the Medicaid expansion. Not to mention the expansion would also help hospitals currently footing much of the bill for uncompensated care.

If Republican governors end up making good on their promise to reject the expansion, they would likely be doing so at the expense of millions of uninsured citizens who would benefit the most from Obamacare.

– Steven Perlberg

Security

Drudge Promotes Story From Conspiracy Website Claiming Obama Plans To Murder Conservative Journalists

By Ali Gharib on Jul 6, 2012 at 2:44 pm

The website Drudge Report, an aggregator that sends a massive amount of web traffic to stories linked on its pages, posted a report from the 9/11 Truther website InfoWars in which two of the nation’s leading right-wing conspiracy theorists Alex Jones with Joseph Farah discuss their paranoia about being attacked by the Obama administration.

In the interview, Farah said he saw a drone over his property in Northern Virginia and suggested that the Obama administration was targeting him. Here’s a screen capture of the Drudge link, with the words “Spy Drone Buzzes Journalist’s Secluded Home…” highlighted in red:

In the interview, Farah told Jones:

I live in one of the most rural places you could possibly live in Northern Virginia and there could only be one thing that this drone was spying on and that would be me, that would be my property. [...]

This is the first term. If [Obama] is re-elected, it’s going to be war. They will be openly at war. We will be hunted down like dogs.

(Listen to clips from the whole Jones radio interview with Farah here.)

Farah also mentioned another damaging right-wing conspiracy theory that vaccine programs are a dangerous and airport security patdowns as evidence of government “attempts to control us.” He went on:

This is where the resistance starts. Because this is part of conditioning for what is really the ened game for them…

It’s everything our founding fathers fought against. And we gotta be like our founding fathers all over again. And the only question in my mind is whether we have the fearlessness, the courage and the conviction that they had to do that.

When the Romney campaign recently outlined its strategy to ignore mainstream media and work its message through right-wing websites, Drudge was at the top of the list. ThinkProgress noted at the time that Drudge has a history of promoting Birtherism and Jones’s 9/11 Truther website InfoWars.

But it’s hard to keep track of the dizzying number of conspiracy theories Alex Jones and Joseph Farah can expound upon in one ten-minute interview. What’s most remarkable is that Mitt Romney’s favorite news aggregator linked to it. (HT: Michael C. Moynihan)

Update

Matt Drudge responds:


Older

Newer

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up