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CNN Still Gives Equal Time To Anti-Science Disinformation

By Joe Romm on Dec 5, 2012 at 5:02 pm


The bad news: CNN continues to treat basic climate science as a he-said/she-said debate. On Piers Morgan Tuesday night, CNN presented a false balance between well-established climate science and long-debunked disinformation.

The good news: The disinformer CNN ran with last night was Marc Morano aka the Swift-boat Smearer, who has emerged as one of the least effective advocates for unrestricted carbon pollution. Indeed, Morano was so bad last night that even the normally tame Piers Morgan felt obliged to basically call him a liar.

Here’s the video — head vise required:

Yes, Morano’s Gish Gallup was so transparently nonsensical that Morgan broke out of the moderator roll to put his finger on the scale:

I respect that you have views. I don’t think they’re facts. And there are many scientists who would take issue with you about the use of the word ‘facts’.

Given that even Morgan understood that Morano isn’t pushing facts but rather anti-scientific blather, this raises the serious question “Why did CNN put Morano on the air in the first place?”

On CNN’s website, where they give Morano’s BS more equal time, CNN said they invited “a pair of experts whose respective opinions place them on polar opposite ends of the spectrum” and then they write, “Marc Morano presented an alternate theory regarding the impact, and concern, associated with carbon dioxide.” Uhh, no and no.

Morano didn’t present an “alternate theory.” That would have actually required him to not merely rattle off a string of factors many of which were irrelevant to the recent accelerated warming (“tilt of the Earth’s axis” — seriously!) but also to explain what precisely is negating the well-known warming effect of CO2.

And Morano is no “expert,” except at getting paid big bucks to spread disinformation: As SourceWatch explains:

Morano was “previously known as Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Man in Washington,’ as reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show.”

He later joined the right-wing news service CNS:

CNS and Morano were the first source in May 2004 of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claims against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election and in January 2006 of similar smears against Vietnam war veteran John Murtha.

Expertise in smearing distinguished Americans was apparently just what Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) was looking for, so he hired Morano as his denier-in-chief (see “Inhofe and Morano keep making stuff up“).

Finally, Morano launched a website notable both for having little original content and for promoting the harassment of scientists (see “UK Guardian slams Morano for cyber-bullying and for urging violence against climate scientists“). As Media Matters explains:

His website is sponsored by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, an organization that has received funding from oil companies…. His website often publishes the email addresses of scientists, leading to a barrage of hate mail, and he defended a billboard campaign comparing those who accept climate science to the Unabomber, saying it was “edgy.”

Nye was obviously unaware Morano was no expert but a paid disinformer, as evidenced from his attempt to reason with Morano: ”Let’s see if we can agree about a couple of things.” As if.

Fortunately Morano was mostly incoherent to CNN’s audience, so the “debate” merely turned into 10 lost minutes of primetime where science and anti-science were given equal billing.

In case you think this was just an off night for Morano, just listen to him on the BBC, appearing on the same show with climatologist Michael Mann. He continues to defend his cyber-bullying.

Bottom Line: The media really needs to stop the false balance, but if they insist on airing the falsehoods of the pro-pollution disinformers, at least we can hope they continue to use their most ineffective ones.

Health

Why You Shouldn’t Believe The Unfounded Concerns Over Falling U.S. Birth Rates

By Jeff Spross on Dec 5, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Lamenting America’s declining birth rate has become a regular ritual among America’s conservative commentators, who see the trend as a threat to the long-term economic sustainability of the social safety net as well as the traditional family structure. The most recent round of concern was kicked off by a Pew Research Center report that found births per 1,000 women of childbearing age hit a record low of 63.2 in 2011. That stat was picked up in a New York Times op-ed piece and subsequent blog post by conservative writer Ross Douthat, with additional encouragement from other commentators who joined in.

In fact, lower birth rates actually correlate with a whole host of positive social and economic trends, such as increased female literacy, increased job opportunities for women, overall national wealth, and women gaining greater control over their own reproduction. So decrying dropping birth rates — especially when it’s conservatives doing the mourning — comes awfully close to pining for past decades when women were far less equal.

But there’s an even more practical issue with this latest round of worries over the “birth dearth” — it’s focusing on the wrong statistic. Douthat’s number comes from the general fertility rate, which calculates annual births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. The Population Reference Bureau explains that the total fertility rate, or “the average number of children women would bear in their lifetimes if the pace of childbearing remained constant for the long term,” is actually a more appropriate measure:

The U.S. population is “older” now than it was in the past—we have more older people than younger people—and that includes a smaller proportion of younger women in the childbearing population than before.

So, when we think about birth rate trends, we should really be using the total fertility rate (TFR). The TFR is “blind”—unaffected by age structure—and in showing the implied number of children women would have at today’s rate, is directly comparable over the years: apples to apples. This may be a tad confusing, but consider this: If the pace of childbearing were the same today as it was in 1976, the U.S. would have had 3.7 million births instead of the 3.9 million it did have.

And 1976, not 2011, is when the total fertility rate hit its lowest point. It’s been on a steady rise since, arguably clearing the “replacement rate” — the level needed to keep the U.S. population from declining — in 2006. It dropped again in response to the recession, but that’s a typical and temporary reaction to hard economic times.

Even using the total fertility rate to calculate birth rates may be low-balling it. The best the TFR can do is anticipate how many children an average woman would have as she passes through all the years of her reproductive life, using the current rates of U.S. births for those various stages. But if more and more women have delayed childbirth over the last few decades, shifting the birth rate’s center of gravity to older women, then actual birth rates will be higher than what the TFR anticipates. In recent years, in fact, that’s exactly what’s been happening:

NEWS FLASH

Mexico Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Marriage Equality | Today, the Supreme Court of Mexico issued a unanimous ruling overturning a ban on same-sex marriage in the southern state of Oaxaca. The full decision has not been released yet, but advocates claim it “opens the door to equal marriage in the whole country.” The process is not immediate, as the Mexican Supreme Court does not have the same power to strike down laws like the U.S. Supreme Court does. Marriage equality was already legal in Mexico City, and the Court had previously ruled that marriages performed there must be recognized elsewhere in the country. Because the decision cited a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, it could have an impact on surrounding countries via the international judicial system.

Economy

100 Bangladeshi Garment Workers Died In Factory Fire After Walmart Refused To Finance Fire Safety Improvements

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Dec 5, 2012 at 4:15 pm

More than 100 workers died in a garment factory fire on November 24 in Bangladesh. The Dhaka plant, which was making products for Walmart and Sears, had no emergency exits or emergency evacuation procedures.

But in a meeting last year, Walmart officials decided against agreeing to pay suppliers more so that they could upgrade their manufacturing facilities and pay for the costs of safety improvements. “Specifically to the issue of any corrections on electrical and fire safety, we are talking about 4,500 factories, and in most cases very extensive and costly modifications would need to be undertaken to some factories,” Walmart officials said in documents obtained by Bloomberg News. “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”

More than 300 Bangladeshi garment factory workers have died since 2006. Walmart reported a 9 percent increase in third-quarter net income, earning $3.63 billion.

Alyssa

What Jovan Belcher’s Murder-Suicide Says About Our Attitudes Toward Guns, Football, And Domestic Violence

By Travis Waldron on Dec 5, 2012 at 3:34 pm

Almost immediately after Kansas City Chiefs lineback Jovan Belcher committed suicide outside the Chiefs’ practice facility — less than an hour after police say he murdered his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins in their home — discussion turned to the role concussions and brain trauma may have played in the deaths. That isn’t surprising, given that the link between football and long-term brain trauma has sparked a nationwide conversation about the safety of the men who play the game.

That’s an important discussion: protecting the men and boys who play football from long-term brain injuries sustained on the field is imperative. But because the manner in which he killed himself eliminated any chance doctors have of diagnosing chronic traumatic encepholopathy (CTE), concussions, or other brain trauma, we will never know for sure what role concussions played in the tragedy.

What is painfully evident though is that the murder of Kasandra Perkins was a blatant act of domestic violence, and the combination of that murder and Belcher’s ensuing suicide followed a path that is common in our country. And yet, while we seem willing to drift to the easy conversation (about concussions) or the politically charged conversation (about guns), we’re ignoring the painful truths about domestic violence and murder-suicides in American society. By focusing so intently on a conversation with no immediate answers, we’re missing the conversation that is so evident.

“We don’t have all of the details about whether or to what extent he’d been abusive before this, but when you pick up a gun and murder your girlfriend, that’s domestic violence,” Shaina Goodman, the public policy coordinator at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, told me. “This is what domestic violence homicide looks like.”

And sadly, it looks like that all too often. There are 12 murder-suicides a week in this country, according to one study, and most are domestic in nature. Three women a day are killed by intimate partners. 91 percent of domestic murders are committed by men, 88 percent involve a firearm. The most dangerous combination of killer in domestic abuse cases, according to David Adams, co-author of a report on domestic murders, is a “jealous substance abuser with a gun,” and such a combination “was present in about 40 percent of the killers” Adams interviewed for his study.

Is that Jovan Belcher? It’s hard to tell. In college, he punched out a glass window over a woman, according to crime reports from the University of Maine, and police were called to his college home another time over a dispute, though not violent in nature, with a woman. Other news reports have indicated that Belcher and Perkins were at a rocky point in their relationship, that he was visiting another woman he identified as his “girlfriend” to police, and that he exchanged text messages with a friend in which he called Perkins “crazy.” Belcher was a “heavy drinker,” intoxicated the night before the incident, and abused prescription pain medications, according to other reports.

I don’t think any of that proves that Belcher has a history of domestic violence, but according to Adams’ study (also authored by professors Jacquelyn C. Campbell and Richard Gelles), only 25 percent of murder-suicide incidents indicated previous cases of domestic violence in arrest records.

Whether Belcher fits the perfect profile of most men who commit murder-suicide or not, it’s more clear that this is a case of domestic violence than it is that concussions or brain injuries played a role. And this isn’t just about Jovan Belcher and Kasandra Perkins. It’s about all of the men who commit domestic homicides and all of the women who die in them each year in our country.

So while it’s important to continue exploring the link between football and brain injuries and the societal effects those brain injuries can have, using concussions as a catch-all explainer of Belcher and Perkins’ death strikes me as a convenient way to gloss over the tougher-to-handle fact that this may have simply been a case of domestic violence. By using concussions or CTE as such a catch-all, we miss the chance to explore the prevalence of domestic violence in our society and the mores, norms, and gender roles that make that violence so prevalent. We miss the opportunity to examine policies we could enact (like the Violence Against Women Act, which will come in front of Congress again this month) and societal changes we need to make to ensure that domestic violence — and murder-suicide — is less likely to occur in the future.

“Talking only about brain injuries makes it about the individual,” Goodman said. “To respond to this incident as only about mental health problems ignores the systemic, cultural level of domestic violence, the reality of what it looks like, and the serious prevalence of it. In the end, and in addition to whatever other important issues this incident raises, this is a domestic violence issue and it needs to be identified as such.”

Justice

Defying Rick Scott, Florida Legislators Introduce Bill To Restore Early Voting Days

By Scott Keyes on Dec 5, 2012 at 3:30 pm

Last year, the Republican-led Florida legislature slashed the state’s early voting period in half and cut out voting on the final Sunday before the election — a day when many African American churches turned out parishioners in high numbers. As a result, long lines were the norm for Floridians this year; some even had to wait six hours or more to vote.

After witnessing the negative effects of reducing early voting from 14 days to 8, a number of state lawmakers have introduced legislation to restore those days that had been axed.

State Sens. Arthenia Joyner (D) and Gwen Margolis (D) have pre-filed two bills, SB 80 and SB 82, that would re-institute 14 days of early voting in Florida, beginning on the 15th day before an election and continuing through the Sunday prior to Election Day.

The News Service of Florida has more:

More voting hours also could be available under the bills. Current law requires at least six hours of voting per day, while the bills would require 12 hours per weekday and 12 hours total on the weekend.

In another change proposed by Joyner and Margolis, local supervisors of elections could expand the types of places where early voting is allowed. Currently, supervisors must offer early voting in the supervisor’s offices, and can allow voting in libraries and city halls. The bills would allow supervisors, if they want, to also offer early voting in other government facilities such as a courthouse, as well as colleges, churches, or community centers. The bills would also prevent counties from reducing the number of early voting sites from what they used in 2008.

Though Republicans control both chambers of the legislature, both incoming Senate President Don Gaetz (R) and incoming House Speaker Will Weatherford (R) have “promised that lawmakers will try to figure out what went wrong on Election Day that led to the long lines, and do something about it.”

LGBT

Michigan House Committee Advances ‘License To Discriminate’ Bills For Adoption Agencies

By Zack Ford on Dec 5, 2012 at 3:25 pm

Michigan state Rep. Kenneth Kurtz (R), sponsor of the 'licence to discriminate' bills.

Last week, a Michigan Senate committee advanced a bill that would allow healthcare providers to discriminate against individuals or object to providing any services if it violated their conscience. Now, a Michigan House committee has advanced two bills that provide a similar “license to discriminate” for adoption agencies. Introduced by Rep. Kenneth Kurtz (R), HB 5763 and HB 5764 allow any child placement agency to discriminate based on “religious or moral convictions” without fear of financial retribution from the state:

A child placing agency is not required to perform, assist, counsel, recommend, facilitate, refer, or participate in a placement that violates the child placing agency’s written or moral convictions or policies. A state or local government entity may not deny a child placing agency a grant, contract, or participation in a government program because of the child placing agency’s objection to performing, assisting, counseling, recommending, facilitating, referring, or participating in a placement that violates the child placing agency’s written or moral convictions or policies.

If the blatant invitation to use state funding to discriminate against Michigan families weren’t odious enough, the bills even acknowledge that the policy has nothing to do with what’s best for the children involved:

Refusal by a child placing agency to perform, assist, counsel, recommend, facilitate, refer, or participate in a placement that violates the child placing agency’s written or moral convictions or policies does not constitute a determination that the proposed adoption is not in the best interests of the adoptee.

Equality Michigan notes that Michigan has 14,000 children in foster care, including 5,000 whose biological parents’ rights have been terminated. These young people could find safe, loving families with same-sex couples, but not if the state’s agencies are free to discriminate for no legitimate purpose other than bigoted beliefs or unfounded stereotypes about the legitimacy of such families. Taxpayer money should not be spent according to the whims of Catholic Charities or other discriminatory agencies.

Conservatives often claim that it’s LGBT activists who are putting their “adult” needs over those of children, but this legislation shows that it’s those who oppose equality who care the least about the fate of children.

Security

New Iran Sanctions Included In Defense Bill

By Hamed Aleaziz on Dec 5, 2012 at 3:18 pm

The National Defense Authorization Act the Senate passed on Tuesday includes an amendment with a new round of sanctions on Iran. While sanctions the Senate passed last year focused primarily on Iran’s oil trade, this year’s bill, sponsored by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), goes beyond that. The Wall Street Journal explained the sanctions as targeting:

“Iran’s energy, shipping and shipbuilding sectors, already in the sights of U.S. sanctions. But the legislation goes further, restricting trade with Iran in precious metals, graphite, aluminum and steel, metallugrical coal and software for integrating industrial processes. Under the bill, the President would have to report back to Congress on whether any material was being used as barter to furnish transactions with Tehran.”

After the President signed last year’s NDAA, which also included an Iran sanctions amendment sponsored by Menendez and Kirk, Iran has lost around $133 million per day in oil revenue and protests erupted across Iran as the value of its currency tanked. An oil analyst told Bloomberg that the sanctions were “an unqualified success.” “Many judge that Iran might soon decide it needs a nuclear compromise to produce an easing of sanctions,” a recent CRS report said.

But some find this new round of sanctions excessive. Reza Aslan, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said “if the purpose of this new round of sanctions is to pressure Iran to come to the negotiating table in a weakened position, that’s already happened. …These new sanctions are little more than empty politicking by senators eager to display their hard line, and ultimately self-defeating, stance against an American adversary.” The National Iranian American Council’s Policy Director Jamal Abdi concurred, saying, “every round of sanctions passed by Congress further limits the President’s flexibility at the negotiating table and undermines confidence that the U.S. can make a deal. If the President lacks the legal or political flexibility to ease the sanctions as leverage for Iranian concessions, a diplomatic resolution is impossible.” Abdi added that the impact could be vast, “there will be a major chilling effect as more third-country (i.e. not the U.S. or Iran) businesses are unable to ship or pay for transactions of any goods, including food, medicine, and communications goods.”

Former Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy, has said that increased sanctions are the best avenue toward a diplomatic solution. Halevy said in October that there needed to be “sanctions, more sanctions, more sanctions and many other things…The fact of the matter is the sanctions have not brought the end to the program but sanctions are hurting very much.”

Though the Obama administration believes that a diplomatic solution utilizing sanctions is the “best and more permanent” way to solve the crisis, it has voiced apprehension about the current sanctions legislation. National Security Council Spokesperson Tommy Vietor said that the administration has “concerns with some of the formulations as currently drafted in the text and want to work through them with our congressional partners to make the law more effective and consistent with the current sanctions law to ensure we don’t undercut our success to date.” The bill will be conferenced by the House and Senate this week.

Economy

Youth Unemployment Hits Highest Level Since World War II

By Pat Garofalo on Dec 5, 2012 at 3:10 pm

According to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, youth unemployment — defined as unemployment for Americans aged 16-24 — is currently the highest its been in the post-war era:

Youth employment is at its lowest level since World War II; only about half of young people ages 16 to 24 held jobs in 2011. Among the teens in that group, only 1 in 4 is now employed, compared to 46 percent in 2000. Overall, 6.5 million people ages 16 to 24 are both out of school and out of work, statistics that suggest dire consequences for financial stability and employment prospects in that population.

More and more doors are closing for these young people. Entry-level jobs at fast-food restaurants and clothing stores that high school dropouts once could depend on to start their careers now go to older workers with better experience and credentials. It often takes a GED to get a job flipping hamburgers. Even some with college degrees are having trouble finding work. At this rate, a generation will grow up with little early work experience, missing the chance to build knowledge and the job-readiness skills that come from holding part-time and starter jobs.

Being unemployed from an early age can have lasting impacts throughout a workers life, as each missed year of work translates into “2 percent to 3 percent less earnings each year thereafter.” This effect is so severe, that college students who graduated during the 1982 recession were still earning less than students who graduated into a strong economy ten years later.

The U.S. is not alone in grappling with sky-high youth unemployment. Europe, in fact, is dealing with the prospect of a “lost generation” due to the inability of its young people to find work.

Health

Olive Garden Suffering From Bad PR After Anti-Obamacare Comments

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Dec 5, 2012 at 3:00 pm

Darden Restaurants, Inc. — owner of Red Lobster and Olive Garden — is battling back negative press attention in light of its October announcement that the company will use Obamacare as a reason to shift to part-time employees.

On Tuesday, the company released a statement revising down its prediction of profits, which led to a huge drop in stocks. Darden attributed the change to the negative attention around its stance on Obamacare, and promised to deal with the health care reform law “in ways that work for our employees“:

“In light of these upcoming changes, we are being cautious about our sales and earnings forecast for the full year,” [Darden's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Clarence Otis] continued. “Our outlook for the year also reflects the potential impact, though difficult to measure, of recent negative media coverage that focused on Darden within the full-service segment and how we might accommodate healthcare reform.” [..]

“We are also committed to accommodating healthcare reform in ways that work for our employees and guests. Darden is a strong business which continues to generate solid cash flows that will support appropriate reinvestment in our brands, effective debt management and consistent dividend growth.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, any business with 50 more full-time workers is required to offer a health care option to its employees by 2014. If a company chooses not to, and its workers instead seek subsidized care in the public exchanges, the company must pay a penalty.

Darden is one of several companies threatening to fire employees, switch workers to part time, or freeze hiring because of the health care law. One Applebee’s franchise owner, the CEO of Papa John’s Pizza, and a Denny’s franchise CEO have made similar threats.

In addition to potentially earning those companies bad press, their complaints about the health reform law are off-base. In reality, Obamacare will, over time, decrease health care costs. It will also likely lead to more satisfied workers, competitive hiring, and higher rate of employee retention.

Update

AP is reporting that, in an effort to stem the negative attention, Darden will announce Thursday that they will not be moving any workers to a part-time schedule because of Obamacare. The company is, however, keeping the option open of relying more heavily on part-time employees in the future. Ultimately, reports a Darden spokesman, they tested a shift to part-time staff and found a decline in satisfaction all around:

After Darden’s tests were reported in October, the company received a flood of feedback from customers through its website, on Facebook and in restaurants, said Bob McAdam, who heads government affairs and community relations for Darden. Additionally, he said that internal surveys showed both employee and customer satisfaction declined at restaurants where the tests were in place.

“What that taught us is that our restaurants perform better when we have full-time hourly employees involved,” he said… McAdam declined to give specifics on the internal surveys but said the decline was “enough to make a decision.”

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