Category: The Dish

It’s underwhelming:

Citing the State Department final environmental impact statement, the lawmakers say the project would create 42,000 jobs. But it takes the economy less than a week to create that many permanent jobs. What’s more, these pipeline jobs wouldn’t be permanent. The State Department report uses the notion of “job years.” So the project, which is expected to take two years to build, requires 3,900 job years for the construction workforce, or 1,950 jobs that last over a two-year period. Another 26,000 jobs (or 13,000 over twoyears) would go to suppliers of goods and services.

Once the project is completed, operations would require 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors, the State Department report says.

Philip Bump illustrates those numbers with the above chart:

For those out of work — a difficult and frustrating experience — the creation of any job that could offer a salary and benefits is worthwhile. The question for lawmakers is how to balance the jobs that would be created by the pipeline — either 42,000 or 50, depending on your feelings about the project — with other considerations, such as the environmental effects of increasing tar sands oil production. If we’re talking about adding the same number of jobs by 2017 that would be added by building a Target, for example, that likely shifts the calculus.

Chait sees the GOP’s Keystone fixation as a way to avoid having a real jobs plan. Which puts Obama in a bad negotiating position:

Republicans need to have a jobs plan. They’re much better off blaming Obama for standing in the way of the huge number of construction jobs that would be made available to hardworking Americans being blocked by the left-wing environmental agenda than they are taking credit for the pipeline. Republicans don’t like cutting deals with Obama even when he offers them something they want. In this case, the trade value of Keystone is negative. Which is to say, Republicans aren’t going to give him squat.

 

The USA Freedom Act was voted down last night. Ronald Bailey is disappointed in Rand Paul, who voted against the bill because it didn’t go far enough:

Paul and the rest of his fellow citizens may well come to rue the day that he allowed the perfect to get in the way of the merely better.

Julian Sanchez likewise finds it “hard to see how blocking this particular set of reforms makes it any more likely that other important changes to the law will be passed”:

Ending the bulk collection of communication records under one group of authorities may only be the first step on a long road to more comprehensive surveillance reform, but taking that step enables privacy groups and civil libertarian legislators to devote their full focus to building consensus around subsequent steps, like amending (if not eliminating) the general warrant authority created by §702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

Sen. Paul’s primary objection thus far has been that the USA FREEDOM Act “reauthorizes the PATRIOT Act,” which is rather misleading. The vast majority of the PATRIOT Act is, alas, permanent and in no need of reauthorization. Three provisions will, in fact, expire in 2015: The §215 business records authority under which the NSA’s bulk telephony program is operating, the never-used “lone wolf” provision blessing the use of intelligence tools against foreigners suspected of terrorism but unaffiliated with any larger group, and the “roving wiretap” authority giving analysts discretion to intercept a target’s communication across multiple communications channels without specifying them in advance to a court.

However, Trevor Timm anticipates that “the the USA Freedom Act’s failure could backfire on its biggest supporters”:

As I’ve mentioned before, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act – the law that was re-interpreted in secret to allow for mass phone metadata surveillance in the first place – comes up for renewal next summer. It has to be reauthorized before June, or it will disappear completely.

And even though the Republicans will be in control next year, they won’t be able to pull the same stunts they did on Tuesday. Everyone knows getting “no” votes is a lot easier than getting a “yes”. And this time they’ll need 60 “yes” votes, plus the support of the House of Representatives, where we know already there are likely enough votes to kill an extension of the Patriot Act.

Ed Morrissey also looks ahead:

The USA Freedom Act is now dead until the next session. Leahy moves to the minority, which means Chuck Grassley will have to take up NSA reform starting in January, putting its direction under Republican control. Rand Paul will probably like that result less than this effort, and it will be interesting to see whether Republicans can make up whatever votes they lose in the Democratic caucus from within their own without Paul’s endorsement.

Greenwald, meanwhile, believes “the last place one should look to impose limits on the powers of the U.S. government is . . . the U.S. government”:

The entire system in D.C. is designed at its core to prevent real reform. This Congress is not going to enact anything resembling fundamental limits on the NSA’s powers of mass surveillance. Even if it somehow did, this White House would never sign it. Even if all that miraculously happened, the fact that the U.S. intelligence community and National Security State operates with no limits and no oversight means they’d easily co-opt the entire reform process. That’s what happened after the eavesdropping scandals of the mid-1970s led to the establishment of congressional intelligence committees and a special FISA “oversight” court—the committees were instantly captured by putting in charge supreme servants of the intelligence community like Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chambliss, and Congressmen Mike Rogers and “Dutch” Ruppersberger, while the court quickly became a rubber stamp with subservient judges who operate in total secrecy.

Judith Shulevitz explores the growing evidence that trauma can be inherited – yes, biologically. The controversial implications:

At the frontier of this research lies a very delicate question: whether some people, and some populations, are simply more susceptible to damage than others. We think of resilience to adversity as a function of character or culture. But as researchers unravel the biology of trauma, the more it seems that some people are likelier to be broken by calamity while others are likelier to endure it.

For instance, studies comparing twins in which one twin developed PTSD after trauma, and the other never had the bad experience and therefore never received the diagnosis, have uncovered shared brain structures that predispose them to traumatization.

These architectural anomalies include smaller hippocampuses—which reduce the brain’s ability to manage the neurological and hormonal components of fear—and an abnormal cavity holding apart two leaves of a membrane in the center of the brain, an aberration that has been linked to schizophrenia, among other disorders. Researchers have further identified genetic variations that seem to magnify the impact of trauma. One study on the mutations of a certain gene found that a particular variation had more of an “orchid” effect on African Americans than on Americans of European descent. The African Americans were more susceptible than the European Americans to PTSD if abused as children and less susceptible if not.

Another theory, even more uncomfortable to consider, holds that a particular parental dowry may drive a person to put herself in situations in which she is more likely to be hurt. Neuropsychologists have identified heritable traits that push people toward risk: attention deficits, a difficulty articulating one’s memories, low executive function or self-control. The “high-risk hypothesis,” as it is known, sounds a lot like blaming the victim. But it isn’t all that different from saying that people have different personalities and interact with the world in different ways. As Yehuda puts it, “Biology may help us understand things in a way that we’re afraid to say or that we can’t say.”

The Keystone XL vote came up short last night:

If just one more Democrat had voted for the measure, it would have gone to President Obama’s desk—and likely been promptly vetoed. The bill was already going to die. The suspense was simply over the identity of the executioner.

Rebecca Leber wonders about the significance:

In the end, most Americans wouldn’t notice Keystone’s impact—both good and bad. Landrieu’s own constituents have no direct stake in the project either, since it does not run through the state. It won’t noticeably impact gas prices and only creates a few dozen permanent jobs. Americans certainly won’t notice the greenhouse gas pollution associated with Keystone and the crude oil it will carry from the Canadian tar sands. Keystone has become a rallying point for climate activists precisely because of this invisible impact (the troubling image of a massive pipeline running through six states helps, too).

The irony is that, after six years of debate and deliberation, the Keystone decision comes when the economics surrounding the pipeline have largely made the issue irrelevant. Oil prices have dropped sharply, an American boom in natural gas and oil production have lessened foreign demand, and companies have proposed alternative pipelines and rail transport to carry the oil from Canada.

Keith Johnson contends that “Keystone has proved crucial neither to the development of Canada’s tar sands nor to getting it to market”:

Despite the years of delays on Keystone, Canadian oil sands production has continued steadily upward. In 2008, Canada produced about 1.2 million barrels a day from its tar sands. Last year, even without Keystone, production had jumped to 2 million barrels a day. Most forecasters expect Canadian tar sands to top 3 million barrels a day by 2020.

Plumber looks at other ways Canada is getting its oil to market:

These projects don’t mean the Keystone XL pipeline is pointless. TransCanada insists that Keystone XL would still be the cheapest way to ship Alberta’s oil to refineries in the Gulf. And if it’s blocked, that could ultimately constrain the size of the oil sands industry somewhat. An analysis by Maximilian Auffhammer of UC Berkeley estimated that blocking Keystone XL would force Canada’s oil-sands producers to leave 1 billion barrels underground by 2030 — even if rail expanded and all the other pipelines got built.

But Keystone XL isn’t the only game in town.

(Photo: Protesters participate in an anti-Keystone pipeline demonstration in New York’s Foley Square on November 18, 2014 in New York City. By Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 

 

 

Boer Deng updates us:

Fretting over space junk is universal among people who care about satellites or space travel. Even partisans in Congress agree that it is a problem. “The scientists who predicted climate change started the same way I did,” [space-junk expert and astrophysicist Don] Kessler muses. “They were thinking about what would happen if we keep dumping things into the air around us. I was thinking about what happens if we do it in space.”

Yet space pollution talks have not been poisoned by political division.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California and a climate change skeptic (“CO­2 is not a pollutant,” he has opined), has grimly warned that space pollution is “getting to a point of saturation now, where either we deal with it or we will suffer the consequences.” Donna Edwards, his Democratic colleague from Maryland, thinks Congress should devote more money to tracking the detritus.

A plan to clean up space is held back by different kind of political paralysis than partisanship. In the United States, three separate agencies handle licensing for various aspects of a commercial satellite launch. Another set of rules governs military activities, with yet another for civilian government research. Who has authority to enforce rules or mete out punishment is murky. Moreover, some Defense Department satellite orbits are classified, as is the reason the department deployed an anti-satellite weapon of its own in 2008 after China’s test the previous year. Any discussion about space regulation, such as one held during a meeting of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in May, is filled with bureaucratic verbs that end in -ize (legitimize,compartmentalize, theorize). Too much remained unknown, lawmakers concluded, so they weren’t “ready to legislate yet.”

Previous Dish on space junk here.

(Image by NASA)

Lisa Guernsey reads through a guide on the subject:

For years, the [American Academy of Pediatrics] has told parents to avoid using screens with children younger than 2. It’s a recommendation based on an understandable concern that parents will substitute screen-watching for the warm, real-world interactions children need. But it doesn’t allow for the possibility that cuddle moments might be possible with a screen on the lap.

Worse, the “no screens” dictates have led to confusion.

As a journalist who has spent a decade reviewing research on screentime and young children, I have spoken with families across the country about how they use technology with their children. Parents have told me about exhausting maneuvers they have attempted to keep their baby’s head turned away from screens when their older children are watching. One mother in Portland, Ore., was visibly upset when she approached me after a public forum on the subject. She and her 1-year-old had been Skyping with her mother in China, and she desperately wanted to keep doing so because they all loved the interactions, but she worried that something emanating from the screen would harm her baby. In fact, a 2013 study in the research journal Child Development shows the opposite: Webcam-like interactions with loved ones can help young children form bonds and learn new words.