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The White House Is Weighing A Plan To Weaken The Special Prosecutor’s Investigation Into Trump’s Russia Scandal

Mother Jones

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By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is exploring whether it can use an obscure ethics rule to undermine the special counsel investigation into ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russia, two people familiar with White House thinking said on Friday.

Trump has said that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s hiring of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead the investigation “hurts our country terribly.”

Within hours of Mueller’s appointment on Wednesday, the White House began reviewing the Code of Federal Regulations, which restricts newly hired government lawyers from investigating their prior law firm’s clients for one year after their hiring, the sources said.

An executive order signed by Trump in January extended that period to two years.

Mueller’s former law firm, WilmerHale, represents Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who met with a Russian bank executive in December, and the president’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is a subject of a federal investigation.

Legal experts said the ethics rule can be waived by the Justice Department, which appointed Mueller. He did not represent Kushner or Manafort directly at his former law firm.

If the department did not grant a waiver, Mueller would be barred from investigating Kushner or Manafort, and this could greatly diminish the scope of the probe, experts said.

The Justice Department is already reviewing Mueller’s background as well as any potential conflicts of interest, said department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores.

Even if the Justice Department granted a waiver, the White House would consider using the ethics rule to create doubt about Mueller’s ability to do his job fairly, the sources said. Administration legal advisers have been asked to determine if there is a basis for this.

Under this strategy, the sources said the administration would raise the issue in press conferences and public statements.

Moreover, the White House has not ruled out the possibility of using the rule to challenge Mueller’s findings in court, should the investigation lead to prosecution.

FOCUS ON CASTING A CLOUD OVER MUELLER

But the administration is now mainly focused on placing a cloud over his reputation for independence, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Kathleen Clark, a professor of legal ethics at Washington University School of Law, said the Justice Department can grant a waiver if concerns about bias are minimal.

She said subjects of the investigation could later argue that its results cannot be trusted, but she believes the argument would not stand up in court.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether it is reviewing the ethics rule in order to undermine Mueller’s credibility.

Mueller’s former colleagues at WilmerHale, James Quarles and Aaron Zebley, are expected to join his investigation, according to a spokeswoman for the law firm. Neither Quarles nor Zebley represented Kushner or Manafort.

Mueller will now lead the ongoing Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into Trump’s associates and senior Russian officials.

Unlike Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel appointed by a three-judge panel to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton’s real estate holdings in the 1990s, Mueller depends on the Justice Department for funding and he reports to Rosenstein, who was appointed by Trump.

When he announced Mueller’s appointment this week, Rosenstein said Mueller will have “all appropriate resources to conduct a thorough and complete investigation.”

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley, additional reporting by Gina Chon in Washington and Jan Wolfe in New York; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Cynthia Osterman)

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The White House Is Weighing A Plan To Weaken The Special Prosecutor’s Investigation Into Trump’s Russia Scandal

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Dwarf-Tossing, Three-Way with Teen Employee Never Happened, Says Real "Wolf of Wall Street" Exec

Mother Jones

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The Wolf of Wall Street is the stuff that Oscar buzz is made of. Martin Scorsese‘s next film, set to be released on Christmas Day, chronicles the testosterone-soaked saga of Jordan Belfort, co-founder and chairman of Long Island brokerage house Stratton Oakmont, who went down for securities fraud and money laundering in the 1990s. (He served 22 months behind bars.)

The movie is based on Belfort’s 2007 memoir of the same name, which Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio—who plays the title character—have been looking to turn into a major motion picture since before copies hit bookstores. With a script by by Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire), and performances from Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, and Cristin Milioti, there’s little doubt that the film will be a prime Academy Awards contender.

DannyPorush.com

Both the memoir and the film tell an outrageous story, full of white-collar scandal, lust, and drug-fueled mayhem that includes sinking a yacht. And while thousands of the memoir’s readers have enjoyed the ride, some may close the book asking how much of Belfort’s wild tale is true.

Now, in advance of the film’s release, Danny Porush, the co-founder and ex-president of Stratton Oakmont, has a few bones to pick with how his years at the firm have been presented.

“The book…is a distant relative of the truth, and the film is a distant relative of the book,” says Danny Porush, who, between 1988 and 1996, was a close friend and partner of Belfort.

In the book, Porush is described as a businessman with a particularly killer instinct—a “Jew of the ultrasavage variety.” Like Belfort, Porush agreed to cooperate with authorities on investigations of other brokerage firms after the collapse of his own. He eventually served 39 months in prison, and now lives with his second wife in Florida, where he runs a Boca Raton medical-supply outfit.

Jonah Hill. YouTube

“My main complaint regarding the memoir besides his inaccuracy was his using my real name,” Porush says. Indeed, in the film, the character inspired by Porush, portrayed by Oscar-nominated actor Jonah Hill—has a different name: “Donnie Azoff.” The name was changed after the real Danny Porush threatened to sue the studio and filmmakers. (Paramount Pictures, the film’s US distributor, and Red Granite Pictures, the production company behind it, did not respond to requests for comment.)

Porush doesn’t deny, as the book depicts, engaging in his fair share of unfettered hedonism, nor does he deny doing his share of drugs or indulging in rowdy antics. For example, movie goers will see Jonah Hill do this to a goldfish:

Paramount Pictures/YouTube

Porush says: true story. “I said to one of the brokers, ‘If you don’t do more business, I’m gonna eat your goldfish!'” Porush recalls. “So I did.”

Of course, films inspired by actual events have a tendency to augment and exaggerate true life and characters beyond recognition. Fittingly, in addition to some complaints about the book’s accuracy, Porush has a run down of details from the trailers (the only parts of the movie he’s yet seen) that he claims stray far from the truth.

Porush’s quibbles start with the book’s cover—and the film’s title: Porush says he never heard anyone at the firm refer to Belfort as the “wolf.” And while sex was nearly as integrated into office life as the scams that made the firm’s owners millions, Porush strongly denies a long-established piece of Stratton lore detailed in the book, and dramatized in the film adaptation: that brokers became so debauched that Belfort was forced to issue a memo declaring the office a “fuck-free zone” from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on workdays.

Both trailers show the Stratton Oakmont boys celebrating their haul by throwing a giant salesroom party with strippers, a marching band, horses, “dwarf-tossing,” and a chimpanzee on roller skates. Some of those details come from the memoir’s depictions of entirely different events and parties; the scene appears to be a composite, rounded out with tidbits (such as the chimp) that Belfort told DiCaprio about in private conversation.

In Belfort’s 519-page book, the tossing of little people is only discussed as a possibility—and though DiCaprio’s Belfort is shown hurling a little person alongside his staff, Belfort says (through a representative) that he merely heard from several people that they were thrown sometime after he left the firm. “It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” Porush is quoted as saying in the book. “I mean, it’s not like we’re gonna toss the little bastard in any odd direction.”

Wall Street “dwarf-tossing.” Paramount Pictures/YouTube

Porush says Belfort’s version of the party, as depicted on the silver screen, includes several fictional hijinks. “There was never a chimpanzee in the office,” Porush maintains. “There were no animals in the office…I would also never abuse an animal in any way.” And while Porush admits the firm hired little people to attend and mingle at at least one party, “we never abused or threw the midgets in the office; we were friendly to them,” he emphasizes. “There was no physical abuse.”

“Stratton was like a fraternity,” Porush remembers. “A lot of goofing around, hazing—but the worst we ever did was shave somebody’s head and then pay ’em ten grand for it.” (On this, Porush and Belfort agree—a version of the haircut appears in his book.)

Granted, Scorsese’s picture is not a documentary. “Hey, it’s Hollywood,” Porush says. “I’m not a communist; I know they want to make a movie that sells. And Jordan wrote whatever he could to make the book sell. His greatest gift was always that of a self-promoter.”

In one scene, the Donnie Azoff character sits and watches as thick bricks of cash are strapped to a Swiss woman’s body. “I never taped money to boobs,” Porush says. Indeed, in the memoir, Porush is not present during this painful boob-tape incident. But there’s another part of the book that’s harder for him to laugh off. The book references Porush’s many dalliances with various female sales assistants. At least one of these attention-grabbers is, according to Porush, completely made up. The incident concerns a “wildly promiscuous” employee, one who was seventeen-years-old. Belfort wrote:

Anyway, about a month later, after a tiny bit of urging, Danny convinced me that it would be good if we both did her at the same time, which we did, on a Saturday afternoon while our wives were out shopping for Christmas dresses.

“I categorically deny this,” Porush says. “I’m not homophobic, but I never had sex with a girl with another guy. I’ve been with a zillion women, several women at the same time—but only just with women…Also, never any minors.” (While Porush thinks it’s highly unlikely the firm ever employed anyone under 18, it may be worth noting that the age of consent in New York state, where Stratton was based, is 17. A representative of Belfort, who declined to comment himself for this story, says that the author stands by the anecdote: “I guess I can see why Danny is denying it, but that’s what happened.”)

“I have no idea what else is in the movie or how it ends, except for a early draft of a screenplay that I read that was total fiction,” Porush says. “Hey, I have thick skin and can easily laugh at myself, but bribing federal agents, organized crime, violence, moles in the US Attorney’s office are not laughing matters.”

Regardless of how he feels about the film or the memoir’s attachment to reality, Porush says he’s excited to see the movie. “I’m a big fan of Scorsese, and DiCaprio,” he says. “Jonah Hill’s body of work, I don’t really know; it’s less of my generation—I’m almost 60 years old.” (He has seen Moneyball, however.)

And though he’s critical of the way Belfort painted their professional and personal history, Porush stresses that he doesn’t hold a grudge. “Life’s too short,” he says. “I don’t have any animosity toward Jordan…I spoke to him this past summer. I asked about his family, and wished him luck on the movie…We are not on unfriendly terms, I should say.”

“I’m looking forward to the movie coming out, and then going away but I hope it doesn’t glorify criminal behavior,” he continues. “I do not wish to try to profit from a crime that I’m remorseful for,” Porush says. “I respect their First Amendment rights, but I would never try to profit from those crimes. I’m still very emotional about what happened.”

Porush has chosen to leave his Stratton Oakmont days in the past, enjoying a comfortable life in Florida. Belfort, on the other hand, came out of jail and wrote a bestseller on his brokerage days. Belfort reportedly received a million-dollar pay day for the film, and DiCaprio cut a short video endorsing Belfort’s motivational speaking business—another key aspect in his years-long redemption tour.

More recently, the two have exchanged text messages, Porush tells me. They briefly discussed the fictionalization of events in the film, but Belfort predictably stood by the contents of his memoir. “I told him he should have come out of prison and started a new legit business, not live in the past,” Porush says.

As the film’s highly anticipated premiere approaches. I asked Porush if he buys Belfort’s present image as a changed man.

“Yeah, sure, why not?” he replies.

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Dwarf-Tossing, Three-Way with Teen Employee Never Happened, Says Real "Wolf of Wall Street" Exec

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Think you can’t afford an EV? Think again

Think you can’t afford an EV? Think again

Tom Raftery

You could be as happy as this guy.

It’s easy to see the electric car as a symbol of the kind of offbeat elitism often associated with eco-conscious living — the rich man’s veggie oil-powered VW bus, if you will. But that could change as the industry starts going Model T on EVs, making them more affordable for the masses. Automakers are now offering an array of discount leases and perks that, when combined with government tax incentives, make EV ownership accessible for a much broader segment of the population.

Owning an electric vehicle automatically slashes drivers’ fuel costs by as much as 80 percent. But it’s the up-front cash that presents a barrier to most prospective buyers, not to mention the lack of widespread charging infrastructure. Of course, growing ranks of EV drivers would spur the construction of more charging stations and attract still more electric converts. But with so few choices on the market, none of them wildly affordable, it’s hard to get that cycle started.

Until now. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Bronson Beisel, 46, says he was looking last fall for an alternative to driving his gas-guzzling Ford Expedition sport utility around suburban Atlanta, when he saw a discounted lease offer for an all-electric Nissan Leaf. With $1,000 down, Mr. Beisel says he got a two-year lease for total out-of-pocket payments of $7,009, a deal that reflects a $7,500 federal tax credit.

As a resident of Georgia, Mr. Beisel is also eligible for a $5,000 subsidy from the state government. Now, he says, his out-of-pocket costs for 24 months in the Leaf are just over $2,000. Factor in the $200 a month he reckons he isn’t paying for gasoline to fill up his hulking SUV, and Mr. Beisel says “suddenly the car puts $2,000 in my pocket.”

Beisel also got a charging station installed at his house for no up-front cost. He’s spending less than $15 a month so far for the electricity needed to power the Leaf. That means that, including charging costs, he’s paying no more than $1,180 a year to drive his EV around town. Compare that to the $9,000 per year it costs to own and operate a typical gas-powered car.

Beisel compared the deal to “a two-year test drive, free.” Another Leaf driver is taking that approach literally:

Matt Brooks, a software engineer in Rochester, N.Y., says he decided to replace a hybrid Prius with a Leaf because the lease was so cheap. He’s paying $239 a month for 24 months with no money down. Mr. Brooks says he likes the car, but doesn’t expect to buy it when the lease is done. Used Leafs are selling below the purchase price written into his lease, he says.

Manufacturers are under pressure to comply with state regulations like California’s, which requires that by 2018, 4.5 percent of cars sold in the state be zero-emission vehicles; by 2025, 15 percent. Only the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model S sold more than 1,000 cars during the first quarter this year. But discount leases like the ones Brooks and Beisel have could help those numbers rapidly accelerate.

In an effort to ramp up production and lower costs, Nissan is increasingly manufacturing the Leaf and its pricey battery packs at factories in Tennessee instead of in Japan (creating American jobs in the process). This helped drop the 2013 Leaf’s starting price ($28,800) by $6,400 compared to last year’s model.

Of course, the one major drawback of EVs is that they’re primarily city cars because most roads still lack charging stations. That’s why many EV owners still keep a gas guzzler around for out-of-town trips. But one automaker has a solution to that problem: As part of the $32,500-plus cost of its new 500e electric, Fiat USA offers 12 days a year of free access to a gas-powered rental car. So unless you’re planning a truly epic road trip, you don’t need to own a second car in order to hit the highway.

And hey, if a guy with a name as bro-y as Bronson Beisel, not to mention a veteran New York cabbie, can proudly pilot an electric car, they’re clearly not just for highfalutin hippies anymore.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Think you can’t afford an EV? Think again

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Hawaii could be hit by more hurricanes as climate changes

Hawaii could be hit by more hurricanes as climate changes

NOAA via University of Hawaii

Hurricane Iniki performed a rare feat when it made landfall on Kauai in September 1992.

Despite living on a mere smattering of volcanic rocks in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, Hawaiians haven’t needed to worry too much about hurricanes. Just two such storms have hit the state in the past 30 years. But as the climate is changing, so too are the hurricane dangers facing the Aloha State.

New research suggests that the Pacific Ocean hurricanes of the future will be more rare than they are today, but the occasional ones that do get whipped into existence will be stronger and will wander farther across the sea. The number of such storms making it all the way to Hawaii is set to double or perhaps triple by the end of the century, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

From Discovery News:

Right now tropical cyclones with the potential of hitting Hawaii are typically born far east of the islands: off the west coast of Mexico, in a way similar to how North Atlantic hurricanes begin off the northwest coast of Africa.

“Normally the tropical cyclones travel west,” said [University of Hawaii researcher Hiroyuki] Murakami. “But they very rarely reach Hawaii.”

The researchers used several different climate models at different spatial resolutions and included a variety of environmental factors to see what robust patterns emerged for storm activity from the year 2075 to 2099. Their results suggest fewer, but stronger cyclones along with a northwestward shift of the typical cyclone track — which would take them more directly toward the Hawaiian islands.

In other words, there is good and bad news: the good news is that there will be fewer tropical cyclones. The bad news is they will be stronger, longer lived, with have longer tracks that steer more towards Hawaii.

As if rising seas, volcanic eruptions, and infestations of fire ants weren’t enough to keep Hawaiians on their toes.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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This Website Will Help You Outsmart the Supreme Court’s Anti-Transparency Ruling

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states have no constitutional obligation to honor public records requests from non-residents. Journalists, who frequently rely on freedom of information laws to expose corruption and break open stories, fear that the decision may make it harder for them to access public records.

MuckRock, a website that files public records requests on behalf of activists, journalists, and private citizens for a small fee and posts the resulting records online, has a solution. The website has been helping out-of-staters seeking public records in Virginia and seven other states with similar laws—Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Tennessee—by pairing them with locals willing to co-file the requests. After Monday’s decision, MuckRock began offering free website subscriptions to citizens of those states to help keep that information flowing.

MuckRock cofounder Michael Morisy, who also works for the Boston Globe, says he “fully expects more states to at least look into adding these laws as they look for ways to cut down on costs for complying with public records requests and generally decrease the amount of people accessing this tool.”

That more states might move to block out-of-staters from filing open-records requests was apparent long before the Supreme Court’s decision, Morisy says. In the decades since federal and state Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, laws were first passed in the 1960s, states have added numerous exemptions limiting who can request information and narrowing the types of information that can be disclosed. But the court’s decision, he adds, is a “major step back.”

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This Website Will Help You Outsmart the Supreme Court’s Anti-Transparency Ruling

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20 Surprising Uses for Wax Paper

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Barack Obama is Dumb and Lazy

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Jamelle Bouie points me toward the very conservative John Podhoretz today, who warns his fellow conservatives against their peculiar preoccupation with the idea that Barack Obama is an empty suit:

The weird condescension his opponents display toward him is ludicrously wrongheaded. They seem eager to believe he is a lightweight, and he is not. Obama is very possibly a world-historical political figure, and until those who oppose him come to grips with this fact, they will get him wrong every time.

….It’s not just the comforting delusion that he’s a golf-mad dilettante, but also the reverse-negative image of that delusion—that Obama is a not-so-secret Marxist Kenyan with dictatorial ambitions and a nearly limitless appetite for power. That caricature makes it far too easy for Obama to laugh off the legitimate criticisms of the kind of political leader he really is: a conventional post-1960s left-liberal with limited interest in the private sector and the gut sense that government must and should do more, whatever “more” might mean at any given moment.

This is related to the “continuing parade of weirdly invented, personality-driven scandalettes” that I mentioned yesterday. It’s not as if I’m surprised that conservatives routinely try to attack Obama. Sure, I happen to think that issues like Benghazi, Solyndra, and Fast & Furious are hopeless nothingburgers, but they’re perfectly understandable, routine kinds of political attacks. Every president is on the receiving end of this kind of stuff, and some of it sticks and some of it doesn’t.

But then there’s the completely mysterious stuff. Obama was too dumb to write his own autobiography. Obama was an affirmative action baby at Harvard Law. Obama can barely string three words together without a teleprompter. Obama is too lazy to attend national security briefings. Obama gives soaring speeches but there’s nothing behind them. Obama lives a life of sybaritic ease punctuated mostly by golf dates and basketball games.

It’s just bizarre. Normally, the opposition exaggerates the actual character of the president. Bush was incurious, so liberals called him dumb. Clinton was a child of the sixties, so he became a coke-snorting drug lord running dope out of Mena airfield. Reagan was personable and a little hazy on facts, so he became a doddering grandfather. Etc.

In Obama’s case, he’s pretty plainly a very smart, studious, and serious policy guy. So the obvious caricature of him would be as an aloof, Harvard egghead. There are occasional stabs at that, usually when conservatives try to portray him as arrogant, but it’s fleeting. Mostly, the tea partiers are convinced he’s dumb, lazy, and tyrannical. The problem is that this is so risibly wrong that (a) they have a hard time fighting back because they flatly don’t understand what they’re up against, and (b) it makes them look moronic. Nobody in their right mind thinks that Obama is dumb and lazy.

So where did this come from? One obvious possibility is that it’s race related: a lot of conservatives are so thoroughly steeped in resentment against affirmative action that they just can’t believe Obama got where he did on his merits. This is probably part of it, but it doesn’t really ring entirely true to me. In a way, it seems like this is really more a product of his phenomenal speaking skills. His speeches elate liberals, but they drive conservatives crazy. They simply can’t believe that anyone actually falls for this stuff unless they’ve been hypnotized by a con man, so that’s what Obama becomes: a slick but basically empty hustler.

Or something. Obviously my ability to fathom the tea party mind is pretty limited. Feel free to adduce your own theories in comments.

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Barack Obama is Dumb and Lazy

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8 of the Worst Foods for Your Body

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8 of the Worst Foods for Your Body

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How Raising the Retirement Age Screws the Working Poor

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Those of you who are careful readers of this blog are already aware that in recent years life expectancy has risen way more for richer people than for poorer people. The basic chart is here. Today, however, the Washington Post puts this into more concrete terms by comparing life expectancies in two Florida counties that are right next to each other. St. Johns is a well-off coastal county, while Putnam is a more working class inland county. Here’s their map:

The article makes the obvious point about how this affects the debate over whether to raise the Social Security retirement age:

The widening gap in life expectancy between these two adjacent Florida counties reflects perhaps the starkest outcome of the nation’s growing economic inequality: Even as the nation’s life expectancy has marched steadily upward, reaching 78.5 years in 2009, a growing body of research shows that those gains are going mostly to those at the upper end of the income ladder.

The tightening economic connection to longevity has profound implications for the simmering debate about trimming the nation’s entitlement programs. Citing rising life expectancy, influential voices including the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission, the Business Roundtable and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have argued that it makes sense to raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare.

But raising the eligibility ages — currently 65 for Medicare and moving toward 67 for full Social Security benefits — would mean fewer benefits for lower-income workers, who typically die younger than those who make more.

“People who are shorter-lived tend to make less, which means that if you raise the retirement age, low-income populations would be subsidizing the lives of higher-income people,” said Maya Rockeymoore, president and chief executive of Global Policy Solutions, a public policy consultancy. “Whenever I hear a policymaker say people are living longer as a justification for raising the retirement age, I immediately think they don’t understand the research or, worse, they are willfully ignoring what the data say.

Bottom line: working class and middle class workers haven’t seen much increase in their life expectancies over the past few decades. So if you raise the retirement age, you’re effectively shortening their retirements, an especially foul blow since they’re the ones with the shortest life spans to begin with.

So why do so many people keep pushing this idea? I’m going to be charitable and say that it’s a combination of ignorance and malice. Experts all understand how life expectancy works, but I imagine there are a lot of pundits and politicians who still haven’t seen the data on how it’s affected by income. At the same time, I suspect that plenty of pundits and politicians have figured it out, but just don’t care. The prospect of screwing the poor simply doesn’t bother them much.

Given the trends of the past few decades, the obvious way to address Social Security’s funding problems is to increase benefits to the relatively poor, whose benefits are low and who live shorter lives in the first place, and to reduce benefits for the well off. At the same time, increasing revenue by raising the income cap would mostly hit the upper middle class and the rich, which is precisely the population that’s (a) benefited the most from rising life spans, (b) seen their incomes increase the most, and (c) got more retirement resources at their disposal—including the option of retiring later, since many of them work at desk jobs that don’t tax their bodies. That’s the right basic approach. Raising the retirement age makes a nice sound bite, but it’s one of the worst and least fair ways imaginable of tackling Social Security’s problems.

Now that the Washington Post has run this piece on their news pages, I assume their editorial board no longer has any excuse for ignoring this. Right?

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How Raising the Retirement Age Screws the Working Poor

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Here’s Why I Don’t Think Republicans Will Reach a Sequester Deal With Obama

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Greg Sargent is doing yeoman’s work trying to convince me that some kind of deal to replace the sequester is possible. You can read his full argument here, but I think this is a fair summary:

Republicans really, really want to replace the sequester. They don’t like the defense cuts; they don’t like the prospect of taking blame for the economic damage the sequester does; and they want more entitlement cuts.
Democrats will never, ever agree to a deal that’s pure entitlement cuts. They’ll insist on some new revenue as well, and they’re not going to cave on this. Republicans know this.
So if Republicans want to end the sequester and make progress on entitlement cuts, they’re going to have to agree to some tax increases.

I’ve already gotten myself into trouble over this issue, so I’m going to keep my response restrained. But basically it’s this: Republicans know all this, and they don’t care. There have long been a few Republican senators who are willing to entertain tax increases as part of a bigger deal, so there’s a bare chance that something could pass the Senate. But the House? Not. Gonna. Happen. Even if John Boehner, in his heart of hearts, wants to make a deal like this—something I’m skeptical about—his caucus won’t let him.

Here’s where I think Greg’s argument, and other similar ones, go wrong:

Republicans don’t actually hate the sequester all that much. It’s a trillion dollars in spending cuts! What’s not to like?
I don’t think public pressure to repeal the sequester is going to be that strong, especially in red districts. Republicans can ride it out for the next few months, and the specific cuts will all be renegotiated in the next budget cycle.
I don’t think Republicans really care that much about entitlement reforms. Sure, they’re in favor of them, sort of, as long as there’s bipartisan cover, but it’s mostly just big talk. They’re keenly aware of the political danger of cutting Social Security and Medicare, especially since seniors are part of their core base. Besides, Obama is offering fairly modest entitlement cuts and they’re mostly not the kind conservatives are interested in.
In any case, who cares? Even if they hate the sequester; even if public pressure is strong; even if they do want entitlement reforms—even if all those things are true, they come in a distant 83rd place to Republican hostility toward tax increases. It doesn’t matter if the tax increases come from raising rates or limiting deductions, either. They’re opposed to them no matter what.

Call me simplistic if you want, but I see no evidence that Republicans are ready to accept tax increases under any circumstances where they have a choice. Maybe someday they will. Certainly logic and basic arithmetic suggest that someday they’ll have to accept the need for higher revenues. But remember what Keynes supposedly said? “The market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” The same is true for Republicans. Someday is still a long way away.

That said, Greg’s argument is easy to understand, and so is mine. You can all decide for yourself which one seems more likely. In a few months, we’ll all know the answer.

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Here’s Why I Don’t Think Republicans Will Reach a Sequester Deal With Obama

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