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Trump Sabotage of Obamacare a Big Success: Enrollment Down By a Half Million or More

Mother Jones

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The signup period for Obamacare is over, and total enrollment fell short of last year. The Washington Post reports the details:

The lower total…marks a striking turnabout from the trend as the Obama administration neared its end — when sign-ups for coverage under the law were running steadily ahead of a year ago.

The volume plummeted, in particular, during the final week of the three-month enrollment season — falling from nearly 700,000 in 2016 to just over 375,000. That last week traditionally is a peak time when eligible customers race to get ACA health plans, most of them with federal subsidies. This time, however, the Trump White House directed federal health officials to halt all advertising and other enrollment-outreach activities for the last six days of the sign-up period.

Based on data from Charles Gaba, here’s what enrollment looked like throughout the entire signup period:

Signups were running a bit ahead of 2016 during the entire open enrollment period, but then Trump took office. Republicans began talking about repealing Obamacare, Trump signed an executive order telling agencies to do whatever they could to throw sand in the gears, and outreach efforts were halted. The result was a substantial downturn in the second half of January. My estimate is that all these antics lowered enrollment by about 600,000. That’s 600,000 people who now have no medical coverage and run the risk of bankruptcy if anything serious goes wrong. Nice work, folks.

For additional evidence on this score, Charles Gaba has more. He notes that state exchanges have their own marketing and outreach programs, so they were less affected by Trump’s sabotage efforts. Sure enough, he finds that state exchanges ended up higher than last year by 2 percent or more, while the federal exchange ended up 4.7 percent lower than last year. He’s got all the details here.

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Trump Sabotage of Obamacare a Big Success: Enrollment Down By a Half Million or More

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There’s Still Slack in the Labor Market—But Not a Lot

Mother Jones

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Brad DeLong looks at a chart showing the employment rate of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) compared to January 2000 and says:

Without nominal wage growth of 4%/year or significantly rising inflation, no way I am going to believe that the U.S. economy is in any sense at “full employment” with an essentially zero output gap right now.

It’s not that I disagree, but I think that choosing January 2000 stacks the deck. That’s the absolute peak of the dotcom boom, and there’s no reason to think we’re going to replicate that anytime soon. A better comparison would be the mid-90s, when the economy was strong and growing but not at the peak of a bubble. Here’s what that looks like:

We’re still not at full employment. But we’re getting there: the unemployment rate is low; the expanded unemployment rate is getting close to low; and wages are increasing a bit. Additional inflationary pressure would be yet another sign of a tight labor market, but we haven’t seen that yet.

We still have work to do to get to full employment—and it’s possible we’ll never get back to 1990s levels. That depends a lot on precisely who’s dropped out of the workforce and why. But we’re getting close.

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There’s Still Slack in the Labor Market—But Not a Lot

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Chart of the Day: Another Sign That Dodd-Frank Is Working

Mother Jones

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Via Matt O’Brien, this chart from JP Morgan shows financial sector leverage over the past few decades. As you can see, leverage skyrocketed during the Bush era, which contributed to the 2008 financial meltdown, and then plummeted shortly thereafter. Then it flattened out for a couple of years, and under normal circumstances it probably would have started to climb again when the economy began to recover. Two things stopped it: Dodd-Frank and Basel III, both of which mandated higher capital requirements and thus lower overall leverage levels. This has reduced Wall Street profits but made the banking system safer for everyone.

In other words: financial regulation FTW. Nothing is perfect, and Wall Street is doing everything it can to undermine Dodd-Frank during the rulemaking process, but if it accomplishes nothing except encouraging less leverage it will have done its most important job.

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Chart of the Day: Another Sign That Dodd-Frank Is Working

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President Obama Stares Down the Chinese

Mother Jones

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President Obama recently decided to send the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen to one of those little islands China is building in the South China Sea, and which China claims as part of its territorial waters. So how did the Chinese react?

The decision…angered China, which said last month it would “never allow any country” to violate what it considers to be its territorial waters and airspace around the islands. The U.S. vessel entered Chinese waters “illegally and without the Chinese government’s permission,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a statement, adding that Chinese authorities had monitored and warned it as it passed.

“The action by the U.S. warship has threatened China’s sovereignty and security interests, endangered the safety of personnel and facilities on the islands and damaged regional peace and stability,” he said, urging the United States to “correct its wrongdoing immediately” and not take further “dangerous and provocative actions.” Hours later, China’s vice foreign minister, Zhang Yesui, summoned U.S. Ambassador Max Baucus to deliver a formal protest.

Oooh. After saying they would “never allow” such a thing, the Chinese….issued a statement and then called in our ambassador to protest. Scary.

Seriously, though: can you imagine the ballistic outrage if Obama had reacted like this to a Chinese sail-by? Republicans would practically be ready to start impeachment hearings. It would be yet another sign of the weakened world standing of the United States under Democratic leadership.

But when it’s the other way around, is it a sign of plummeting Chinese leadership? Or Obama’s steely-eyed projection of American power? Judging by the non-reaction, I guess not. Go figure.

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President Obama Stares Down the Chinese

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McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Twitter are selling the green lifestyle on Collectively. Should you buy it?

McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Twitter are selling the green lifestyle on Collectively. Should you buy it?

8 Oct 2014 12:41 PM

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McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Twitter are selling the green lifestyle on Collectively. Should you buy it?

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Yesterday, the internet witnessed the launch of a new online media platform, Collectively.org, which wants to usher us into a brighter, greener, more sustainable future. Great! Me too! It is part of my job.

The primary force behind Collectively is Jonathon Porritt’s blue-sky-minded nonprofit Forum for the Future, and the content is “curated” by VICE Media’s advertorial arm, VIRTUE (red flag #1, perhaps.) But there’s one weird trick here (if you will): This particular venture is collaboratively — and very publicly — bankrolled by a whole slew of major corporations (McDonald’s! Coca-Cola! General Mills! Twitter!), many of which have played a significant role in building models of unsustainable industry.

The venture does make a valid point: Climate change mitigation is going to be essentially impossible without the cooperation of major corporations, and it’s naïve to think that they should be excluded from the process. But for the perpetual cynic (hi!), Collectively could be seen as a very glossy marketing tool for corporate greenwashing:

From time to time you’ll see stories of sustainable innovation from our partner organizations, but they are selected entirely on the merits of their newsworthiness and potential to create positive change. On Collectively, we’re as excited to talk about the work of a social entrepreneur in Kigali as we are to break the news about a global environmental initiative from Nike.

However, the primary problem with Collectively does not appear to be, at least in these nascent stages of its development, that it’s bankrolled by some of the largest corporations in the world. Rather, its content is both formulaic to the point of bizarreness and largely consumer-focused: A two-year-old video of a cardboard bicycle. A piece on sustainable condoms with a confoundingly cringe-worthy headline. A “news” article about why the climate march — which happened two weeks ago — was so successful. (One section has the heading, “Brands Took on a Bigger Role Than Ever.” Hmm.)

That said, I’m fully aware that Grist also frequently covers the minutiae of green decisions made in our day-to-day lives on an individual level. The difference, I would argue, is that the onus of climate change mitigation is not placed squarely on the consumer.

From the site’s introductory post:

In our articles, we will not only give readers a great story full of useful information, but also something they can do to begin creating the world they want to live in. No action is too small. Each one offers a different way of thinking and living from which we all can benefit.

Sustainability continues to be a term that has to be called out and acknowledged, a set of choices that are somehow differentiated from a “normal” lifestyle. But if we are to survive and our planet is to survive with us, a sustainable lifestyle must simply become our lifestyle. In our collective future that must be the new normal.

And on the topic of a systemic change starting at the individual level, I also found this unbelievably strange PR quote from an article in The Guardian announcing the site’s launch:

Keith Weed, the chief marketing officer and global head of sustainability at Unilever, which is the second largest advertiser in the world, says it is important to create a global movement of change.

“Maybe mother nature has invented a solution by creating the internet so that we can create movements at scale,” he told Guardian Sustainable Business.

Pardon? Is this real life? At what point did Mother Nature (She prefers Her name to be capitalized, Keith) create the internet? On which planet, exactly, can we find the Unilever marketing department?

There’s an argument to be made for the importance of personal lifestyle choices — if the demand for cleaner products isn’t there, then where’s the incentive to produce them? I get it. But I’m not delusional enough to think that the majority of my generation — the target audience for Collectively — is going to look at a video of urban beekeepers in Los Angeles (also, weirdly, two years old) and say, “SIGN ME UP FOR THE COMMUNITY APIARY THIS INSTANT! I WILL ONLY PRODUCE MY OWN HONEY FROM HERE ON OUT!” No. Most of us might, however, be more inclined to look for more sustainably produced honey at the grocery store — and guess which major brands will likely be right there to slap a label on a jar and sell it to us? Cynicism! I know.

To me, reading about how consumers should make more sustainable purchases on a site that is paid for by the exact businesses that are trying to reach those consumers raises the eyebrows at least a bit, despite insistent guarantees that the editorial and branding staff are kept entirely separate. Rather than what can be doing differently to save the planet, I’m much more interested in what major corporations are doing to fix the emissions mess they started. I mean, I already belong to a community apiary.*

*A complete and utter lie. But hey, at least I’m being up-front with you.

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McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Twitter are selling the green lifestyle on Collectively. Should you buy it?

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Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.

Another sign of the apocalypse: Coal is making a comeback in the U.S.

If there were a war on coal — which, sadly, there isn’t — it appears that the tide of battle has turned. Coal is making a comeback.

In an extensive article entitled “Coal Claws Back,” the Rhodium Group, a think tank that assesses global trends, outlined the fuel’s resurgence in the U.S. In short:

While the decline in coal-fired power generation, driven in large part by cheap natural gas, has helped reduce emissions to levels most policymakers and climate diplomats thought impossible absent economy-wide legislation, it looks as though it has just about run its course. Natural gas prices bottomed out in April of last year at $1.82 per MMBTU at Henry Hub, and have since climbed to above $3. While still low relative to the high gas prices that had become the norm before the shale boom took hold, this rebound has been enough to stop the bleeding for coal-fired power. Coal’s share of electricity generation increased from 33% in April to 42% in November, the most recent month for which public data is available, and industry consultancy GenScape estimates that coal’s share stabilized at these levels through January.

The picture is more clear in graph form.

Last summer, we noted that electricity generation from natural gas had nearly matched that from coal. This is one reason our CO2 emissions plummeted recently. But the coal-versus-natural-gas trend hasn’t held. (Note: All of the data used below is from the Energy Information Administration; November 2012 data is the most recently available.)

In October and November, the gap between coal and natural gas increased. Coal clawed back.

One reason is that the price of natural gas used for electricity generation increased. Below, it’s compared to the always-cyclical price of residential natural gas. Since April 2012, the price has risen steadily — up 58 percent by November.

That uptick correlates with the trend away from natural gas in energy production. Higher natural gas price, less incentive to use it to power electricity generation.

And the Rhodium Group suggests that, at least for the next year or two, the cost difference between coal and natural gas will hold steady.

Rhodium Group

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The EIA, meanwhile, projects that coal will hold a consistent if smaller share of the generation market for another 30 years, with natural gas and renewables inching up in the percentage of generation. Overall amount of generation, which had fallen in recent years, will start going back up.

EIA

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More coal use and more electricity produced means more greenhouse gas emissions.

Rhodium Group

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Welcome back to the fight, coal. You weren’t missed.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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