PeterWK's Periodical

Teresa Boardman/Flickr

Hooray! Today the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to save the postal service. After plowing through half a dozen separate reports about what the bill does, I’ve compiled a comprehensive list. Take a deep breath:

• Allows USPS to recoup more than $11 billion that it had overpaid into one of its pension funds. 
• Provides early retirement incentives for nearly 100,000 USPS workers.
• Restructures payments to a health benefits fund for future retirees.
• Frees up USPS to offer a broader range of services like delivering beer and wine for retailers.
• Creates a USPS chief innovation officer.
• Halts the immediate closing of up to 252 mail-processing centers and 3,700 post offices.
• Forces USPS to preserve overnight delivery of mail sent to nearby communities.
• Forbids USPS from closing a rural post office unless the next-nearest location is no more than 10 miles away.
• Places a one-year moratorium on closing rural post offices and then requires the mail agency to take rural issues into special consideration.
• Prevents USPS from cutting Saturday delivery for two years, until the agency can prove such a cut is needed as a “last resort.”
• Transitions from door-to-door delivery to curbside delivery in some areas, such as suburban neighborhoods.
• Strengthens the appeals process for customers opposed to closing a post office.
• Caps bonuses and pay for USPS executives.
• Forces USPS to wait until after Election Day to close postal facilities in states that permit voting by mail.
• Permits USPS to co-locate post offices in government-owned buildings.

Hmmm. Do you notice anything missing? Let me think.

Oh yeah: there’s nothing in there about allowing the postal service to increase postal rates. This is crazy. Take a look at countries around the world that have smaller volumes of mail than us: they all charge higher postage rates. They have to. And as volumes keep declining in America, we’re going to need higher rates here too. Right now, a first-class equivalent stamp runs 75¢ in Germany, 72¢ in Britain, 82¢ in France, 98¢ in Switzerland, 97¢ in Belgium, and 63¢ in the Netherlands. There’s no way that we can stay at 45¢ as volumes decline and pretend that somehow everything will be hunky-dory.

But allowing the price of a stamp to go up is apparently even more of a political taboo than closing rural post offices. I suppose Democrats are afraid of annoying granny and Republicans are so intent on busting the postal carriers union that they don’t like the idea of anything that brings in more revenue. We are ruled by idiots.

“Taking Aim At Regulation,” reads the official campaign website. Screenshot: neil2012.com

According to his official campaign bio, Montana Republican gubernatorial candidate Neil Livingstone has, at various points during his illustrious career as a Washington-based security consultant, “dined at gangster clubs in Moscow and in the back rooms of Georgian and Uzbek restaurants with members of the Russian Mafia”; “been stalked by terrorists and Nazis in Argentina”; “been paid in stacks of $100 bills by clients”; and held “a business meeting with a six-and-half foot tall pink-eyed albino dressed in white from head-to-foot in a Miami-area motel with the peculiar distinction of having more ‘floaters’ in its pool than any other hospitality establishment in the U.S.”

But it was the line about spending time aboard a pirate ship filled with hookers during the Monte Carlo Grand Prix that landed him in a spot of political trouble. In March, local blogger Montana Cowgirl got wind of the flooze cruise, and it quickly went national. Livingstone purged the item from his bio and attempted damage control, explaining to an Associated Press reporter that his wife had accompanied him and, anyway, he was on official business. When in Monte Carlo, right?

Livingstone, 65, probably won’t be Montana’s next governor. In head-to-head match ups, he trails GOP front-runner Rick Hill, a former congressman, and likely Democratic nominee Steve Bullock. And he has struggled to raise money. But his long-shot candidacy to replace term-limited Democrat Brian Schweitzer has drawn attention because of his less-than-orthodox past.

A ubiquitous presence on the DC scene, Livingstone has made his share of cameos in newspaper stories about spook-filled rooms. The Washington Post once described his style—crisply tailored suit, Turkish worry beads, three gold rings—as “more invented than real, like a character in an Arnaud de Borchgrave novel.” In 2005, Roll Call dubbed Livingstone “Deep Mouth,” after it was alleged that he had dined at Dupont Circle’s Palm steakhouse 88 times in a 57-day period. (Livingstone denied the charge, telling the paper that he eats there only about 15 times a month.)

Although he’s spent much of his life with an inside-the-Beltway mailing address, Livingstone boasts deep Montana roots. He grew up in Helena, where as a high school student he once made $200,000 selling a coin collection he’d picked up for a bargain at an estate sale. With the proceeds, he bought a Ferrari. Livingstone moved east for college at William & Mary, worked as a mostly anonymous Capitol Hill staffer for a few years under Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) and moved back to Missoula with his wife to get his master’s degree in political science. Then he returned to Washington, where, after a second stint on the Hill, he got a job in the mid-1970s as the vice president of Air America, the CIA-owned airline that played a critical role in the agency’s covert anti-communist operations in Laos and elsewhere. He later purchased, with four partners, Air Panama, and from there he moved to stints at various security companies.

(click the link for the rest)

It’s no secret: The federal budget is expanding faster than tax revenues, a trend that’s been fueled by the rapid growth of entitlement programs and exacerbated by the recession. As a recent New York Times article documents, even as fiscally conservative lawmakers complain about deficit spending, their constituents don’t want to give up the Social Security checks, Medicare benefits, and earned income tax credits that provide a safety net for the struggling middle class.

This gap between political perception and fiscal reality is also reflected in the distribution of tax dollars at the state level: Most politically “red” states are financially in the red when it comes to how much money they receive from Washington compared with what their residents pay in taxes.

A look at 2010 Census and IRS data reveals that the 50 states and the District of Columbia, on average, received $1.29 in federal spending for every federal tax dollar they paid. That means that some states are getting a lot more than they put in, and vice versa. The states that contributed more in taxes than they got back in spending were more likely to have voted for Obama in 2008 and were more likely to be largely urban. (There are some clear exceptions: For instance, New Mexico, a rural, Democratic state, gets more federal money per tax dollar than any other state.)

These three interactive maps break down the split between the spenders and lenders. Click on any state for more detailed data, including each state’s per capita ratio of spending received versus taxes paid and where it ranked when the Tax Foundation ran the 2005 numbers.

Red states were more likely to get a bigger cut of federal spending. Of the 22 states that went to McCain in 2008, 86 percent received more federal spending than they paid in taxes in 2010. In contrast, 55 percent of the states that went to Obama received more federal spending than they paid in taxes. Republican states, on average, received $1.46 in federal spending for every tax dollar paid; Democratic states, on average, received $1.16.

This red-blue split may be partly explained by the difference between urban and rural states. Red states are more likely to be rural, and rural states were more likely to receive more federal spending than they paid in taxes in 2010. Among predominantly rural states, 81 percent received more federal spending than they paid in taxes. In contrast, 44 percent of urban states received more federal spending than they paid in taxes. Rural states, on average, received $1.40 in federal spending for every tax dollar paid; urban states, on average, received $1.10. (Rural states are defined as states whose urban population rate is below the national average of 79 percent.)

Note: Data has been adjusted to be deficit neutral using the method described by the Tax Foundation in its earlier analysis of federal spending versus federal taxes paid.
Sources: IRS (state tax data), Tax Foundation (2005 rank of spending vs. taxes), US Census (federal spending, urban/rural)

Front page image: Wikimedia Commons

Roger Ippolito, a 74-year-old Korean War veteran, receives $450 a month in social security benefits. Amanda Voisard/ZUMA

Republican candidates have lately been parroting Charles Murray’s argument that our “entitlement society” has created a nation of deadbeats who would rather live off government benefits than find a job. In response, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released a study earlier this week showing the fraction of government benefits that go to able-bodied workers.

Their estimate is about 9 percent. I linked to the CBPP study on Monday, and since their methodology was fairly complex, I added a back-of-the-envelope version that simply added up the benefits of programs that don’t serve the elderly, disabled, or working poor. I figured that would make the source of CBPP’s number a little more understandable.

The next day I got an email from Arloc Sherman, one of the authors of the study. You can’t just add up these programs, he told me, because even a lot of programs that people think of as “welfare” actually serve the elderly, disabled, and working poor too. Medicaid is the biggest example: Most of us think of Medicaid as a program for the poor, but more than half of all Medicaid spending actually goes to the elderly and the disabled.

So what percent of each program goes to the elderly, disabled, or working poor? The bulk of both Medicare and Social Security goes to the elderly and most of the balance goes to the disabled. The Earned Income Tax Credit goes almost entirely to the working poor. But what about the others? I was surprised when I saw the complete breakdown, and you might be too. Here it is:

Eighty-three percent of Medicaid goes to the elderly, disabled, or working poor. Seventy-nine percent of school lunches. Sixty-nine percent of unemployment compensation. Sixty-four percent of SNAP (food stamps). Even TANF, the classic “welfare” program, clocks in at 46 percent—and it’s a very small program. The other 54 percent only amounts to about $6 billion, a minuscule fraction of federal benefits, and ever since the 1996 welfare reform bill those benefits have been temporary anyway. It’s not really possible to become dependent on TANF any longer.

Overall, only about 9 percent of government benefits go to those who could be thought of as able-bodied workers who either can’t or won’t find a job. And as the study says:

Moreover, the vast bulk of that 9 percent goes for medical care, unemployment insurance benefits (which individuals must have a significant work history to receive), Social Security survivor benefits for the children and spouses of deceased workers, and Social Security benefits for retirees between ages 62 and 64. Seven out of the 9 percentage points go for one of these four purposes.

Sherman adds this:

Another point: Many of those who decry the growth of entitlement spending seem to forget the most basic of all facts about it: it continues to be driven overwhelmingly by the twin engines of an aging population and the rising cost of medical care. Neither of which has much to do with dependency among the working-age population.

This is especially true for medical care, I think. We spend a fair amount of money on health care services for the poor, but even theoretically that does nothing to make them less likely to work. They still need money for everything else, after all. All it does is provide them with a bare minimum of decent health care. We can afford that, can’t we?

UPDATE: I mistakenly said that all of Medicare and nearly all of Social Security goes to the elderly. In fact, about 81% of Medicare and 77% of Social Security goes to people over the age of 65. However, the chart is correct: 100% of Medicare and 96% of Social Security goes to the elderly, disabled, and working poor. I’ve corrected the text.

Ron Paul 2012

Last year, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul introduced a bill in Congress that would allow states to ban contraception if they choose.

Paul’s “We the People Act,” which he introduced in 2004, 2005, 2009, and 2011, explicitly forbids federal courts and the Supreme Court of the United States from ruling on the constitutionality of a variety of state and local laws. That includes, among other things, “any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction.” The bill would let states write laws forbidding abortion, the use of contraceptives, or consensual gay sex, for example.

If passed, Paul’s bill could undermine the most important Supreme Court case dealing with contraception—1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut. In that case, the high court found that a Connecticut law prohibiting the use of contraception was unconstitutional based on a “right to marital privacy” afforded by the Bill of Rights. In other words, the court declared that states cannot interfere with what happens between the sheets when it comes to reproduction.

Paul’s bill would also keep the federal courts out of cases like Roe v. Wade and 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas, in which the justices found that privacy is a guaranteed right concerning sexual practices and struck down Texas’ anti-sodomy law as unconstitutional.

It’s well known that Paul, like the other remaining GOP presidential contenders, is no fan of abortion or gay people. But the issue of contraception access is one that has not received nearly as much attention.

Paul’s bill hasn’t received much support in the House. It has no cosponsors and has never made it to a vote on the House floor. But that’s not its biggest potential problem: ”I don’t think it would be constitutional to strip the court of that power,” said Bebe Anderson, director of the US legal program as the Center for Reproductive Rights. “You certainly couldn’t do it by law—you’d have to amend the constitution to do that.”

Paul’s campaign did not respond to a request for a clarification on the intent of the his proposed law with regard to contraception. But as Addie Stan notes over at Alternet, Paul’s response to a question about the Griswold ruling during a January presidential debate provides hints about what he might say. “As far as selling contraceptives, the Interstate Commerce Clause protects this because the Interstate Commerce Clause was originally written not to impede trade between the states, but it was written to facilitate trade between the states,” Paul said. “So if it’s not illegal to import birth control pills from one state to the next, it would be legal to sell birth control pills in that state.” 

Charles Murray is concerned about the moral collapse of the white working class and ascribes it to the breakdown of traditional values that began in the 60s. But Paul Krugman hauls out a couple of charts showing that violent crime and teen pregnancy have been dropping over the past few decades and makes a pointed observation: “So here’s a thought: maybe traditional social values are eroding in the white working class — but maybe those traditional social values aren’t as essential to a good society as conservatives like to imagine.”

Maybe! But then again, maybe both Murray and Krugman are missing the boat. I’ve written before about Rick Nevin’s research showing the startlingly strong correlation between the drop in childhood lead exposure (mostly thanks to the introduction of unleaded gasoline) and the drop in violent crime, but I’ve never mentioned the actual title of the original paper he wrote. Here it is:

How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy

Guess what? The reduction in blood lead levels over the past few decades seems to be a very strong predictor of the drop in teen pregancy levels. Here’s Nevin:

Although other social trends and government policies are often cited to explain the rise and fall in unwed pregnancy and crime rates over recent decades, the role of childhood lead exposure seems to be especially apparent in the best-fit lag structures for gasoline lead regressions. In the case of the unwed pregnancy regressions, the best-fit lag for each bracket is consistent with changes in lead exposure in the first years of life….The fit between the temporal patterns, with lags consistent with the known risks of lead exposure in the first years of life, provide striking visual support for the association between lead exposure and undesirable social behaviors.

His “striking visual support” is below. Make of this what you will. Just keep in mind that sometimes neither “traditional moral values” nor economic stagnation provides all the answers. Sometimes you ought to be looking elsewhere.

Almost everyone I know owns something made by Apple, and while most of us spend a fair bit of time obsessing about our gadgets—which apps are worth paying for? Is Siri useful or annoying?—rarely do we talk about where they came from. In part, that’s because Apple wants it that way: The company is famously tight-lipped about its manufacturing process, and few outsiders have ever made it into their factories.

But now, Apple’s tough facade has finally begun to crack: Recent coverage (more on this below) has provided a glimpse into Apple’s vast supply chain and the massive profits it produces—more than $400,000 for every employee, according to a New York Times investigation. Here at Mother Jones, we’ve got a somewhat related investigation in the pipeline—come back in a few weeks for the details. Meanwhile, my colleague Dave Gilson made this handy tool.

We’ve loaded this iPhone up with 10 apps you won’t find on a real smart phone. Click on an app to learn where your phone’s electronic components really came from.