Dave Gilson

Senior Editor

San Francisco native, word wrangler, data cruncher, chart drawer, pun maker. Recent areas of interest: campaign finance, income inequality, prison riots.

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Dave Gilson has worked at Mother Jones since 2003. Previously, he worked for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and the Northern California bureau of the New York Times.

Quick Reads: "Ascent of the A-Word: by Geoffrey Nunberg

—By Dave Gilson

| Mon Aug. 13, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years

By Geoffrey Nunberg

PublicAffairs

It's hard to say what makes an asshole an asshole, but you know 'em when you see 'em—from Donald Trump to that guy in the SUV who refuses to use his freakin' turn signal. Here, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg of the University of California-Berkeley briskly and entertainingly traces how a bit of World War II GI slang became an ubiquitous epithet and a moral category that's come to embody our polarized politics. Though he doesn't buy into simplistic notions of civility, Nunberg is concerned about the toxic side of assholism: When we declare someone an asshole, we're usually giving ourselves leave to act like one.

This review originally appeared in our September/October issue of Mother Jones.

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Charts: Which Countries Are the Real Olympic Winners?

Faster, higher, smaller? A different way of measuring who does best at the summer games.

—By Dave Gilson

| Fri Jul. 27, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Update, 8/7/12: The most current data from the 2012 games has been added to the charts.

When all the medals from the 2012 Summer Olympics in London are tallied up, the top slots will likely be occupied by the usual suspects—the United States, China, and Russia. But what if we tried to measure countries' Olympic achievements without simply counting how many medals they bring home? What if we compared their athletes' performance against the size of their economies and populations?

That's what this interactive chart does. Click the play button at the bottom to see animated data starting in 1960. Hover over dots to see country names; click on a dot to turn on its label. (And scroll down to the bottom of this post for a customizable version.)

As you'll see in the chart above, looking at Olympic records this way produces some interesting results. For example, in the 2008 Beijing games, Jamaica only won 11 medals (or 32 medal points, if you assign 4 points to gold, 2 to silver, 1 to bronze). But it outperformed the big guns like the United States and China when it came to how many medal points it got relative to its developing economy and tiny population. While the US garnered 0.02 medal points per billion dollars of GDP and 0.8 medal points for every 1 million Americans, Jamaica picked up 2.2 medal points per billion dollars of GDP and 11.9 medal points for every 1 million Jamaicans. Not bad.

Mother Jones 2012 Summer Olympics Coverage

By this metric, other countries that outperformed the big medal winners in 2008 included the Bahamas, Cuba, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mongolia, and Zimbabwe.

This isn't necessarily a sign that these countries are up-and-coming athletic powerhouses. In some cases it simply means that they have a handful of world-class athletes and terrible economies (e.g. Ethiopia and Zimbabwe). Doing well in events that award a lot of medals also helps (e.g., Cuba and boxing and judo.) Other factors that may help countries' overall Olympic performance: Being a former member of the Soviet Bloc or a country with a planned economy, since they are more likely to aggressively recruit and train athletes. Being the host country also provides a bump (e.g. Mexico in 1968).

[Read the full article]

Boats, Bottles, and Billy the Kid: The Other Koch Brother

—By Dave Gilson

| Mon Jul. 23, 2012 1:13 PM PDT

Bill Koch at an America's Cup press conference in 1992.

Now that he's given $2 million to the main pro-Romney super-PAC, William Koch has joined his brothers David and Charles as one of 2012's top conservative moneymen. Bill, David's twin, also made much of his money from his family's energy holdings, though he's not quite as rich as his better-known siblings. Forbes puts his net worth at $4 billion, versus his brothers' combined worth of $50 billion, the result of a drawn-out legal battle over the family fortune that left Bill and the eldest Koch brother, Frederick, behind.

Though he's given money to Republicans such as Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) and has used his company, Oxbow Carbon, to lobby against wind turbines off Cape Cod, Bill has not gotten involved with his brothers' shadowy political fundraising operation. "Bill Koch isn't Charles Koch and he isn't David Koch," his spokesman told the Village Voice. "He's not his brother's keeper."

What Bill Koch does like to keep: Wine and art. According to Antiques and Fine Art, Koch's Florida house has a "computerized wine cellar" that provides "easy access" his collection, whose size has been estimated at somewhere between 35,000 and 43,000 bottles. Koch once believed he possessed bottles of French wine signed by legendary oenophile Thomas Jefferson, but he later claimed they were bogus and sued the dealer and Christie's auction house. Last year, Koch told the Economist that he has spent $4 to $5 million on fake wines. He did not say how much he has spent on his ongoing lawsuits (five at last count) against the alleged purveyors of counterfeit wine.

Koch also has an extensive and eclectic collection of fine art, including works by Monet, Chagall, and Winslow Homer. Not content to let his favorite pieces collect dust, Koch seasonally schleps them to and from his summer home. As AFA explains:

Koch annually chooses artwork from his 400-strong collection to transport from his 40,000 square foot primary residence in Florida to the Cape Cod beach house. At a third of the size, the summer home accommodates only a careful selection. Thus, favorites such as enormous Fernando Botero sculptures, Alfred Stevens's engaging The Coquette, and much of the maritime collection (excluding over 120 boat models of every defender and challenger in the America's Cup), travel north while the majority of Koch's trove stays behind.

Koch's other passion is sailing. In 1992, he won the America's Cup at a reported cost of $68 million. "Financially, I would say win or lose, it's not worth it," he told ESPN. "If you asked me…if I knew what I know now, would I do it, the answer to that would be no."

"Wild Bill" also has a thing for the Old West. In 2010, he quietly purchased Buckskin Joe, a Colorado town/movie set/tourist trap, and relocated its buildings to his ranch. Last June, he spent $2.3 million on the only authenticated photograph of Billy the Kid. That's still $300,000 more than he's spent on Romney, one of his cheaper hobbies.

The House That Ate the Hamptons

—By Dave Gilson

| Mon Jul. 9, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Ira Rennert's Fair Field Wikimedia Commons

This weekend, Mitt Romney made a very profitable swing through the Hamptons. On the agenda: A trio of fundraisers, including a $50,000-a-head party at David Koch's $18 million estate and a shindig at financier Ronald Perelman's 57-acre estate, home to "the most outstanding private conifer collection in the United States." But those spreads have nothing on billionaire Ira Rennert's estate in Sagaponack (which, sadly for Romney, did not host a fundraiser).

Thought to be America's largest inhabited residence, Fair Field cost $100 million to build and is worth at least $200 million. The 110,000-square-foot complex has 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms, three pools, two libraries, a bowling alley, a playground, a full theater, its own power plant, and a garage for 100 cars. The main building is 66,000 square feet, 28 times bigger than the average new house. It's the third-largest private home in America. (No. 1 is the 174,000- square-foot Biltmore Estate.) The mansion even inspired a novel, The House That Ate the Hamptons. Kurt Vonnegut called it "the greatest book ever written." In a rare public appearance, Rennert described his mega-mansion as "old age and loneliness insurance."

A local architect who approved the project praised its "restrained classic design." Or, as one local put it to MoJo's Josh Harkinson, "It's a fucking monster!" Fair Field is now at the heart of a new controversy between Rennert and his slightly less affluent neighbors, who have accused him of "practicing class warfare" with his noisy private helicopters. Seriously. Check it out.

UFO Sightings Are More Common Than Voter Fraud

The GOP says election fraud is rampant. A close look at the numbers shows there's no evidence of that.

—By Hamed Aleaziz, Dave Gilson, and Jaeah Lee

| July/August 2012 Issue

Block The Vote

Since 2001, nearly 1,000 bills that would tighten voting laws have been introduced in 46 states.

24 voting restrictions have passed in 17 states since 2011. This fall, new laws could affect more than 5 million voters in states representing 179 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

In the past two years, 5 battleground states (Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) have tightened their voting laws.

As of April, 74 restrictive voting laws were on the table in 24 states.

Sources: Brennan Center for Justice, NAACP

Card-carrying Americans Only

Since 2011, 34 states have introduced laws requiring voters to show photo ID, and 9 states have passed photo ID laws, affecting 3.8 million voters.

2.2 million registered voters did not vote in 2008 because they didn't have proper ID.

*Does not include laws awaiting DOJ clearance, blocked by courts, or not in effect until after 2012. Source: National Conference of State Legislatures

Last year, 12 states introduced laws requiring birth certificates or other proof of citizenship to vote; 3 passed.

Only 48 percent of women have a birth certificate with their current legal name on it.

Texas' new ID law permits voters to use concealed-handgun licenses as proof of identity, but not state university IDs.

Sources: Brennan Center for Justice; Gabriel R. Sanchez, Stephen A. Nuño, and Matt A. Barreto

Discouraging New Voters

80 percent of the 75 million eligible voters who did not take part in the 2008 election were not registered to vote.

In 2008, more than 1/3 of voters cast ballots before Election Day. In 2011, 5 states passed bills to restrict early voting.

States with Election Day registration have 7 to 12 percent greater turnout than states without. Last year, 5 states introduced bills that eliminate Election Day registration.

12 percent of minority voters report registering through voter drives, twice the rate of white voters. In 2011, Florida and Texas passed laws making registration drives much harder to organize.

Florida state Sen. Mike Bennett, a supporter of the tougher voter registration law, said, "I don't have a problem making it harder. I want people in Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who walks 200 miles across the desert. This should not be easy."

Source: Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project

Locking Out Ex-cons

4 million Americans who have completed prison sentences are ineligible to vote. 38 percent of disenfranchised voters are African American.

13 percent of African American men cannot vote due to criminal records, a rate 7 times the national average.

The United States and Belgium are the only democracies that disenfranchise citizens for lengthy or indefinite periods after completing prison sentences.

To regain their voting rights, released felons in Iowa must provide the address of the judge who convicted them and a credit report showing they have paid off their court costs. "They make the process just about impossible," said a 40-year old ex-con who'd stolen a soda machine as a teen.

In Search Of Stolen Votes

While defending its precedent-setting photo ID law before the Supreme Court, Indiana was unable to cite a single instance of voter impersonation in its entire history.

A 2005 report by the American Center for Voting Rights claimed there were more than 100 cases of voter fraud involving 300,000 votes in 2004. A review of the charges turned up only 185 votes that were even potentially fraudulent.

In support of a voter ID law, Kansas Secretary of State (and the legal brains behind a slew of anti-immigration laws) Kris Kobach cited 221 incidents of voter fraud in the state between 1997 and 2010. Yet those cases produced just 7 convictions—none related to impersonating other voters.

Last December, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus declared that Wisconsin is "absolutely riddled with voter fraud." In fact, the state's voter fraud rate in 2004 was 0.0002 percent—just 7 votes.

In 2008, John McCain said fraudulent registrations collected by ACORN were "one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." The Congressional Research Service found no proof that anyone improperly registered by ACORN tried to vote.

Federal convictions for election fraud, 2002-05

Voting while ineligible: 18
Voting multiple times: 5
Registration fraud: 3

unidentified lying objects

Between 2000 and 2010, there were:

649 million votes cast in general elections

47,000 UFO sightings

441 Americans killed by lightning

13 credible cases of in-person voter impersonation

Special hat tip to craigconnects.org

Additional sources:

A 2005 report by the American Center for Voting Rights…: The Myth of Voter Fraud by Lorraine C. Minnite
13 credible cases…: Justin Levitt, Loyola Law School