Josh Harkinson

Reporter

Born in Texas and based in San Francisco, Josh covers the economy, corporations, and a wide range of political issues in California and the West.

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What if 31 Shots Had Been Only 10?

—By Josh Harkinson

| Tue Jan. 11, 2011 4:00 AM PST

Glock's "superior firepower" clip Glock's "superior firepower" clipThe Tucson shooter's killing frenzy finally came to an end on Saturday after he allegedly emptied his semi-automatic Glock handgun of its 31 bullets. According to witness reports, as he was changing the clip, a wounded woman tried to grab the gun from him. His next shot jammed before two men wrestled him to the ground.

Before 2004, when the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired, the shooter never would have been able to get off so many shots before pausing to reload. The ban, enacted in 1994 in the wake of mass killings in San Francisco and Waco, limited gun magazines to a maximum of ten rounds. Assuming that the shooter would've achieved the same hit ratio with the smaller clip, he would have shot six people and maybe killed one or two instead of shooting 20 and killing half a dozen.

"If he was restricted to a 10-round magazine, lives could have been saved," says Daniel Vice, a senior attorney with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. According to a 2004 study (PDF) by the University of Pennsylvania's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, "attacks with semiautomatics—including assault weapons and other semiautomatics equipped with large capacity magazines—result in more shots fired, more persons hit, and more wounds inflicted per victim than to attacks with other firearms."

The Brady Campaign is supporting a new bill by Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) that would renew the Assault Weapons Ban, a Democratic priority that the Obama administration had essentially abandoned.

Of course, a renewed ban will do little to get rid of the thousands of high-capacity clips already in circulation. While seven states and the District of Columbia ban clips of the sort Jared Loughner allegedly used, they're widely available in Arizona gun stores and enthusiastically marketed by gun makers. As the Glock website puts it: "Compact and subcompact GLOCK pistol model magazines can be loaded with a convincing number of rounds."

Read our exclusive interview with a friend of the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, who describes Loughner's family, bizarre dream journal, and his obsession with Rep. Giffords. Full coverage of the shooting and its aftermath is here. Front page image courtesy of Joe Holst/Flickr.

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Obama: Not So Wild About Wildlife

Why isn't he doing more to beat George W. Bush's pathetic record on protecting polar bears and other endangered species?

—By Josh Harkinson

| Thu Jan. 6, 2011 4:00 AM PST

By the time he left office, President George W. Bush wasn't exactly known as a friend of endangered wildlife. Over eight years, his administration protected 62 species of domestic animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act. By contrast, Bill Clinton had declared 522 species endangered during his two terms. (See chart below.) On average, Bush added eight new species to the list annually, the slowest pace of any president since Richard Nixon signed the ESA into law in 1973.

When Barack Obama took office in 2009, conservationists expected him to pick up the slack as well as end the outgoing administration's policy of blocking, delaying, and politicizing endangered-species listings. In April 2009, the president took a swipe at his predecessor, declaring that the ESA had been "undermined by past administrations," and all but promising to apply the law more aggressively: "We should be looking for ways to improve it—not weaken it."

Yet two years later, little has changed, to the frustration of some wildlife advocates. Late last month, for example, the Interior Department upheld the Bush administration's decision not to list the polar bear as endangered despite the rapid loss of its arctic habitat. If the bear were designated as endangered, it could legally obligate the government to adopt a more aggressive climate policy. "The Obama administration delivered a lump of coal to the polar bear for Christmas," said the Center for Biological Diversity's Kassie Siegel, the lead author of a 2005 petition to protect the bear. "Once again President Obama's interior department has sacrificed sound science for political expediency, and the polar bear will suffer as a result."

[Read the full article]

Oakland Suspends Pot Farms

—By Josh Harkinson

| Mon Jan. 3, 2011 2:26 PM PST

Was it all just a pipe dream? Oakland's audacious plan to legalize and tax large-scale marijuana farms is starting to sound like a totally rad idea that, upon further consideration, is only workable in a Harold and Kumar movie. Over the holidays, the city's pot-loving council members sent the plan back to the drawing board over fears that they might all go to prison. "It remains an open question" whether allowing the farms could expose the council to federal prosecution, the county DA informed them. Because, you know, the risks of building four, football-stadium-sized indoor grow operations that would together gross $200 million a year hadn't already been totally obvious.

The council's hand-wringing is probably the result of the feds harshing their buzz. Early last month, California Watch reported that officials from the US Department of Justice had informed Oakland's city attorney that no, really, they weren't cool with the plan. The city council had been under the mistaken impression that the the farms would be left alone by the Obama DEA, which in 2009 announced that it would no longer raid legitimate medical marijuana operations. But Oakland's plan to become "Oaksterdam" may have been a bit too Left Coast even for the O-man.

So what now? Council president Jane Brunner tells the San Francisco Chronicle that the pot farm plan is being reworded to exclude any possibility that its high-grade ganja could be used by recreational stoners (a California ballot measure that would have legalized recreational pot failed in November). In Oaksterdam, it's all about the meds now, or whatever.

The iPhone's Trade Deficit Problem

—By Josh Harkinson

| Thu Dec. 16, 2010 6:05 AM PST

Pundits love to claim that America's job market will come roaring back as soon as everyone learns to "embrace the innovation economy" and churn out more high-tech gadgets. Well, maybe they should think different. Two academic researchers at the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo recently found that the most iconic American gadget of all—Apple's iPhone—last year added $1.9 billion to the US trade deficit.

The explanation is fairly simple: iPhone parts manufactured in the United States account for a mere 6 percent of its estimated $179 wholesale cost. The rest of the iPhone's cost comes from components made in Japan and Germany and their final assembly in China. "High-tech products such as iPhones in this context do not help increase US exports," conclude the researchers, Yuqing Xing and Neal Detert, "but instead contribute to the US trade deficit."

As the chart makes obvious, it's unfair to blame the entire trade deficit on China, which accounts for just 3.6 percent of the phone's wholesale cost. Citing some of the figures yesterday, the Wall Street Journal argued that "the practice of assuming every product shipped from one country is entirely produced in that country no longer reflects the complex reality of global commerce." That's certainly true.

Yet the Journal neglected a more important point: There's nothing forcing Apple to manufacture the iPhone abroad. The ADBI researchers estimate that Apple's gross profit margin on iPhones in 2009 was a whopping 64 percent. This leads them to conclude that "profit maximization behavior," and not competition, is what's driving Apple to China. In other words, Apple would rather make a little bit more money than employ more Americans.

If all iPhones were assembled in the US, it would have added $5.7 billion to US exports last year. When are we gonna get an app for that?

From Filibernie to Twitterbuster: The Digital Sit-in of the Tax Deal

—By Josh Harkinson

| Mon Dec. 13, 2010 11:39 AM PST

A few days after Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) became the world's biggest Twitter trend with his 8.5-hour filibuster of the Obama/GOP tax deal, the #filibernie has morphed into a loosely-defined "digital sit-in" promoted under the new hash tag #Twitterbuster. A few sample tweets:

@imwithbernie: okay twittetarians...it's now or never. show the #filibernie support. #twitterbuster = digital sit-in, RT #twitterbuster

@normavela: If you support Bernie Sanders's opposition to tax cuts for the wealthiest, tweet & retweet #filibernie #twitterbuster

@SoundPolitic: I called my Senators to stand with Bernie Sanders. Took about 15 minutes. I KNOW you've got the time too! #filibernie #twitterbuster

@Heidiko44: Robin Hood was right #filibernie #twitterbuster

Beyond the obvious outrage over giving tax breaks to the rich during a budget crisis, the twitterverse's fascination with Sanders' speech might have something to do with mashing up two vastly different types of media. There's something delightfully jarring about promoting the definition of long-form oration, the filibuster, on a platform constrained to 140 characters. One of Friday's most popular tweets attempted to sum up the entire address: "@SenatorSanders spoke for 8.5 hours in defense of 98% of Americans."

For highlights from the monster speech that started it all, check out my summary here.

UPDATE: On Monday night, Sanders appeared on Countdown With Keith Olbermann and was attacked by Stephen Colbert, who proposed that instead of taxing the rich, we support the poor by purchasing and eating their children. Below the jump Rachel Maddow recaps his speech and makes the case that the Beltway media exhibited a bias in its spotty coverage of the event.

Update #2: On Tuesday, Twitter user @imwithbernie launched an eponymous website, imwithbernie.com, that allows users to easily highlight and tweet any part of the transcript of Sanders 72,000-word oratory.

Last updated on 12/14/10 at 1:35 Pacific

[Read more in the MoJo blog]