Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

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Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

US to Lead World Oil Production…for a Few Years

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Nov. 14, 2012 8:49 AM PST

On Monday, the International Energy Administration released a new report that projects that the US will pass Saudi Arabia as the world's leading producer of oil in 2020. U-S-A! U-S-A!

IEA IEA

"The United States, which currently imports around 20% of its total energy needs, becomes all but self sufficient in net terms—a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy importing countries," the IEA concluded.

The projection, of course, flies in the face of the allegation that President Obama has destroyed the oil and gas industry in the US with his crushing regulatory agenda. He hasn't. Crude oil production actually increased 14 percent between 2008 and 2011.

Yet the amount of oil we produce is expected to decline again after 2020. Saudi Arabia is expected to retake the global lead by 2030. So maybe we should be thinking about a Plan B.

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8 Environmental Rules That Were Too Controversial to Enact Pre-Election

At long last, Obama has a chance to make life harder for polluters. Will he take it?

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Nov. 14, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Intermountain Power Agency's coal plant near Delta, Utah

Now that the election is over and Barack Obama will be staying in the White House for another four years, environmental groups are hoping that some long-awaited new rules will break loose from the regulatory logjam.

It's no surprise that a lot of the rules that seemed to do a disappearing act are the ones that the fossil fuel industry and Republicans in Congress have opposed. "It takes no genius to see that from mid-summer until now there were not going to be any major controversial rules finalized until after the election," said Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice, which has filed suit to speed up the delivery of several of these delayed regulations.

While some rules were delayed this year because of election season strategizing, others have been backlogged for years. The sticking place for many of them is the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, a White House outpost that is supposed to review draft regulations within 90 days. Many advocates for tougher environmental and public health rules blamed OIRA for being too timid in Obama's first term, weakening or delaying any rule that could be contentious.

Here are eight environmental problems that the Obama administration could soon get around to regulating:

[Read the full article]

Which Anti-Science Rep. Will Chair the Science Committee?

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Nov. 13, 2012 2:18 PM PST

The race is on for the next chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee—and no matter who wins, he won't be a big fan of science.

So far, three men have announced that they would like to take over for Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas), who is stepping down because House rules limit representatives to 6 years as chairman. Hall was certainly no champion of science, telling National Journal last year that he doesn't think humans are having a significant impact on the climate because, "I don't think we can control what God controls." He also said he was "really more fearful of freezing," and that he thinks climate scientists dreamed up the whole "warming" thing to make money.

But the would-be new chairs aren’t much better. So far, Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wisc.) have all announced that they would like to take over, Science reports. Here are some of their greatest hits on science.

Rohrabacher: You can check out his webpage on the subject, which is full of crazy, or read his March 2009 speech on how scientists made up global warming as part of a "radical agenda to change our way of life." Or you can see his May 2011 comments that seemed to indicate that he believes that trees cause global warming. His greatest hit, however, was suggesting in a hearing that historic global warming was caused by "dinosaur flatulence." (While you're at it, check out my colleague Daniel Schulman's 2010 story about Rohrabacher taking up arms in Afghanistan in the '80s.)

Smith: Here's Smith in December 2009 chastising news networks for not devoting enough coverage to the so-called "Climategate" affair: "We now know that prominent scientists were so determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming that they worked together to hide contradictory temperature data." His congressional website does at least acknowledge that the climate is changing, but not that human activity is a major factor.

Sensenbrenner: The Wisconsin lawmaker believes that climate change is a "massive international scientific fraud," and in December 2009 declared, "There's increasing evidence of scientific fascism that's going on." But his best one-liner, perhaps, was at a 2007 panel in which he suggested that maybe we should put catalytic converters on cow butts to deal with gases.

The Internet Gets Its Slut-Shaming Kicks Over Paula Broadwell

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Nov. 12, 2012 1:45 PM PST

Hey, this story about General David Petraeus is pretty wild. And it seems like many writers covering it have used this as an opportunity to air some good, old-fashioned misogyny—because we all know it was the woman's fault for having a vagina in the presence of a powerful man, right?

On Friday afternoon, before there was even any information available about the woman in question, Free Beacon writer Michael Goldfarb opined on unsubstantiated rumors that the still unidentified "homewrecker" had something to do with Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren:

After information came to light about Paula Broadwell, the alleged mistress, Business Insider posted a piece from writer Robert Johnson, who talks to an unnamed "senior military source." The source praises Petraeus' "honor" in admitting that he was having an affair with a woman who "got her claws—so to speak—in him." From the article:

Let's face it, everyone is human, and we all make mistakes. You're a 60 year-old man and an attractive woman almost half your age makes herself available to you — that would be a test for anyone.

Here's the Washington Post making sure you know that the affair was all Broadwell's fault because, you know, she dressed like a marriage-destroying vixen:

Former aides say Broadwell’s attire—usually tight shirts and pants—prompted complaints in Afghanistan, where Western-style attire can offend local sensibilities. Her form-fitting clothes made a lasting impression on longtime Afghan hands, and Petraeus once admonished her, through a staffer, to "dress down," a former aide recalled.

"She was seemingly immune to the notion of modesty in this part of the world," said a general who served in Afghanistan while Petraeus was commander there.

Paleocon blogger Robert Stacy McCain doesn't even bother to couch his feelings in euphemism, in his unsubtle blog post, "The Slut Paula Broadwell."

Over at Buzzfeed, writer Jessica Testa does an admirable job of trying to criticize this developing media narrative about Broadwell as a manipulative strumpet. But then she does little to help the cause, writing of Broadwell: "A few months ago, she shared Katie Roiphe's Newsweek story about powerful women who want to be sexually dominated."

60 Percent of Women in Congress Were Girl Scouts

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Nov. 12, 2012 4:08 AM PST

When the new Congress is sworn in next January, it will include a record number of women senators. Interesting fact about the 20 women in the Senate: 70 percent of them were Girl Scouts.

Of the newly elected senators, Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) were all involved with Girl Scouts, the national organization reports. (At press time, they were still trying to figure out if Heidi Heitkamp, the new Democratic senator from North Dakota, was a scout, too.) If you include the House as well, 60 percent of women in Congress were once Girl Scouts.

This is notable, as only about 8 percent of women overall in the US were scouts in their youth. I talked to Anna Maria Chávez, the chief executive officer of the Girl Scouts of the USA, about why the group, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this year, is so well represented in Washington. "From the very beginning the whole mission of this organization has been to create girls who are very sensitive and in tune with their community needs," said Chávez. "We develop not only leaders, but leaders with a political conscience."

She noted that Girl Scouts are also well-represented among women business leaders and astronauts, for example. "This organization has literally created the female leadership pipeline in this country," she said. "There's obviously a secret sauce in our methodology."

For certain, Girl Scouts learn a number of life skills—financial literacy, environmental awareness, the value of community service. On the campaign trail, Warren talked about teaching her daughter and friends how to use a knife when she was a troop leader, which is also pretty helpful.

While we're all excited about having 20 women in the Senate, that's still far from representative of the US population. Chávez said that is also why the Girl Scouts launched a new campaign this year, To Get Her There, which aims to increase the number of women in leadership roles through mentorship and supportive environments for developing those skills. The goal of the program is to achieve parity within a generation, which they're defining as about 25 years from now.

OK, so, by 2037 there better be at least 50 women in the Senate. We're looking at you, Girl Scouts!