through Coit Rd. Station in East Cleveland, en route to Rockefeller’s Forest Hill summer home, 1912.
On this date in 1877, John D. Rockefeller, who would live another 60 years, and his business partner at the Standard Oil Company, Henry Flagler, made a deal with the Pennsylvania Railroad requiring it to rebate 15 percent of its revenue from carrying freight on the line. That gave Standard Oil an edge against which other oil companies could not compete. That same day, they also bought the Empire Transportation Company and the Columbia Conduit Company, which made Standard Oil the primary shipper of oil to Europe.
Together, the companies owned pipelines, shipping operations and rail cars, and that gave Standard Oil nearly complete control over oil transportation, a tremendously lucrative perch. It was the beginning of a 35-year fight in the courts. While the investigators and lawyers and judges pondered matters of legality, Rockefeller and Flagler consolidated their hold over oil, and by 1892 had a monopoly over the nation’s refineries.
In no small part due to muckraking of Ida Tarbell in her 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company, which depicted Rockefeller as a vicious, vindictive money-grubbing monopolist, Standard Oil was broken up into 33 smaller companies.
Each week, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting offers a mini-critique of media coverage of a few issues. Here is the latest:
Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute writes Home Values Have Seen Starkly Disparate Recoveries by Race:
Though it is widely believed that home values have stabilized in most areas during the recovery, a recent report by the Federal Reserve found that between 2010 and 2013, the inflation-adjusted median home value for all homeowners declined 7 percent. Even more startling, however, is how unevenly home values have recovered by race of the homeowner.
This 7 percent decline in the inflation-adjusted median home value breaks out into a 4 percent decline for both non-Hispanic whites and nonwhites (including Hispanics). But public data from the Survey of Consumer Finances—which provide more detailed race categories—show even starker differences among racial and ethnic groups. Between 2010 and 2013, inflation-adjusted median home values fell by 4.6 percent for white households and 18.4 percent for African American households, but increased by 3.7 percent for Hispanic households. Since respondents reported their highest home values in the 2007 survey, the median value reported by whites has declined 20.3 percent, compared to 37.7 percent for African Americans and 25.8 percent for Latinos.
The sharp difference between African Americans and Hispanics is a departure from prior years when changes in home values and homeownership rates for the two groups moved together. While African Americans and Hispanics reported the same homeownership rate (44 percent) in 2013, the difference in home values could be related to geographic variation in the timing of the housing recovery. According to the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite home price index, between 2010 and 2013 the largest increase in home values occurred in cities in the western region of the United States, where Latinos make up a larger share of the population. Southern and Midwestern cities, where African Americans are a larger share of the population, have seen less appreciation in home values over this period.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2002—US deports Canadian citizen to Syria:
From the bizarro files, TalkLeft informs us that a dual Canadian/Syrian citizen was apprehended in NY while on a stopover on his way home to Canada, and then deported to Syria.
“Mr. Arar, 32, was deported to Syria on Oct. 7 or Oct. 8 from Kennedy Airport in New York during a stopover on his way home to Montreal, officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs revealed yesterday. The Canadian government was not contacted about Mr. Arar’s case until after he had been deported, on Oct. 10.”
“Mr. Arar, who holds dual Syrian-Canadian citizenship, has not set foot on Syrian soil in 16 years. The thought that her husband is back in the country he chose to leave pains Ms. Mazigh. “Just the idea is a torture for him,” she said. “Syria is not a democratic country. Anything can happen there. “The proof: I don’t know where he is and I have no contact with him.”
I don’t know what to make of this. It’s gross ineptness, but at what level of government remains to be seen.
There are people who desperately wish that Ebola was spreading in America.
Not ISIS or the Taliban.
Republicans.
— @UltraVerified
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: With help from Armando, no one beats a dead fan like KITM! Gideon asks about Meteor Blades’ take on non-violent drug offenders & voting rights, which leads to expansive consideration (surprise!) of sentencing, prison privatization, libertarians, the universe & everything. In other debate news, Cory Gardner is grilled again over personhood. A Hunter post ponders the meaning of SC Gov. Nikki Haley’s yardstick for Confederate flag approval. Back to Meteor Blades momentarily for a comparative study in political “courage.” More reporting from St. Louis County municipal courts provides evidence we’re regressing.
