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New York Times Signals More Newsroom Layoffs Are Imminent

by OliverTrevino Posted on November 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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The New York Times indicated today that it’s getting close to a round of forced layoffs of its journalists.

The newsroom-wide email sent Thursday morning, obtained by Mother Jones, details responses to employee questions about a scheduled buyout program from Janet Elder, a deputy executive editor at the company. The email states that, “the most frequently asked question is about scale and whether or not there will be enough buyouts to avoid layoffs. Given that the buyout window is still open, it’s hard to have an absolute answer to that question just yet. Early efforts to handicap the outcome regrettably point to having to do some layoffs.”

The email says the buyout window for newsroom employees closes on December 1, 2014. Danielle Rhoades Ha, a director of communications at the New York Times Company, confirmed the email from Elder and said there would be no further information made public at present about the buyout program or layoffs.

The Times announced a plan in October to cut 100 newsroom jobs starting with a buyout program. Dean Baquet, the executive editor, wrote to staff then that layoffs were possible if not enough volunteers stepped forward: “We hope to meet this number through voluntary buyouts. But if we don’t get there we will be forced to do layoffs.â&#128;&#139;” At the end of October, the New York Times Company reported lower-than-expected quarterly revenue, and projected a further slowdown in ad sales, according to Reuters.

The Times had some other bad news for employees who are considering taking a buy-out package: Certain perks are going away, including free access to MoMA. “We’ve been asked a lot of questions about everything from “Can I keep my laptop?”… to “Does my retiree ID card allow me free access to museums?” (Most of the museums we’ve asked have said yes except for MoMA.)”

Rhoades Ha added in response to Mother Jones: “The company supports certain cultural institutions and as a result, employees get discounted entry fees. It’s not part of anyone’s ’employment package.'”

The full email is reproduced below:

Date: Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 10:01 AM
Subject: A Note From Janet on Buyouts

Dear Colleagues,
The window for voluntary buyouts closes on Monday, Dec.1, at 5 p.m. We’ve been asked a lot of questions about everything from “Can I keep my laptop?” (it depends, talk to Walt Baranger) to “Does my retiree ID card allow me free access to museums?” (Most of the museums we’ve asked have said yes except for MoMA.)
But the most frequently asked question is about scale and whether or not there will be enough buyouts to avoid layoffs. Given that the buyout window is still open, it’s hard to have an absolute answer to that question just yet. Early efforts to handicap the outcome regrettably point to having to do some layoffs.
For the most part, we’ve been trying to review and either accept or reject voluntary buyout applications as they come in. Not all applications can be approved. Some jobs are too critical to our mission to let go. Many of you may still be contemplating the buyout. If you think it works well for you and your family, we urge you to give it serious consideration.
It is worth repeating here that if we do go to layoffs, there will not be any taps on the shoulder. Throughout this process, Dean has urged everyone to have a frank conversation with his or her supervisor about whether or not their goals match those of The Times. That’s still a good idea.
If you have any questions in the coming days please do not hesitate to reach out to Dean, Ian, Susan, Matt or me.

— Janet

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New York Times Signals More Newsroom Layoffs Are Imminent

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Hillary Clinton: Strong Parental Leave Laws Are Great. Here’s Why You Can’t Have Them.

by ConradTomaszews Posted on September 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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The early stages of Hillary Clinton’s proto-presidential campaign this summer were light on details about her domestic policy proposals. Instead, she focused on selling her book, Hard Choices, which focuses on her foreign policy opinions and diplomatic chops.

But this week, during a videotaped speech to a conference on women’s issues in Japan, Clinton staked out a strong view on paid family leave, a topic that could play a role in her 2016 campaign. “The United States, unfortunately, is one of a handful of developed countries without paid family leave,” she said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “If we give parents the flexibility on the job and paid family leave it actually helps productivity, which in turn helps all of us.”

Clinton was asked about family leave during a CNN-hosted town hall in June, and said it was a good idea but one that won’t come to America anytime soon. “I don’t think, politically, we could get it now,” she said.

The United States is one of just four countries where employers are not required to grant new mothers any paid time off after giving birth. Japan, on the other hand, offers 14 weeks.

Paid family leave has been an increasingly important cause for progressives. Three states now buck the national trend and force employers to offer their employees time off. “Many women can’t even get a paid day off to give birth—now that’s a pretty low bar,” President Obama said in June. “That, we should be able to take care of.”

Republicans have resisted calls for offering maternity leave, as it would force company’s to spend more on employee benefits. But polls consistently show that the public is overwhelmingly supportive of such measures. “For her 2016 campaign, Clinton should make paid family leave a—no; the!—central plank,” the Daily Beast‘s Michael Tomasky wrote in July. Clinton’s past profile on domestic politics largely centered on her experience and wisdom on finding ways to offer universal health insurance—a topic that is mostly off the national radar thanks to Obamacare. If she wants to run for president again, anchoring her campaign on getting the US in line with the international consensus of letting workers take a bit of paid time off to take care of newborns or a sick loved one seems like a no-brainer.

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Hillary Clinton: Strong Parental Leave Laws Are Great. Here’s Why You Can’t Have Them.

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Chart of the Day: The Great Medicare Spending Mystery

by DillonMairinger Posted on July 28, 2014

Mother Jones

Here it is: the biggest question mark in the entire federal budget. The 2014 Medicare Trustees Report is out today, and it shows, rather remarkably, that the cost per person of Medicare in 2013 was absolutely flat compared to 2012. Even more remarkably, they expect the combined increase over the next two years to be zero as well. In other words, Medicare costs are growing considerably slower than the inflation rate.

And now for the trillion-dollar question: How long will this slowdown last? The historical data in the report, along with future projections, suggests that between 2006 (when the prescription drug benefit began) and 2018, Medicare costs will have grown, on average, at exactly the rate of inflation. In real terms, that means zero growth over a 12-year period. But Medicare’s actuaries don’t expect that to last. Starting in 2017 they expect high growth rates again, leading to Medicare spending outpacing inflation.

This is by far the biggest unknown going forward in the federal budget: Will Medicare spending continue to increase slowly, or will it revert to the higher growth rates of the early aughts? You can make a pretty good case either way. But no matter what anyone tells you—including me—don’t be fooled. The real answer is that We. Just. Don’t. Know.

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Chart of the Day: The Great Medicare Spending Mystery

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Obama Fights Back on Highways

by CharliCYLL Posted on July 2, 2014

Mother Jones

President Obama needled Republicans yesterday about not passing a highway bill. “I mean, they’re not doing anything,” he said, “Why don’t they do this?” Today Paul Waldman told him:

Well, the reason they don’t do it isn’t hard to figure out: It costs money, and that means raising taxes to pay for it, which Republicans don’t like to do. We could also pay for it with deficit spending, but they don’t like that, either. And while the jokes are certainly good for a laugh from a friendly crowd, I’m not sure whether Obama thinks that’s actually going to make Republicans more inclined to work with him on this.

That’s Obama’s eternal problem, isn’t it? Early in his presidency he bent over backwards to play nice with Republicans, and got savaged for it by lefties. “Get tough!” they said. But he played nice because he had no choice. He needed two or three Republican votes to pass anything, and if he’d played hardball he wouldn’t have gotten them.

Now, having given up on Republican cooperation, he’s playing hardball and….getting criticism that this kind of thing isn’t likely to make Republicans any more inclined to work with him. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

Oh well. That’s life in the White House. The reality, of course, is even worse than Waldman paints it. Republicans don’t actually have to raise gasoline taxes at all. All they have to do is vote to keep them constant when you adjust for inflation. But keeping taxes constant still makes them higher than allowing them to decline automatically every year, so in Republican theology this counts as a tax hike. And that means no highways for you. Republicans would rather let them crumble into dust than approve so much as a penny in additional gasoline taxes.

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Obama Fights Back on Highways

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The Big Melt Accelerates

by Myrna Posted on May 19, 2014

With every day, it seems, comes new evidence that the thawing of the world’s glaciers and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating. Originally posted here –  The Big Melt Accelerates ; ;Related ArticlesBillionaire Democrat Sets Eye on Senate RacesFire Season Starts Early, and FiercelyOutlasting Dynasties, Now Emerging From Soot ;

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The Big Melt Accelerates

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Are Corporations Hoarding Cash? It’s Complicated.

by ArdenCulbert Posted on March 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over at the newly launched—or relaunched—FiveThirtyEight.com, Ben Casselman updates us on the enormous mountains of cash that have been piling up in company treasuries ever since the recession ended:

One of the early narratives of the economic recovery was that companies were “hoarding” cash….The data backed up the story: The Federal Reserve in 2011 reported that American companies had more than $2 trillion stashed away in overflowing vaults.

Then the Fed revised its data. New figures released in early 2012, based on more complete tax filings, showed that American companies actually had close to half a trillion dollars less cash than previously thought….The revision didn’t just change the numbers—it undermined the whole narrative.

….It’s understandable that so many experts bought into the “cash on the sidelines” narrative. What’s less understandable is that they’re still buying into it. Despite the big revision, the corporate-cash narrative remains very much alive.

Hmmm. I think there’s a little more to it. It’s true that two years ago the Fed revised down its corporate cash estimate1 for the first quarter of 2012 from $2.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion. But even taking that into account, corporations have been increasing their cash holdings about 15 percent per year since 2008. In 2013 corporate cash increased another 12 percent. That’s a pretty steep increase.

Beyond that, David Cay Johnston estimates that when you count cash worldwide, not just domestically, American corporations are holding something like $7.9 trillion in liquid assets. He calculates that this number has grown six times faster than corporate revenues since 1994. “When liquid assets grow six times faster than revenues, it tells you that companies are hoarding cash, not investing or spending.”

Now, it’s true that the huge spike initially reported in 2011-12 was mostly illusory. But it’s not clear to me that this undermines the entire “cash hoarding” narrative. Even without that spike, corporate cash holdings have been growing strongly over the past decade. What’s more, corporate profits have been booming ever since the recession ended—without a correspondingly dramatic increase in capital expenditures.

There are plenty of other arguments floating around. If you remove the tech sector, the whole phenomenon looks less dramatic. Corporate debt has been increasing too thanks to ultra-low interest rates, which suggests that companies are simply making a rational decision to borrow rather than spend their own cash. Cash overseas is piling up because companies don’t want to repatriate it and pay the taxes that would be due. Etc.

In other words, it’s complicated. I think Casselman has a point that the Fed’s revision wasn’t very widely reported or acknowledged, but I’m not sure that’s quite as damning as he suggests. The corporate cash pile-up, though less startling than we thought in 2012, is still real. Probably.

1Actually, this is an estimate of “liquid assets.” We’re just using cash here as shorthand.

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Are Corporations Hoarding Cash? It’s Complicated.

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One Man’s True Experience With the Naked Web

by FMRBeatriz Posted on March 16, 2014

Mother Jones

One thing led to another this weekend, and yesterday I found myself playing around with Internet Explorer on Windows 8.1. It had probably been 20 years since I’d last used it. It turned out to be surprisingly nice once I got everything set up, so then I got curious and set up the tile version too. (That’s the Windows RT version, aka the Metro version, aka the Modern UI version, aka whatever Microsoft is calling it this month.) It was actually fairly nice too. I have a few UI quibbles here and there, but that’s true of every app. Generally speaking, it was pretty good.

But. It turns out that the MUI version of IE doesn’t support add-ons. Don’t ask me why. That means I couldn’t install AdBlock. And holy cow: during the hour or so that I spent checking things out I felt like I was under assault. My browser was deluged with gigantic banner ads, flash ads, auto-play video ads, animated GIF ads, ads that danced across my screen, and a relentless series of popup ads that apparently have figured out how to foil the built-in popup blocker.

I’ve spent the last ten years or so browsing with ad blocking of some kind enabled. This was the first time in a long while that I had been forced to spend time on the naked web, so to speak. Have I just lost my tolerance for this kind of thing? Or has advertising on the web really gotten an order of magnitude worse since the early aughts? This is an academic question, since needless to say I won’t be using the MUI version of IE anytime soon, but I’m still curious. What say you, commenters?

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One Man’s True Experience With the Naked Web

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Charlie Porter, a Solitary Adventurer Who Reshaped the Ascent of a Monolith, Is Dead at 63

by Myrna Posted on March 15, 2014

Mr. Porter, a self-taught adventurer and climate scientist, was most famous for the climbing routes he devised up El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in the early 1970s. Source: Charlie Porter, a Solitary Adventurer Who Reshaped the Ascent of a Monolith, Is Dead at 63 Related ArticlesCharlie Porter, an Adventurer Who Reshaped Climbing, Is Dead at 63U.S. Agrees to Allow BP Back Into Gulf Waters to Seek OilEmails Link Duke Energy and North Carolina

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Charlie Porter, a Solitary Adventurer Who Reshaped the Ascent of a Monolith, Is Dead at 63

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Drive-by Truckers’ Long Road Stretches On

by Keith44Mvbrhqr Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Drive-By Truckers
English Oceans
ATO

Twelve studio albums is a long time to maintain your edge, but Drive-By Truckers show no signs of fatigue on the compelling English Oceans. While the band has maintained a consistent identity over the years, telling hard-luck stories of everyday people with nonjudgmental eloquence, subtle changes have helped them stay fresh, namely new faces in the supporting cast and a gradual shift to a greater sharing of creative power. Where Patterson Hood seemed to be the main driving force in the early days, fellow writer and singer Mike Cooley has emerged as a more substantial and confident contributor, and provides 6 of the 13 songs here. His folkier voice may sound too understated at first, but serves as an effective counterpoint to Hood’s bluesier and brasher displays. Highlights include “Made Up English Oceans,” inspired by real-life political smear master Lee Atwater, and the epic, eight-minute lament “Grand Canyon.”

Equally adept at dirty, two-fisted rock and tender ballads, Drive-By Truckers still have their mojo. Long may they roll.

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Drive-by Truckers’ Long Road Stretches On

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Bitcoin Is a Fiat Currency, But That’s Not Its Big Problem

by Isela Harris Posted on February 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Mt. Gox, the biggest name in Bitcoin exchanges, has apparently suffered a huge, ongoing theft amounting to several hundred million dollars. Today, their website is shut down. All is chaos, and science fiction author Charles Stross doesn’t have much sympathy:

C’mon, folks. Mt. Gox was a trading card swap mart set up by an amateur coder and implemented in PHP!….I’ve written software that handled financial transactions for a dot-com startup—a payment service provider, now a subsidiary of Mastercard. Been there, got the scars.

….You can’t do this shit on an amateur basis and not get burned….Datacash grew from a tiny seed (about 30 credit card transactions in our first three months) to something that was handling around 20,000 transactions per server per day when I left in early 2000, following 30% compound growth per month for an extended period; the early codebase was retired as rapidly as was feasible, the company had penetration testers, an in-house crypto specialist, and coding standards with test harnesses and QA well before it was handling 10% of MtGox’s turnover … and still shit happened. From what I’ve read, I’m not convinced that MtGox ever understood what financial security entails. But the fault isn’t theirs alone. The real fault lies with Bitcoin itself.

A real currency with a fiscal policy and the backing of a state that could raise loans would be able to ride out this insult. It’d be extraordinarily painful, but it wouldn’t devastate the currency in perpetuity. But Bitcoin doesn’t have a fiscal policy: it wears a gimp suit and a ball gag, padlocked into permanent deflation and with the rate of issue of new “notes” governed by the law of algorithmic complexity.

Personally, I consider Bitcoin useful in one narrow way: it forces people to think about what a fiat currency really is. Bitcoin, after all, is the ultimate fiat currency: just a bunch of ones and zeroes on a computer with no intrinsic value. But so are all currencies. The difference is that it’s more obvious with Bitcoin because the entire enterprise is actively marketed as nothing more than algorithmically-created data. It’s one of their big selling points.

So that forces you to think about what the ultimate value of a Bitcoin can be. And if there isn’t any, then why do dollars and yen have value? Why do IOUs passed around in prison camps have value? Or babysitting chits? Once you figure out what ultimately underlies the value of these various fiat currencies, you’ve taken a big step toward understanding why some currencies are better than others and why playing games with the debt ceiling is so stupid.

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Bitcoin Is a Fiat Currency, But That’s Not Its Big Problem

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