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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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Exclusive: Jay Leno Cancels Performance at Gun Lobby Trade Show Following Pressure from Newtown Group

by Elinor5620 Posted on November 19, 2014

Mother Jones

Update: Late Wednesday, Jay Leno said in a brief phone interview that he had called the National Shooting Sports Foundation to cancel his scheduled performance at the SHOT Show. He also said that he’d spoken with Po Murray of the Newtown Action Alliance to let her know. “I understand it’s Newtown, and of course I get it,” Leno told Mother Jones. “It’s just sometimes, mistakes get made.”

Gun control advocates aren’t laughing about Jay Leno’s next move.

On Tuesday, several gun violence-prevention groups called on the comedian to cancel his appearance at January’s Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT), an annual event put on by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which is based in Newtown, Connecticut. A petition posted by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence accuses Leno of “helping to legitimize a crass commercialism which values profit over human lives” by speaking to this group, which lobbied against the background checks bill in Congress following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The drive is backed by the Campaign to Unload, which pushes for divestment from gun companies, and the Newtown Action Alliance, founded by residents of the Connecticut town who support gun-safety legislation. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which has pushed corporate restaurants and retailers to take a stand against open-carry activists in their stores, has also launched a social media campaign against Leno.

“I’m not sure if Jay Leno has done his research and understands that NSSF is the corporate gun lobby and they spend a significant amount of money to lobby congressional leaders to not pass significant gun reform legislation,” says Newtown Action Alliance chairman Po Murray, whose children previously attended Sandy Hook. “It’s a disheartening as a Newtown resident to see him make this appearance at the SHOT Show. So we’re urging him to cancel his appearance.”

Seats for the event, held at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, go for $135 apiece. Leno’s publicist did not respond to a request for comment.

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Exclusive: Jay Leno Cancels Performance at Gun Lobby Trade Show Following Pressure from Newtown Group

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Today’s Winner in Washington: The Filibuster

by DawnComeaux Posted on November 19, 2014

Mother Jones

Today, Democrats blocked action to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. A few minutes later, Republicans blocked a bill to regulate the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA.

Both bills had majority support. Both failed thanks to filibusters. It’s good to see that life is back to normal in Washington DC.

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Today’s Winner in Washington: The Filibuster

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Today’s Math You Can Use: Marijuana + Big Corporations = A Lot More Marijuana

by QGZEdwinagft Posted on November 18, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s a good example of how cavalier snark can get the better of you. This is Kevin Williamson writing at National Review:

From the annals of issues that only intellectuals are capable of misunderstanding: Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA, is worried that the drug trade might end up being dominated by people who care about making money. My experience with drug dealers suggests very strongly that they are a profit-seeking, entrepreneurial lot as it is.

Har har. Mark is a friend of mine, so I guess I’d be expected to defend him, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean his short piece about the commercialization of pot to be an attack on the free market. Quite the contrary. In fact, he has a powerful appreciation of the efficiency of the market, and knows very well that drug gangs are actually pitifully incompetent at the basics of modern distribution and logistics. Put them in competition with Philip Morris or RJ Reynolds and they’d go out of business in a few months. At the same time, with a truly modern, efficient multinational corporation at the helm, sales and consumption of marijuana would most likely skyrocket.

Remember what happened to all those mom-and-pop stores when Walmart came into town? It would be about like that.

I don’t even know that I agree with Mark about trying to keep pot away from the commercial sector. My guess is that it’s not really workable. Still, his argument is simple: The free market is powerful. Big corporations are far, far more efficient than a bunch of hoodlums. So if big corporations start selling drugs, then drug use (and abuse) is going to increase. Maybe a lot. You might still favor complete legalization, and that’s fine. But you should at least recognize that it comes with a likely cost, just as it did with cigarettes and alcohol.

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Today’s Math You Can Use: Marijuana + Big Corporations = A Lot More Marijuana

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Public Evenly Split on Immigration Action

by SamualBuvelot Posted on November 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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So how does the public feel about President Obama changing immigration rules via executive action? Pretty evenly split, it turns out. According to a USA Today poll, Democrats want action now; Republicans want him to wait; independents are split down the middle; and the overall result is slightly in favor of waiting, by 46-42 percent.

In other words, pretty much what you’d expect. Politically, then, this probably holds little risk for Obama or the Democratic Party. Especially in light of this:

On one more issue, Americans are in agreement: The elections two weeks ago aren’t going to make Washington work better. Just 15% predict Obama and the new Congress, now under solid Republican control, will work together more closely to reach bipartisan compromises.

The American public is pretty politically astute, I’d say. They may not be up to speed on all the details of policymaking, but when it comes to the big picture, they know a lot more than the Beltway pundits seem to.

Link – 

Public Evenly Split on Immigration Action

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Kids Today Are No Dumber Than Their Elders

by DennyCornejo Posted on November 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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One of my little pet peeves—occasionally given expression on this blog—is the notion that kids today are dumber than they used to be. I’d say that both the anecdotal and statistical evidence suggests just the opposite, but it’s hard to get good comparisons since children are tested constantly while adults almost never are. Every year we hear horror stories about how few teenagers can locate France on a map, but who’s to say whether adults are any better? After all, we never get the chance to herd them into classrooms and force them to tell us.

Today, however, Andrew Sullivan points me to a lovely little tidbit that I can’t resist passing along. As true evidence, it’s pretty much worthless. But who cares? This is a blog! If I can’t draw sweeping conclusions from minuscule data here, where can I? So here it is: a YouGov survey of a thousand adults asking them six grammatical questions. The results are on the right. As you can see, every age group did about equally well. In fact, if you average all six questions, the results ranged from 75 percent correct for the youngsters to 73 percent correct for the senior citizens. That’s no difference at all.

So there you have it. The kids today are all right. Or alright. Or something. In any case, their grammar appears to be every bit as good as that of their elders.

Link – 

Kids Today Are No Dumber Than Their Elders

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Sunni Awakening 2.0? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

by BrittneCCPE Posted on November 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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Back in 2007, the military success of the famous “surge” in Iraq was due largely to the fact that many Sunni tribal leaders finally turned against al-Qaeda and began cooperating with the American army. This so-called Sunni Awakening was a key part of the tenuous peace achieved a year later.

It was a fragile peace, however, and eventually it broke down thanks to the lack of a serious political effort to include Sunnis in the central government. By last year, the Sunni areas of Iraq had once again begun to rebel, and ISIS took advantage of this to storm into Iraq and take control of a huge swath of territory. If we want to regain this ground from ISIS, the first step is to once again persuade Sunni tribal leaders to cooperate with us, but it looks an awful lot like that particular playbook isn’t going to work a second time:

Officials admit little success in wooing new Sunni allies, beyond their fitful efforts to arm and supply the tribes who were already fighting the Islamic State — and mostly losing. So far, distrust of the Baghdad government’s intentions and its ability to protect the tribes has won out.

….Much of the Islamic State’s success at holding Sunni areas comes from its deft manipulation of tribal dynamics. Portraying itself as a defender of Sunnis who for years have been abused by Iraq’s Shiite-majority government, the Islamic State has offered cash and arms to tribal leaders and fighters, often allowing them local autonomy as long as they remain loyal.

At the same time, as it has expanded into new towns, the Islamic State has immediately identified potential government supporters for death. Residents of areas overrun by the Islamic State say its fighters often carry names of soldiers and police officers. If those people have already fled, the jihadists blow up their homes to make sure they do not return. At checkpoints, its men sometimes run names through computerized databases, dragging off those who have worked for the government.

“They come in with a list of names and are more organized than state intelligence,” said Sheikh Naim al-Gaood, a leader of the Albu Nimr tribe. The most brutal treatment is often of tribes who cooperated with the United States against Al Qaeda in Iraq in past years, mostly through the so-called Sunni Awakening movement supported by the Americans.

Obviously ISIS may overplay its hand here, or simply overextend itself. They aren’t supermen. At the same time, it’s obvious that ISIS is well aware of how the original Sunni Awakening played out, and they’re doing an effective job of making sure it doesn’t play out that way again. Sunni leaders are already distrustful of Americans, having been promised a greater role in governance in 2007 and then seeing that promise evaporate, and ISIS leaders are adding a brutal element of revenge to make sure that no one thinks about believing similar promises this time around.

All this is not to say that things are hopeless. But a replay of the Sunni Awakening isn’t going to be easy. Sunni leaders have already been burned once and were unlikely from the start to be easily persuaded to give reconciliation another chance. ISIS is reinforcing this with both deft politics and brutal retaliation against collaborators. It’s not going to be an easy dynamic to break.

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Sunni Awakening 2.0? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

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Why Won’t Orrin Hatch Blame Republicans For the Failure of Immigration Reform?

by ClarencXQA Posted on November 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch cracks me up:

Hatch expressed concern that President Barack Obama may soon take executive action on immigration and protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. “It would be catastrophic for him to do that,” said Hatch. “Part of it is our fault. We haven’t really seized this problem. Of course, we haven’t been in a position to do it either, with Democrats controlling the Senate. I’m not blaming Republicans. But we really haven’t seized that problem and found solutions for it.”

….”Frankly, I’d like to see immigration done the right way,” Hatch added. “This president is prone to doing through executive order that which he cannot do by working with the Congress, because he won’t work with us. If he worked with us, I think we could get an immigration bill through … He has a Republican Congress that’s willing to work with him. That’s the thing that’s pretty interesting to me.”

You know, it was only 17 months ago that the Senate passed a vigorously negotiated and tough-minded bipartisan immigration bill that was actively supported by President Obama. You know who voted for it? Orrin Hatch. The only reason it’s not the law of the land today is….Republicans in the House. That’s it.

So what’s the problem here? Why shouldn’t we blame Republicans?

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Why Won’t Orrin Hatch Blame Republicans For the Failure of Immigration Reform?

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Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala

by Aileen5637 Posted on November 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama and other world leaders are in Australia for the G20. They spent the day doing world leader things like talking about climate change and tourist things like holding koalas.

President Obama holds a koala before the start of the G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia.

A photo posted by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Nov 11, 2014 at 2:19pm PST

Also, via Mother Jones’ Senior Australian correspondent James West, the Daily Telegraph has had better days:

Our friends at the Huffington Post have a whole gallery of heads of state passing koalas around like they’re going out of style..

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Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala

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Two Important Notes For Anyone Renewing Obamacare Coverage

by MaikSeibert Posted on November 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Today is the first day of the 2015 signup period for Obamacare. If you currently have coverage, you need to decide whether to keep the plan you have or shop around for a different one. Here are a couple of key things to keep in mind—whether you’re buying coverage for yourself or know friends who are:

As the New York Times points out today, it’s possible that the net price of your current coverage could go up substantially this year. Here’s why: the size of the federal subsidy depends on the price of your plan relative to other plans. If your plan was the cheapest on offer last year, it qualified for a maximum subsidy. But if other, cheaper plans are offered this year, and your plan is now, say, only the fourth cheapest, you’ll get a smaller subsidy. So even if your actual plan premium stays the same, your net cost could go up a lot.

This is, naturally, becoming a partisan attack point, but don’t ignore it just because the usual suspects are making hay with it. It’s a real issue that anyone buying insurance on a state or federal exchange should be aware of.

Bottom line: shop around. Don’t just hit the renew button without checking things out.
Andrew Sprung has been writing tirelessly about something called Cost Sharing Reduction. It’s not well known, but it could be important to you. Today, Sprung tells us that the new version of healthcare.gov has a pretty nice shoparound feature that allows you to enter some basic information and then provides a comparison of all plans in your area. I tried it myself, and sure enough, the “window shopping” feature works nicely and is easily accessible from the home page.

However, it doesn’t do a good job of steering you toward silver-level plans, which are the only ones eligible for Cost Sharing Reduction. For example, I shopped for a plan for a low-income family of three in Missouri, and the cost of the cheapest bronze plan was $0. The cost of the cheapest silver plan was $90 per month. That’s an extra $1,000 per year, and a lot of low-income families will naturally gravitate toward the cheaper plan, especially since it’s the first one they see.

But the bronze plan has both a deductible and an out-of-pocket cap of $12,600. The silver plan with CSR has a deductible of $2,000 and an out-of-pocket cap of $3,700. Unless you’re literally rolling the dice that you’re never going to see a doctor this year, you’re almost certain to be better off with the silver plan, even though the up-front monthly premium is a little higher.

Bottom line: shop around. The plan that looks cheapest often isn’t, and for low-income buyers a silver plan is often your best bet. For more, here’s the CSR page at healthcare.gov. And for even more, Sprung has details about shopping at the new site here and here.

I guess the bottom line is obvious by now: shop around. Even if you can navigate the website yourself, be careful. Not everything is obvious at first glance. And if you’re not comfortable doing it by yourself, don’t. Get help from an expert in your state. You have three months to sign up, so there’s no rush.

Original article – 

Two Important Notes For Anyone Renewing Obamacare Coverage

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