Category Archives: Economics

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The Philadelphia teachers and crappy work attitudes. If some teachers believe that they are not "treated with dignity," it is because other teachers have not been worthy of dignified treatment.

I’ve seen the forms before. In an employee evaluation form from the University of Kentucky, when I was in grad school, there was an attendance section which had four different possible selections, one of which was “Uses sick days as fast/almost as fast as they are accumulated.” And no, that box was not checked in my case; I almost never missed work, and yes, I went to work even when I was not feeling 100%.

I did have a few instances of missing time when I was hospitalized due to Crohn’s Disease, something I have but which is almost completely in remission. My last serious flare-up was in 2012.

However, in an article in Wednesday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, on the use of sick days in the city’s public schools, there was one line which told subscribers — yes, it’s another of those “subscribers Only” articles — which encapsulated the problem very succinctly:

“The days were meant for us to take,” said Cristina Gutierrez, a kindergarten teacher at Elkin Elementary in Kensington.

No, Miss Gutierrez, the sick days are not some sort of personal time off that employees are “meant” to take; they are there for employees to use when they are actually sick! Perhaps the Inquirer’s school system reporter, Kristen A Graham, or an editor was as appalled by that statement as I was, given that someone made it the lead photograph, complete with that abysmal quotation, in the online version of the article!

Sick days come with their contract. But Philly teachers get punished for taking them.

10 are allowed each year, but after accumulating a few, instructors are expected to meet with the boss. Then things intensify.

by Kristen A Graham | Wednesday, February 28, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

Philadelphia teachers’ contract allows them 10 sick days a year. But they are progressively penalized just for taking them.

No, the teachers are not being punished for using sick days; they are being held to account for abusing sick days.

That means when a teacher comes down with a virus or has a family member with a medical emergency, there’s a constant calculus in the heads of many: Can I afford to take the day off? Will there be consequences for doing so?

The policy, known informally as “3-5-7-9,” works this way: After a teacher’s third “occurrence,” whether a single sick day or the third in a consecutive stretch of days, principals are instructed to have an informal conversation with the instructor and write a memo documenting the episode. After the fifth occurrence, the teacher gets a warning memo in the permanent file; after the seventh, the teacher gets an “unsatisfactory incident” memo in the file and a formal conference. A teacher who reaches nine occurrences gets a second unsatisfactory incident report, a recommended suspension, and conferences with the principal and assistant superintendent.

The policy seems kind of bulky and overly documentarian, but I suppose that’s something that’s required in a large, unionized environment.

My far too expensive Philadelphia Inquirer subscription. I could use a senior citizen’s discount right about now!

Miss Graham’s article continues to tell readers “subscribers like (me)” — and I subscribe so that you don’t have to — several different stories about hardships that some teachers have: sick children, handicapped spouses, and the like, many of which would appear to be legitimate concerns.

Much further down:

The policy stems from a case dating 40 years, when a district secretary was fired for poor attendance. The PFT (Philadelphia Federation of Teachers) challenged the termination and ultimately lost; the arbitrator wrote that management can “require reasonably steady attendance as a condition of employment, regardless of the reasons for the absences, since otherwise the employee is of no practical value to the enterprise.”

The PFT contract sets the number of sick days at 10 (plus three personal days), but the arbitration decision gives the district the right to set the 3-5-7-9 policy. The district’s employee relations department tells principals that “progressive discipline uses increasingly more severe penalties to bring about positive change in employee behavior. The goals of progressive discipline are to improve employee output, correct inappropriate behavior, or terminate recalcitrant employees.”

Under the union contract, full-time teachers, referred to as ten-month employees, have a work year defined as 188 days[1]Article XVII, §A and a work day set at 7 hours and 4 minutes, including a duty-free lunch our of 30 minutes in secondary schools, and 45 minutes in elementary schools.[2]Article XVII, §B(1)(a) How many employees in the private sector, who normally have a 244-day work year plus two weeks of vacation, would love to have ten sick days plus three ‘personal’ days? Yet here we have teachers, who get a solid two months off a year, combitching that they can’t use sick days just willy-nilly. I can guarantee you that, if I had taken ten unscheduled says off a year, I’d have been fired in any job I ever had!

The union contract has the sick day provisions in place not to be [insert plural slang term for the anus here], but due to teachers with an attitude as expressed by Miss Gutierrez[3]Perhaps Miss Gutierrez simply expressed herself poorly; I do not know her, so I cannot really judge. But I have been proceeding as though she meant exactly what she said., that sick days are things simply granted to teachers to take off for whatever reasons they have. If the employees had a decent employee attitude, they’d come to work every day they were scheduled to work, do their f(ornicating) jobs, and the Inquirer would have had no story on the subject.

What about Lewis Elkin Elementary School, where Miss Gutierrez teaches? According to US News & World Report, only 5% of students tested at or above grade-level proficiency in reading and 5% scored at or above grade-level proficiency in math. Niche.com gives the school a C- in overall performance, a C- in academics, and a C for quality of teachers.[4]US News & World Report mistakenly called the school Elkin Lewis Elementary, while Niche.com got it right as Lewis Elkin Elementary. Perhaps Miss Gutierrez’s expressed attitude has been shaped by working in a poor school in Kensington, or perhaps the poor school in Kensington has been shaped by her attitude.

Shortly after he started teaching at Building 21, a district high school in West Oak Lane, Julian Prados Franks explained his new employer’s sick time policy to his family. His father, a casino worker, was mystified.

He said, “‘They do what?’” said Prados Franks, who has not incurred consequences for using his sick time — yet. “This policy just demonstrates a fundamental distrust between the district and the teachers; that level of control makes it feel like we’re not adults, like we don’t deserve to be treated with dignity.”

It’s simple: the Philadelphia Public Schools are unionized, and the union contract has to specify how teachers who do not act like adults have to be treated and subjected to discipline. Mr Prados Franks may very well be one of the good guys, but the School District has to have the policies in place for everyone — and Miss Graham’s article noted that there have been complaints that the policy has not been enforced evenly — good and bad. If some teachers believe that they are not “treated with dignity,” it is because some teachers have not been worthy of dignified treatment.

You know, we used to have a pretty strong work ethic in this country, and some of us still do. We go to work and do our jobs, every day we are scheduled to work. I’ve had to work many Saturdays in my career, and not a few Sundays as well. I’ve worked 19 full days in a row before, and one year, because another worker had a heart attack, I had only two work days off all year, no vacations, nothing.

But now we have a generation of whiners, and I find it sickening.

References

References
↑1 Article XVII, §A
↑2 Article XVII, §B(1)(a)
↑3 Perhaps Miss Gutierrez simply expressed herself poorly; I do not know her, so I cannot really judge. But I have been proceeding as though she meant exactly what she said.
↑4 US News & World Report mistakenly called the school Elkin Lewis Elementary, while Niche.com got it right as Lewis Elkin Elementary.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us about yet another government economic program that just didn’t work.

My good friend Daniel Pearson — OK, OK, I think he knows who I am, but we’ve never met other than in debates on Twitter — is an editorial writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and that makes him a liberal, but he’s not a far left whacko, and conservatives can actually talk to him. And, other than the fact that he appears to be holding a disgusting Philly cheesesteak in his Twitter pic — a hot, freshly baked Philly pretzel would be more than acceptable, but cheesesteaks are vile — I pretty much like him. Today’s main editorial shows that, for a liberal, he’s not completely ignorant of economics.

Inclusionary zoning has failed to deliver on affordable housing promise | Editorial

Since enforcement began in July 2022, only five housing projects — with a total of 106 new apartments and fewer than 30 income-restricted units — have received permits within the restricted area.

by The Editorial Board | Tuesday, February 27, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

In December 2021, Philadelphia City Council created a new affordable housing program — known as inclusionary zoning — that sounded almost too good to be true.

With no public subsidy, density bonuses, or other financial concessions, developers of new properties with 10 or more units in parts of West Philadelphia and the greater Kensington area were required to set aside 20% of every proposed new development for affordable housing. Given the then-hot real estate market in these areas, supporters pitched the concept as a cost-free way to prevent displacement as neighborhoods changed.

The problem is obvious. Developers, like is the case with all other types of investors and businesses, are in business to make money, the maximum amount of money possible for the shareholders. A requirement to set aside 20% for “affordable housing”, without any financial kickbacks or concessions, means that there’s less money to be made. Not only is there less money to be made on the “affordable” units, but the presence of the lower cost units brings down the sale value or potential rents for the luxury condominiums or apartments.

“Philadelphia is in the midst of a full-blown housing crisis. If we continue to do nothing, housing prices will continue to go up, and the Black and brown people who are the backbone of this city will continually be pushed to the fringes,” said Councilmember Jamie Gauthier at the time. Gauthier, along with then-Councilmember Maria Quiñones Sánchez, proposed the bill.

Two years later, the legislation hasn’t lived up to those lofty goals — and it’s clear a new approach is needed.

Ryan Spak, an affordable housing developer with a track record of delivering new income-restricted housing without public subsidy, predicted that the concept would struggle. Spak told anyone who would listen that the bill would force him to either raise prices to unsustainable levels or to do business outside of West Philly. The math simply didn’t work out.

Mr Spak did the math, writing on January 6, 2022:

Today, rents have already risen to unseen levels. This legislation forces those costs to rise faster and higher because developers will have to charge more for the market-rate units to pay for the affordable units. For one example, to meet the required 20% of the units at 40% AMI (Area Median Income), Spak Group would need to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Cedar Park for $2,150 per month — $500 per month more than I’ve ever achieved in my 10 years developing and managing rentals in West Philly. The market will reject these prices; the project will never be constructed and, as a result, neither will the affordable units.

Other requirements would have different math, but he noted that “every analysis” made, with different tweaks of the proposal, would fail without direct government subsidies.

Going back to the first cited article, we can see the problem:

Gauthier said that while developers might make less money, the potential of adding 200 income-restricted housing units a year was too promising to reverse course. The fruits of the program, however, have been minimal, and even those were achieved only by reopening the door to subsidies.

Mr Pearson, who had told me personally that he strives to keep his editorials around the old 750-word limit, was pretty kind to the Third District Councilwoman with that small paragraph. What she actually wrote was:

A complaint we’ve heard from developers since day one is that MIN will diminish the return on investment for their projects — and yes, it’s true that this legislation will require them to see lower profits than they’re accustomed to. It remains unclear to me why we should find it unacceptable for developers and investors to see less of a return, but fail to question why we continue to build housing that doesn’t meet the needs of current residents. Just because the existing system works for developers and investors doesn’t mean we should let socially irresponsible development continue, unfettered.

Opponents of this legislation say it will stymie development in my district. I have a hard time believing that. To say that commercial development is booming in University City would be an understatement — and we know that today’s workers want their jobs to be close to their homes, which will lead them to continue moving to this part of the city. MIN will ensure that this growth doesn’t displace working-class residents and that we have equity in our neighborhoods for years to come.

So, why was development booming in University City? The area is home to the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania[1]2023-24 cost of attendance, $73,494, not including housing., Drexel University, the former University of the Sciences, now part of St Joseph’s University, the very famous Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania (CHOP), along with several other places of note, and has been gentrifying since the 1960s, pushed by Penn’s programs to help faculty and staff buy there. And, of course, there’s student housing.[2]We have previously noted, and the Inky reported, on the absolute mess that the very liberal and environmentally-conscious students left when they moved out in May of 2023. The furthest left candidate … Continue reading Simply put, there were people with money to spend, and developers have chosen to make money in an area where there was money to be made. Miss Gauthier might believe that developers would blithely accept “lower profits than they’re accustomed to,” rather than considering the possibility that many would not accept “lower profits” and would simply invest their money elsewhere.

There’s more than that, or course. As we have reported previously, there is significant resistance to city projects in West Philly that some believe would lead to more gentrification in the area.

In a plan for a safer, vibrant 52nd Street, worried West Philly neighbors see gentrification looming

Angst is roiling minority neighborhoods as they struggle to balance the opportunities and the threats created by gentrification. “West Philly is the new Africa,” one resident warned at a community meeting. “Everyone wants the property that’s in West Philadelphia.”

by Jason Laughlin | February 21, 2020

The topic of the community meeting — a plan to beautify 52nd Street, to make it safe, welcoming, and prosperous once again — was, on its face, nothing but good news for West Philadelphia’s long-declining business corridor.

Yet the audience of about 50 residents and retailers, mostly African American, grew increasingly agitated as urban designer Jonas Maciunas flipped through a PowerPoint presentation of proposed improvements. Many weren’t seeing a vision of a neighborhood revitalized from Market to Pine Streets. Instead, in the talk of redesigned intersections, leafy thoroughfares, and better bus shelters, they heard the ominous whisper of gentrification.

“It just seems that when white people decide to come back to a certain neighborhood, they want it a certain way,” said Carol Morris, 68, a retired elementary school teacher.

Morris’ declaration opened the floodgates of fear and anger that recent night at the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library. Maciunas and Jesse Blitzstein, director of community and economic development for the nonprofit Enterprise Center, which is spearheading the project, were peppered with skeptical questions ranging from the validity of surveys showing community support for the improvements to the maintenance of trees that would be planted.

Now, why would any developer want to risk his money on a project that the neighborhood doesn’t want? Who among the higher-end buyers and renters, would want to buy or rent in a neighborhood in which many of the locals don’t want beautification projects because they might bring in more white residents?

Mr Pearson also noted that Philly isn’t the only place where ‘inclusionary zoning’ hasn’t lived up to the promises made for it:

Portland, Ore., enacted inclusionary zoning in 2020 and saw a similar decline in the construction of large apartment buildings, with many developers instead opting to reduce the scale of their projects so they did not meet the threshold that required set-asides. The well-meaning measure also seems to raise the cost of existing homes.

California towns with inclusionary zoning saw housing prices increase by 20% relative to towns without it. Those kinds of spikes limit the restrictions’ potential to stave off gentrification. It isn’t much use to provide 30 new affordable apartments if the price of Philadelphia’s existing 700,000-plus homes goes up.

Gee, how ’bout that? Governments try to push and pull on the economy, doubtlessly aided by doctors of economics, yet they always seem to get it wrong.

Councilwoman Gauthier got everything wrong, because she was basing her ‘economic’ policy on what she sees as promoting ‘socially responsible development’. Well, investors don’t care about socially responsible development; they care about making money!

In the end, there’s a great fact about economics that so many people, liberals and conservatives alike, and economics professors, just don’t understand. The economy simply cannot be controlled, because the economy is 250 million taking over a billion economic decisions, every single day. Deciding whether to stop on the way to work at Wawa or just making a cup of coffee at home is an economic decision, deciding to scarf down two pieces of toast at home or grab a bagel at Dunkin’ Donuts is an economic decision. These things may seem small, and individually, they are, but when a thousand potential customers have to decide whether to get coffee and a sandwich at Ultimo Coffee or go elsewhere, because the baristas are on strike,  those things, in the aggregate, start to become influential economic decisions.

And those decisions are taken by people, not graphs or flowcharts or city councils. Miss Gauthier’s act, pushed through the Philadelphia City Council, didn’t work out the way she expected, because the economic actors she wanted to influence, took their decisions differently from what she hoped.

 

References

References
↑1 2023-24 cost of attendance, $73,494, not including housing.
↑2 We have previously noted, and the Inky reported, on the absolute mess that the very liberal and environmentally-conscious students left when they moved out in May of 2023. The furthest left candidate in the 2023 Democratic mayoral primary, Helen Gym Flaherty, received a plurality of the votes in wealthier, whiter and more heavily Asian University City.
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Baristas on strike! Heaven forfend!

I was aware that some Philadelphia coffee shops were unionized, though I will admit that I didn’t see how that made much sense. In response to the tweet from The Philadelphia Inquirer pictured at the right, @JoeDollinger replied:

We have a barista union? Do people realize it’s not hard to make coffee?

@TooMader replied and repented being a capitalist stooge:

I never realized how overly capitalist I was pouring my own coffee at Wawa. Sorry comrades.

The Keurig coffee machine on our kitchen countertop, with one of my favorite coffee cups.

I applaud anyone who recognizes the superiority of Wawa coffee!

Alas! There is no Wawa close to us in the Bluegrass State, though one is planned for eastern Fayette County, where I-75 meets Richmond Road. However, rather than counting on baristas to serve me overpriced coffee, we have instead exploited another capitalist invention, the Keurig! Since Mrs Pico prefers a different coffee than I do, it’s the perfect thing for us, and, brewed one cup at a time, there’s no wasted half-pots of coffee in a carafe sitting around.

Local 80, Philly’s barista union, calls for Ultimo Coffee boycott

Local 80 is encouraging customers to “suspend their use of Ultimo Coffee products until owners settle a contract with their workers.”

by Jenn Ladd | Wednesday, February 21, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

Local 80, the nearly two-year-old food service union that represents employees at various independent coffee shops in Philadelphia, announced it is calling for a boycott of Ultimo Coffee beginning today. The boycott comes a week after unionized Ultimo employees publicly authorized a strike, and a week before the union’s next bargaining session with the cafe’s owners.

Ultimo Coffee, Rittenhouse Square, from their website.

Ultimo’s four Philadelphia cafes unionized in late 2022. Owners Aaron and Elizabeth Ultimo and union employees have been negotiating a tentative first contract for just over a year. In January, employees at the Germantown and Graduate Hospital shops moved to decertify their unions, leaving just 12 workers represented under two Ultimo unions at the Newbold and Rittenhouse cafes.

Local 80 is encouraging customers to “suspend their use of Ultimo Coffee products until owners settle a contract with their workers,” according to a release.

The Ultimos could not be reached immediately for comment.

There’s more at the original.

Unions have power when the employees are highly skilled at some difficult to train and replace position; it’s not like Joe Schmuckatella can just walk in off the street and do skilled welding jobs. Electricians and plumbers require training, and if some of them were trained on the job while working as helpers — I was! — it still takes a long time.

But the photo used in the Inky’s tweet, by the newspaper’s staff photographer David Maialetti, shows “Barista Emily Halpern mak(ing) a hand pour coffee at Ultimo’s Catharine Street shop in Philadelphia on November 20, 2014.” Just how much training does it take to get a new employee to be able to pour hot water through coffee grounds in a filter to make a single cup of coffee? The barista shown is doing, in person, what our Keurig does: pouring a measured amount of hot water through coffee grounds — though a Keurig actually pressurizes the water a bit — to make a single cup of coffee.

So, why does Ultimo Coffee use baristas to hand pour the coffee in front of customers? I can see one reason: if they just had Keurigs lined up, customers might be able to see it and say to themselves, “Self, I can do this at home for maybe 50¢ a cup!” Of course, when it comes to the shop in tony Rittenhouse Square, perhaps saving money doesn’t really matter. And, depending upon how busy their shops are, they might need several people to handle customer service during peak hours.

That’s a bit simplistic, in that Ultimo’s website shows fancy shops in upscale locations, with seating both inside and out, as well as various breakfast foods. Showing a picture of a hard coffee mug, you can apparently sit down with your pretty wife and enjoy a pleasant breakfast, outside on Locust Street in nice weather, or inside if that’s what you prefer. But it’s still not the kind of job for which a new employee can easily be trained.

Unionization and the threat of strikes work when replacement workers cannot easily be found, and the company against which the strike is called cannot handle a long work stoppage.

A previous story in the Inquirer reported that “The Philadelphia Joint Board recently set up a relief fund for organized Ultimo employees.” But it also noted that:

“We will continue to work through all remaining issues with the Union, and we are confident that we will reach a mutually-agreeable solution,” the Ultimos said in a statement. “We are proud that the employees at our Newbold and Rittenhouse stores make an average of $25 per hour. Employees are guaranteed a minimum of $20/hour, including tips.”

What the heck does a cup of coffee and a croissant cost there that employees average $25 an hour? That 50¢ for a cup of coffee in my Keurig sounds better all the time!

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Maybe Jeff Bezos could spend some of those tax savings on The Washington Post?

I will admit it: I liked the way that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, to save it when the Graham family were running out of money. Full disclosure: I am a basic digital subscriber to the Post. I have previously said that I appreciated billionaires who bought newspapers, to fail an otherwise failing industry, as long as they understood that losses were inevitable. Sadly, Mr Bezos isn’t too happy with that last part. We have also noted that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire who bought the Los Angeles Times, with a piddling $5.9 billion to his name, might feel much more pressure than Mr Bezos, current guesstimated net worth of $194.1 billion, in taking $40-$50 million a year losses.

Well, perhaps Mr Bezos can put a little less pressure on the Post, now that he’s made this money-saving move:

Jeff Bezos will save over $600 million in taxes by moving to Miami

by Robert Frank | Monday, February 12, 2024

  • Last year, Bezos announced on Instagram that he was leaving Seattle after nearly 30 years to move to Miami.

  • In 2022 Washington state imposed a new, 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000.

  • Bezos plans to unload 50 million shares of Amazon before Jan. 31, 2025. Posting those sales in Florida will save him at least $610 million.

Jeff Bezos’ $2 billion stock sale last week came with an added perk: no state taxes.

Last year, Bezos announced on Instagram that he was leaving Seattle after nearly 30 years to move to Miami. He said the move was to be closer to his parents and his rocket launches at Blue Origin. The timing also suggested another reason: taxes.

In 2022 Washington state imposed a new, 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000. Washington state doesn’t have a personal income tax, so the new levy marked the first time Bezos would face state taxes on his stock sales.

Starting in 1998 Bezos sold billions of dollars worth of Amazon shares almost every year for more than two decades to fund his philanthropy, his space company Blue Origin, and more recently his $500 million mega yacht and a growing collection of mansions purchased with his fiancé Lauren Sanchez.

In 2022, when the tax took effect, Bezos stopped selling. He didn’t sell any Amazon stock in 2022 or 2023, gifting only $200 million of shares at the end of last year.

After his move to Miami, Bezos made up for lost time. Last week, a filing with the SEC revealed that Bezos launched a pre-scheduled stock-selling plan to unload 50 million shares before Jan. 31, 2025. At today’s price, that would total more than $8.7 billion.

Simply put, rapacious state governments trying to steal more money from the people who earned it wind up influencing the decisions of the people who earned that money. Mr Bezos had the freedom to move away from the left coast to the far more sensible Sunshine State, and did.

Florida has no state income tax or a tax on capital gains. So on the $2 billion sale last week, he saved $140 million that he would have paid to Washington state. On the entire sale of 50 million shares over the next year, he will save at least $610 million. And that’s assuming Amazon shares remain flat. If they continue to rise, the value of his shares — and his tax savings — will be even higher.

That’s some major bucks he doesn’t have to give to a left-wing state government, which would doubtlessly spend it on welfare and illegal aliens. Mr Bezos could, and should, spend some of those savings on the Post, to decrease the financial pressure on that august newspaper, at least if his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez doesn’t persuade him to waste more of it on yachts and mansions.

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The 15-Minute City: Another exercise in Soviet economic planning! The oh-so-well-intentioned left seem to think they can 'design' how people live their lives.

Have you ever heard of the 15-minute city concept? As defined by Wikipedia, it is:

an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit ride from any point in the city. This approach aims to reduce car dependency, promote healthy and sustainable living, and improve wellbeing and quality of life for city dwellers.

I will admit it: I hadn’t heard of this idea until seeing an article on it by William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove. Upon reading about it, and the concept, I was reminded of a couple of articles I read in Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

What happens after a Philly neighborhood’s last chain pharmacy shuts its doors

After the Grays Ferry Rite Aid closed this fall, residents there said they felt abandoned and had to devise new ways to get their prescriptions. Seniors without cars struggled.

by Erin McCarthy | Sunday, February 4, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST Continue reading →

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I guess that Marc Rowan will keep his checkbook closed

Our constitutional rights under the First Amendment include the right of peaceable assembly, and this demonstration on the University of Pennsylvania campus in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia has been reported to be completely peaceful. But, in speaking their piece, the demonstrators, which included some Penn faculty, have exposed themselves to criticism of their message, and, unfortunately for the supporters of the Palestinians and Hamas terrorists, some of that criticism could come from deep-pockets donors. We have covered the backlash of deep-pockets donors against the outbreak of anti-Semitism on our college campuses, as recently as yesterday, but some people just don’t listen. From The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper:

Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine hosts College Hall protest, blocks main entrance

Continue reading →

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Sorry, Sarah Jones, but journalism really is a business just like any other You just aren't the super-duper special person you think your are

The serious layoffs at the Los Angeles Times have other journolists — The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias. — up in arms, not in the least part because they are seriously worried about being the next victims themselves.

Billionaires Are Journalism’s False Saviors

by Sarah Jones | Wednesday, January 24, 2024

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times announced that it would lay off at least 115 journalists, 20 percent of the newsroom. The cuts would have been larger were it not for the newspaper’s union, which fought back and walked out of the office for one day last week in protest. The cuts follow a previous round of layoffs last June, meaning the Times has lost around one-third of its staff in under a year. The same day, Time announced cuts of its own. Condé Nast was already on the way to cutting 5 percent of its workforce when also on Tuesday, members of the company’s union walked out after the company proposed significant layoffs and downsized its original severance offer. Earlier, Univision announced significant cuts and the company that owns Sports Illustrated laid off most, perhaps all, unionized staff, which could kill the storied magazine. The Washington Post slashed its newsroom late last year. Journalism’s fate was never assured, but now it looks bleaker every year.

Many of these companies had been purchased by billionaires who struck an altruistic pose. At one time, they said they believed in journalism, not the bottom line. When billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong purchased the L.A. Times in 2018, he “knew in my heart of hearts” that “we need to protect the newsroom … I came in there with an inner belief it’s all or nothing,” he said in 2021. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in part because it’s an “important institution,” the New York Times recently noted. “I said to myself, ‘If this were a financially upside-down salty snack food company, the answer would be no,’” he told the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., in 2018. Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder of Salesforce, told CNBC in 2019 that he bought Time to address “a crisis of trust.” He added that his magazine “can be a steward of trust … It’s one of the core values of Time: trust, impact, the core magazine itself, and that it’s about equality.”

Now altruism has worn thin. Plain business interests are taking over, and media workers are feeling the blow. The implications for them — and the public — are devastating. “In 20 years you truly will not be able to believe anything that you see or hear online — which will be the only place you see or hear things,” Jack Crosbie wrote at Discourse Blog. “Every person trying to learn more about the world around them will be forced to navigate a chaotic ecosystem of rage and deceit in search of one of the few honest or good-faith news-providers that still exist. Almost all of us will fail at this.” Billionaires aren’t rescuing journalism. They’re a threat to it.

A threat to journalism? If Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong hadn’t bought the Los Angeles Times, would that newspaper even exist today? If Jeff Bezos, the founder of amazon.com, hadn’t bought The Washington Post when the Graham family realized that they had to sell, would the Post exist today, and if so, in what form?

Dr Soon-Shiong is a billionaire, but not one of the super, super wealthy ones: with a guesstinated net worth of ‘just’ $5.4 billion, his family and he can’t keep just taking $50 million a year losses in keeping the Times afloat forever. Mr Bezos, on the other hand, is worth something on the order of $180.0 billion, so yeah, he could absorb, the Post’s losses more easily, at least if his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez doesn’t demand too many more ridiculous mansions and yachts, but even he has been demanding that his newspaper do something really radical like start to break even.

But here’s the part that Sarah Jones, the New York Magazine author of the cited article, just doesn’t quite understand: these august newspapers, both considered one of America’s five “newspapers of record,” were losing money before the billionaires bought them. It isn’t Mr Bezos’ or Dr Soon-Shiong’s fault that they are losing money!

Miss Jones lamented that, “Plain business interests are taking over,” as though newspapers are somehow not businesses like any other. Yeah, I know: a lot of credentialed media people, basing their view on the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of the press, somehow think that they are not just special, but super-duper special, but, just like every other business, they have to produce a product that other people are willing to buy. And newspapers, facing the competition of a mostly free internet, have not been producing a product that enough people have been willing to shell out their hard-earned money to buy.

That’s partly because their greatness is a myth. In Soon-Shiong’s case, his business acumen was always a little unclear. He bought a controlling stake in Verity Health System, a California-based hospital chain, in 2017. He told employees he “was the last owner we were going to have,” Politico reported a year later, not long after the hospital chain announced it was in serious debt. It soon declared bankruptcy. “A big, rude awakening, from ‘I’m the savior’ to, ‘Maybe I’m going to keep my promise to you, maybe not,’” one hospital executive told Politico. There are troubling parallels to his management of the Times. He staffed up, expressing major national ambition. Workers are paying for the failure of his ambition.

Really? So Miss Jones is telling us that more journalists had jobs at the Times for awhile, because of Dr Soon-Shiong’s ambitions, but, Alas! his reach was greater than his grasp, and he just couldn’t realize his dreams. Where would the 115 laid-off staff have been during the last several years if he had not bought the Times? Baristas, anyone?

The situation is revelatory. Media layoffs tell us something about an owner’s business prowess, but they also show bigger forces at work. Though companies say layoffs are business decisions, there is an ideology underneath the jargon. Owners like Soon-Shiong sound noble at first, but ultimately they prioritize profit over the public interest. Their goals, then, are at odds with the purpose of journalism. Media workers can’t serve the public if there are no opportunities for them to do so. By cutting jobs in journalism, the ruling class cedes ground to the rabid right-wing media — whose benefactors are committed to an ideological project. The prospect of an emboldened right wing and a corresponding reduction in reputable news sources does not trouble them nearly as much as the loss of profit.

That Miss Jones is a fairly far left liberal is obvious from her article list on New York Magazine. But this site has expended considerable bandwidth on documenting how The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and a clearly left-oriented publication, has continually censored information that just didn’t fit Teh Narrative.

I’ve quoted more of Miss Jones’ article than I’d like, but there’s one more sentence from her concluding paragraph that deserves some real attention:

Journalism doesn’t function like a traditional business, nor should it; its objective isn’t profit but service.

Lots of businesses provide services: cleaning services, financial services, medicine. Miss Jones apparently believes that journalism is somehow different, and deserves your fealty and respect, perhaps more than roofers or concrete finishers or garbagemen. But her take on the difference raises the obvious question: if “journalism doesn’t function like a traditional business,” how can it be supported? Who pays the journalists — and sadly, journolists — if it’s not a business?

The answer is that journalism always has been a business, with reporters being paid, and printing presses run, by ordinary people subscribing to the newspapers and paying good money to consume the journalists’ product. Now? Print journalists are finding that fewer people are willing to shell out good money for their product when there are so many free sources of information on that internet thingy that Al Gore invented. I’m not a subscriber to New York Magazine, but found her article thanks to a tweet from someone I do not follow, but a couple of the other people I do follow, follow! That’s all thanks to another billionaire, Elon Musk, net worth $204.3 billion. Who would have even seen what she wrote, other than subscribers, without Mr Musk providing Twitter — I refuse to call it “X”! — for free?

I haven’t seen the calls yet, though it’s very possible that I have just missed them, for the government to subsidize or pay for, or even own, the newspaper industry. With Miss Jones most certainly not the only Democrat with a byline, as Robert Stacy McCain would call them, who believes that journalists are somehow special, somehow members of an elite and should-be-protected class, I expect such calls to be made.

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Why do you peons hate Mother Gaia? The Plebians are not doing what the Patricians have demanded!

Fresh off the stories of the demands at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the hoitiest and the toitiest get to use their private jets to take their mistresses to a very upscale Swiss ski resort and lecture us about global warming climate change, it seems that the people are just not doing what they’ve been told!

Ford cuts production of F-150 Lightning EV, adds jobs at Bronco and Ranger plant

  • Ford is increasing production of its Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup, while cutting production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning, the automaker said Friday.
  • The announced cut to Lightning production comes a month after CNBC and other media outlets reported Ford would slash planned production of the pickup roughly in half this year.
  • The automaker will be reducing production of the Lightning at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan to one production shift from two, impacting approximately 1,400 employees.

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After 72 uninterrupted years in power, Democrats have kept Philly our nation’s poorest big city

The city of Philadelphia has been governed by Democrats for decades: the last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was President of the United States. The Democrats of today, in complete charge of the City of Brotherly Love, have talked a great, great game of taking care of the poor and downtrodden, yet it has to be asked: having talked the talk, have they walked the walk?

Some Philadelphia homeless shelters have gone months or years without being paid by the city

The Office of Homeless Services spent $15 million more than it was budgeted over the last four years, but some nonprofit leaders say during that time, they experienced severe delays in payment.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, January 17, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving when officials at Gloria’s Place, a West Philadelphia homeless shelter that’s operated for five decades, learned their contract with the city wouldn’t be renewed due to a lack of funding, and the seven families in its care would need to find shelter somewhere else.

That came after Gloria’s Place had for ten months housed dozens of children and adults referred to them by the city — but were not paid the more than $400,000 the city owed them.

Yup, it’s another one of those Philadelphia Inquirer articles limited to subscribers only. I subscribe so that you don’t have to. Continue reading →