Category: Business

Corporate news from all over

Broadcast plagiarism is standard procedure

Seth Anderson0 comment

I studiously avoid receiving any news from television broadcasts or radio shows, but in my limited experience, the plagiarism discussed by Linda Thomas is a long-standing issue. Of course, some print journalists routinely steal from blogs as well.

Lonely Zenith

A newspaper reporter would be fired or suspended for something TV and radio reporters do quite often.

Print journalists consider it plagiarism. Broadcasters call it a “rewrite.”

Here’s how it works in nearly every news market in the country. Print reporters do research and interviews for a story that ends up being about 800 words or so. Broadcasters rewrite and condense the paper’s story to around 50 words – sometimes adding their own audio or video – then present it as their own.

[Click to continue reading Broadcast plagiarism]

Too much of broadcast journalism reporting directly lifts from print media: and especially now when so much of print media is in danger of vanishing, wonder what would happen if trends continue like this. If the print media vanishes, how will the lazy broadcasters survive?

Tesla Dealership on Grand west of Morgan

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I’d test drive a Tesla: sounds like a fun car. However, way (way way) beyond my budget: $120,000 is steep for any item, much less an automobile.

Arlbor

[closest photo of mine I could find-this is 800 W Grand Ave, or nearby.]

Car companies have tinkered with all-electric cars for years — but have run into problems, particularly high price and limited range. The 2006 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” told of the 1990s Saturn EV1 electric car — which General Motors recalled and destroyed.

The California-based Tesla claims to sell the only highway- capable all-electric car in North America or Europe, but it won’t be alone for long. Americans will be seeing more alternative-engine cars — all-electric, plug-in electric hybrid (like the planned Chevy Volt), conventional hybrid, and hydrogen-fuel cell — as car makers compete to offer more fuel-efficient models. Revving up the contest is last-week’s federal mandate that all new cars and trucks average 35.5 mpg by 2016.

Wisniewski’s Tesla isn’t exactly middle-market — it’s a two-seat sports car that cost him $120,000. The California company is working on a family sedan, which it hopes to start producing in late 2011, at a base cost of $49,900 after government rebate.

Tesla expects to open its first Chicago dealership next month at 1053 W. Grand.

“It’s definitely a conversation piece,” said Kevin Daly, Tesla’s Midwest regional sales manager, of his own Roadster. “It really has changed the script on what people’s thoughts are for electric cars.”

The car charges overnight, like a cell phone, using either a 110-volt or 220-volt charger. It claims to run 220 miles on a charge. Daly says the car runs well in extreme cold or heat (though he admits a sports car isn’t great in heavy snow).

The cost for the electricity is about 1 or 2 cents per mile. To get ready for guests with electric cars, Hyatt Hotels and Lake Point Tower in Chicago are offering charging stations, according to Daly.

[From Testing out the Tesla :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Transportation]


View Larger Map

Live to Ride
[Ogden and Grand – slightly west of 1053 Grand.]

Conflicts of Interest Ensare Journalists, Too

Seth Anderson0 comment

Just a little corruption, nothing to pay attention to

Health reporters may become entangled in the same kinds of ethical conflicts they often expose when accepting industry-sponsored awards and relying on corporate public relations offices, three researchers warn.

Journalism awards consisting of cash prizes and all-expense-paid trips given out by drug companies are among the more “astonishing” financial ties between journalists and drug companies, the authors said. The paper appears in the online edition of the British medical journal BMJ.

Among the prizes cited are the Embrace Award for reporting on urinary incontinence — consisting of trips to Washington, D.C., and Paris — offered by pharmaceutical firms Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim, as well as another Eli Lilly award for cancer treatment stories that includes a weeklong international trip for two.

The authors also point a finger at journalism training and education programs sponsored by the health care industry and to professorships funded by drug company grants. The writers go on to criticize reporters’ reliance on drug company press officers for referrals to experts or to patients, whose views may have been carefully screened.

[Click to continue reading Conflicts of Interest May Ensnare Journalists, Too – NYTimes.com]

A New Route to Ease Plane Congestion

Seth Anderson0 comment

A glimmer of hope for frequent fliers in the US, if the FDA can get off their asses and dance with the new technology

U.S. airlines and the FAA are phasing in a new navigation system that has already proved it can reduce weather delays, shave minutes off flight times and reduce noise pollution on the ground.

“Required Navigation Performance,” or RNP, is already in use in parts of China, Australia, Canada and Alaska. U.S. airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration are working to expand it to major U.S. airports. Southwest Airlines, for example, will have all its planes and pilots ready next year. Washington’s Reagan National Airport already has an RNP procedure in place.

The plan in the U.S. is to attack the most congested cities first, starting with New York and Chicago. “We’ll apply it where the need is greatest to start,” said Victoria Cox, FAA senior vice president for “NextGen” air-traffic modernization.

Think of RNP as precision navigation. Using two different kinds of standard navigation equipment, the newest generation of Boeing and Airbus jets have the ability to fly an exact path with deviation of no more than the wingspan of the airplane. RNP routes take advantage of that equipment by creating very precise flight paths that require computers on board to alert pilots if the plane strays. No ground-based equipment like radar and instrument landing systems is needed. The plane’s autopilot can put the aircraft at an exact position within seconds of an assigned time.

[Click to continue reading A New Route to Ease Plane Congestion – WSJ.com]

Circumstances Beyond Our Control - oil paint

[not related, but hey, my blog, my rules…]

New Whole Foods Market in Chicago

Seth Anderson0 comment

Judy Hevrdejs visits the new Whole Foods on Kingsbury:

New Whole Foods under construction

[my photo of the Whole Foods construction from March, 2009]

By the time the shiny new Whole Foods Market in Lincoln Park opens May 20, the shelves will be fully stocked, the produce bins piled high and the wine-sampling machines filled with assorted bottles of vino.
That wasn’t the state of affairs when I checked out the store at 1550 N. Kingsbury St. during a hard-hat tour May 13. But I did get a fine aerobic workout hoofing it from the store’s main entrance to the in-house bakery that’s destined to perfume its corner of the 75,000-square-foot store with baked-fresh-daily breads. (Don’t believe me? I counted 200 strides.)

The Lincoln Park site’s vast space makes it the third largest Whole Foods Market in the world, just behind London’s Kensington store (at more than 100,000 square feet) and the Austin, Texas flagship store/HQ. “It’s a Whole Foods Market on soy protein powder,” says Rich Howley, the store team leader

…

And if Howley’s discussions pan out, they may hold yoga and tai chi classes on the building’s roof.

[Click to continue reading New Whole Foods Market an homage to Chicago | The Stew – A taste of Chicago’s food, wine and dining scene]

Perhaps it is because I moved to Austin the same year that Whole Foods opened its first store, or perhaps because I’ve shopped at the (old) Lincoln Park location for nearly as long as I’ve lived in Chicago, but I want Whole Foods to do well, to survive and thrive, selling quality food that wasn’t created in a Monsanto laboratory. However, I do wonder if having such a monstrous location is really a good thing. I hate going to shopping malls, have avoided stepping foot in a Wal-Mart so far in my life, so why would I want to go to a grocery mall? The new Whole Foods mega-store has 42 checkout lanes, and 400 parking spaces!

Stanford A Drug Informer and Bush Ally

Seth Anderson0 comment

Somehow the allegation that an 2006 SEC investigation into Sir Allen Stanford was dropped at the request of the Bush Administration because Stanford was too well connected, and a drug informant, does not surprise me. Rules are different for the very rich, no matter how they got their money. The Bush team was always more interested in loyalty than law-abiding anyway, and Stanford, being a fifth generation Texan, was a Bush Ranger1.

Sir Allen Stanford, who is accused of bank fraud, is the subject of an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama.

Sources told Panorama that if he was a paid anti-drug agency informer, that could explain why a 2006 probe into his financial dealings was quietly dropped.

…

On 17 February of this year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Sir Allen of running a multi-billion dollar Ponzi fraud – when cash from new depositors is used to pay dividends to old depositors – civil charges he has denied.

Two and a half months after the SEC filing, the Texan has not yet faced criminal charges.

He was initially investigated by the SEC for running a possible Ponzi fraud in the summer of 2006, but by the winter of that year the inquiry was stopped.

Panorama understands that the decision was taken because of a request by another government agency.

Panorama is aware of strong evidence that Sir Allen was a confidential agent of the DEA as far back as 1999 – the year he made out the $3.1m cheque to the DEA.

[From BBC NEWS | UK | Stanford drug informer role claim]

Stanford got his knighthood from Antigua and Barbuda, yet insists upon being called Sir Allen, by the way. A bit of a douche-bag, in other words.

Among several framed certificates hung on a wall is one with the gold seal of Antigua and Barbuda pronouncing Stanford Knight Commander, which allowed him to use the title Sir Allen Stanford, and a letter on White House stationery dated Jan. 25, 2006, signed by then-President George W. Bush.

If I’m not mistaken2, when Bush the Smarter3 was in the CIA, there were allegations of CIA drug smuggling, using the body bags of American GIs returning from Southeast Asia. Also using various drug lords in the Golden Triangle as fronts to pay various military operations supported by the US. Wonder if that’s how Stanford and Bush met?

Footnotes:
  1. I’m assuming [↩]
  2. too lazy to look right now [↩]
  3. aka George Herbert Walker Bush [↩]

Vulgar Pig Boy Takes Down another Corporation

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Rush Limbaugh is nearly singlehandedly destroying another corporation. Too bad for him it’s the one paying his exorbitant salary.

Latinos Meat

I wonder about Limbaugh and the thousands of his laid-off Clear Channel colleagues, because the dichotomy is striking: Last July, just months before the radio economy went into free-fall, Limbaugh’s bosses at Clear Channel, who enjoy deep ties to Texas Republicans and who have been at the forefront of promoting right-wing radio, rewarded the turbo-talker with the biggest contract in terrestrial radio history. The contract included an eye-popping 40 percent raise over his already gargantuan pay, despite the fact it’s doubtful any other radio competitors could have even matched Limbaugh’s old pay scale.

The astronomical worth of Limbaugh’s eight-year pact: $400 million. The amount of money Clear Channel execs have been trying to scrimp and save this year as they lay off thousands from the struggling company: $400 million. Ironic, don’t you think?

The simple truth is that Limbaugh lives in the lap of Clear Channel-backed luxury, while Clear Channel employees are being axed with abandon. And those who are lucky enough to keep their jobs are told to do the work of three or four employees.

[Click to continue reading Limbaugh’s living large while radio boss Clear Channel implodes | Media Matters for America]

Boarding Stable

Can’t really bemoan the fact that Clear Channel is in trouble: they have long been an opponent of both liberals, and music lovers. I’d be happy to see them fade into bankruptcy court, and oblivion.

Death of Newspapers as explained by David Simon

Seth Anderson0 comment

David Simon1 was interviewed by Bill Moyers (video here if you missed it) about what fictional tales like The Wire can say about our corrupt institutions that journalism cannot. About 2/3 through the interview, Mr. Simon reminded me of how newspapers, as a business, made decisions to increase their profits at the expense of newsgathering, and thus sowed the seeds of their own destruction:

BILL MOYERS: I read something you recently told “The Guardian,” in London: “Oh, to be a state or local official in America…” without newspapers. “It’s got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption.”

[quote]

DAVID SIMON: Well, I was being a little hyperbolic. But-

BILL MOYERS: But it’s happening. I mean, it’s becoming true.

DAVID SIMON: Yes. It absolutely is, it absolutely is. To find out what’s going on in my own city I often find myself at a bar somewhere taking, writing stuff down on a cocktail napkin that a police lieutenant or some school teacher tells me. Because these institutions are no longer being covered by beat reporters who are looking for the systemic. It doesn’t exist anymore.

And this is not all the Internet. This was a– you know, there’s a lot of the general tone in journalism right now is that of martyrology. Of-

BILL MOYERS: Being martyrs, right.

DAVID SIMON: Yes, we were doing our job. Making the world safe for democracy. And all of a sudden, terra firma shifted, new technology. Who knew that the Internet was going to overwhelm us? I would buy that if I wasn’t in journalism for the years that immediately preceded the Internet because I took the third buyout from the “Baltimore Sun.” I was about reporter number 80 or 90 who left, in 1995. Long before the Internet had had its impact. I left at a time– those buyouts happened when the “Baltimore Sun” was earning 37 percent profits.

You know, we now know this because it’s in bankruptcy and the books are open. 37 percent profits. All that R&D money that was supposed to go in to make newspapers more essential, more viable, more able to explain the complexities of the world. It went to shareholders in the Tribune Company. Or the L.A. Times Mirror Company before that. And ultimately, when the Internet did hit, they had an inferior product– that was not essential enough that they could charge online for it.

I mean, the guys who are running newspapers, over the last 20 or 30 years, have to be singular in the manner in which they destroyed their own industry. It– it’s even more profound than Detroit making Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins and believing that no self-respecting American would buy a Japanese car in 1973. That– it’s analogous up to a point, except it’s not analogous in that a Nissan is a pretty good car, and a Toyota is a pretty good car. The Internet, while it’s great for commentary and froth doesn’t do very much first generation reporting at all. And it can’t sustain that. The economic model can’t sustain that kind of reporting. And to lose to that, because you didn’t– they had contempt for their own product, these people. I mean, how do-

BILL MOYERS: The publishers. The owners.

DAVID SIMON: Yes, how do you give it away for free? You know, but for 20 years, they looked upon the copy as being the stuff that went around the ads. The ads were the God. And then all of a sudden the ads were not there, and the copy, they had had contempt for. And they had– they had actually marginalized themselves

By the time the Internet had its way, I mean, they’re down to 180 now. You don’t cover the City of Baltimore and a region like Central Maryland with 180 people. You don’t cover it well.

And the institutional knowledge of the place disappears. And so that was– I was being a little flippant with “The Guardian” but what I was saying was, you know, there’s going to be a wave of corruption until they figure out the new model and reestablish– the institutional memory of these places, there’s going to be a wave of misbehavior.

[Click to read more of Bill Moyers Journal . Transcripts | PBS David Simon]

Remember this fact next time you hear a Sam Zell type complain about why they are cutting staff, again.

Footnotes:
  1. famously of The Wire, but other things too, including a series in production about musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans called Treme, in post-production [↩]

Cat Fight Emerson vs Bud

Seth Anderson0 comment

St. Louis cat-fight!

Taj Mahal

Emerson, one of St. Louis’ largest companies, is apparently steamed at what it thinks is rough treatment at the hands of Anheuser-Busch. The Ferguson-based manufacturer of cooling equipment, network power products, appliances and tools plans to boycott Anheuser-Busch products to protest stingier payment policies and what it claims are Anheuser-Busch’s cutbacks in funding for local non-profits.

In an internal memo obtained by Lager Heads, Emerson sounded off:

“With the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch we have seen negative things happening in the St. Louis community and in regard to Emerson doing business with InBev. InBev payment terms with Emerson have now been stipulated as 120 days – take it or leave it!”

Before being taken over by InBev, A-B typically settled its accounts in 30 days. Emerson, an Anheuser-Busch supplier, is evidently mad at the change. It’s not alone, but this is the most interesting response – by far- to Anheuser-Busch’s new way of dealing with suppliers.

[Click to continue reading Emerson to boycott Anheuser-Busch | Lager Heads | STLtoday]

DDB Chicago has both petulant companies as clients, as Jeremy Mullman reports:

DDB, Chicago, finds itself in exactly that awkward position today following a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Emerson, an engineering conglomerate, has instructed its divisions to boycott Anheuser-Busch products in response to A-B’s new insistence on making vendors — including Emerson — wait 120 days for payments. Emerson also included among its reasons what it described as A-B’s cutbacks in funding to local nonprofits, including the United Way and the Girl Scouts.

The orders were contained in an internal memo obtained by the newspaper. “With the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, we have seen negative things happening in the St. Louis community and in regard to Emerson doing business with InBev,” the memo reads. “Effective immediately, we will not use Anheuser-Busch InBev products at the Emerson World Headquarters complex, Winfield Conference Center, on Emerson planes, or in Emerson suites at Busch Stadium (Cardinals), Scottrade Center (St. Louis Blues & concerts), and Edward Jones Dome (Rams).

“We want all divisions to comply and not purchase or stock any Anheuser-Busch InBev products. We suggest you use Coors, Miller, Modelo or Heineken products.”

[Click to continue reading Coors Light at Busch Stadium? – Adages – Advertising Age]

I’d be annoyed too if all invoices were paid after 120 days – that really would mess up our cash-flow. A few years ago we did a large marketing program with a major financial corporation, and because they paid their invoices within 60 days, we had to take out a bridge loan with a local bank just so we could stay afloat. Turned out ok, but money was more liquid a few years ago. Four months is a long time to hold someone’s money before paying it.

Streetwise Magazine May Be Forced To Shutter

Seth Anderson0 comment

A shame StreetWise can’t get a bailout from the federal government: they actually help people. StreetWise sells each issue to the vendors for $0.75, the vendors resell for $2.001, and keep the change.

Streetwise Headquarters

StreetWise, the weekly Chicago magazine for the homeless, has fallen victim to a hobbled economy and could be forced to close its doors by June if it cannot replace hemorrhaging foundation support, its managers say.

A shutdown would end 16 years of publication and put at risk a non-profit publication that employed homeless Chicagoans as writers and vendors.
“We’ve been in trouble for a long time, but now we’re feeling like we can’t dig ourselves out so easily,” said StreetWise executive director Bruce Crane.

Trying to stem the tide, the publication has switched from a weekly newspaper to a magazine, changed the makeup of its board and slashed staffing, services to the homeless and costs. The organization has sought to replace lost income with stepped up fundraising and grant-writing, and expanded its efforts to seek out advertisers.

Nevertheless, the savings and new funding sources are not enough to cover the loss of major foundation support that has kept the publication afloat in the past.

“If we get no grants, no economic stimulus funds, if nothing else would happen, we’d be 45 days from going out of business,” said StreetWise board vice chairman Pete Kadens.

[Click to continue reading Magazine sold by homeless may fold – Chicago Breaking News]

There are some dudes who have become veritable icons on the streets of Chicago, hawking StreetWise from the same corner for years.

Ironically, on the same day, Janie Lorber of the New York Times reports that circulation is up, at least in other cities (StreetWise is not mentioned).

Newspapers produced and sold by homeless people in dozens of American cities are flourishing even as the deepening recession endangers conventional newspapers. At many of them, circulation is growing, along with the sales forces dispatched to sell the papers to passers-by.

The recession has hardly been a windfall for these street papers, most of which are nonprofits that survive on grants and donations as well as circulation revenue. But the economic downturn has heightened interest in their offbeat coverage and driven new vendors to their doors.[Click to continue reading Rising Circulation, at Papers Sold by Homeless – NYTimes.com]

Doh!

Footnotes:
  1. or whatever they can get, a percentage of issues sell for more than $2.00 [↩]

User Generated Theft

swanksalot8 Comments
Piney Woods TRI-X 400
Piney Woods TRI-X 400, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

outside of Leesville, LA

Republished with really lousy credit:

www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/carbonfundorg-reforestat…

Discovery Communications, the parent of TreeHugger, market capitalization exceeding $2,000,000,000 apparently doesn’t mind bending the rules when it comes to User Generated Content. Flickr hosts my photographs, and has printed clear guidelines outlining what is acceptable usage:

Do link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere.

The Flickr service makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to outside web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr.

[From Flickr Community Guidelines]

TreeHugger downloaded my photograph from Flickr, stripped out the copyright information that was embedded in the photo, changed the photograph’s name, uploaded it to its own server, and added it to a blog post without linking back to the original photo1. Now this image has become public domain, available for anyone to download from TreeHugger’s high profile site, to use, sell, or whatever, without ever realizing where the image came from2.

I actually don’t usually mind my photos being used on other websites, as I say on my Flickr profile page, or else I wouldn’t bother to upload images anywhere on the internet in the first place. But multi-billion dollar corporations should try a little harder to respect the rights of the little guys.

Suppose I copied some content from the Discovery Channel, a documentary about American Loggers, for instance, and rebroadcasted it on my own television station, while putting a small on-screen title at the end of the broadcast saying, “all content originally created by the Discovery Channel“, I’d soon receive a sternly worded letter from their corporate attorneys. What rights do I have? What cause of action do I have? None, other than this whiney-ass blog post, and a big spit on the ground in TreeHugger’s direction.

Update, left this comment at TreeHugger

So I’m curious, why did you strip out all of the copyright metadata on my photo when you republished it, and why didn’t you follow the terms of use (which are simple: attribution, and link to the original photo). Is this TreeHugger policy? Discovery Communications policy? In effect, you have released my photo to the world as uncopyrighted, is that your intent? Would it bother TreeHugger/Discovery if I did the same with your work?

Curious as to your response, either here, or at my blog where I ask the same questions.

Update: 9:10 CST, TreeHugger didn’t publish my comment, just removed the photo. Now, they are stealing Brion V.’s photo, without a link to his photo page. Still scummy, but not my problem any more. Just wish I had bothered to take a screenshot of their theft before blogging about it. Remind me to steal as much TreeHugger and Discovery Channel material as possible before I die. Or get served with papers.

As twitter and Flickr pal Friendly_Joe suggested, I should still invoice TreeHugger for the time3 that my photo was on their site.

Footnotes:
  1. they did write below the image, Photo via: Swanksalot, but without a link to the photo they borrowed, or bothering to use my actual name. [↩]
  2. my trip to East Texas on a day when both of my grandfathers died [↩]
  3. somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 hours [↩]

Rule of Law and Sancitity of Contracts

Seth Anderson0 comment

Glenn Greenwald notes the absurdity of the claim that AIG’s outrageous bonuses must be paid because we are a nation of laws.

Soulsville cropped

Apparently, the supreme sanctity of employment contracts applies only to some types of employees but not others. Either way, the Obama administration’s claim that nothing could be done about the AIG bonuses because AIG has solid, sacred contractual commitments to pay them is, for so many reasons, absurd on its face.

…

To use Larry Summer’s eloquent phrase (perversely deployed to justify the AIG bonus payments)1: if “we are a country of law,” we would probably do something about these severe violations of law that are right in front of our faces, particularly since we all know exactly who the lawbreakers are.  

Apparently, this “we are a country of law” concept means that hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money must be transferred to the AIG executives who virtually destroyed the financial system, but it does not mean that something must be done when high government officials get caught plainly breaking the law. What an oddly selective application of the “rule of law” this is.

…In comments, EJ has an excellent suggestion as to how the Government can enable AIG not to pay these bonsues:
Couldn’t Congress just give poor, well-meaning AIG immunity from lawsuits? Novel idea, huh?

That would certainly solve the problem.  If Congress (with Obama’s support) was willing to immunize lawbreaking telecoms from lawsuits brought by their illegally-spied-upon customers, shouldn’t Congress be willing to immunize AIG from bonus-seeking lawsuits brought by their executives who helped spawn the financial crisis?

[From The sanctity of AIG’s contracts – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com]

Yes we are a nation of law, but we are also a nation of lawyers, and since when is a business contract sacrosanct? Just ask a labor union about renegotiating contracts.

such as:

Associated Press, February 18, 2009:

The United Auto Workers’ deal with Detroit’s three automakers limits overtime, changes work rules, cuts lump-sum cash bonuses and gets rid of cost-of-living pay raises to help reduce the companies’ labor costs, people briefed on the agreement said today. The UAW announced Tuesday that it reached the tentative agreement with General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. over contract concessions, as GM and Chrysler sent plans to the Treasury Department asking for a total of $39 billion in government financing to help them survive.

Concessions with the union are a condition of the $17.4 billion in government loans that the automakers have received so far.

or, for example, a concession that has nothing to do with bailouts:

Members of the San Francisco Chronicle’s largest union have agreed to contract concessions that parent company Hearst Corp says are essential to keeping the newspaper open.

Members of the California Media Workers Guild voted by a 10-1 margin to approve concessions that would allow the Chronicle to cut at least 150 union jobs and eliminate various benefits and rights, according to a statement on the union’s website posted on Saturday evening.

New York-based Hearst had threatened to close the paper unless it could secure immediate concessions. The company also says that it may close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, or possibly take it online only with a much smaller staff. A decision may come next week.

[From San Francisco Chronicle union OKs concessions | Reuters ]

So please, no bullshit about AIG bonuses being immune to renegotiation. I don’t believe it, and neither should you.

Obama can read between the lines too:

President Obama vowed to try to stop the faltering insurance giant American International Group from paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives, as the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street that could complicate Mr. Obama’s economic recovery agenda.

“In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he had asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

In strongly-worded remarks delivered in the White House East Room before small business owners, Mr. Obama called A.I.G. “a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed.”

“Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses at all, much less $165 million in extra pay,” Mr. Obama said. “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”

White House officials said that the administration is not looking to take A.I.G. to court to stop the company from paying out the bonuses. But they said the Treasury Department would be trying to figure out what they can do to block A.I.G. from making the payments within the legal confines of A.I.G.’s contractual obligations to the

[click to continue reading Obama Orders Treasury Chief to Try to Block A.I.G. Bonuses – NYTimes.com]

Footnotes:
  1. We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system. [↩]

Reading Around on March 12th

swanksalot0 comment

Some additional reading March 12th from 19:11 to 21:58:

  • Mad Dog Blog – NBA players with Twitter.com Accounts – “I had no idea what Twitter was and so I decided to do some research and really figure it out. As I was checking on it I found someone’s blog who pointed out that a bunch of NBA players have Twitter accounts. Then on my own I found some other NBA players with accounts. Some of the players are listed below.

    Chris Bosh
    Andrew bogut
    Danny Granger
    Steve Nash
    Shaq
    Charlie Villanueva
    Tyson Chandler
    Jalen Rose
    Dwight Howard     “

    maybe. Some of these seem fake, or near fake.

  • Fdic: Banks Didn’t Pay Into FDIC Coffers From 1996 To 2006 – For 10 years—including the boom times banks enjoyed in the first half of this decade—the FDIC was prevented from collecting fees from 95% of financial institutions, which it would have used to further build up its safety net in the event it would someday have to bail out a bunch of stupid losers…

    Cornelius Hurley, director of the Boston University law school’s Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law, [said] if the FDIC has to take over a large bank—say, Citibank—the funds that remain would be drained “in a flash.”
    “Typically you would build up a reserve during the halcyon days to protect yourselves during a recession,” he said, calling the decision to stop collecting most premiums “a political one” that was pushed by banks and not based on strict accounting principles.

    Of course the American Banking Association says it made no sense to pay into the FDIC during those 10 years because they had more than enough money. Congress, not surprisingly, agreed with them.

News America Purchases Floorgraphics

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Whoa, that’s one way to settle a lawsuit that is going poorly…

Hanging Out on the Bean

News America Marketing, a unit of the News Corporation that produces coupon inserts and sells advertising in supermarkets, settled a lawsuit this week with a competitor that had accused it of anticompetitive behavior and corporate spying.

On Wednesday, News America bought the company, Floorgraphics, outright for an undisclosed sum.

The lawsuit was settled after witnesses began testifying in the trial in federal court in New Jersey. The original lawsuit was filed in 2004.

In a brief statement, a spokeswoman for News America confirmed the acquisition, saying, “We’re pleased to be expanding our network of stores to better serve our customers and we’re very excited to incorporate the quality network so ably developed by Floorgraphics.”

[From News Corp. Unit Settles Suit With a Rival, Then Buys It – NYTimes.com]

Surprising development, actually. Rupert Murdoch must have made FGI an offer they couldn’t refuse.

[more details at Jim Edwards blog: bnet]

Death of the Chicago Tribune

Seth Anderson0 comment

Seems like an almost done deal. The Chicago Tribune has chosen to become a shallow, tabloid newspaper, chasing 20-somethings with a short attention span.

Pippen Peruses the Newspaper
[Pippen already prefers the WSJ]

I got in touch with Coleen Davison. “We’d been [Tribune] subscribers for 12 or 13 years,” she told me. “Obviously we’ve seen changes we weren’t thrilled by, but the last redesign was the final straw. It was sound-bite journalism — all pictures, no stories.”

…

They gave the new Tribune a week and then decided to cancel the subscription to their Naperville home. At the suggestion of the woman in circulation she spoke to about that, Coleen participated in a readers’ phone survey. “As I recall,” she told me, “almost all of the questions were extremely vague and general. The respondee was asked to answer on a scale of 1 to 5 whether they agreed or disagreed. The only question that came remotely close to allowing me to voice my displeasure was something like ‘I think the redesign contains too many pictures.’ I was frustrated that the survey seemed designed to only allow for positive feedback.”

So she wrote a redesign feedback link she found at the Tribune Web site and complained. She told the paper that although its survey hadn’t let her say so, she was “also appalled by the significant drop in the quality of what little news is reported. Rearranging and renaming the sections I can deal with, but the new Tribune looks and reads like a tabloid magazine.”

She went on, “I understand the need to update your look periodically, and I also understand the desire to attract more readers. It’s just terribly sad that the way you chose to do this was to pander to those who prefer tabloid journalism to real news.” Her long note, which I’m merely excerpting here, she signed “Sadly and sincerely.”

She heard back from John McCormick of the Tribune editorial board

[Click to read more Chicago Reader Blogs: News Bites]

Daily News

I’ve been a Tribune subscriber since 1994, and I’ve just about decided to cancel my subscription as well. There just isn’t much news in the Tribune these days, and so why bother getting it delivered? I already subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and the weekend New York Times, perhaps I’ll just expand my NYT subscription. The Trib is a pale shadow of the paper it used to be, and Sam Zell obviously doesn’t give a shit about readers like me.