office

Great Expectations

April 8, 2012

* Earnings reports follow 24 pct rise in bank stocks this year * Some big banks could show profit decline from year ago * Investors count on eventual rise in interest rates, loan income By David Henry and Rick Rothacker April 9 (Reuters) – U.S. bank executives face great expectations from investors when they report first-quarter results beginning Friday. Bank stocks have shot up 24 percent this year, as measured by the KBW Banks index, in their steepest ascent in any quarter since the end of September 2009. Now investors want to know if they should stick with their bets that the economy will strengthen and lift bank lending margins and profits, or take their gains and get out. “Investors are out on a limb,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank. They won’t get much help from the earnings, which are expected to be murky this quarter and confused by accounting items. Investors may have to rely on their own hunches to sort conflicting numbers and comments from bank executives about the unfolding course of the economy. Chris Bingaman, a portfolio manager at Diamond Hill Capital Management in Columbus, Ohio, is among the buyers. Bingaman, whose firm manages $9 billion, said he’s been picking up shares of Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co, U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial Services Group Inc lately. The prices, compared with expected future cash flows, are still attractive, he explained. Still, Bingaman called the banks “revenue challenged” because bank customers remain reluctant to borrow and profit margins are being held down by low interest rates. “That puts a damper on revenue growth overall,” Bingaman said. At the least, Bingaman said, he wants to see the banks report that their lending margins have stopped contracting. Net interest margins at JPMorgan, for example, were down to 2.70 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2011 from 2.88 points a year earlier and 3.33 points in 2009. Even if the contraction were to stop, at least another three to six months must pass before lending margins actually increase, said Chris Kotowski, an analyst at Oppenheimer. “You need to see more loan growth,” he said. But Kotowski said that the current slow growth in loan portfolios is a big step from the shrinkage two years ago and points toward increasing momentum in borrowing and a stronger recovery in bank profits. “Slowly, but surely, people are going to realize that this is for real,” Kotowski said. In the meantime, sorting out what is real could be difficult. Some banks will likely report loan growth that stems not from new demand from customers for funds, but from taking business from competitors, said analyst Paul Miller of FBR Capital Markets & Co. “The overall economic growth needed for loan growth still is not there,” Miller said. Loan balances at banks in recent weeks have been running about 4.0 percent higher than a year earlier, according to Federal Reserve data, but some of that increase is thought to have come at the expense of European banks and lenders in the capital markets. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo kick off bank earnings Friday morning. For 81 financial companies in the S&P 500 stock index, first-quarter earnings are expected to be up 6.5 percent from a year ago, according to surveys of analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S through April 4. For the full year, analysts expect the earnings will be up 22.4 percent from 2011. Underneath the averages are likely to be confusing cross-currents about whether the quarter was good or bad. For example, while profits are expected to be higher for banks in general, earnings per share will be down in the first quarter from a year earlier for JPMorgan and Citigroup Inc, according to surveys of analysts. But c ompared with the fourth quarter, profits for JPMorgan and Citigroup are expected to be higher. The big reason for the expected flip-flop in fortunes for the two banks: Their trading and investment banking business in the first quarter were worse than a year before but better then three months ago. Profit from making new mortgages is expected to counterbalance the loss of fee income from new restrictions on how much banks can charge merchants for debit card transactions. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan have big mortgage operations and some regional banks, such as SunTrust Banks Inc and Fifth Third Bancorp could get a lift, too. Though most new mortgages are used now to refinance existing loans, the are generating additional revenue for the banks. “We’re going to see decent earnings for banks that embrace mortgage banking,” said Miller of FBR Capital Markets & Co. “It’s probably some of the most profitable stuff you can do.” With overall revenue weak, bankers know investors will be looking hard at their expenses. At Bank of America Corp, whose shares are up 66 percent this year, more than any other big bank, executives are expected to supplement their April 19 earnings report with details of the second phase of a campaign that has already set out to eliminate $5 billion in annual expenses and 30,000 jobs. Analysts caution that there are at least two wild cards that could rock the results of the biggest banks: trading revenue and the impact of accounting adjustments, known as debt valuation adjustment or DVA, which must be made for changes in the value of debts the banks owe. Bond trading increased as investors were more willing to take on risk in the quarter than they were at the end of the year. But profit margins for the dealers tightened. Overall, quarterly revenue from fixed income, currency and commodity trading at the investment banks was likely down more than 20 percent from a year earlier, but up more than 100 percent from three months earlier, analyst David Konrad of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods wrote in a report April 2. Equity capital markets volumes and fees for advising completed takeovers were down about 25 percent in the quarter from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters data. The accounting adjustments known as DVA perversely reduce the reported earnings of banks when their creditworthiness improves. Because analysts vary in how much work they do to factor DVA into their earnings estimates, the adjustments can create confusion about whether banks actually missed or beat Wall Street expectations. Bank stock buyers may chose to ignore the accounting noise and the mixed signals. “The psychology seems to be getting better,” said Frank Barkocy, director of research at Mendon Capital Advisors. “We’re continuing to see signs of improvement in the US economy.” (Reporting by David Henry in New York and Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina. Editing by Alwyn Scott.)

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Report: Predominantly Latino and African American Neighborhoods Suffer A New Front of Discrimination

April 7, 2012

Three years since a Wells Fargo Bank loan officer shared the details of how she and her colleagues targeted and directed prospective African American homebuyers into taking out expensive high-interest subprime mortgages to The New York Times, racial discrimination in the housing market is still an issue. According to a new investigative report by the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), a coalition of fair housing non-profit organizations, six major banks are engaging in discriminatory practices in the maintenance and marketing of foreclosed Real Estate Owned (REO) properties in predominantly Latino and African American neighborhoods. CEO and President of the NFHA, Shanna L. Smith, said in a press release that the report “offers evidence that banks responsible for peddling unsustainable loans to communities of color and triggering our current foreclosure crisis are continuing to damage those communities by failing to properly maintain and market the properties they own.” The report looked at nine cities and cited “extremely troubling disparities.” For instance, in Philadelphia, PA, 41 percent of foreclosed homes in African American communities were cited with more than 10 distinct maintenance or marketing problems. In contrast, not one property in a predominantly white community was cited with the same. And in Phoenix, AZ, 73 percent of REO properties in Latino neighborhoods were missing a “For Sale” sign. The same could only be said for 31 percent of homes in predominantly white neighborhoods. Marred by disrepair and neglect, the report goes on to state that the abandoned homes, “degrade the quality of life in these neighborhoods.” Under the federal Fair Housing Act , it is illegal to engage in discriminatory practices with regards to real estate-related transactions. The NFHA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development plan to file administrative complaints against the banks in question. A 2009 report by the Center for American Progress found that among 14 major banks, all engaged in predatory lending practices that targeted people of color. In 2006, a whopping 41.5 percent of African American and 30.9 percent of Hispanic borrowers received higher-priced mortgages than necessary. 17.8 percent of white borrowers received higher-priced mortgages. Moreover, a study by the Center for Responsible Lending published last year found that borrowers of color were more than twice as likely than white households to lose their homes. The reason? “African Americans and Latinos were consistently more likely to receive high-risk loan products, even after accounting for income and credit status,” according to the report.

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Sorry, Kindle: The iPad Is The Only Tablet Most People Know

April 7, 2012

NEW YORK (AP) — Apple is on the verge of doing what few others have: change the English language. When you have a boo-boo, you reach for a Band-Aid not a bandage. When you need to blow your nose, you ask for Kleenex not tissue. If you decide to look up something online, you Google instead of search for it. And if you want to buy a tablet computer, there’s a good chance there’s only one name you’ll remember. “For the vast majority, the idea of a tablet is really captured by the idea of an iPad,’” says Josh Davis, a manager at Abt Electronics in Chicago. “They gave birth to the whole category and brought it to life.” Companies trip over themselves to make their brands household names. But only a few brands become so engrained in the lexicon that they’re synonymous with the products themselves. This so-called “genericization” can be both good and bad for companies like Apple, which must balance their desire for brand recognition with their disdain for brand deterioration. It’s one of the biggest contradictions in business. Companies spend millions to create a brand. Then, they spend millions more on marketing that can have the unintended consequence of making those names so popular that they become shorthand for similar products. It’s like if people start calling station wagons Bentleys. It can diminish a brand’s reputation. “There’s tension between legal departments concerned about ‘genericide’ and marketing departments concerned about sales,” says Michael Atkins, a Seattle trademark attorney. “Marketing people want the brand name as widespread as possible and trademark lawyers worry … the brand will lose all trademark significance.” It doesn’t happen often. In fact, it’s estimated that fewer than 5 percent of U.S. brand names become generic. Those that do typically are inventions or products that improve on what’s already on the market. The brand names then become so popular that they eclipse rivals in sales, market share and in the minds’ of consumers. And then they spread through the English language like the common cold in a small office. “There’s nothing that can be done to prevent it once it starts happening,” says Michael Weiss, professor of linguistics at Cornell University. “There’s no controlling the growth of language.” FIGHTING BACK A company’s biggest fear is that their brand name becomes so commonly used to describe a product that a judge rules that it’s too “generic” to be a trademark. That means that any product — even inferior ones — can legally use the name. A brand usually is declared legally generic after a company sues another firm for using its name and the case goes to a federal court. Drug maker Bayer lost trademarks for the names “aspirin” and “heroin” this way in the 1920s. So did B.F. Goodrich, which sued to protect its trademark of “zipper” in the 1920s after the name joined the world of common nouns. Similar cases deemed “escalator” generic in 1950, “thermos” generic in 1963 and “yo-yo” generic in 1965. It’s difficult to quantify how much revenue a company loses when its brand is deemed generic. But companies worry that it breeds confusion among consumers. To prevent their names from becoming generic, some companies use marketing to reinforce their trademarks. For instance, after its Band-Aid brand name started becoming commonly used to refer to adhesive bandages, Johnson & Johnsons changed its jingle in ads from “I’m Stuck on Band-Aid” to “I’m Stuck on Band-Aid brand.” Kleenex uses “Kleenex brand” instead of just “Kleenex” on its packaging and in marketing and places ads to remind people Kleenex is trademarked. And the company contacts some people who use Kleenex generically to refer to tissue in order to correct them. “We’ve worked very hard to keep ‘Kleenex’ from going the route of ‘escalator’ and ‘aspirin,’” says Vicki Margolis, vice president and chief counsel, intellectual property and global marketing for Kimberly-Clark, which owns Kleenex. “If we lose the trademark, people can use it with sandpaper and call that a Kleenex.” Xerox is taking a similar route. The company, which introduced the first automatic copier in the U.S. in 1959, has been on a public crusade for decades to keep its brand from becoming generic. The machine’s success has led people to start using “Xerox” to refer to any copying machine, copies made from one and the act of copying. “In the mid- to late-1970s, we ran dangerously close to Xerox becoming ‘genericized,’” says Barbara Basney, vice president of global advertising. “That prompted a lot of proactive action to protect our trademark.” Xerox has spent millions taking out ads aimed at educating so-called “influencers” like lawyers, journalists and entertainers about its brand name. A 2003 ad said: “When you use ‘Xerox’ the way you use ‘aspirin,’ we get a headache.” More recently, a 2007 ad read: “If you use “Xerox” the way you use “zipper,” our trademark could be left wide open.” While people still use “Xerox” generically — the Merriam-Webster dictionary lists the word as both a lower-case verb with the definition “to copy on a xerographic copier” and a trademarked noun — the brand says its campaign has been a success. Xerox is still popular: It’s ranked the 57th most valuable global brand, worth $6.4 billion, according to brand consultancy Interbrand. And perhaps most importantly, Xerox hasn’t lost its trademark. TAKING IT IN STRIDE Sometimes companies embrace when their brands become common nouns. Perhaps the best example of this is Google, a company created in 1998 when Alta Vista and Yahoo.com were the top online search engines. Google, which created a formula that returned more accurate results than its competitors, became so popular that people began saying “Google” to refer to a Web search, in general. Experts say Google has benefited from its name becoming a part of the lexicon. “You don’t say ‘Why don’t I Google it’ and go to Yahoo or Bing,” says Jessica Litman, professor of copyright law at the University of Michigan Law School, referring to other search engines. Apple also has gotten a boost from its brand names becoming synonymous with products. The iPod, which was the first digital music player when it came out in 2001, is still the name people use for “digital music player” or “MP3 player.” And it appears Apple’s iPad is headed down the same path. For consumers like Mary Schmidt, 58, the “iPad” is generic for “tablet.” Schmidt, a Baltimore marketing executive, owns an iPad and doesn’t know the names of any other tablets. “When I think of tablets, I think of an iPad,” she says. “I think it’s going to be the generic name. They were first.” It remains to be seen if the iPad will maintain its name domination in the tablet market. Apple declined to comment for this article. For now, Apple Inc. has a majority of the tablet category, which includes Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy Tablet. The iPad accounted for about 73 percent of the estimated 63.6 million tablets sold globally last year, according to research firm Gartner. Apple’s market share is likely to decline as more rivals roll out tablets. But experts say that won’t necessarily diminish iPad’s name recognition. “Apple is actually pretty good at this,” says Litman, the law school professor. “It’s able to skate pretty close to the generics line while making it very clear the name is a trademark of the Apple version of this general category.” When the iPad debuted in 2010, some people offered up “Apple Tablet” or the “iTab” as better names. Others even suggested that the name sounded more like a feminine hygiene product than a tablet: “Get ready for Maxi pad jokes and lots of ‘em!” wrote tech site Gizmo at the time. Two years later, those complaints are all but forgotten. “At the end of the day, the product was so successful that even if it wasn’t the ‘quote unquote’ best name, it made the name synonymous with the category,” says Allen Adamson, managing director at branding firm Landor.

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High Five! Dodgers On Track To Exit Bankruptcy Thanks To Magic Sale

April 6, 2012

DOVER, Del. — The Los Angeles Dodgers filed a revised reorganization plan on Friday and said they are on track to exit bankruptcy as planned by April 30. The amended Chapter 11 plan filed Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware is based on an agreement announced last week to sell the team for more than $2 billion, which the Dodgers say will allow for the payment of all allowed creditor claims in full. The Dodgers are being bought by Guggenheim Baseball Management, a group that includes former Los Angeles Lakers star Magic Johnson and longtime baseball executive Stan Kasten. The $2 billion purchase price includes about $412 million of existing debt financing that will remain in place. The balance, just under $1.6 billion, will be paid in cash from equity financing by the owners and affiliates of Guggenheim, which has provided a cash deposit of about $159 million. “This agreement is the culmination of an auction process that was conducted over several months and reflects the highest and best bid generated by that process,” the team said in a prepared statement. The April 30 date was included in a settlement that resolved a dispute between the Dodgers and Major League Baseball over the team’s bankruptcy. It coincides with the deadline for current owner Frank McCourt to pay $131 million to his ex-wife, Jamie, as part of their divorce settlement. The judge presiding over the bankruptcy case has scheduled a hearing next Friday to consider whether to confirm the plan. While the purchase agreement with Guggenheim calls for the sale to close on April 30, it also allows the Dodgers to seek approval from MLB or the court to extend the closing date to sometime next month if need be. Court papers indicate that Dodgers chief financial officer Peter Wilhelm will remain in that post with the reorganized company. Kasten, former president of the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals, will serve as president and CEO. “By any measure, the plan is a remarkable outcome for the debtors, their estates, and all parties in interest, especially taking into account where these cases began,” Dodgers attorneys wrote in a memorandum supporting the revised plan. The Dodgers sought bankruptcy protection in June after baseball Commissioner Bud Selig refused to approve a new TV deal with Fox Sports that McCourt was counting on in order to make payroll and keep the franchise solvent. After the bankruptcy filing, attorneys for Selig successfully fought to force the Dodgers to accept bankruptcy financing from Major League Baseball, arguing at the same time that McCourt had looted more than $180 million from the team for his own use and reasons not related to baseball, and that he should be forced to sell the team. The Dodgers, meanwhile, threatened to seek court permission to enter into a new media rights deal without the approval of MLB. After battling for several months, the Dodgers and MLB reached an agreement last year that authorized a sale of both the team and a process to market the media rights to games starting in 2014. Fox Sports objected to the settlement with MLB and the proposed marketing of future media rights, saying it violated Fox’s rights under its existing telecast contract with the Dodgers. The Dodgers reached a settlement with Fox in January after a federal district court judge said Fox likely would win an appeal of the bankruptcy judge’s ruling authorizing the marketing of the media rights.

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A Sneak Peek At The Next Generation Kindle

April 6, 2012

Living in Seattle, you tend to find yourself in the company of tech people all the time. With Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, Google, and a dozen other major companies established in the area, it’s never a surprise when you find out the guy next to you at the bar is working on Windows Phone 8 or Half-Life 3. This week, I was lucky enough to get a chance to see what Amazon has cooking for its next generation of e-readers. Their new offices and the mysterious Lab 126 are just down the street, after all, so I’m actually surprised it hasn’t happened before now.

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Caught In the Act: Codes Enforcement Officers Wore Police Badges

April 6, 2012

NASHVILLE — Last fall, The Huffington Post reported that the city of Nashville had begun to push new regulations that were driven by big limo companies and aimed at squashing independent competition. The small car companies fought back, filing a lawsuit to overturn the new requirements. That’s when it got ugly. Drivers allege that after the lawsuit was filed, city inspectors, working on behalf of the Nashville Transportation Licensing Commission , began targeting independent operators by pulling their cars over and issuing citations — even when presented with the legal documents in question — and harassing off-duty drivers in their personal vehicles. During these stops, inspectors wore badges identifying themselves as members of the Nashville Police, according to a former TLC inspector and exclusively confirmed to HuffPost by Kris Mumford, spokeswoman for the Metro Nashville Police Department after months of queries. According to the former inspector, the police impostors also improperly used badges, sirens and flashing lights. Under Tennessee law , impersonating a police officer for the purpose of “causing another to believe that the person is a law enforcement officer” constitutes a Class A misdemeanor, which can carry a penalty of up to 11 months in jail, fines of up to $2,500 or both. “It just came to my attention on Tuesday that one of our officers actually saw an inspector wearing a badge that said ‘Inspector’ but also said ‘Nashville Police.’ Metro is not aware of exactly when or how they got those badges, but they were not authorized by Chief Steve Anderson,” Mumford told HuffPost. According to Mumford, the police have confiscated seven badges that identified TLC inspectors as members of Metro Police or Nashville Police. According to the former inspector, who resigned in late 2011 and wishes to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, the commission had been making ample use of the spurious badges. TLC workers would conduct stakeouts in unmarked vehicles and use blue lights — permitted only for official police vehicles — to make traffic stops, the former inspector said. Undercover inspectors would specifically target smaller, independent private car services and give them specious citations, the former inspector said. TLC Director Brian McQuistion admits his department used the badges and blue lights to pull people over, but maintains the practice stopped when he realized they weren’t allowed to. Inspectors’ use of these badges, however, continued until just a few days ago, when the police chief requested the badges’ return. McQuistion says that his department has carried the police badges for the past 35 years but won’t do so any longer. “They were given to the department’s inspectors decades ago for use by the police — I guess they were given [by] police commissions. We didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be using them anymore, so [when the police asked for them,] we turned them in,” said McQuistion. Mumford said the police department is still looking into the circumstances that allowed the TLC to obtain the seven badges. “If they were commissioned by the police department, it would be on a year-to-year basis and most likely would have expired by now. Chief Steve Anderson has been here for 36 years, and he is certain they have not been commissioned in recent years,” she said. Mumford added that she is unaware of any badges ever being issued by special commission to non-police agents. McQuistion refused to comment on the allegations by livery companies when HuffPost contacted him in January. He now says he refused to comment because he wanted to determine if there was a problem with the TLC’s use of these badges. “After my conversation with [HuffPost] about job descriptions and if we had police commissions, I requested to the chief then to get police commissions, and I didn’t hear back from him until Tuesday [April 3,] when he contacted us wanting the badges back.” Ali Bokhari, owner of Metro Livery and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said TLC officials have pulled his drivers over to issue false citations. “After they passed the regulations, they targeted my business for selective enforcement … because a lot of the high-end clients [of the major taxi companies] were switching to our services,” he said. On January 27, eight days after the city’s motion to dismiss the court case, the TLC ran an undercover sting operation against Metro Livery, in which the former chief of police for Lavergne, Tenn., worked as an undercover agent to persuade one of Bokhari’s drivers to charge less than the minimum fare required under the new laws. Because of the sting operation, Metro Livery now faces having its permit revoked, and the driver faces the loss of his license. Independent drivers fear more than ever that TLC officials are retaliating against the companies who instigated the lawsuit. The commission will continue to issue citations, said McQuistion, pulling over livery vehicles and carrying out inspections with or without badges. “There’s another avenue for us: We still have the authority to do what we do, but we will have to go through the Civil Service Commission to get the job descriptions changed so we no longer have to have police commissions. We still have the right to do what we’re doing by charter.” When asked if the TLC faced investigation by the police, Mumford said, “We don’t have any jurisdiction over them. So I don’t know if they’re under investigation.” Susan Niland, communications director at the Davidson County District Attorney General’s Office said that at this time, her office has not received any criminal complaints or requests to investigate the TLC.

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WATCH: Federal Employee Raps About Agency’s Lavish Spending

April 6, 2012

If you’re a federal employee, it may be best not to rap about your agency’s lavish spending, or you “rolling on 20s, yeah, in my G.O.V.” And yes, G.O.V. stands for government owned vehicle. Yet that’s exactly what General Services Administration employee Hank Terlaje decided to do in a video that was shown at an extravagant conference the agency held in 2010, The Washington Post reports ( h/t NPR ). Terlaje, in fact, won the event’s employee talent show because of the video. The conference became a source of controversy after a report issued by the Office of the Inspector General found the event cost more than $820,000. Three top-level GSA employees were eventually ousted . In the video, Terlaje jokes that he’ll ” never be under OIG investigation, ” ironically the exact same federal watchdog that issued the report. Perhaps even more cringeworthy are Terlaje’s superiors comments upon awarding him top prize, including being named “honorary commissioner.” “The hotel would like to talk to you about paying for the party that was held in the commissioner [Robert Peck]’s suite last night,” Deputy Commissioner David Foley can be seen joking in front of the crowd. That party reportedly cost $2,000 and in part led to the firing of Peck , who was Public Building Services Chief at the time. Check out the controversial video below:

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Detroit Employment Rate Looking Up, Until City Layoffs Hit

April 6, 2012

While data released this week showed a drop in Detroit’s unemployment rate in February, impending layoffs for the city’s largest employer might walk Detroit backward on job recovery. In February, the city’s jobless rate was 17.8 percent , down from 18.8 percent the previous month, according to statistics released by the state. An 800-person drop in the workforce contributed somewhat to the lower jobless rate, but 2,800 more people were working in February than in January. But the positive gains in employment could be reversed as the city works to cut its budget under a new agreement with the state. Deputy Mayor Kirk Lewis made it clear layoffs were on the horizon , telling the Associated Press cutting payroll and negotiating with unions were top priorities. Mayor Dave Bing previously announced 1,000 layoffs, which take effect by June. And he said last month he expected city government restructuring to end in more than 3,000 layoffs , a 35 percent drop that would leave thousands of workers unemployed. As of February, before layoffs started going into effect, the city had 10,900 employees. While some have criticized the size of Detroit’s government workforce relative to other cities, Bing has already made extensive cuts since he entered office in 2009. Nationally, the unemployment rate dropped slightly in March to 8.2 percent, but the job market also slowed considerably. Some 120,000 jobs were added from the previous month, lower than was forecast.

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Ron Ashkenas: Rejection Is Critical for Success

April 6, 2012

There are few experiences more painful than being rejected . We vividly remember the hurt of not being picked for a sports team, not being invited to a social event, or not being accepted to university. Our basic human need to belong causes these incidents to stick with us through the years. Even as adults, at various times in our careers we’re not selected for jobs , promotions, or projects; or even less significant benefits such as parking spaces, preferred offices, or new computer equipment. Whether it’s fair or not, the hard reality is that everyone cannot have everything. Accepting rejection however is not an easy process — for children or adults — and many of us handle it poorly. When this happens repeatedly, it often leads to two types of dysfunctional patterns in organizations: entitlement and resignation. Entitlement is when someone feels that he deserves certain benefits, no matter the reality of the situation. For example, I recently worked with a company that reduced costs by moving staff members into smaller offices and having them share meeting rooms, printers, and other services. A few people refused to accept the new standards, arguing their unique needs for privacy, space, and administrative support. They felt entitled to these benefits and considered anything less to be a rejection of their status and personal self-worth. At the other extreme is resignation , when people avoid situations where they might be rejected. In the example above, some people resigned themselves to the reduced space by not engaging in conversations about how the design of the office would work. By passively accepting the new constraints, they made sure that none of their ideas were rejected (because they didn’t offer any). This may have been psychologically comfortable, but the organization didn’t benefit from their contributions and their buy-in to the new facility was minimal. In light of these behaviors, leaders need to encourage a more conscious and healthy toleration of rejection. While all employees should feel comfortable offering ideas, raising issues, and making observations — they should do so with the knowledge that they may be rejected. If they get discouraged or angry about not having their ideas accepted, they might shut down and stop contributing. Similarly, if employees feel so self-important that the organization should never turn them down, their sense of entitlement will make it difficult to drive constructive change. It’s easier to talk about learning from rejection than to actually experience it. Rejection often triggers painful emotional doubts about our own competence and self-worth, so we either try to avoid it or pretend that it doesn’t matter. A more constructive approach is to remember that rejection can be beneficial: It can force us to come up with more ideas, redirect us to different paths, and keep us humble and open to learning. How has rejection helped or hindered your career? Author’s Note: The original draft of this post quoted the Rolling Stones song ” You Can’t Always Get What You Want ,” but my HBR editor deleted the reference because she thought it “would detract from the ideas.” It seems that even regular HBR bloggers get rejected from time to time. Cross-posted from Harvard Business Online .

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Bank Lets Old Woman Rack Up Astronomical Fees

April 6, 2012

So much for local banks behaving better than the big ones. Webster Bank, a regional bank with 165 branches southern New England and New York, allowed a longtime customer to bounce more than 70 checks and charged her $2,500 in overdraft fees over a period of three months last year, the Hartford Courant reported. Instead of calling the customer to inquire about what was happening, the bank cleared dozens of checks–most made out to charities–and charged a hefty $36 fee per check. The elderly bank customer, who is 88 years old, lives on a monthly income of less than $2,000. After her family intervened, the bank reduced some of the fees–but still defended its actions. The family requested anonymity to protect their privacy, according to the Courant . “Our policy is to notify everyone in writing,” Jeffrey Brown, the chief administrative officer for Webster Bank and Webster Financial Corp, told the Courant . “You can’t always reach people by phone and we want to ensure everyone has all the facts we do. So we send them a written notification. We provide a number they can call us at any time.” But this seems to be a pattern for Webster Bank. In 2010, the bank agreed to pay $2.8 million to settle in a class action lawsuit over the bank’s predatory overdraft practices. And this latest story further highlights how vulnerable the poorest are to bank fees –9 percent of bank customers pay nearly 85 percent of all overdraft fees, according to a 2008 report from the FDIC . In February, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it would look more closely at how overdraft fees are marketed and explained to customers –an investigation that could result in additional rules, perhaps even lawsuits, the CFPB said. Since 2010, banks have not been able to automatically enroll customers in so-called overdraft protection programs for debit card or ATM transactions. Following the Courant’s most recent story about the egregious fees, Webster Bank has said it is looking into its overdraft policies. “We are in the process of adopting changes that will enable us to identify instances of high numbers of overdrafts so that we can offer customers advice on managing their checking account,” Sarah Barr, Webster Bank’s vice president for external communications, told the newspaper.

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How To Make A Living Working From Home

April 6, 2012

By Luke Dempsey for Bookish Friday sees the release of the much-awaited U.S. Department of Labor’s March employment figures, but for many “new workers”–those who’ve traded the chance of a corner office for the lure of their couch–these weighty announcements are beside the point. Suits are out, pajamas are in, and that’s because in the 21st century economy, more people are finding work beyond a traditional office setting. Many (often younger) Americans are a workforce of one as they head off on their own as independent contractors and freelancers. But can you make a living from your living room? These experts say you can. Read more at Bookish

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‘Disturbing’ Warning Physicists Have For U.S. Science

April 6, 2012

By: Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer Published: 04/06/2012 09:56 AM EDT on LiveScience ATLANTA — The United States is at risk of ceding its leadership in science, a number of physicists agreed Monday (April 2), though there was less of a consensus on a clear solution to the problem. Five physicists shared their worries about America’s scientific future during a panel discussion here at the April 2012 meeting of the American Physics Society, saying that governmental funding for science research is in crisis, and not enough U.S. students graduate with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. “There are some facts and figures that are very disturbing, which show the United States might be losing ground in science and discovery, whereas other countries are gaining,” Pushpa Bhat, a physicist at Illinois’ Fermi Accelerator National Laboratory (Fermilab), said at a press conference preceding the panel. “We can’t sit back and watch.” Bhat lamented the lack of cutting-edge physics facilities in this country. While many of the world’s best instruments and experiments, such as Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator, used to be housed here, that frontier has moved elsewhere. For example, the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, is located at the CERN lab in Switzerland, while Illinois’ Tevatron has shut down . “There are things that the country will miss out on if we don’t have such facilities here,” Bhat said. However, she and other physicists also said that now is a time for greater international collaboration between scientists, and that other countries’ gains are not necessarily our losses. “I think science is largely impervious to national boundaries,” said Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek of MIT. “The U.S. still has leading efforts in most areas of science, and attracts students from all over the world. But I don’t think we take advantage of that resource, because we make it difficult for them to stay. I think for science, it’s a tragedy.” Wilczek said that both America’s immigration laws and its cultural attitudes toward foreigners could be more welcoming. And the physicists acknowledged that scientists will have to confront a hard reality: There is simply less money for research in the current economy. [ Graphic: Science Funding in the Federal Budget ] “We need to redouble our efforts to make sure the projects we select are of the highest importance and impact, and be on the lookout for new technologies and innovations that would allow us to do more of our science goals with more modest resources,” said Timothy Hallman, associate director of science for nuclear physics at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Jim Siegrist, director of the Office of High Energy Physics in DOE’s Office of Science, agreed. “We need to find a way to do more science with a fixed amount of money,” Siegrist said. “I think it’d be easier just to have more money,” Wilczek replied. He argued that society doesn’t adequately value and recognize the economic benefits of basic science. “Think about how much the invention of the transistor is worth,” Wilczek said.”The fundamental science that went into that was understanding quantum mechanics, understanding the micro world. Bohr didn’t get rich from it, Heisenberg didn’t get rich from it. But society got rich from it.” (Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg were two of the pioneers of quantum mechanics.) A number of the scientists stressed the importance of communicating the value of science to the public. “The science community can do so much more to engage on the policy side,” said Neal Lane, a physicist at Rice University and asenior fellow in science and technology policy at the university’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “We are not connecting as well as we should.” “It looks like we are doing a lot of outreach, but it has not been effective,” Bhat said. “Maybe we are always preaching to the choir. Maybe we should have scientists talk to Jay Leno.” [ 8 Celebs Who Promote Science ] Ultimately, most of the physicists expressed some optimism about the future, particularly given the major advances being made in understanding the universe and its tiny components, from dark matter and dark energy to exotic particles like the Higgs boson . “It’s really an exciting time for science, and I think that ultimately we’ll win if we could just communicate that in a clear way,” Siegrist said. “I think we can resonate with the decision-makers inside the beltway. There’s plenty of science to do for the whole planet. We don’t actually need to colonize the moon to have enough science to do.” You can follow LiveScience senior writer Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ ClaraMoskowitz . For more science news, follow LiveScience on twitter @ livescience . 10 Science Discoveries to Be Thankful for Creative Genius: The World’s Greatest Minds NASA’s 2013 Budget: What Will It Buy? Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Silicon Valley Janitors Could Go On Strike

April 5, 2012

Thousands of Silicon Valley janitors on Thursday granted their union leaders the power to call a strike if they can’t settle on a new contract with their employers in the heart of America’s technology corridor. The 3,000 janitors are members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and clean office parks that serve some of the country’s largest tech giants, including Apple, Facebook and Oracle. Several hundred janitors marched Thursday in Palo Alto and Century City to draw attention to the negotiations, employing the language of Occupy Wall Street and casting themselves as the “99 percent.” Mark Gomez, a research director with the SEIU, said the union is in the midst of “tough” negotiations with a handful of maintenance companies that have contracts at commercial properties throughout Silicon Valley and elsewhere in Northern California. (The janitors don’t work for the tech companies, but for the buildings’ maintenance contractors.) Although he wouldn’t discuss specifics because the negotiations are ongoing, Gomez said that health care is a primary concern. The workers, he said, want to make sure they share in the “prosperity” of America’s technology sector. Most of the janitors receive around $28,000, while a viable family budget is north of $34,000, according to the California Budget Project , a non-profit that advocates for low- and middle-income earners. In a memo issued outlining its “strike principles,” the union cited its concerns over health care costs, potential layoffs and inadequate staffing at office buildings. “Health care obviously is a tremendous issue, and our wages are below … a basic living wage for a family,” Gomez said. “Without the health care, our members are just one sickness away from economic calamity.” An executive at one of the companies involved in the Silicon Valley negotiations, Mountain View, Calif.-based Service by Medallion, declined to comment by phone Thursday. The janitors’ current contracts expire at the end of April, and if the parties can’t come to terms, the SEIU said workers could strike May 1. A strike authorization like the one issued Thursday allows the workers’ representatives to use a possible work stoppage as a bargaining chip. Typically a sign that negotiations are not going well, the authorization comes on the heels of a similar one issued by SEIU janitors in Chicago. More than 13,000 janitors there gave their bargaining committee the go-ahead to call a strike Sunday if it couldn’t settle on a new contract with the Building Owners and Managers Assoc. of Chicago.

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New Jersey Makes A Grab For Residents’ Gift Cards

April 5, 2012

Like many states on the hunt to fill in budget shortfalls, New Jersey is getting creative. The state is making a grab for its residents’ gift cards. If you live in New Jersey and wait more than two years to cash in on that Red Lobster gift card that your boss gave you, you’ll be out of luck. Under a new state law, New Jersey will take control of funds on gift cards that have not been used for two years. The law could potentially translate into millions of dollars for the Garden State, which would hold the gift card money as “unclaimed funds.” That means New Jersey will keep that money in state coffers rather than a consumer being able to access it through the card. But gift card makers, unwilling to part with so much money in unredeemed funds, are fighting back, pulling out their wares from the state altogether. On Thursday, Blackhawk Network and InComm, the companies behind hundreds of major name-brand gift cards sold through thousands of vendors, said they are pulling their cards from New Jersey vendors starting on June 30 if not sooner. Earlier this week, American Express pulled its cards from New Jersey retailers . The new law would make card sellers responsible for gathering from buyers certain personal information, such as a ZIP code. That information would then be used by New Jersey to collect the unused money on the cards into the state’s unclaimed money fund 24 months after the last time these cards were used. Procrastinating residents could still obtain any remaining balances on the gift cards by contacting the state’s unclaimed funds office. Under federal law, gift cards must be usable for at least five years after purchase, though most do not have any expiration date. Consumer advocates have criticized gift cards because consumers often forget about them or leave balances unused. Redemption rates are low for cards and as much as $41 billion in the United States went unspent on all gift cards from 2005 to 2011 . In some cases, activation or dormancy fees can eat up small amounts of money left on cards. All these things have made them lucrative for card makers. InComm claimed that the technology to collect a buyer’s information and route it through the multiple channels — the vendor, the partner brand, the card processor — does not exist, which makes compliance with the law difficult. “We have hundreds of card partners and dozens of platforms [for card processors],” Brooks Smith, president and CEO of InComm told The Huffington Post. “It’s impossible to bring that data back to the issuer.” New Jersey State Treasury spokesman Andy Pratt said rules about what kind of information would be collected have not yet been established, making the gift card issuers’ retreat a surprise for the state. “We have to ask, why is this so important that they get to keep [an] unused balance?” While the new law is part of the state’s attempt to make up for budget shortfalls, Pratt said the amount it would add to the budget would not be known until after June 30, 2013, when the first unused gift card funds would be tapped by the state. The unused gift cards, travelers’ checks and money orders would net $79 million in revenue for New Jersey, according an estimate for the 2011 fiscal year , the Associated Press reported. So far New Jersey is the only state that is trying to tap unused card balances as a revenue source. Jennifer Kim, a consumer advocate for the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, said the additional restrictions –such as handing over personal information at the point of purchase — will make the cards less consumer friendly, the Associated Press reported .

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‘There Will Have To Be Cuts’ Under Detroit Consent Agreement

April 5, 2012

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder pushed an optimistic view of Detroit’s future under the newly brokered financial agreement between the city and the state, despite the deal’s lack of direct financial assistance for the struggling city. Under the deal, the city gets state approval of a $137 million bond package, which should help the city stay solvent until the fiscal year ends in June. From there, the consent agreement establishes strict budget and operational reforms to stabilize Detroit’s finances. Detroit City Council agreed to the plan in a 5-4 vote Wednesday night , after the mayor, state Treasury officials and the governor pushed its passage. The consent agreement gives the state oversight of Detroit’s finances and establishes a nine-member financial advisory board, chief financial officer and project management director with control over the city’s purse. In March, a financial review team found Detroit in a state of “severe financial emergency,” with a projected budget deficit of $270 million. Snyder said the consent agreement was the only way to get the city back on track, short of appointing an emergency manager. The agreement includes an ambitious reform plan to restructure city services and collective bargaining agreements. It also requires the city to balance its budget or face a full state takeover. “They’ve committed not to overspend their revenues,” explained Treasurer Andy Dillon. “There’s real teeth in this agreement.” But there is no cash for the city, and while proponents of the plan say it will resolve Detroit’s long-term debt and obligations, others worry city services will suffer if officials are forced to balance the budget. “There will have to be cuts,” Dillon conceded, but Snyder quickly interjected. “It doesn’t mean you’re not being innovative or providing better services,” the governor said. “Just because they have to cut the budget doesn’t mean it’s at the expense of having worse services.” Snyder said he didnt like the word “privatization” but that the city would have to look for bids for some services. Detroit has already placed its bus system under private management and is looking to do the same with the lighting department and the Department of Human Services . Among other measures, the plan requires the city to reform public health and safety, lighting and transit — all things the governor said will help “grow” Detroit. He said a robust plan with strict goals and consequences was necessary to ensure Detroit gets those things done. “It’s important they be there because — not this administration or city council — but the last 30 to 40 years, implementation and financial stability have been challenges.”

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Get Those Encyclopaedias While You Can

April 5, 2012

CHICAGO — It turns out all Encyclopaedia Britannica had to do to breathe new life into the sale of its print edition was to kill it. Since Britannica announced last month that it was discontinuing its print editions, the Chicago-based company said sales have skyrocketed. It has sold all but 800 of the 4,000 sets of the 32-volume 2010 edition it had left at a Kentucky warehouse, the company said. “We were averaging about 60 sets a week and the next thing we knew, we were selling 1,050 a week,” Britannica spokesman Peter Duckler said Thursday. “When people thought they were going to be around forever there was no rush to buy one and then suddenly, boom, and now there is a scarcity and it’s a collector’s item.” Britannica announced March 13 that it would stop publishing print editions of its flagship encyclopedia for the first time in 244 years and instead focus on its online encyclopedia. Duckler said business got so busy after that – Britannica at one point was selling the print editions at a clip of about two sets per minute – that a senior vice president and chief marketing officer jumped in and started taking orders over the phone. The company will likely sell out by the end of the month, Duckler said. He added that Britannica – which first published its book form encyclopedia in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768 – will hold onto a few sets so they can be displayed somehow or donated to museums. As they did before the announcement, the sets are selling for $1,395. If that sounds like a lot of money, secondary sellers online are asking more than $3,200 a set for the 2010 edition – and that’s before the company has run out of the ones it has. Duckler said the sudden spike in sales hasn’t prompted anyone at Britannica to rethink the decision to discontinue selling the print edition. Though the scarcity of the 2010 edition may be making it popular, the company has long known that the print sales were never going to come back to anything approaching the peak year of 1990 when 120,000 were sold. Britannica, which published the first CD-ROM edition in 1989, introduced an online version in 1994. Online versions of the encyclopedia now serve more than 100 million people around the world and are available on mobile devices, the company said. “It just makes sense to embrace our digital products,” he said.

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US To Exorcise Ghost Ship With Explosives

April 5, 2012

OVER THE GULF OF ALASKA — The U.S. Coast Guard plans to use cannon fire to sink a derelict Japanese ship dislodged by last year’s massive tsunami. The shrimping vessel, which has no lights or communications systems, was floating about 195 miles south of Sitka in the Gulf of Alaska on Thursday morning, traveling about 1 mile per hour. The ship holds more than 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel and authorities are concerned it could interfere with the course of other vessels as it drifts through shipping lanes. A Coast Guard cutter was headed out to the ship on Thursday with plans to fire cannons loaded with high explosive rounds to sink the vessel. If left to drift, the ship would ground somewhere, said Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Charley Hengen. “It’s safer to mitigate the risks now before there’s an accident or environmental impact,” Hengen said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency studied the problem and decided it is safer to sink the ship and let the fuel evaporate in the open water. The Coast Guard will warn other ships to avoid the area, and will observe from an HC-130 Hercules airplane. The vessel, named Ryou-Un Maru, is believed to be 150 to 200 feet long. It has been adrift from Hokkaido, Japan, since it was launched by the tsunami caused by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that struck Japan last year. About 5 million tons of debris were swept into the ocean by the tsunami. The Japan earthquake triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl accident in 1986, but Alaska state health and environmental officials have said there’s little need to be worried that debris landing on Alaska shores will be contaminated by radiation. They have been working with federal counterparts to gauge the danger of debris including material affected by a damaged nuclear power plant, to see if Alaska residents, seafood or wild game could be affected. In January, a half dozen large buoys suspected to be from Japanese oyster farms appeared at the top of Alaska’s panhandle and may be among the first debris from the tsunami. ___ D’Oro reported from Anchorage, Alaska.

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Jacqueline Lemke Named CFO of BASi

April 5, 2012

WEST LAFAYETTE, IN–(Marketwire – Apr 5, 2012) – BASi (Bioanalytical Systems, Inc.) ( NASDAQ : BASI ) announced today that Jacqueline M. Lemke will join the company as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Vice President of Finance and Administration, effective April 9, 2012. Ms. Lemke succeeds Michael Cox, who left the Company to pursue other opportunities.

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Rana Florida: Your Start-Up Life: Dan Pink on Why "Passion" Doesn’t Matter

April 5, 2012

Thursdays at the Huffington Post, Rana Florida, CEO of The Creative Class Group , will answer readers’ questions about how they can optimize their lives. She will also feature conversations with successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders about how they manage their businesses, relationships, careers, and more. Send your questions about work, life, or relationships to rana@creativeclass.com A conversation with Dan Pink , author/speaker/journalist Photo credit: Jerry Bauer Several of you have asked for advice on how to find a job or career that gets you excited to go to work every day. I was there myself, trapped in a dead-end 9 to 5 corporate job, forcing myself to get out of bed every morning. It drove me crazy when people would tell me I just had to look for a job that I could be passionate about. How does one get there when living pay check to pay check?! I decided to ask Daniel H. Pink, the New York Times best-selling author, speaker and former chief speech writer for Vice President Al Gore. Ten years ago he launched a revolution with his book Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself . His latest book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us gives us a path to achieve high performance. Q. How do you advise people to find purpose and meaning in their jobs when their career is going nowhere and they can hardly make ends meet? That’s difficult. If you’re struggling for survival, the search for transcendence is a second order concern. But lots of people still manage to find moments of meaning in their day-to-day jobs. The key sometimes is to take a step back and examine what you’ve contributed — an elderly person cared for well, a child delivered safely to school, a customer whose life is a little better. That’s not always easy. And it’s not a magic bullet. But it can help. Q. So how do we turn our careers into our passions? You know, I’m not a huge fan of the concept of “passion” when it comes to careers. Instead of trying to answer the daunting question of “What’s your passion?” it’s better simply to watch what you do when you’ve got time of your own and nobody’s looking. That will give you the deepest insights into what you should be doing with your life. If people tap their strengths, and use them in the service of something larger than themselves, passion will take care of itself. Q. What kinds of programs can managers and companies put into place to motivate their workforce? Assuming companies are paying people fairly, they should do what they can to foster autonomy, mastery, and purpose. One of my favorite specific ideas is this: The Australian company Atlassian conducts what they call “FedEx Days” in which people work on anything they want for 24 hours and then show the results to the company the following day. These one-day bursts of autonomy have produced a whole array of fixes for existing products, ideas for new ones, and improvements to internal processes that would have otherwise never emerged. For creative tasks, the best approach is often just to hire great people and get out of their way. Q. Are you suggesting that offering someone a 50 per cent raise won’t motivate him or her to work harder? I don’t know anybody, myself included, who wouldn’t love a 50 per cent raise. But I defy you to find an organization taking that approach. Instead, most organizations dangle what I call “if-then” rewards — as in, “If you do this, then you get that” — bonuses, commissions, and like. Fifty years of social science tells us that “if-then” rewards are great for simple, routine, algorithmic work — whether turning the same screw the same way on an assembly line or adding up columns of figures in a white-collar office. However, the same research shows that “if-then” rewards don’t work very well at all once you start asking people to do things that require complexity, conceptual thinking, or creativity. The best use of money as a motivator is to hire great people and then pay them enough to take the issue of money off the table. For the sorts of artistic, empathic, inventive, non-routine work people in North America are doing today, reducing the salience of money is smarter than increasing it. By the way, even that juicy, non-contingent 50 per cent raise has some serious limits. People will be thrilled in the short-run, but over the long term (say, the third paycheck) the thrill will become the status quo — in much the same way that people quickly get used to a shiny new car. Q. In my previous careers, I hated performance reviews. A year’s worth of work was diminished to 30 minutes of interview questions. What is your view? Are they important? Are they accurate or useful? Traditional performance reviews have passed their sell-by date. Big time. There’s research showing that roughly two-thirds of performance appraisals have either no effect — or a negative effect! — on employee performance. That said, making progress in one’s work is enormously motivating, as Harvard’s Teresa Amabile has shown. And the only way to make progress is to get feedback on your performance. But giving people that feedback once a year — and in an awkward, kabuki theater-style meeting with their boss — is a joke. One of the key challenges of organizations today is to make the feedback that people get inside the organization as rich, relevant, and frequent as the feedback they get outside of the organization through their smartphones, games, and social networks. Q. If you asked your parents if their jobs were rewarding, purposeful and motivating, they probably would laugh. What caused the generational shift? One cause is rising affluence. Even in tough economic times like these, material living standards — deep into the middle class — are breathtaking by historic and international standards. People who grew up in that world — at least some of them — often seek meaning as well as money. Another, which is often overlooked, is the changing nature of jobs themselves. When jobs were routine, when we were simply following a set of rules — either with our bodies in a factory or with our brains in a white-collar office — they weren’t that interesting. Today, we’ve got less algorithmic work and more work that requires judgment, discernment, creativity, and other things people actually like to do. In economic terms, we’ve always thought of work as a disutility – as something you do to get something else. Now it’s increasingly a utility — something that’s valuable and worthy in its own right. Q. Can high schools and universities better prepare students for career decisions? If so, how? Absolutely. But the issue reaches deeper than most of us recognize. Education in general and higher education in particular is on the brink of a huge disruption. Two big questions, which were once so well-settled that we ceased asking them, are now up for grabs. What should young people be learning? And what sorts of credentials indicate they’re ready for the workforce? Taking on those issues is far more important than adding a few career counselors or buying extra copies of What Color is My Parachute? or The Adventures of Johnny Bunko . Q. You’ve interviewed a lot of free agents; how do they keep themselves motivated? It’s actually easier to stay motivated working for yourself than it is working for others. First, if you don’t get stuff done, you don’t earn anything — and therefore can’t pay the mortgage or feed the children. Second, most people working for themselves are doing things they enjoy. They’ve got autonomy in day-to-day efforts and a deeper connection to the work itself. Q. What has changed about the way we work since you wrote Free Agent Nation 10 years ago? One of the biggest changes that I’ve seen since writing FAN is the blurred boundary between who’s a free agent and who’s an employee. More and more risk is shifting to individuals, even individuals who hold regular jobs. They’ve got 401k’s rather than traditional pensions. They’re paying a much larger share of their health insurance and medical costs. They don’t expect to be with their employer forever. They’re in charge of their own education, training, and professional development. That makes them quite free agent-like in spirit — if not under US labor law and the IRS tax code. What’s more, I see more and more people moving across the borders of Free Agent Nation and Corporate America with considerable ease. It’s almost as if people have become dual citizens. Q. Will the increase in free agents affect our society? Or has it already? During a big swath of the 20th century, corporations acted as something of a de facto welfare state — providing health insurance, pensions, and other benefits. But with more people working for themselves, and with more large companies operating globally and shedding both explicit nationalities and broader obligations to their workforces, that arrangement is becoming obsolete. That means America will have to reckon with some seriously outdated systems. For instance, even after Obama’s health care reform, it’s still considered the norm to get health insurance from an employer. Yet there’s very little economic or moral logic behind that approach.

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As Seen On TV, Inc. Strengthens Management Team and Expands Board of Directors

April 5, 2012

Eric Mausolf Appointed to Chief Operating Officer; Randolph Pohlman, PhD. Appointed as Independent Director

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Will ‘The Hunger Games’ Sink ‘Titanic’?

April 5, 2012

He may be King of the World, but the odds aren’t necessarily in James Cameron’s favor. Although the 3D re-release of “Titanic” is expected to gross as much as $25-30 million by Sunday , it might not be enough to unseat current box-office queen, “The Hunger Games.” According to Deadline.com, “Titanic” took in $4.5 million on Wednesday . That’s inline with pre-release expectations, but doesn’t guarantee Cameron’s classic a box-office crown. Regardless of final results, this is expected to be a big weekend for Hollywood. Many schools and businesses are closed on Friday for Good Friday, meaning parents and children could flock to theaters. The only other major new release besides “Titanic” is “American Reunion,” an R-rated comedy that is expected to compete for the runner-up position at the box office. The original release of “Titanic” earned just (“just”) $28 million during its opening weekend in December of 1997. It was a slow-burn success at the box office , however, topping the charts for 15 consecutive weeks, a record that still stands. The film earned $600 million at the domestic box office and another $1.2 billion internationally, for a grand total of $1.8 billion worldwide. It currently sits in the No. 2 slot on the all-time box office list behind Cameron’s “Avatar,” which earned $2.7 billion worldwide . “The Hunger Games” is no slouch either. The adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ best-selling book series has earned over $258 million since its release last month. “The Hunger Games” is the sixth fastest film to hit $250 million, ahead of both “Titanic” and “Avatar.” [via THR ] PHOTOS: “Titanic” Red Carpet

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Detroit City Council Approves Consent Agreement

April 4, 2012

Detroit City Council on Wednesday voted 5-4 to enter into an agreement with the state of Michigan that will radically alter the structure of the city’s government. Proponents said the agreement will help the struggling city’s finances and pay off its longterm debts, but opponents said the measure was forced on Detroit by the state and undermines local democracy. The agreement allows city officials to retain their powers, but puts city operations and budgeting in the hands of a nine-member financial advisory board, chief financial officer and program management director. It also abrogates the city’s duty to bargain with its public employees. Deputy Mayor Kirk Lewis signed the consent agreement document on behalf of Mayor Dave Bing, who is back in the hospital following an earlier surgery. The financial review team voted 7-0 , with three members absent, to approve the consent agreement Wednesday afternoon. It now goes to Gov. Rick Snyder. “The council has acted responsibly to put Detroit on the path to financial stability,” Snyder said in a statement. “Approval of the consent agreement is a positive opportunity for the city and our entire state.” The agreement takes effect immediately, and has teeth that will allow the state to ensure its implementation. The governor and state treasurer will appoint members to the financial advisory board, and the city must meet monthly budget requirements or face further state takeover. Snyder said the other option to fix Detroit’s finances was appointing an emergency manager — a state-appointed official who would have the power to overrule elected officials, sell public assets and break city contracts. Detroit was on track to run out of cash next month and faces a $270 million projected deficit for this fiscal year. The agreement brings $137 million in a bond package to help the city’s short-term cash problem but does not include any other direct financial assistance from the state. The state legislature would have to approve any direct financial appropriations for Detroit, and it also would have to approve some of the reforms suggested under the agreement. Both houses of Michigan’s legislature are controlled by Republicans, who in March refused to loan the city money without a longterm plan in place. “I think they can be convinced,” Council President Charles Pugh said after the vote. “The next budget is critical.” “Now the work begins,” said Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown. “There’s a skeleton but now meat has to be put around the bones. Now it’s time to implement.” Four members of City Council who voted against the agreement were less optimistic. “There are those who will try to pretend the consent agreement will be good for the city even though there is no cash infusion on the table,” said JoAnn Watson during the meeting. “Clearly there’s a viable option … Stand up and demand that the governor pay what he owes. Don’t give up the legacy of this city and those whose shoulders we stand on and act as if we have no options.” City leaders maintain the state owes Detroit $220 million dollars under a past revenue-sharing agreement and many hoped the money would be included in the consent agreement. Members of the public, clergy and city unions vocally opposed the agreement Wednesday, urging city council not to “sell out” Detroit. Wanda Akilah Redmond, member of the Detroit School Board, said the agreement was as much a state takeover as an emergency manager would be. “I’m asking this body not to vote us into slavery,” she said. “If you do this, all your authority will be taken away from you.” Cecily McClellan of the Association of Professional and Technical Employees questioned the legal advice the city council received. “Having Attorney [Michael] McGee, one of the authors of Public Act 4, the dictator law, advising the city on this agreement is like having the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan to advise the NAACP,” she said. Michigan’s Public Act 4 allows for the governor to appoint emergency managers to cash-strapped municipalities and also provides the framework for much of the consent agreement. It is the subject of a repeal effort , and the secretary of state may soon certify enough signatures to suspend the law until a referendum in November. Detroit’s consent agreement is specifically designed to outlast any challenges to Public Act 4. Even with the agreement in place, Detroit is a long way from recovery. “Will it somehow miraculously lower insurance rates? Will the 90,000 foreclosures in this city be overturned? Will the 90,000 vacant lots and vacant homes automatically be redeveloped?” asked Rev. David Bullock, president of Rainbow PUSH Michigan and a proponent of the drive to repeal Michigan’s emergency manager law. He cautioned the city council against believing the agreement will fix Detroit’s myriad problems. “We have some systemic problems here that are not addressed by this at all,” he said. “We cannot stop the hemorrhaging and claim victory without a transfusion and rehab.” UPDATE: 8:12 p.m. — This story was updated to reflect the Detroit City Council’s vote Wednesday night on the consent agreement.

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Alex Hope, 23-Year-Old Millionaire Trader, Arrested For Trading Scheme

April 4, 2012

In March, 23-year-old UK Foreign Exchange trader Alex Hope made headlines for reportedly spending more than $320,000 on champagne at a Liverpool night club . Exactly one month later, he’s back in the news. But this time, instead of libations, it’s about allegations. Hope was arrested Tuesday by the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority “on suspicion of being involved in an unauthorised foreign exchange trading scheme,” City A.M reported . His publicist, who told City A.M. that Hope denies the allegations, had no further comment when contacted by The Huffington Post. A little more than a week ago, Hope came to HuffPost’s offices to talk about his passion for foreign exchange trading and the public’s mixed reaction to his nightclub spending spree. Dressed in a sharp navy blue suit and wearing an expensive watch with a pair of white athletic socks, Hope chatted about his meteoric rise to trading stardom, his aversion to the celebrity lifestyle and what it means to “splurge sensibly.” But given recent events, Hope’s critics might feel justified in condemning his decadent display of wealth amid a struggling global economy. And the fans who congratulated Hope’s success, asking for trading tips via his twitter account , could be having second thoughts. Here’s what Hope had to say when he visited HuffPost last week, before the arrest news broke. HuffPost: You taught yourself the Foreign Exchange market. Why do you think you’ve been so successful? Alex Hope: Because I’ve literally dedicated my whole life to it. I’ve worked extremely hard, even when friends are partying on the weekends and this and that. That wasn’t me. I’m not a big-headed person but I believe my psychology is just unbelievable. The way I think, I’m almost like a robot when I trade. HuffPost: So luck doesn’t come into the equation? Alex Hope: [People] always say ‘oh is it gambling?’ … Guessing is gambling, knowing what you’re doing equals a calculated risk. If I cross the road and I get knocked over by a bus, that’s a gamble I took. But if I’m about to cross the road, and I look left, I look right and I still get knocked over by a bus, that’s OK because I analyzed the situation. That’s the difference between trading and gambling. HuffPost: Why Foreign Exchange? Alex Hope: The reason why I trade foreign exchange and not the stock market … is because to make money on the stock market you need to know the insides and what’s happening. That’s called insider trading. Really, you don’t want to be a part of that because that’s obviously illegal. But the currency market is such a big market … it’s easier to do well because it’s easier to predict. HuffPost: You’ve had a lot of success and exposure recently. What is it like to be 23 years old and partying with British soccer stars and celebs like Katie Price? Alex Hope: For me that’s not my lifestyle. What I’ve been doing for the last five years is working and teaching Foreign Exchange. So to go out one night and get so much media attention, it’s quite funny. But I’m not starstruck or anything like that, I’m a very humble guy. There’s not many people I idolize because if you concentrate on wanting to be like them, how are you ever going to be like yourself? HuffPost: What happened the night you bought the Ace of Spades? Alex Hope: I got invited to a club in Liverpool. There’s this big bottle of champagne called Ace of Spades, 30 liters, it’s a very unique bottle. People like Jay-Z have bought it. It’s specially made in France. I’m not a drinker at all but I’ve always wanted to buy this bottle. And I thought to myself, ‘I never treat myself, I don’t have a flashy car, but if I go out let me buy this bottle,’ and for me it will be like an achievement thing to say: ‘I’ve done well, I’m having a bit of fun and that’s it.’ It was more for the other people around me. I spent a lot of money at a nightclub for a normal person, but to me it wasn’t such a large amount because of the fact that I’ve done very well in my field. HuffPost: Did you foot the entire $320,381.65 bill? Alex Hope: Yeah, I picked up about 80 percent of that bill. But that unique bottle was something I paid for and was happy to pay for because it’s something I really wanted. I think only three or four people in the world have ever bought that, so for me to be the youngest it’s like really neat. I told you, Jay-Z’s bought it and to be associated with someone like that just by buying a bottle of champagne is quite nice. HuffPost: What’s your response to all the criticism? Alex Hope: Well, I’d say 90 percent of the comments have been positive … but you’re always going to get negative comments like on anything. It’s like Beyoncé. She’s a great singer, she has great videos and you have 99 percent good comments but you’ll always have one or two people who might say, I don’t like it. But that just comes with any territory when you’re doing well, to be quite blunt. I’ve coped with it well so it doesn’t bother me. HuffPost: How much are you actually worth? Alex Hope: It’s in the millions. My short term goal is to raise quite a lot of money. Forty, fifty million would be great in the next five to ten years. For someone my age in the UK, I’m doing very, very well. HuffPost: You tweeted a link to a personal finance article by Bankrate.com last week that advised people to ‘splurge sensibly.’ Do you think the Ace of Spades was a sensible splurge? Alex Hope: Splurge is such a unique word isn’t it? You can look at it from a good sense or a bad sense but splurging is obviously spending and it’s about spending responsibly. I like to buy clothes, I’ll admit I’m a shopaholic. There’s nothing wrong in that. HuffPost: What are you going to do for your 24th birthday? Another bottle of Ace of Spades? Alex Hope: Nah, I think I’ll come [to New York] and have a quiet one at a restaurant. I’ll go to like Lavo or Tao , somewhere like that.

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ADDvantage Technologies Appoints David Humphrey President and Chief Executive Officer

April 4, 2012

BROKEN ARROW, OK–(Marketwire – Apr 4, 2012) – ADDvantage Technologies Group, Inc. ( NASDAQ : AEY ) today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed David Humphrey as the Company’s new President and Chief Executive Officer. As part of an executive transition plan, Ken Chymiak, who had been President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company since September 1999, has been appointed as Chairman of ADDvantage’s Board of Directors and will continue to focus on the Company’s ongoing business strategy in that role. Also, David Chymiak, who had been Chairman since September 1999, will remain on the Company’s Board of Directors and has been appointed as Chief Technology Officer of ADDvantage. In this role, David Chymiak will focus on supporting the product lines the Company currently offers and expanding its product offerings in the cable television industry as well as other markets. David Chymiak will also continue his current responsibilities of leading Tulsat, a wholly- owned subsidiary of the Company.

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PeopleClues Expands Leadership Team, Names Bryan Wempen Chief Strategy Officer

April 4, 2012

Social Media and HR Expert, Cathleen Carlos Joins Wempen at New Tulsa, Okla. Office

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West must wake up to the growing power of Brics

April 4, 2012

(MENAFN – The Peninsula) What you’re about to read does, I admit, sound like a conspiracy theory. It involves powerful people meeting in private offices, hundreds of billions of euros, and …

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Producer prices up 0.8 percent in EU

April 4, 2012

(MENAFN – Saudi Press Agency) Producer prices in the European Union rose 0.8 percent in February from January, Eurostat, UPI cited the region’s data office as saying Tuesday. Producer prices also …

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Poland’s jobless rate grows to 13.5% in Feb

April 4, 2012

(MENAFN) Poland’s Main Statistical Office said that unemployment rate in February rose 0.3 percentage points from January to 13.5 percent, reported AP. The agency added that during winter, the …

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Wall Street No Longer Taking Up The Most Space In Manahattan

April 3, 2012

When it comes to New York office space, Wall Street’s no longer king. For the first time ever, financial services firms aren’t renting the most office space in New York City, according to a report from consulting firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc. , cited by Crain’s New York . The financial sector rents 26 percent of overall square footage in New York, compared to the 28 percent rented by media companies, the report found. Forfeiting the title as Manhattan’s biggest renter is just the latest indication that the financial industry is being forced to cut back. Last year, Wall Street bonuses fell 14 percent as banks laid off more than 200,000 workers as of November, Bloomberg reports. While it may be hard to feel bad for the still-employed Wall Street workers, who are making an average of $121,000 even with the pay cuts, the financial industry’s shrinking impact is affecting New York’s economy more generally. Declining Wall Street pay has also meant cuts in the revenue the New York state government collects from taxes on that pay , according to the Buffalo News . And if Wall Street doesn’t shrink all by itself, it may be forced to do so. The nation’s biggest banks, such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, could one day be broken up by regulators, according to a recent report from bank analysts . But the desire to shrink may not be the only reason the finance industry is shying away from leasing space in New York, which is the city with the sixth most expensive office space in the world , according to Cushman and Wakefield .

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A Look At New York’s Swankiest Startup Pads

April 3, 2012

New York’s booming Internet sector is spawning some workplace wonderlands. For proof, look no further than the in-office DJ booth or the rooftop lounge in this roundup of Manhattan’s swankiest startup spaces , released by SecondMarket , an online marketplace for alternative investments, with headquarters in New York’s Union Square. And SecondMarket isn’t the only one shining a light on the recent emergence of Silicon Alley chic. The Roger , a bi-monthly magazine that launched in February, highlights the en vogue interiors of New York’s hottest startups. Mashable’s Startup Spaces and BusinessInsider’s Office Tours regularly peek inside young tech firms housed in Manhattan. There’s even the annual Walkabout NYC , a five hour walking tour of the spaces that started during last year’s Internet Week. According to a report by real estate services company CBRE Group , the tech and media sector accounted for roughly 13 percent of New York office space leasing last year, up from 11 percent in 2005.

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One State Is Kicking A Huge Number Of Kids Off Of Medicaid

April 3, 2012

In Pennsylvania, the struggle to keep up with the demand for health care among the state’s poor residents means that nearly 90,000 children are losing access to Medicaid benefits. The administration of Gov. Tom Corbett (R) says it’s just cleaning house and striking people from the program whose paperwork isn’t in order, but critics see the move as an underhanded effort to reduce state spending by dumping needy children , according to the Philadelphia Daily News . Those 89,000 children all lost Medicaid benefits just in the five months between August 2011 and January 2012, the newspaper reports, citing data from the state agency that runs Medicaid. State Senator Vincent Hughes (D) of Philadelphia reportedly accused the administration of waging a “war on poor folk,” according to the newspaper. The fight over Corbett’s decision to drop the children from the Medicaid program is indicative of states’ struggle to provide access to health benefits in the face of shrinking budgets and declining tax revenues. States spend 23.6 percent of their budgets on Medicaid , more than they do on education, transportation, and any other priority, according to the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers. During economic downturns, states are hit with higher demand for Medicaid benefits by the jobless or poor at the same time that their income tax receipts decline because fewer people are working. The federal economic stimulus bill enacted in 2009 provided $103 billion in relief but those funds ran out last June, leading states to cut back on their Medicaid programs. Medicaid is jointly funded by federal and state governments. Even with rollbacks in eligibility or covered health care services and reductions in payments to medical providers, state spending on Medicaid still grew by 28.7 percent this fiscal year, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Colorado is trying to buck the trend by enrolling more of the state’s poorest and childless adults into its Medicaid program. Budget issues, however, mean that only 10,000 of the 50,000 people who should be eligible for benefits will get them , the Denver Post reports. Colorado is using a lottery system to determine who gets on and who doesn’t. And in Washington, Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) has been forced to retreat from a novel but controversial plan to rein in Medicaid spending by refusing to pay emergency room bills for people who go to the hospital for “non-emergency” treatments. The Gregoire administration halted the policy on Friday, two days before it was supposed to take effect, after lobbying by hospitals and physicians worried they’d be stuck eating the cost of unpaid bills, the Seattle Times reported. In addition, Federal regulators rejected a Hawaii plan to control costs by limiting Medicaid patients to 10 days in the hospital during any year , Kaiser Health News reports. The state can restrict hospital stays to 30 days beginning July 1, federal authorities ruled. Sellers of diabetes test strips are in the crosshairs in Ohio and the administration of Gov. John Kasich (R) says the state’s Medicaid program paid $8 million too much for the products last year, according to the Dayton Daily News . The state will consider copying an initiative being rolled out under the federal Medicare program that uses a competitive bidding process to set prices for medical equipment. Ohio pays $35 for a 50-pack of test strips compared to the $15.52 Medicare spends for the same product in Ohio, the newspaper reports.

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How To Stop The Gas Leak?

April 3, 2012

* Outbound flights resume with heavy delays * Total expects conditions to improve by Wed afternoon * Expert team of 8 to assess situation for “well kill” By Oleg Vukmanovic ABERDEEN, Scotland, April 3 (Reuters) – France’s Total plans to send a team of experts on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning to assess the steps needed to stop a large and potentially explosive gas leak at its North Sea Elgin platform, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Helicopter flights resumed carrying crews to North Sea oil and gas rigs on Tuesday afternoon, after adverse weather conditions offshore grounded traffic overnight, preventing the oil company from beginning its relief efforts on the platform. Strong east to northeast winds are expected in the area on Wednesday evening and early on Thursday with a risk of gales, forecasters from the Met Office said, potentially hampering relief efforts if conditions deteriorate further. “The team of engineers will be on a mission to assess conditions,” Total’s UK Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Manager Andrew Hogg said. Hogg said part of the mission would be to find out whether a so-called “well kill” was feasible through pumping mud into the well and whether any other measures would be necessary. Another, much more expensive option being pursued in parallel is to dig two relief wells to the source of the gas at 4,000 metres depth, far below the sea bed. Experts have said that this option could take up to six months to complete and could cost the company billions of dollars. Hogg said the team of eight engineers would consist of a mix of staff from Total and U.S. specialist company Wild Well Control. Firefighters and engineers from the Houston-based company are experts at disasters such as oil rig explosions and have been dubbed “Hellfighters” by Hollywood. The leak, which began on Sunday, is spewing an estimated 200,000 cubic metres of natural gas into the air per day, forming a highly explosive gas cloud around the platform. It began after pressure rose in a well that had earlier been capped.

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Will New York’s Underground Park Become A Reality?

April 3, 2012

Think a park beneath the streets of New York is far-fetched? A pair of innovators are one step closer to making it a reality. Dan Barasch and James Ramsey have secured the initial funds for the LowLine, an underground park on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. While they lack the generous $20 million that the Diller-von-Furstenberg Foundation donated to the High Line , the group’s Kickstarter page shows that they’ve cleared their initial $100,000 fundraising goal with around $150,000. The first $100,000 will be used to build a “mini LowLine” to show the community and possible backers that the project is feasible. After that will come a full scale demonstration of their skylight technology and studies regarding the structural and ventilation conditions of the terminal. Entrepreneurs and creative thinkers have been coming out of New York City offices recently to transform and get creative with the cities shared spaces. The High Line in the West Village and Chelsea provided a charismatic spark to the area near the Hudson River, and was eventually granted a sizable half-mile extension last year . While the High Line took over an elevated historic freight rail line, the LowLine’s creators have their eyes set on reviving an abandoned underground trolley terminal on the Lower East Side. Former site of the Williamsburg trolley terminal, the site was built in 1903 but has been abandoned since 1948. While an underground park may have you thinking of dark caverns and subway tunnels, Barasch and Ramsey have taken creative measures to assuage these anxieties. Both Ramsey (Yale, NASA) and Barasch (Cornell, Google) have the ingenuity and background to make the space thrive again. Ramsey is principal of the architecture firm RAAD Studio and has helped to create an innovative technology wherein sunlight can be directed underground by fiber optic cables . Solar collectors at street level will collect sunlight all day and subsequently reflect that light below ground. This will allow for a true green space underground, with photosynthesis ensuring that plants, trees and grass can grow. With 60,000 square feet — around 1.5 acres — the prospective park can build around some of the original architecture which includes old cobblestones, crisscrossing rail tracks, vaulted 20-foot ceilings, and strong steel columns. “Of course the lighting will be supplemented with an electric supply at night and during cloudy periods…and we’ll also need additional energy for a ventilation system,” Ramsey told CNN . “But for both cost and environmental purposes, any additional energy use will be as green and efficient as possible.” Apart from a space to relax, the LowLine’s creators have envisioned the space as an arena for all kinds of commerce and entertainment. Ideas include a farmers market, concerts, art installations and youth programs. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, who own the space, are trying to boost awareness for the project, including offering a video tour of the space in November . With the MTA’s interest and support in revitalizing the area under Delancey, Ramsey and Barasch are now focusing on the economic realities and galvanizing surrounding communities and businesses for the project. “We’re doing all we can to build community support, from every small business, real estate owner, local resident, student, or artist to all elected officials,” Barasch told Yahoo . “If we move ahead, it will be with the support of the Lower East Side community, and it will be something that will belong to everybody.”

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Hall of Fame Beverages Announces New CEO, Moves Operations to Dallas

April 3, 2012

DALLAS, TX–(Marketwire – Apr 3, 2012) – Hall of Fame Beverages, Inc. ( PINKSHEETS : HFBG ) announces Greg Thrasher will be the company’s new Chief Executive Officer. After months of searching for a leader with the kind of experience necessary to build an infrastructure and grow Hall of Fame from the ground up, the company is excited to name Thrasher as its new CEO.

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TradeCard Appoints New CEO to Realize Business Growth Potential

April 3, 2012

Kurt Cavano Transitions to Founder, Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer to Focus on Business & Product Strategy

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ComRent Adds Load Bank Solutions Expert to Leadership Team

April 3, 2012

Raul Martinez, ComRent West Sales Veteran, Promoted to Chief Operating Officer

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Shrimp Don’t Make Flamingos Pink, And Other Phone Scams

April 2, 2012

Have you ever received a cryptic text message from an undisclosed number? It’s possible you were being targeted by a phone-cramming scammer. On Monday, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) called for the government to put a stop to this fraud, which uses text messaging to steal money from unsuspecting consumers. Phone cramming takes place when you are sent text messages for fake services that result in extra fees and monthly charges. “Cell phone cramming is merely scamming by another name–it steals money from cell phone users and the FCC and carriers must take prompt action to snuff it out,” Sen. Schumer said in a prepared statement on Monday. Already two major carriers, Verizon and AT&T, have banned cramming on landlines–but not cellphones–thanks to an effort by Senator Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) last year. Sen. Schumer has also asked carriers to ban third-party cramming charges until the FCC passes a law to protect consumers. In one case of cell phone cramming, a New York resident got an incoming text message as cryptic and juvenile as a bad riddle. It said, “Flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp.” A second text instructed the consumer to text “STOP” to put an end to these messages. Next thing the recipient knew, there was a $9.99 bogus charge on his cell phone bill, according to the statement issued by the senator’s office. Other cell phone cramming scams can look like enticements to sign up for a daily horoscope service or gossip news .

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Women Still Struggling To Make It To The Top Of The Ladder

April 2, 2012

Women still aren’t making it to the top of the ladder. Male chief financial officers in the U.S. get paid 16 percent more on average than their female counterparts, according to a report by GMI Ratings . In total compensation, female CFOs earn $1.35 million per year on average, compared to $1.56 million per year for male CFOs, according to the study. The female CFO at the middle of the pay ladder would see a 25.5 percent pay increase if she were male, according to the study. And there are far more male CFOs than female CFOs. Just 8 percent of the CFOs in the study were women. The large gender discrepancy in CFO pay rates could be the result of glaring pay differences in a variety of industries. Indeed, the gender pay gap is wider in the financial sector than in any other area of the economy, according to the U.S. Census. And female lobbyist CEOs earn 43 percent less than male lobbyist CEOs, according to Bloomberg News. Though the gender wage gap for CFOs is pretty wide, it’s narrower than the pay gap for average workers. Women in the U.S. were paid 19 percent less than men in 2010, according to the Labor Department. The GMI Ratings study found that female CFOs on average are paid 14 percent less than male CFOs. The gender pay gap has largely stopped retreating in the 2000s, after narrowing in the 1980s and 1990s, according to the Labor Department. Women were paid 20.6 percent less than men in 2003, while now they are paid 18.8 percent less. Part of the pay gap may be due to the fact that women tend to land in lower-paying professions, according to the Labor Department. Eight percent of female professionals had jobs in the higher-paying industries of computers and engineering in 2010, in contrast to 43 percent of male professionals. At the same time, 69 percent of female professionals worked in education and health care, compared to 31 percent of male professionals. Check out the GMI study below: GMI ratings

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How Post 50s Will Transform Aging In America

April 2, 2012

WASHINGTON — Baby boomers will transform aging in America over the next decade, as the generation faces both opportunities and potential crises, according to a panel of experts at the Aging in America conference on April 1. By 2020, the population of Americans age 55 to 64 will have grown an unprecedented 73 percent since 2000, noted moderator Ken Dychtwald, president and CEO of the consulting firm AgeWave. “Anyone who thinks [the boomers] will turn 65 and be the same as the generation before are missing out on the last 60 years of sociology,” he said. “The boomers change every stage of life through which they migrate.” Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; Dr. Rhonda Randall, chief medical officer of United Healthcare; author and columnist Gail Sheehy; and professor Fernando Torres-Gil of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging made up the rest of the panel. Historically, Americans led “linear” lives because so many only lived into their 50s and 60s, Dychtwald said. Today, “a new model of life is emerging,” he said. “People want to distribute the longevity bonus. They are going back to school at 40 and coming back from illness to run a marathon at 80 . They are beginning as late bloomers and hitting their stride in later years. The new model of life means aging isn’t an isolated zone in ‘Seniorville.’ We are thinking about people as beginners again and again.” Huffington agreed. “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line that ‘there are no second acts in American lives’ is completely wrong,” she said. “As we grow older, we have the opportunity to tap into the kind of wisdom that is denied to the young — the opportunity to look at life without all the extra anxiety and self-judgment that dominated our lives when we were younger.” Sheehy called the mid-50s to the early 70s the “Grand Tweens,” saying that “the pioneers and pathfinders among us” will shape this new stage of life, characterized by a renewed sense of purpose. Dychtwald outlined the generational history of the 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 . “We weren’t prepared for the boomers,” he said. “There weren’t enough hospitals or pediatricians. There weren’t enough bedrooms in our homes. There weren’t enough schoolteachers or textbooks or playgrounds. The huge size of this generation has strained institutions every step of the way.” For example, he noted, students at his high school in Newark, N.J., had to go to class in shifts. That experience offers a warning for what may lie ahead, he argued. “The boards of education had 13 years to see this coming. What was the surprise there?” said Dychtwald. “But it’s the same today with senior care and geriatric medicine and continuum of care. It’s staggering how unprepared we are.” Baby boomers will put unprecedented strains on entitlement programs. In 1940, life expectancy was 63.5 years, some 9 million Americans received Social Security, and the ratio of workers to beneficiaries was 159 to 1, Dychtwald said. By 2010, life expectancy was 78.3 years, nearly 39 million people received Social Security benefits, and the ratio of workers to retirees was 2.9 to 1. “And this was before the first boomer turned 65,” Dychtwald pointed out. If the looming shortfall in entitlement programs is not addressed, boomers will confront challenges that rival those faced by their parents and grandparents in the Great Depression and World War II, argued Torres-Gil, who was the first assistant secretary for aging under President Bill Clinton. Torres-Gil expects to see a new generation of gray activists. “I’m hopeful we might see a renewed sense of … advocacy and demands for change,” he said. “The boomers may well be the 100-ton electoral force in the next 20 years. The question is, ‘Will we use it for our own selfish needs to raise taxes on young people?’ I remain hopeful we will use our numbers to make change for the betterment of all generations.” He also suggested that the economic demands of boomers may trump political divisiveness over immigration policy. “It behooves us aging baby boomers to support the Dream Act and a path to citizenship –- not because we are do-good, liberal, progressive commie pinkos, but because it may be in our self-interest,” Torres-Gil said. “It will be on the backs, so to speak, of immigrant Hispanic minorities upon whose productivity, labor and taxes we will depend for whatever public benefits, such as Social Security and Medicaid, that we may need.” By 2020, 64 million people will be eligible for Medicare -– one-third more than today, noted Randall of United Healthcare. Chronic disease is the single biggest driver of health care costs, she said. More than 60 percent of people over age 65 live with one or more chronic diseases; that rises to 70 percent by age 80. Insurers are working to better coordinate care so that seniors stay healthy longer, Randall said. Randall expects the boomers to be sophisticated purchasers of health care, seeking customized insurance plans tailored to meet their needs. “They want more information and control over their health care,” she said. “If they see something better that fits their needs, they’ll change plans. We see this as having a positive impact on health care –- more demand means more competition, and more competition means more innovation.” Boomers also have a “fierce” desire to remain independent, which will lead to an expansion of organizations offering home- and community-based care, Randall added. On the philosophical side, America needs to look globally for perspectives on aging, Huffington said. “Aging is so dramatically different where I come from. There is a reverence for people getting older in Greece,” she said. “There is a realization that you have lived this life and now have wisdom to impart to the rest of the world. You see the same sense of village elders in so many cultures, but not in America.” Huffington expects to see baby boomers “learning to lead their own lives with more awareness, gratitude and empathy … and communicating that to the rest of the world.” “By giving back and looking at life in its fullest dimensions,” she said, “we can transform not just how boomers see life but how our culture sees what matters.”

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AMD Appoints Darrell Ford as Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer

April 2, 2012

SUNNYVALE, CA–(Marketwire – Apr 2, 2012) – AMD ( NYSE : AMD ) announced today that Darrell Ford, 47, will join the company as senior vice president and chief human resources officer. He will report to President and Chief Executive Officer Rory Read. Ford, who was most recently vice president, Human Resources – Retail for Shell Oil, will be responsible for leading all areas of the company’s human resources function.

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Kansas Lottery Winner Still Unknown

April 2, 2012

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas Lottery officials say the holder of the state’s winning Mega Millions ticket has not come forward to claim a share of the $656 million jackpot. Lottery spokeswoman Cara Sloan-Ramos said Monday that no one has contacted the lottery about the prize from Friday’s drawing. The winning ticket was purchased in northeast Kansas, though lottery officials don’t plan to identify the store until the winner comes forward. Winning tickets also were sold in Illinois and Maryland, making the Kansas ticket worth about $218 million. Kansas law gives a prize winner a year to claim a jackpot, and it allows winners to remain anonymous. The prize must be claimed either at the Kansas Lottery’s headquarters in Topeka or at its regional office in Great Bend.

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Council Wins With Tweaks To Consent Agreement, But Overall Document Remains Unchanged

April 2, 2012

The latest draft of a possible financial consent agreement between the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan includes some changes urged by City Council members. Council met with Deputy Mayor Kirk Lewis and Mike Mcgee, a consultant with Miller, Canfield Paddock and Stone PLC, Monday afternoon to review the revised draft. Council members on Thursday pushed back at many of the agreement’s clauses, and it seems a handful of their objections paid off. Both Lewis and McGee noted the overall substance of the agreement had not changed, but allowed for several tweaks. The agreement would still appoint a nine-member financial advisory board with the power to approve budgets and collective bargaining agreements and it would create a chief financial officer and project management director for the city. It would also abrogate the city’s duty to bargain under the Public Employee Relations Act and would remain in effect even if Michigan’s emergency manager law were repealed. “We’re comfortable with it as written,” Lewis said of the new draft, but Council members weren’t so sure. The biggest win for Council members who strongly objected to the lack of direct financial assistance in the agreement : the state will split the cost of the financial advisory board members’ salaries and expenses. The city will not finance the board beyond $1 million. Council also won a victory on state support to instate residency requirements for city employees, firefighters and police, and to overturn a state requirement that Detroit lower its income taxes . Both of those measures, however, require a vote of the state legislature. But what some Council members wanted most — and some analysts say Detroit needs most — is not included. The state will not give Detroit any cold, hard cash. McGee noted any cash infusion would require an appropriation by the state legislature. He said the agreement was strengthened to require the state to provide any other financial assistance where possible. “It’s leaving the question open, but we did not want to preclude possibility of other options,” he said. Council Member Saunteel Jenkins pushed back, asking why the state couldn’t be required to push the legislature for more funding. “I, too, think the state should be bringing money,” she said. “Any legislation required for any cash infusion, the state agrees they will push that legislation or do as required to get that legislation.” Lewis said the city was unlikely to get full guarantees, but he felt confident Gov. Rick Snyder and Treasurer Andy Dillon agreed with the need for more money. “I agree [to] just making it clear that the expectation is that we get resources,” he said. “If it’s not up front, it’s got to be down the line, because we’ll never be able to get the things done that are necessary without some additional resources.” This is a developing story. Stick with HuffPost Detroit for updates.

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Efforts To Battle North Sea Gas Leak Hit By Rough Seas

April 2, 2012

* Gales forecast for North Sea area this afternoon -Met Office * Total to move drilling rigs from two nearby fields * Total to fly experts to platform in next few days By Karolin Schaps and Muriel Boselli LONDON/PARIS, April 2 (Reuters) – Total faced rough seas and heavy winds on Monday as the oil and gas company prepared to send men and machines to battle a leak at its Elgin platform in the North Sea that has spewed gas into the air for over a week. The French company, which is spending $1 million per day on efforts to plug the leak, plans to move drilling rigs from two nearby fields, fly staff to the platform if it is deemed safe and send two underwater inspection vehicles to check where best to drill relief wells, Total said on Monday. “Both (inspection) vessels are currently awaiting optimum sea conditions before they can be deployed,” Total said, raising concerns that relief operations will be delayed as Met Office forecasts showed even stronger wind levels for Monday afternoon. The company is expected to fly its own staff to the platform within the next few days, industry sources told Reuters. If a first visit to the platform is successful, Total plans to fly out more engineers by the end of the week to begin injecting mud into the well to stop the gas leak, the industry sources said. Workers are expected to wear personal breathing apparatuses and gas detectors to protect them against dangers on the site. Total was due to meet experts from Britain’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on Monday to discuss the dangers involved. An executive said, meanwhile, Total was not aware of any legal proceeding from UK authorities in relation to the leak. On March 25 all 238 workers were evacuated from the platform 240 kilometers off the Scottish coast, and a two-mile exclusion zone was set up around the site, while fire-fighting ships remained on standby in case of an explosion. The union representing staff at the Elgin platform opposes plans to fly a team of crisis engineers to the platform, saying it is too dangerous given the amount of gas that has escaped. “We think this is a highly dangerous tactic. Even a dropped hammer could ignite the gas. The whole thing would have to executed perfectly,” said a union official, who asked not to be identified. RELIEF WELLS Total also plans to drill two relief wells to prevent gas from leaking at the top of the platform. It said it would stop drilling operations a few kilometres away at its Fettercairn and West Franklin fields so that it can use the rigs to drill two relief wells at the leaking platform. “To maintain the widest possible range of options, other drilling rigs are also being considered,” the company said, without specifying from where it could source the additional rigs. Total has hired a team of international experts to advise it on how to plug the leak, including U.S. firefighting and engineering firm Wild Well Control, which helped tackle BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 and Kuwait’s raging oil fires in 1991. The company estimated its net operational loss of income from the leak at $1.5 million per day but said it was unable to give an overall cost estimate of the impact. EARLY SIGNS Total had detected the first signs of trouble at Elgin one month before the leak started as pressure rose in a well, which had been capped a year earlier. The operator told workers up to a few hours before the evacuation that a leak was impossible, rebuffing concerns raised by rig workers weeks before the incident, a union official said last week. The company said on Monday it had suspended production at the Elgin well in January 2011 due to pressure problems. “My experience in the North Sea is that if you scratch beneath the surface, things get quite scary quite quickly,” said an oil industry professional with knowledge of North Sea safety systems and procedures. “There is a worrying backlog of maintenance on safety-critical equipment, including release valves, pipelines and sub-sea fail-safe devices,” he said. A marine expert onboard a Greenpeace ship, which has arrived near the exclusion zone, said he could see evidence of some sinvormental pollution. “Our boat is in an area of extensive oil pollution, and we see yellowish chemicals swimming in the oil spill,” Christian Bussau told Reuters by satellite phone from the Koningin Juliana ship some 5 km from the Elgin platform. Greenpeace activists said they had collected their first samples of water and air, which will be analysed in Germany. A different marine pollution specialist at the University of Liverpool said danger posed by the gas leak on sea birds and marine plants and animals was small due to the low quantity of hydrocarbons contained within the condensates that have formed a slick on the water. “If things continue as they are, I do not think that the marine pollution risks are high. The condensate slick is reported to be slight and diminishing,” said Dr. Martin Preston.

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Mega Millions Fight Over McDonald’s Lottery Pool

April 2, 2012

Following last week’s Mega Millions buzz, the mood has shifted from excitement to fury over Maryland’s unclaimed winning ticket. Mirlande Wilson, an employee at a Maryland McDonald’s, claims she holds a winning ticket, which would make her one of three winners of Friday’s record-high $640 million jackpot, reports the New York Post . But Wilson’s coworkers allege that her ticket was part of a lottery pool, and that she must share the wealth. 37-year-old Wilson told the New York Post that although she did take part in the pool, she bought the winning ticket on her own. Another person who took part in the pool refutes Wilson’s claim and says Wilson was given additional money late Friday night to buy extra lottery tickets before the Mega Millions drawing. Wilson has yet to claim her prize. Three winners hailing from Kansas, Illinois and Maryland were drawn on Friday and will split the historic $656 million payout , notes ABC News. No winners have yet been identified. If Wilson is indeed a winner, she’ll be able to chose between receiving her prize in 26 yearly payments totaling $218.6 million or a one-time lump sum of $157.8 million. Maryland lottery communications director, Carole Everett, told ABC News that there is no evidence that Wilson’s story is true . “There’s nothing to substantiate anything,” Everett told ABC. “It’s probably not this person.” This isn’t the first time an office Mega Millions pool has lead to mega mayhem. Americo Lopes, a New Jersey resident and winner of a $38.5 million lottery jackpot, was sued by five co-workers who accused him of not sharing his earnings after the six men had pooled money to buy lottery tickets. Last month, a jury ordered Lopes to share his winnings with the five men.

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Bill Moyers: Who Pays for Political Ads?

April 2, 2012

Great efforts are underway both locally and nationally to keep secret the identities of people and organizations paying for local political advertisements. But Americans can still do something, even when broadcasters shirk their responsibilities. Here’s what you can do to reveal who’s paying for — and hiding behind — misleading political ads on your TV. Over the years we’ve been reporting on how power is monopolized by the powerful. How corporate lobbyists, for example, far outnumber members of Congress. And how the politicians are so eager to do the bidding of donors that they allow those lobbyists to dictate the law of the land and make a farce of democracy. What we have is much closer to plutocracy, where the massive concentration of wealth at the top protects and perpetuates itself by controlling the ends and means of politics. This is why so many of us despair over fixing what’s wrong: we elect representatives to change things, and once in office they wind up serving the deep-pocketed donors who put up the money to keep change from happening at all. Here’s the latest case in point. The airwaves belong to all of us, right? They’re part of “the commons” that, in theory, no private interest should be able to buy or control. Nonetheless, government long ago allowed television and radio stations to use the airwaves for commercial purposes, and the advertising revenues have made those companies fabulously rich. But part of the deal was that in return for the privilege of reaping a fortune they would respect the public interest in a variety of ways, including covering the local news important to our communities. If they didn’t, they would be denied their license to use the airwaves at all. Alas, over the years, through one ruse or another, the public has been shafted. We heard the other day of a candidate for office in a Midwest state who complained to the general manager of a TV station that his campaign was not getting any news coverage. “You want coverage?” the broadcaster replied. “Buy some ads and then we’ll talk!” That pretty well sums up the game. But hold your nose: it gets worse. The media companies and their local stations — including goliaths like CBS and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp — stand to pull in as much as $3 billion this year from political ads. Three billion dollars! And most of that money will pay for airing ugly, toxic negative ads that use special effects, snide jokes and flat out deception to take us to the lowest common denominator of politics. The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, which is supposed to make sure the broadcasters don’t completely get away with highway or, rather, airwave robbery has proposed to the broadcasting cartel that stations post on the Web the names of the billionaires and front organizations — many of them super PACs — paying for campaign ads. It’s simplicity itself: give citizens access online to find out quickly and directly who’s buying our elections. Hardly an unreasonable request, given how much cash the broadcasters make from their free use of the airwaves. But the broadcasting industry’s response has been a simple, declarative “Not on your life!” It would cost too much money, they claim. Speaking on their behalf, Robert McDowell, currently the only Republican commissioner on the FCC — the other one left to take a job with media monolith Comcast — said the proposal is likely “to be a jobs destroyer” by distracting station employees from doing their regular work. The party line also has been sounded by Jerald Fritz, senior vice president of Allbritton Communications, who told the FCC that making the information available on the Internet “would ultimately lead to a Soviet-style standardization of the way advertising should be sold as determined by the government.” We’re not making this up. Steven Waldman, who was lead author of the report that led to the FCC’s online proposal, quotes a letter from the deans of twelve of our best journalism schools: “Broadcast news organizations depend on, and consistently call for, robust open-record regimes for the institutions they cover; it seems hypocritical for broadcasters to oppose applying the same principles to themselves.” Hypocritical, but consistent with a business that values the almighty dollar over public service. The industry leaves nothing to chance. Through its control of the House of Representatives, it got a piece of legislation passed this past week euphemistically titled the FCC Process Reform Act. George Orwell must be spinning in his grave – this isn’t reform, it’s evisceration. Not only does the bill remove roadblocks to more media mergers — further reducing competition — it would subject every new rule and every FCC analysis of that rule to years of paper work and judicial review, enabling the industry’s horde of lawyers and lobbyists, “to throw sand in the works at every opportunity,” as one expert puts it. There was a noble attempt by California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo to include in this bill an amendment that, like the FCC proposal, called for stations to post online who’s putting up the big bucks for political ads. Shocker — it was rejected. Score another one for the plutocrats. There is some good news. The White House opposes this latest bid by the broadcasting oligarchy to further eviscerate the public interest. And the fate of the House bill in the Senate is uncertain at best. In the meantime, as far as those political ads go, we’re not totally helpless. Here’s what you can do: Under current law, local television stations still have to keep paper files of who’s paying for these political ads, and they have to make those files available to the public if requested. You can even make copies to take away with you. So just go down to your nearest station, politely ask for the records, and then send the data online to the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative or to the organization of investigative journalists ProPublica . Both have mounted campaigns to get the information online. Each is pulling together all the information on political ads they get from you and others — crowdsourcing — and making it available to the entire country via the Internet. If you’re a high school teacher or college professor of journalism, have your students do it and maybe give them classroom credit for collecting the data democracy needs to work. In other words, here’s a way citizens can take action even against the plutocrats who run Big Media and Congress. Addendum: The media reform advocacy organization Free Press is also conducting station file inspections, and has just published an easy-to-follow guide to how it’s done. —- Moyers & Company airs weekly on public television — check local listings . See more features — including our all-new TAKE ACTION page — at BillMoyers.com Previously posted on Billmoyers.com .

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WB Head: World’s Easy Money Obsession Only Buys Time

April 2, 2012

By Kevin Yao BOAO, China, April 2 (Reuters) – Policymakers in both developing and developed countries must embrace structural reforms to sustain economic recovery and cope with the hangover from loose monetary policy that could fuel new risks, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Monday. In an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the 2012 Boao Forum for Asia on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, Zoellick sharpened his warnings that any delays to painful structural shifts could “plant the seeds” for new problems. “While the IMF focuses on macroeconomic stability, I’m trying to say: Keep your eyes on structural reforms for growth, whether it’s India, China, Europe, the United States, Japan or others,” he said, referring to the International Monetary Fund. “If countries don’t undertake the structural reforms for growth, there will be pressures on monetary authorities to continue the abnormal policies even though that’s not really a solution,” he said. The global economy has stabilised as the United States is showing a modest recovery, but the European economy may experience a period of “slower (growth) or no growth”, he said. Zoellick is wary of new economic risks, including asset bubbles, that could crop up after major central banks, especially those of the United States and Europe, have pumped out huge amounts of easy money to stimulate economic growth. “I’m not critical of those steps, but I think it’s important to recognise that the steps simply buy time. They don’t solve the fundamental problems,” he said. “The nature of monetary bubbles is that you never can quite predict where it’s going to develop.” For China, more efforts should be made to boost consumption to wean the economy off its reliance on investment and exports, and economic reforms and opening up are needed, Zoellick said, although he did not foresee any “big bang” raft of changes. China’s growth momentum unleashed by the country’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) a decade ago could be weakening, adding some pressures for Chinese leaders to push through some tough reforms, he said. In February the World Bank said in a report that the world’s second-largest economy is near a turning point and should push through structural changes and move towards free markets. Zoellick is pinning his hopes on the next generation of Chinese leaders, who are due to take office next year. “This is not the year that I would expect the government to take big steps because it’s a political transition year.” President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are due to retire from their party posts late this year and from the presidency and premiership early next year, when Vice President Xi Jinping is likely to be named president and Li Keqiang premier. When they hand over power in late autumn, China could be headed for its slowest full year of growth since Hu and Wen took office a decade ago. The economy ended 2011 with its slackest quarter of growth in 2-1/2-years at 8.9 percent. Turning to the yuan, Zoellick said it may be too early to tell if the Chinese currency has reached its equilibrium level as it’s not fully convertible, which means the yuan’s rate may not reflect real market supply and demand. Both Wen and central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan have recently said the yuan is probably near a balanced level, even as they pledged to let the currency float more freely. (Reporting by Kevin Yao)

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The Center for Public Integrity: FedEx fails to deliver for drivers

April 2, 2012

By Amy Biegelsen , iWatch News Gary Terrio used to work for himself driving lost luggage from the airport in Manchester, N.H., out to the owners’ homes. “Working with my own business I could deliver whatever I wanted,” he says. “If it was something that was ridiculous, I could say no.” When he and his wife started a family, he started looking for something more lucrative and stable. He heard that FedEx Ground drivers in the shipping giant’s home delivery division bought their delivery routes and worked them as their own business, which sounded pretty good. He could earn more and still be his own boss. “And is that how it panned out?” Terrio laughs. “It was nothing, nothing, nothing of what they said.” Rather than making his own schedule, he had to be at the package terminal for pick-up at 6:00am FedEx Ground paid by the delivery, not the hour, and assigned the roster of packages each day. If Terrio delivered the package outside the window of time that FedEx assigned or if a customer complained, his paycheck got docked. He had to buy his own FedEx specified truck and financed and insured it by refinancing the mortgage on his house. After all the expenses and deductions, he says he’d be lucky to bring home $500 a week. “I would have loved to have been just an independent contractor,” he says. Instead, “I felt like an employee.” You might think it’s easy to know the difference between an employee and an independent contractor. It’s not. The distinction sits in a stubbornly murky corner of the law, and workers, employers and governments have a lot riding on the outcome. Meanwhile the number of people who are working but not considered employees continues to grow . Employees are eligible for a host of legal benefit and protection programs that governments run and regulate. Employers must pay into those programs on behalf of “employees,” but not “independent contractors.” The murkiness comes in when someone calls a worker’s status into question, often when a worker and employer disagree over what benefits are due. There is not one single, legal definition for “employee” or one central government agency that decides a worker’s status. Different federal agencies regulate different aspects of employment, and often apply distinct tests to make the decision. State agencies may use other measures still. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote in a 1968 opinion that “there is no shorthand formula or magic phrase that can be applied to find the answer,” and, for at least as long, lower courts have bemoaned the difficulty of deciding these cases. The confusion is so entrenched that in the case of the IRS — which calculates the federal tax employers owe based in part on how many employees they have — there is a federal law prohibiting the service from issuing clearer guidelines for distinguishing between employees and independent contractors. Legislation introduced in Congress as recently as March 1 aims to address these issues, but historically, similar bills have not made it very far in the legislative process. Terrio felt like he was taking all the risks of being a contractor without being able to exert control over the work. Some of his fellow drivers agreed and in 2005 sued , arguing that in reality they were employees and that FedEx’s treatment of them violated federal overtime and state labor laws. The case is still ongoing. Increasingly, businesses have been shifting to contractor workforces to save money and reduce regulatory exposure. Critics say the model is so alluring that some businesses find ways to intentionally “misclassify” employees as independent contractors. When that happens people lose legal rights, governments lose tax revenue, and businesses gain an unfair advantage over competitors who pay the extra costs to treat their workers as employees. Federal and state governments have started coming down harder on businesses for misclassification, but without a clear definition for employee, how much of the problem can they really solve? The right to a Ron Paul bumper sticker? If Terrio had been working as an employee, the Department of Labor would ensure that he earned overtime pay and could collect workers’ compensation if he had gotten hurt on the job. Anti-discrimination protections would have prevented any of his fellow drivers from being terminated just because they were Latino, a woman, or 52-years-old. As an independent contractor, over 10 percent of his pay went to Social Security and Medicare taxes. As an employee, FedEx would have split that bill and contributed to a state unemployment insurance fund that Terrio could draw on if he lost his job. Independent contractors don’t get any of it. Once, Terrio’s infant son was too sick for daycare. His wife couldn’t get time off so Terrio had to strap him in the front seat of the truck. An employee whose child has a “serious health condition” would generally be entitled to time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Rich Farrell, a New Jersey FedEx Ground driver and medic in the Army National Guard, was deployed overseas for six months. FedEx terminated his contract and refused to let him come back; a move that would have been illegal if he had been classified as an employee. Tony Marcellino, a FedEx Ground driver in California, died on the job in a traffic accident. His family couldn’t collect death benefits under California’s Workers’ Compensation Act that families of employees receive. While foregoing benefits, Terrio wasn’t getting the freedoms he expected as a contractor, either. He got frustrated when he wasn’t allowed to put a Ron Paul sticker on the truck he’d refinanced his house for, or run personal errands in it without masking all the FedEx logos. “What does it matter if I stop at the store and pick up groceries?” he says. “It’s my truck.” The government doesn’t regularly count independent contractors. The last time they did, in 2005, contractors represented up to 7.4 percent of the workforce, or 10.3 million people, up from 6.7 percent, or 8.3 million, in 1995. Observers agree that the number has likely grown since. Denise Drake , a management-side attorney in Kansas City, Mo., says “We absolutely see employers using as many different staffing arrangements as possible to get their jobs done in the best and most cost-effective manner possible,” Drake says. “This means there has been, and likely will continue to be, a big increase in the use of temporary employees … and independent contractor arrangements.” Catherine Ruckelshaus , legal co-director for the National Employment Law Project, says businesses can save 30 percent substituting independent contractors for employees. She sees the growth of independent contractors in the workforce running hand-in-hand with increased misclassification. “The independent contractor abuses have been rising for a while. Even before the recession it was really kind of a surge,” Ruckelshaus says. A Labor Department study from 2000 audited companies in nine states and found that up to 30 percent had misclassified employees. Between 2007 and 2010, New York state alone identified over 50,000 cases of misclassification, assessing over $21.5 million in taxes and over $4 million in fines. The Labor Department study estimated that every 1 percent of the workforce misclassified as an independent contractor cost federal unemployment insurance funds $200 million. A FedEx spokeswoman says the company stands by its independent contractor model because it “gives us a flexibility to be competitive in the market.” It’s a flexibility FedEx has gone to great lengths to keep. A 2010 audit from the Montana Department of Labor Insurance of FedEx Ground’s operations there shows one way the company keeps workers as contractors. The audit found that FedEx Ground would advertise on its website for temporary drivers. FedEx conducted an interview and if they decided to hire, the driver would complete paperwork at the FedEx terminal or online for an outside temporary employment agency. The agency, not FedEx, would issue paychecks. “A few of these drivers were already employees of FedEx in other capacities,” the audit said. Montana ruled those drivers ought to have been classified as FedEx employees. Rather than comply with the audit determinations, FedEx settled with the state for $2.3 million, admitting no wrongdoing, and adjusted its business operations there. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the company says that FedEx has continuing relationships with three different temporary agencies nationwide, and uses them “at any point that there is an operational need.” Montana is not the only state that has looked into FedEx Ground’s employment practices. FedEx’s 2011 annual report says the company is involved in “numerous” lawsuits and audits. Losing those disputes could entitle drivers “to the benefit of wage-and-hour laws,” the report says, and could force FedEx to change their independent contractor status. If that happens, the report warns, “labor organizations could more easily organize these individuals, our operating costs could increase materially and we could incur significant capital outlays.” Drivers at FedEx’s main competitor, UPS, belong to a union. Definition derby Terrio’s lawsuit illustrates how complex the wrangling over “employee” status can get. His suit was not the only one active against FedEx. In fact it was one of 42 separate drivers’ suits coming out of 27 different states. To streamline the litigation they were all rolled together into one federal courtroom in Indiana. In December 2010, the judge announced that drivers in lawsuits covering 23 states were properly classified as independent contractors, but drivers from three other states should have been employees. The case is now on appeal. So the Indiana court found employment status distinctions among the drivers even though they were doing identical work in different states. To make matters trickier, some drivers were getting different answers from the Indiana court than they had previously gotten in their home state. While Terrio was fighting FedEx in federal court, the state of New Hampshire audited their operations in 2008 and found hundreds of state labor violations. As in Montana, FedEx settled admitting no wrongdoing. They wrote the state a check, but did not reclassify the drivers as employees. Instead, they now require drivers in New Hampshire to incorporate as businesses before they can buy delivery routes. The Indiana decision also ruled that drivers in a California suit were independent contractors even though a landmark decision in a California court granted drivers employee benefits from FedEx in 2006. Stickier still, while the litigation focuses on FedEx’s labor practices, the IRS has already blessed the drivers’ contractor status for tax purposes. After auditing FedEx’s 2002 filings, the service calculated a tentative assessment of $319 million in back tax, penalties and interest for misclassifying the drivers, but withdrew the case in 2009, letting the contractor designation stand. The criss-crossing categories reflect the haziness in state and federal law over how “employee” gets defined. “There is nothing definitive,” says Ann Hodges , a labor law professor at the University of Richmond’s law school. The IRS, for instance, uses a 20-part common-law test that focuses on how much control the employer has over the work. Scoring 11 out of 20 doesn’t guarantee a victory, and no single point clinches. The Department of Labor uses a 7-point test focused on the “economic reality” of the worker’s dependence on the employer. The National Labor Relations Board uses something in between. Many other government employment tests are variations on one of those themes. At the IRS the confusion is not an accident, it’s the law. The 1935 Social Security Act set up a trust fund for retirees financed by employers contributing an amount equal to a set percentage of each employee’s pay and withholding a sum from each employee’s check. The IRS hadn’t had to distinguish among workers before, but the statute did not define “employee.” The IRS had to glean its 20-point test from court decisions. That worked until the 1970s when the IRS kicked up its misclassification enforcement. When a major tax reform bill came up in the late ’70s, a coalition of lobbyists representing industries built around a contractor workforce — trucking, real estate, construction and direct sales like Mary Kay — saw an opportunity to get the IRS off their backs. With help from then-Rep. Dick Gephardt and then-Sen. Bob Dole, they condensed the 20-part IRS test into a single law, but couldn’t get it approved. Instead, Congress passed a temporary measure while, theoretically, better language would be crafted. It specifically prohibited the IRS from publishing regulations “clarifying the employment status of individuals for purposes of the employment taxes.” Rather than replacing the temporary law, Congress made it permanent in 1982. The 1982 law goes further than just banning a clearer definition. It includes a provision that says that if the IRS ever audits a company and doesn’t find any problems with employee misclassification, it can never demand that the same business change its employment practices in a later audit even if it finds misclassification the second time around. FedEx was able to avoid $319 million in back taxes under this provision. After 1982, the issue mostly hibernated. “There’s been very lax enforcement by federal and state government agencies that has contributed to a comfort zone for employers to increase their use of independent contractors,” says Richard Reibstein , an attorney in New York City who helps businesses write independent contractor policies that will withstand regulatory scrutiny. In 2006, the Government Accountability Office released a report on misclassification and renewed government interest. The next year then-Sen. Barack Obama sponsored a bill that would repeal the 1982 ban on the IRS defining employment, but it died. On March 1 this year, both the House and Senate introduced another round of bills to free the IRS from the 1982 law, but similar bills have been killed in every Congress since 2006. More attention or more confusion The recession has focused the attention of cash-starved governments on the issue. “The governments need money and they look at this as revenue,” says William Weissman, a tax attorney in California. “I also think there’s a push in the current administration to create a safety net for everyone. So if you want people in the system, you’ve got to collect the taxes.” What Obama could not do legislatively, he’s attempted to do through his agencies. His Department of Labor budget for fiscal 2013 proposes $10 million for state grants to combat misclassification and $4 million for new federal investigators. The Labor Department is hoping to add 35 more full-time employees to investigate misclassification. The department has also announced information-sharing arrangements with 12 states. The IRS has begun allowing companies that voluntarily reclassify independent contractors as employees and pay 10 percent of what would have been owed the previous tax year to avoid other penalties. The IRS refused repeated requests for information on how many businesses had signed up for the program. States have begun ramping up regulation, too. A new California law , for instance, includes civil penalties up to $15,000 per misclassified employee and up to $25,000 per willful violation. “There’s a lot of intentional misclassification going on and we would all agree, whatever your party, that that is wrong,” Reibstein says. He worries, though, that this new run of regulation will hurt businesses that make changes out of fear or have to fight off costly enforcement actions and lawsuits. Weissman says “a simple brightline test would likely be more useful,” than tougher penalties, but that administration-side enforcement is easier than waging a political battle in Congress for a uniform definition. “Whether that uniformity would wind up tougher or weaker is a political choice,” says Harold Datz, former chief counsel at the NLRB. Interest groups on both sides — from the unions to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — are wary of a definition that would go against them. Russ Hollrah , executive director for the Coalition to Preserve Independent Contractor Status, says “I think current law is fine.” The exemption for businesses with a clean prior tax audit “works very effectively.” As for a change that might provide greater clarity, he says, “It depends on the clarity you get.” Matt Capece, who works for the president’s office of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America , says “For us in the construction industry, Jesus Christ could write the definition of ‘employment’ and we’d have a problem because the unlawful practices are so ingrained,” he says. Construction firms that treat their builders as employees, he says, often “face the double indignity of losing jobs to the cheaters,” whose savings on labor allow them to underbid the competition. “Then they see their tax rates going up to cover the people who don’t pay” for unemployment insurance and workman’s compensation, he says. Capece doesn’t like the term misclassification. “I refer to it as the ‘M’ word,” he says. “What we see is payroll fraud.” He’s heartened by the state escalations and sees the IRS ban on guidance as a “straitjacket,” but for him, enforcement is the game. The construction industry is a frequent target for state enforcement. In January, Massachusetts’ attorney general extracted $400,000 in unpaid wages and penalties, and more than $141,000 for Massachusetts’ unemployment system from Pulte Homes, one of the nation’s largest builders. “Frankly every time we talk about this issue, the other side paints a picture of a husband and wife sitting at a kitchen table with statutes spread all around them, and they can’t figure out how to classify their workers, and they make a mistake, and the government comes in and severely punishes them,” Capece says. In fact, sitting at Marie Washington’s kitchen table in a rented townhouse in Owings Mill, Md., she is still trying to sort out what she and her husband could have done differently to avoid the employee misclassification lawsuit they’re stuck in. Her husband, Darian, runs Washington Home Installation, which subcontracts out jobs from the company that manages home deliveries for BestBuy. He pays his installers by the job, but says they pick how many deliveries they want to do, which order in which they want to make them and if they want to come in the next day. In March 2011, a former installer sued the business saying he was denied overtime pay even though he regularly worked 70-hour weeks. In an affidavit, the installer describes having far less control over the work, meaning the lawsuit will involve heavy fact-finding. Marie maintains that the independent contractor relationship was clear. When they found out about the lawsuit, the Washingtons discovered that because of the uncertainty of employment lawsuits, many lawyers require a hefty down payment — often as much as $10,000 — before they’ll take a case. It was then that Marie says she realized, “We’re really going to have to exhaust all our financial resources.” When they got married, the plan was for Marie, 25, to finish college and build her own career, but that’s been put on hold. “Even now there’s not clarity,” she says. “I’ve looked at the IRS website, at the state website — there are no answers.” Meanwhile, the Washingtons worry that if they lose, other former employees will come after them for overtime pay, and they may be vulnerable to other liabilities, too. “If we’re wrong in all this,” she says, “then what about the government?” Continue this story and read more investigations at iWatch News

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Apollo Investment Corporation Initiates Chief Financial Officer Search

April 2, 2012

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – Apr 2, 2012) – Apollo Investment Corporation ( NASDAQ : AINV ) or the “Company,” “Apollo Investment,” “we” or “our” today announced that it has initiated a search for a new combined Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Treasurer. Mark Harris, who had been appointed to this position in an announcement issued on February 15, 2012, has subsequently notified the Company that he will be unable to join Apollo Investment in a timeframe consistent with our mutually agreed upon start date due to exigent circumstances at his current employer. Due to our desire to fill this position promptly, the Company has initiated a search for a CFO and Treasurer, and Gene Donnelly, Apollo Global Management, LLC’s CFO, will continue to serve as interim CFO and Treasurer for the Company until the search is completed.

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Euro zone’s jobless rate up to 10.8% in Feb

April 2, 2012

(MENAFN) EU’s statistics office Eurostat, said that jobless rate in the euro zone grew to 10.8 percent in February from 10.7 percent in January, reported AP. The agency added that the figure was …

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Germany posts 1.1% drop in Feb retail sales

April 2, 2012

(MENAFN) Germany’s federal statistics office Destatis said that in February, the country’s retail sales fell by 1.1 percent from the previous month, reported Khaleej Times. The agency added that …

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