Friday, November 16, 2018
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Bojack
-Bojack Horseman “Free Churro”
via:
[ed. Watched the last episode of Season 5 last night, and it was... devastating (spoiler alert). How many noticed the last song (as Bojack finally commits to rehab) was Under The Pressure by the group The War On Drugs? Or the coldly mercenary interview with Gina (written pre-Weinstein) and how it anticipates the #MeToo movement. This show operates on a lot of different levels.]
[ed. Watched the last episode of Season 5 last night, and it was... devastating (spoiler alert). How many noticed the last song (as Bojack finally commits to rehab) was Under The Pressure by the group The War On Drugs? Or the coldly mercenary interview with Gina (written pre-Weinstein) and how it anticipates the #MeToo movement. This show operates on a lot of different levels.]
Let Every Day Be Sadie Hawkins Day
If You Like a Guy, Tell Him. Only Then Will Women Be Free.
I still remember my first Sadie Hawkins Day. We spilled out of the cafeteria and divided ourselves, amoeba-like, into two lines on either side of the basketball court.
Everyone seemed to know what to do. Someone must have yelled “Go!” The boys scattered, and the girls, after a quick five-count, tore after them. I aimed straight. I caught Matthew Kirschenbaum up by the swings; I don’t think he was running at top speed.
“Do you want me to release you?” I asked. He shook his head.
This, I remember thinking, is how it should be.
Sadie Hawkins Day — traditionally celebrated on Nov. 15 — was the one day a year when it was the girls who pursued the boys, instead of the other way around. It was big back then, if less so now.
In the early 1970s, Seventeen magazine urged prepubescent me to guard my self-respect, which meant, I knew, to not be obvious about liking a boy. The same message came through in the stories we were raised on, the TV shows we watched. Yvette Mimieux nearly died from wanting it in the classic teenage melodrama “Where the Boys Are,” and much, much earlier, Eve got all of humanity kicked out of Eden by wanting that apple. Her punishment: Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. The first woman and the first lesson.
So I grew up believing that girls were supposed to be wanted, but we were not supposed to want. If we did want, we were never, ever to show it. Any move on behalf of our own desires should be in service of getting men to act on theirs.
I always envied the girls who seemed so peaceful waiting for boys to talk to them; I wasn’t of that tribe. My mother used to shake her head and say, “Just let them come to you,” but I was no good at biding my time. In sixth grade, I asked a boy I liked if he liked me; in freshman year of college, I asked a man I was attracted to if he felt the same. In each case, I felt that something was wrong with me for having brought up the topic. I was too much like a guy, I thought. But even then, I was asking them about their desires, not speaking my own.
As I got older, I developed other methods for getting a man to make the first move: bumping into him as we walked together, shivering with unfelt cold, standing fetchingly on steps that would bring me to his eye level — all so he’d be overtaken with desire and, for God’s sake, kiss me. So much work, this active passivity — but I never considered kissing any of them first. After all, what worse insult can a man give a woman than “She wanted it,” a phrase that carries its own sneer.
So the reason that afternoon is still so bright in my memory, why I can still feel the metal chain of the swing in my hand, see Matthew’s smile: Sadie Hawkins was a day of respite from pretending not to want, or from distorting my want into a hint. (...)
I’d like to think that women are becoming more comfortable voicing their own desires, that there’s no need for permission anymore. But change seems slow in coming. Stories of heterosexual marriage proposals usually still feature the man asking and the woman thrilled to be asked.
How about the youngest generation, who have the benefit of the new fluidity of gender — have they transcended this dynamic? Maybe not as much as we would hope. Consider the hoopla around “promposals”: Girls may send out emissaries to test the waters, but the request still usually comes from the boy — sometimes with as many bells and whistles as a marriage proposal. And with the same enactment of amazed gratitude on the girl’s part. They cling to their own disempowerment and call it romance. Is romance worth such passivity?
Until it is no big deal for a woman to say, “I want,” as well as “I don’t want” — until heterosexual women no longer feel the need to wait for the man to propose or to invite us to the prom or to kiss us on a beautiful summer evening when we want to kiss — we leave ourselves at the mercy of men’s desires.
by Kate Neuman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Jason Merritt/Getty Images
[ed. Right on. I imagine most men would be flattered and relieved not to have to bear the burden of potential rejection all the time.]
Everyone seemed to know what to do. Someone must have yelled “Go!” The boys scattered, and the girls, after a quick five-count, tore after them. I aimed straight. I caught Matthew Kirschenbaum up by the swings; I don’t think he was running at top speed.
“Do you want me to release you?” I asked. He shook his head.This, I remember thinking, is how it should be.
Sadie Hawkins Day — traditionally celebrated on Nov. 15 — was the one day a year when it was the girls who pursued the boys, instead of the other way around. It was big back then, if less so now.
In the early 1970s, Seventeen magazine urged prepubescent me to guard my self-respect, which meant, I knew, to not be obvious about liking a boy. The same message came through in the stories we were raised on, the TV shows we watched. Yvette Mimieux nearly died from wanting it in the classic teenage melodrama “Where the Boys Are,” and much, much earlier, Eve got all of humanity kicked out of Eden by wanting that apple. Her punishment: Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. The first woman and the first lesson.
So I grew up believing that girls were supposed to be wanted, but we were not supposed to want. If we did want, we were never, ever to show it. Any move on behalf of our own desires should be in service of getting men to act on theirs.
I always envied the girls who seemed so peaceful waiting for boys to talk to them; I wasn’t of that tribe. My mother used to shake her head and say, “Just let them come to you,” but I was no good at biding my time. In sixth grade, I asked a boy I liked if he liked me; in freshman year of college, I asked a man I was attracted to if he felt the same. In each case, I felt that something was wrong with me for having brought up the topic. I was too much like a guy, I thought. But even then, I was asking them about their desires, not speaking my own.
As I got older, I developed other methods for getting a man to make the first move: bumping into him as we walked together, shivering with unfelt cold, standing fetchingly on steps that would bring me to his eye level — all so he’d be overtaken with desire and, for God’s sake, kiss me. So much work, this active passivity — but I never considered kissing any of them first. After all, what worse insult can a man give a woman than “She wanted it,” a phrase that carries its own sneer.
So the reason that afternoon is still so bright in my memory, why I can still feel the metal chain of the swing in my hand, see Matthew’s smile: Sadie Hawkins was a day of respite from pretending not to want, or from distorting my want into a hint. (...)
I’d like to think that women are becoming more comfortable voicing their own desires, that there’s no need for permission anymore. But change seems slow in coming. Stories of heterosexual marriage proposals usually still feature the man asking and the woman thrilled to be asked.
How about the youngest generation, who have the benefit of the new fluidity of gender — have they transcended this dynamic? Maybe not as much as we would hope. Consider the hoopla around “promposals”: Girls may send out emissaries to test the waters, but the request still usually comes from the boy — sometimes with as many bells and whistles as a marriage proposal. And with the same enactment of amazed gratitude on the girl’s part. They cling to their own disempowerment and call it romance. Is romance worth such passivity?
Until it is no big deal for a woman to say, “I want,” as well as “I don’t want” — until heterosexual women no longer feel the need to wait for the man to propose or to invite us to the prom or to kiss us on a beautiful summer evening when we want to kiss — we leave ourselves at the mercy of men’s desires.
by Kate Neuman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Jason Merritt/Getty Images
[ed. Right on. I imagine most men would be flattered and relieved not to have to bear the burden of potential rejection all the time.]
When No One Retires
Before our eyes, the world is undergoing a massive demographic transformation. In many countries, the population is getting old. Very old. Globally, the number of people age 60 and over is projected to double to more than 2 billion by 2050 and those 60 and over will outnumber children under the age of 5. In the United States, about 10,000 people turn 65 each day, and one in five Americans will be 65 or older by 2030. By 2035, Americans of retirement age will eclipse the number of people aged 18 and under for the first time in U.S. history.
The reasons for this age shift are many — medical advances that keep people healthier longer, dropping fertility rates, and so on — but the net result is the same: Populations around the world will look very different in the decades ahead.
Some in the public and private sector are already taking note — and sounding the alarm. In his first term as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, with the Great Recession looming, Ben Bernanke remarked, “in the coming decades, many forces will shape our economy and our society, but in all likelihood no single factor will have as pervasive an effect as the aging of our population.” Back in 2010, Standard & Poor’s predicted that the biggest influence on “the future of national economic health, public finances, and policymaking” will be “the irreversible rate at which the world’s population is aging.”
This societal shift will undoubtedly change work, too: More and more Americans want to work longer — or have to, given that many aren’t saving adequately for retirement. Soon, the workforce will include people from as many as five generations ranging in age from teenagers to 80-somethings.
Are companies prepared? The short answer is “no.” Aging will affect every aspect of business operations — whether it’s talent recruitment, the structure of compensation and benefits, the development of products and services, how innovation is unlocked, how offices and factories are designed, and even how work is structured — but for some reason, the message just hasn’t gotten through. In general, corporate leaders have yet to invest the time and resources necessary to fully grasp the unprecedented ways that aging will change the rules of the game.
Paul Irving says he became seriously interested in the issues of aging and longevity almost serendipitously. “When I began my work at the Milken Institute, I fell into a project focused on urban adaptations for an aging population. I realized that this unprecedented demographic shift would change everything — societies, communities, businesses, families, and institutions of all types in incredible ways,” he says. “But understanding, planning, action, and urgency were lacking.”
What’s more, those who do think about the impacts of an aging population typically see a looming crisis — not an opportunity. They fail to appreciate the potential that older adults present as workers and consumers. The reality, however, is that increasing longevity contributes to global economic growth. Today’s older adults are generally healthier and more active than those of generations past, and they are changing the nature of retirement as they continue to learn, work, and contribute. In the workplace, they provide emotional stability, complex problem-solving skills, nuanced thinking, and institutional know-how. Their talents complement those of younger workers, and their guidance and support enhance performance and intergenerational collaboration. In encore careers, volunteering, and civic and social settings, their experience and problem-solving abilities contribute to society’s well-being.
In the public sector, policy makers are beginning to take action. Efforts are under way in the United States to reimagine communities to enhance “age friendliness,” develop strategies to improve infrastructure, enhance wellness and disease prevention, and design new ways to invest for retirement as traditional income sources like pensions and defined benefit plans dry up. But such efforts are still early stage, and given the slow pace of governmental change they will likely take years to evolve.
Companies, by contrast, are uniquely positioned to change practices and attitudes now. Transformation won’t be easy, but companies that move past today’s preconceptions about older employees and respond and adapt to changing demographics will realize significant dividends, generating new possibilities for financial return and enhancing the lives of their employees and customers. I spent many years in executive management, corporate law, and board service. Based on this experience, along with research conducted with Arielle Burstein, Kevin Proff, and other members of our staff at the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, I have developed a framework for building a “longevity strategy” that companies can use to create a vibrant multigenerational workforce. Broadly, a longevity strategy should include two key elements: internal-facing activities (hiring, retention, and mining the talents of workers of all ages) and external-facing ones (how your company positions itself and its products and services to customers and stakeholders). In this article, I’ll address the internal activities companies should be engaging in. I’ll discuss the external-facing activities in an article coming tomorrow.
But first, let’s examine why leaders seem to be overlooking the opportunities of an aging population.
THE AGEISM EFFECT
There’s broad consensus that the global population is changing and growing significantly older. There’s also a prevailing opinion that the impacts on society will largely be negative. A Government Accountability Office report warns that older populations will bring slower growth, lower productivity, and increasing dependency on society. A report from the Congressional Budget Office projects that higher entitlement costs associated with an aging population will drive up expenses relative to revenues, increasing the federal deficit. The World Bank foresees fading potential in economies across the globe, warning in 2018 of “headwinds from ageing populations in both advanced and developing economies, expecting decreased labour supply and productivity growth.” Such predictions serve to further entrench the belief that older workers are an expensive drag on society.
What’s at the heart of this gloomy outlook? Economists often refer to what’s known as the dependency ratio: the number of people not typically in the workforce — those younger than 15 and older than 65 — in a population divided by the number of working-age people. This measure assumes that older adults are generally unproductive and can be expected to do little other than consume benefits in their later years. Serious concerns about the so-called “silver tsunami” are justified if this assumption is correct: The prospect of a massive population of sick, disengaged, lonely, needy, and cognitively impaired people is a dark one indeed.
This picture, however, is simply not accurate. While some older adults do suffer from disabling physical and cognitive conditions or are otherwise unable to maintain an active lifestyle, far more are able and inclined to stay in the game longer, disproving assumptions about their prospects for work and productivity. The work of Laura Carstensen and her colleagues at the Stanford Center on Longevity shows that typical 60-something workers today are healthy, experienced, and more likely than younger colleagues to be satisfied with their jobs. They have a strong work ethic and loyalty to their employers. They are motivated, knowledgeable, adept at resolving social dilemmas, and care more about meaningful contributions and less about self-advancement. They are more likely than their younger counterparts to build social cohesion and to share information and organizational values.
Yet the flawed perceptions persist, a byproduct of stubborn and pervasive ageism. Positive attributes of older workers are crowded out by negative stereotypes that infect work settings and devalue older adults in a youth-oriented culture. Older adults regularly find themselves on the losing end of hiring decisions, promotions, and even volunteer opportunities.
The reasons for this age shift are many — medical advances that keep people healthier longer, dropping fertility rates, and so on — but the net result is the same: Populations around the world will look very different in the decades ahead.
Some in the public and private sector are already taking note — and sounding the alarm. In his first term as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, with the Great Recession looming, Ben Bernanke remarked, “in the coming decades, many forces will shape our economy and our society, but in all likelihood no single factor will have as pervasive an effect as the aging of our population.” Back in 2010, Standard & Poor’s predicted that the biggest influence on “the future of national economic health, public finances, and policymaking” will be “the irreversible rate at which the world’s population is aging.”This societal shift will undoubtedly change work, too: More and more Americans want to work longer — or have to, given that many aren’t saving adequately for retirement. Soon, the workforce will include people from as many as five generations ranging in age from teenagers to 80-somethings.
Are companies prepared? The short answer is “no.” Aging will affect every aspect of business operations — whether it’s talent recruitment, the structure of compensation and benefits, the development of products and services, how innovation is unlocked, how offices and factories are designed, and even how work is structured — but for some reason, the message just hasn’t gotten through. In general, corporate leaders have yet to invest the time and resources necessary to fully grasp the unprecedented ways that aging will change the rules of the game.
Paul Irving says he became seriously interested in the issues of aging and longevity almost serendipitously. “When I began my work at the Milken Institute, I fell into a project focused on urban adaptations for an aging population. I realized that this unprecedented demographic shift would change everything — societies, communities, businesses, families, and institutions of all types in incredible ways,” he says. “But understanding, planning, action, and urgency were lacking.”
What’s more, those who do think about the impacts of an aging population typically see a looming crisis — not an opportunity. They fail to appreciate the potential that older adults present as workers and consumers. The reality, however, is that increasing longevity contributes to global economic growth. Today’s older adults are generally healthier and more active than those of generations past, and they are changing the nature of retirement as they continue to learn, work, and contribute. In the workplace, they provide emotional stability, complex problem-solving skills, nuanced thinking, and institutional know-how. Their talents complement those of younger workers, and their guidance and support enhance performance and intergenerational collaboration. In encore careers, volunteering, and civic and social settings, their experience and problem-solving abilities contribute to society’s well-being.
In the public sector, policy makers are beginning to take action. Efforts are under way in the United States to reimagine communities to enhance “age friendliness,” develop strategies to improve infrastructure, enhance wellness and disease prevention, and design new ways to invest for retirement as traditional income sources like pensions and defined benefit plans dry up. But such efforts are still early stage, and given the slow pace of governmental change they will likely take years to evolve.
Companies, by contrast, are uniquely positioned to change practices and attitudes now. Transformation won’t be easy, but companies that move past today’s preconceptions about older employees and respond and adapt to changing demographics will realize significant dividends, generating new possibilities for financial return and enhancing the lives of their employees and customers. I spent many years in executive management, corporate law, and board service. Based on this experience, along with research conducted with Arielle Burstein, Kevin Proff, and other members of our staff at the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, I have developed a framework for building a “longevity strategy” that companies can use to create a vibrant multigenerational workforce. Broadly, a longevity strategy should include two key elements: internal-facing activities (hiring, retention, and mining the talents of workers of all ages) and external-facing ones (how your company positions itself and its products and services to customers and stakeholders). In this article, I’ll address the internal activities companies should be engaging in. I’ll discuss the external-facing activities in an article coming tomorrow.
But first, let’s examine why leaders seem to be overlooking the opportunities of an aging population.
THE AGEISM EFFECT
There’s broad consensus that the global population is changing and growing significantly older. There’s also a prevailing opinion that the impacts on society will largely be negative. A Government Accountability Office report warns that older populations will bring slower growth, lower productivity, and increasing dependency on society. A report from the Congressional Budget Office projects that higher entitlement costs associated with an aging population will drive up expenses relative to revenues, increasing the federal deficit. The World Bank foresees fading potential in economies across the globe, warning in 2018 of “headwinds from ageing populations in both advanced and developing economies, expecting decreased labour supply and productivity growth.” Such predictions serve to further entrench the belief that older workers are an expensive drag on society.
What’s at the heart of this gloomy outlook? Economists often refer to what’s known as the dependency ratio: the number of people not typically in the workforce — those younger than 15 and older than 65 — in a population divided by the number of working-age people. This measure assumes that older adults are generally unproductive and can be expected to do little other than consume benefits in their later years. Serious concerns about the so-called “silver tsunami” are justified if this assumption is correct: The prospect of a massive population of sick, disengaged, lonely, needy, and cognitively impaired people is a dark one indeed.
This picture, however, is simply not accurate. While some older adults do suffer from disabling physical and cognitive conditions or are otherwise unable to maintain an active lifestyle, far more are able and inclined to stay in the game longer, disproving assumptions about their prospects for work and productivity. The work of Laura Carstensen and her colleagues at the Stanford Center on Longevity shows that typical 60-something workers today are healthy, experienced, and more likely than younger colleagues to be satisfied with their jobs. They have a strong work ethic and loyalty to their employers. They are motivated, knowledgeable, adept at resolving social dilemmas, and care more about meaningful contributions and less about self-advancement. They are more likely than their younger counterparts to build social cohesion and to share information and organizational values.
Yet the flawed perceptions persist, a byproduct of stubborn and pervasive ageism. Positive attributes of older workers are crowded out by negative stereotypes that infect work settings and devalue older adults in a youth-oriented culture. Older adults regularly find themselves on the losing end of hiring decisions, promotions, and even volunteer opportunities.
by Paul Irving, Harvard Business Review | Read more:
Image: Mark Smith
Google, Facebook, and Amazon Benefit From an Outdated Definition of “Monopoly”
A few weeks ago, Italy fined Apple and Samsung €15 million for the “planned obsolescence” of their smartphones. The antitrust regulators allege that both companies pushed users to download software that slowed phone performance, forcing customers to buy replacement phones sooner.
The fines were another blow to big tech companies as the groundswell of skepticism against them rises. These companies have amassed so much power that even Apple CEO Tim Cook has called for stricter regulations to be placed on them. Google owns 92% market share of internet searches, Facebook an almost 70% share of social networks. Both have a duopoly in advertising with no credible competition or regulation. Amazon, meanwhile, is crushing retailers and faces conflicts of interest as both the dominant e-commerce seller and the leading online platform for third-party sellers. Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android completely control the mobile app market, and they determine whether businesses can reach their customers and on what terms.
So why hasn’t the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) taken action to break up these companies?
I believe that an outdated interpretation of antitrust law is partly to blame. For decades the standard for evaluating whether to break up monopolies, or block the mergers that create them, has been “consumer welfare.” And this consumer welfare standard has predominantly been interpreted as low prices. If companies can show that a merger or acquisition would not impact prices, for the most part, they win approval.
But in the context of technology companies—which often offer “free” platforms and instead sell user attention as their product—this low-prices-focused paradigm makes no sense. (...)
Google, Facebook, and Amazon have great technology, but much of their current status and financial success comes from what I believe are regulatory and antitrust mistakes. Amazon was allowed to buy dozens of ecommerce rivals and online booksellers to give it a monopsony position in the book industry. Google was able to buy its main competitor, DoubleClick, and vertically integrate online ad markets by buying advertising exchanges. Facebook was able to buy Instagram and WhatsApp with no regulatory challenges.
Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft have together acquired more than 500 companies in the past decade. Many new tech startups never get the chance to compete with the established companies, because as soon as they prove their technologies, they are acquired.
But startups aren’t the only ones suffering. A growing mountain of evidence is showing that increasing industrial concentration via all the merger activity is leading to lower productivity, lower wages, and destroyed economic dynamism. And despite the fetish for lower prices, highly concentrated industries have been raising prices on their consumers. This is why you keep paying more for worse service on airlines, as an example.
The fines were another blow to big tech companies as the groundswell of skepticism against them rises. These companies have amassed so much power that even Apple CEO Tim Cook has called for stricter regulations to be placed on them. Google owns 92% market share of internet searches, Facebook an almost 70% share of social networks. Both have a duopoly in advertising with no credible competition or regulation. Amazon, meanwhile, is crushing retailers and faces conflicts of interest as both the dominant e-commerce seller and the leading online platform for third-party sellers. Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android completely control the mobile app market, and they determine whether businesses can reach their customers and on what terms.So why hasn’t the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) taken action to break up these companies?
I believe that an outdated interpretation of antitrust law is partly to blame. For decades the standard for evaluating whether to break up monopolies, or block the mergers that create them, has been “consumer welfare.” And this consumer welfare standard has predominantly been interpreted as low prices. If companies can show that a merger or acquisition would not impact prices, for the most part, they win approval.
But in the context of technology companies—which often offer “free” platforms and instead sell user attention as their product—this low-prices-focused paradigm makes no sense. (...)
Google, Facebook, and Amazon have great technology, but much of their current status and financial success comes from what I believe are regulatory and antitrust mistakes. Amazon was allowed to buy dozens of ecommerce rivals and online booksellers to give it a monopsony position in the book industry. Google was able to buy its main competitor, DoubleClick, and vertically integrate online ad markets by buying advertising exchanges. Facebook was able to buy Instagram and WhatsApp with no regulatory challenges.
Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft have together acquired more than 500 companies in the past decade. Many new tech startups never get the chance to compete with the established companies, because as soon as they prove their technologies, they are acquired.
But startups aren’t the only ones suffering. A growing mountain of evidence is showing that increasing industrial concentration via all the merger activity is leading to lower productivity, lower wages, and destroyed economic dynamism. And despite the fetish for lower prices, highly concentrated industries have been raising prices on their consumers. This is why you keep paying more for worse service on airlines, as an example.
by Denise Hearn, Quartz | Read more:
Image: David Goldman/AP
[ed. See also: today's NY Times blockbuster: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis (or here for the short version). Also: Apple’s “Capital Return Program”: Rewarding the Wrong People (Naked Capitalism).]
[ed. See also: today's NY Times blockbuster: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis (or here for the short version). Also: Apple’s “Capital Return Program”: Rewarding the Wrong People (Naked Capitalism).]
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
The Pros and Cons of Cheerleading
I’m eating a giant bowl of mashed potatoes covered in melted cheese and that’s normal. It’s normal to take five pounds of leftover mashed potatoes from your fridge, grate a pound of cheese on top, microwave it, and then sit on the couch and eat it while staring blankly at the wall. This is how adult human beings eat lunch.
My daughter is trying out for cheerleading this week. They call it “cheer” now, but it’s just as bone-chilling as it was when I did it back in junior high school, which they now call “middle school.” Back then, I was high-strung and geeky, which they now call “anxious and socially awkward.” I wanted to make cheerleading so I could Be Somebody. While I eat six pounds of food for lunch (which they used to call “binge eating” but they now call “self-care”) I’m wondering if this is what my daughter wants, too.
My daughter never sweated a thing back in elementary school. She effortlessly made lots of ordinary, lovable elementary school friends. But seventh grade is different. You show up to middle school and your entire group of friends might just be judged as uncool by some other giant group of friends from an ever-so-slightly more sophisticated segment of your deeply idiotic suburb. You go to places like Starbucks or the fucking drug store next to the Starbucks (this is where they hang out now, instead of the Orange Julius) and even your closest friends are trying to ditch you, and you are also trying to ditch some of your other closest friends. Everyone is trying to win—or “out-beat the rest” as the grammatically challenged local cheerleaders put it in one of their cheers.
“Junior high is all about ditching and getting ditched,” I tell my daughter and her friend, trying to make the brutal realities of seventh grade sound faintly sporting instead of torturous. Even though I called middle school the wrong name again, they nod vigorously, so I throw in some wisdom about being who you are, where you are. Their eyes go dead. I wander off in search of something stiff to drink instead. Which is normal.
It’s normal to drink when you’re 48 years old and you’re looking a little grizzled, but you still want to look beautiful—magically, implausibly beautiful—possibly because you’ve always been attracted to the impossible. Some mornings I look in the mirror and I see Keith Richards. Other mornings I am Jeffrey Tambor. I put moisturizer on Tambor’s face anyway, as if, with enough moisture, I will transform him into a dewy nymph. I almost savor the despair of this moment, of wanting something so shallow and out of reach.
Being in seventh grade isn’t so different. You hate it but you also love it a tiny bit for the same reasons you hate it: the drama, the suffering, the competition. But you want to love it more. You want to be the one who is standing in the front, shouting something and looking cute doing it. You want to out-beat the rest.
When I was in seventh grade, I had no dance or gymnastics experience, but I wanted the impossible, and so did my best friend. Every day after tryouts, we practiced our cheers and our jumps and yelled at each other, “NO BROKEN WRISTS!” and “THAT LOOKS SLOPPY, START OVER!” When we checked the list after school and saw that we made the team, just 8 slots available to 60 girls, we screamed and jumped around for five minutes straight because we knew that becoming cheerleaders would change everything. We would still be geeks, sure, but we would be visible geeks. People would hate us for no reason. That’s what we wanted. That is a normal thing to want at that age.
Now that I’m older and I’ve been hated for all kinds of reasons, I find cheerleading sexist and futile. I also know from personal experience that at least 91 percent of cheerleading coaches are sadists and sociopaths. That’s just a wild guess, but it feels statistically bulletproof inside of my head, where I spend most of my time these days. I’m middle-aged so I have all kinds of baseless and unfair opinions, which people used to call “being fucking delusional” but now refer to as “honoring your truth.”When you wake up in the morning looking like Burgess Meredith, what else do you have, really? You treasure your petty grievances and sweeping generalizations.
But I don’t tell my daughter these things. I don’t tell her harrowing stories about my high school cheerleading coach, who was a terrifying cross between an enthusiastic real estate agent and Bernadette Peters on a five-day bender. I don’t describe how we were forced to practice dangerous stunts in the gym without mats. Girls would be writhing in pain, saying their backs or heads hurt after a fall to the hard gym floor, and our coach would yelp in her scary baby voice, “You’re OK, you’re fine, get up!”
I also don’t tell her how much I loved wearing my uniform to school, or how satisfying it was to get attention from cute boys for the first time ever, after feeling doomed by my giant ugly glasses and unrelenting acne and bad fashion choices for so long. Out-beating the rest feels pretty goddamn great, I never say to her. I strongly recommend it.
I am being discreet, which is unusual for me. I want to help my daughter make the team. But I also feel like I should’ve prevented her from landing here, in this idiotic predicament in our idiotic suburb. Her dance is set to a hip-hop mix that begins with the words “My left stroke just went viral,” from “Humble” by Kendrick Lamar, but then it segues into a bad pastiche of watered-down beats that aren’t nearly as good as that song. My younger daughter asks me what “left stroke” means, but I ignore her because my older daughter is dancing and, in spite of my misgivings, I am already yelling, “NO BROKEN WRISTS!” and “THAT LOOKS SLOPPY, START OVER!” After a few rounds of this, she’s crying. I’m making cheerleading seem impossible. I am the worst kind of mother, a cartoonishly bossy, shallow nightmare. I don’t care. I can’t stop barking instructions, which seem to be about dancing but really boil down to how to be visible and cute and win by cheering someone else to victory. I never in a million years thought I would land here.
My daughter says she’ll freak out if she doesn’t make the team. This is normal, I think, but my pulse rate goes up anyway. I tell her that she should try on the despair of not making cheerleading right now, and maybe even cry about it, so she’s prepared when she sees the list at school and she’s not on it. This is terrible advice, advice so shitty that only a professional advice columnist could give it. “I feel like you don’t think I’m going to make it!” she yells at me. She hates me right now. I hate myself, too. All very normal and developmentally appropriate, for all involved.
It’s true that I feel like she might not make cheerleading, for the same reason I feel like I might get crushed by a mile-wide meteor at any second. I’ve always expected the worst. It’s a way of life. I want her to mimic my mindset, the way I mimicked my mother’s. That way no one wants something impossible that they can’t have. That way no one is ever disappointed. That way everyone aims low, and no one cares too much about something that’s out of their control. That way no one cries their eyes out when they read the list after school on Friday. My friend is a counselor at the school and says that it’s like the end of the world that day, hallways filled with sobbing girls. They have a nickname for that day. “Dies Dolorem,” or something like that. I might’ve made that up, too.
When you’re middle-aged, it’s normal to make shit up. It’s normal to be cynical about things you used to care about way too much, and it’s normal to find yourself seduced by those same things, out of the blue, in spite of your best intentions. It’s also normal to aim for the impossible while also expecting the worst. I want my daughter to make cheerleading, and I also don’t want her to make it. I want her to pick an activity that’s much less sexist and futile, but I also want her to out-beat the rest—not in spite of the fact that it’s absurd and shallow and twisted, but because of it.
My daughter is trying out for cheerleading this week. They call it “cheer” now, but it’s just as bone-chilling as it was when I did it back in junior high school, which they now call “middle school.” Back then, I was high-strung and geeky, which they now call “anxious and socially awkward.” I wanted to make cheerleading so I could Be Somebody. While I eat six pounds of food for lunch (which they used to call “binge eating” but they now call “self-care”) I’m wondering if this is what my daughter wants, too.
My daughter never sweated a thing back in elementary school. She effortlessly made lots of ordinary, lovable elementary school friends. But seventh grade is different. You show up to middle school and your entire group of friends might just be judged as uncool by some other giant group of friends from an ever-so-slightly more sophisticated segment of your deeply idiotic suburb. You go to places like Starbucks or the fucking drug store next to the Starbucks (this is where they hang out now, instead of the Orange Julius) and even your closest friends are trying to ditch you, and you are also trying to ditch some of your other closest friends. Everyone is trying to win—or “out-beat the rest” as the grammatically challenged local cheerleaders put it in one of their cheers.“Junior high is all about ditching and getting ditched,” I tell my daughter and her friend, trying to make the brutal realities of seventh grade sound faintly sporting instead of torturous. Even though I called middle school the wrong name again, they nod vigorously, so I throw in some wisdom about being who you are, where you are. Their eyes go dead. I wander off in search of something stiff to drink instead. Which is normal.
It’s normal to drink when you’re 48 years old and you’re looking a little grizzled, but you still want to look beautiful—magically, implausibly beautiful—possibly because you’ve always been attracted to the impossible. Some mornings I look in the mirror and I see Keith Richards. Other mornings I am Jeffrey Tambor. I put moisturizer on Tambor’s face anyway, as if, with enough moisture, I will transform him into a dewy nymph. I almost savor the despair of this moment, of wanting something so shallow and out of reach.
Being in seventh grade isn’t so different. You hate it but you also love it a tiny bit for the same reasons you hate it: the drama, the suffering, the competition. But you want to love it more. You want to be the one who is standing in the front, shouting something and looking cute doing it. You want to out-beat the rest.
When I was in seventh grade, I had no dance or gymnastics experience, but I wanted the impossible, and so did my best friend. Every day after tryouts, we practiced our cheers and our jumps and yelled at each other, “NO BROKEN WRISTS!” and “THAT LOOKS SLOPPY, START OVER!” When we checked the list after school and saw that we made the team, just 8 slots available to 60 girls, we screamed and jumped around for five minutes straight because we knew that becoming cheerleaders would change everything. We would still be geeks, sure, but we would be visible geeks. People would hate us for no reason. That’s what we wanted. That is a normal thing to want at that age.
Now that I’m older and I’ve been hated for all kinds of reasons, I find cheerleading sexist and futile. I also know from personal experience that at least 91 percent of cheerleading coaches are sadists and sociopaths. That’s just a wild guess, but it feels statistically bulletproof inside of my head, where I spend most of my time these days. I’m middle-aged so I have all kinds of baseless and unfair opinions, which people used to call “being fucking delusional” but now refer to as “honoring your truth.”When you wake up in the morning looking like Burgess Meredith, what else do you have, really? You treasure your petty grievances and sweeping generalizations.
But I don’t tell my daughter these things. I don’t tell her harrowing stories about my high school cheerleading coach, who was a terrifying cross between an enthusiastic real estate agent and Bernadette Peters on a five-day bender. I don’t describe how we were forced to practice dangerous stunts in the gym without mats. Girls would be writhing in pain, saying their backs or heads hurt after a fall to the hard gym floor, and our coach would yelp in her scary baby voice, “You’re OK, you’re fine, get up!”
I also don’t tell her how much I loved wearing my uniform to school, or how satisfying it was to get attention from cute boys for the first time ever, after feeling doomed by my giant ugly glasses and unrelenting acne and bad fashion choices for so long. Out-beating the rest feels pretty goddamn great, I never say to her. I strongly recommend it.
I am being discreet, which is unusual for me. I want to help my daughter make the team. But I also feel like I should’ve prevented her from landing here, in this idiotic predicament in our idiotic suburb. Her dance is set to a hip-hop mix that begins with the words “My left stroke just went viral,” from “Humble” by Kendrick Lamar, but then it segues into a bad pastiche of watered-down beats that aren’t nearly as good as that song. My younger daughter asks me what “left stroke” means, but I ignore her because my older daughter is dancing and, in spite of my misgivings, I am already yelling, “NO BROKEN WRISTS!” and “THAT LOOKS SLOPPY, START OVER!” After a few rounds of this, she’s crying. I’m making cheerleading seem impossible. I am the worst kind of mother, a cartoonishly bossy, shallow nightmare. I don’t care. I can’t stop barking instructions, which seem to be about dancing but really boil down to how to be visible and cute and win by cheering someone else to victory. I never in a million years thought I would land here.
My daughter says she’ll freak out if she doesn’t make the team. This is normal, I think, but my pulse rate goes up anyway. I tell her that she should try on the despair of not making cheerleading right now, and maybe even cry about it, so she’s prepared when she sees the list at school and she’s not on it. This is terrible advice, advice so shitty that only a professional advice columnist could give it. “I feel like you don’t think I’m going to make it!” she yells at me. She hates me right now. I hate myself, too. All very normal and developmentally appropriate, for all involved.
It’s true that I feel like she might not make cheerleading, for the same reason I feel like I might get crushed by a mile-wide meteor at any second. I’ve always expected the worst. It’s a way of life. I want her to mimic my mindset, the way I mimicked my mother’s. That way no one wants something impossible that they can’t have. That way no one is ever disappointed. That way everyone aims low, and no one cares too much about something that’s out of their control. That way no one cries their eyes out when they read the list after school on Friday. My friend is a counselor at the school and says that it’s like the end of the world that day, hallways filled with sobbing girls. They have a nickname for that day. “Dies Dolorem,” or something like that. I might’ve made that up, too.
When you’re middle-aged, it’s normal to make shit up. It’s normal to be cynical about things you used to care about way too much, and it’s normal to find yourself seduced by those same things, out of the blue, in spite of your best intentions. It’s also normal to aim for the impossible while also expecting the worst. I want my daughter to make cheerleading, and I also don’t want her to make it. I want her to pick an activity that’s much less sexist and futile, but I also want her to out-beat the rest—not in spite of the fact that it’s absurd and shallow and twisted, but because of it.
by Heather Havrilesky, Popula | Read more:
Image: Olan Fucking Mills? Who knows?
Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?
These should be boom times for sex.
The share of Americans who say sex between unmarried adults is “not wrong at all” is at an all-time high. New cases of HIV are at an all-time low. Most women can—at last—get birth control for free, and the morning-after pill without a prescription.
If hookups are your thing, Grindr and Tinder offer the prospect of casual sex within the hour. The phrase If something exists, there is porn of it used to be a clever internet meme; now it’s a truism. BDSM plays at the local multiplex—but why bother going? Sex is portrayed, often graphically and sometimes gorgeously, on prime-time cable. Sexting is, statistically speaking, normal.
Polyamory is a household word. Shame-laden terms like perversion have given way to cheerful-sounding ones like kink. Anal sex has gone from final taboo to “fifth base”—Teen Vogue (yes, Teen Vogue) even ran a guide to it. With the exception of perhaps incest and bestiality—and of course nonconsensual sex more generally—our culture has never been more tolerant of sex in just about every permutation.
But despite all this, American teenagers and young adults are having less sex.
To the relief of many parents, educators, and clergy members who care about the health and well-being of young people, teens are launching their sex lives later. From 1991 to 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey finds, the percentage of high-school students who’d had intercourse dropped from 54 to 40 percent. In other words, in the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high-school students have experienced to something most haven’t. (And no, they aren’t having oral sex instead—that rate hasn’t changed much.)
Meanwhile, the U.S. teen pregnancy rate has plummeted to a third of its modern high. When this decline started, in the 1990s, it was widely and rightly embraced. But now some observers are beginning to wonder whether an unambiguously good thing might have roots in less salubrious developments. Signs are gathering that the delay in teen sex may have been the first indication of a broader withdrawal from physical intimacy that extends well into adulthood. (...)
Over the course of many conversations with sex researchers, psychologists, economists, sociologists, therapists, sex educators, and young adults, I heard many other theories about what I have come to think of as the sex recession. I was told it might be a consequence of the hookup culture, of crushing economic pressures, of surging anxiety rates, of psychological frailty, of widespread antidepressant use, of streaming television, of environmental estrogens leaked by plastics, of dropping testosterone levels, of digital porn, of the vibrator’s golden age, of dating apps, of option paralysis, of helicopter parents, of careerism, of smartphones, of the news cycle, of information overload generally, of sleep deprivation, of obesity. Name a modern blight, and someone, somewhere, is ready to blame it for messing with the modern libido.
Some experts I spoke with offered more hopeful explanations for the decline in sex. For example, rates of childhood sexual abuse have decreased in recent decades, and abuse can lead to both precocious and promiscuous sexual behavior. And some people today may feel less pressured into sex they don’t want to have, thanks to changing gender mores and growing awareness of diverse sexual orientations, including asexuality. Maybe more people are prioritizing school or work over love and sex, at least for a time, or maybe they’re simply being extra deliberate in choosing a life partner—and if so, good for them.
Many—or all—of these things may be true. In a famous 2007 study, people supplied researchers with 237 distinct reasons for having sex, ranging from mystical (“I wanted to feel closer to God”) to lame (“I wanted to change the topic of conversation”). The number of reasons not to have sex must be at least as high. Still, a handful of suspects came up again and again in my interviews and in the research I reviewed—and each has profound implications for our happiness.
[ed. See also: How the GOP Gave Up on Porn (Politico)]
The share of Americans who say sex between unmarried adults is “not wrong at all” is at an all-time high. New cases of HIV are at an all-time low. Most women can—at last—get birth control for free, and the morning-after pill without a prescription.
If hookups are your thing, Grindr and Tinder offer the prospect of casual sex within the hour. The phrase If something exists, there is porn of it used to be a clever internet meme; now it’s a truism. BDSM plays at the local multiplex—but why bother going? Sex is portrayed, often graphically and sometimes gorgeously, on prime-time cable. Sexting is, statistically speaking, normal.
Polyamory is a household word. Shame-laden terms like perversion have given way to cheerful-sounding ones like kink. Anal sex has gone from final taboo to “fifth base”—Teen Vogue (yes, Teen Vogue) even ran a guide to it. With the exception of perhaps incest and bestiality—and of course nonconsensual sex more generally—our culture has never been more tolerant of sex in just about every permutation.But despite all this, American teenagers and young adults are having less sex.
To the relief of many parents, educators, and clergy members who care about the health and well-being of young people, teens are launching their sex lives later. From 1991 to 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey finds, the percentage of high-school students who’d had intercourse dropped from 54 to 40 percent. In other words, in the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high-school students have experienced to something most haven’t. (And no, they aren’t having oral sex instead—that rate hasn’t changed much.)
Meanwhile, the U.S. teen pregnancy rate has plummeted to a third of its modern high. When this decline started, in the 1990s, it was widely and rightly embraced. But now some observers are beginning to wonder whether an unambiguously good thing might have roots in less salubrious developments. Signs are gathering that the delay in teen sex may have been the first indication of a broader withdrawal from physical intimacy that extends well into adulthood. (...)
Over the course of many conversations with sex researchers, psychologists, economists, sociologists, therapists, sex educators, and young adults, I heard many other theories about what I have come to think of as the sex recession. I was told it might be a consequence of the hookup culture, of crushing economic pressures, of surging anxiety rates, of psychological frailty, of widespread antidepressant use, of streaming television, of environmental estrogens leaked by plastics, of dropping testosterone levels, of digital porn, of the vibrator’s golden age, of dating apps, of option paralysis, of helicopter parents, of careerism, of smartphones, of the news cycle, of information overload generally, of sleep deprivation, of obesity. Name a modern blight, and someone, somewhere, is ready to blame it for messing with the modern libido.
Some experts I spoke with offered more hopeful explanations for the decline in sex. For example, rates of childhood sexual abuse have decreased in recent decades, and abuse can lead to both precocious and promiscuous sexual behavior. And some people today may feel less pressured into sex they don’t want to have, thanks to changing gender mores and growing awareness of diverse sexual orientations, including asexuality. Maybe more people are prioritizing school or work over love and sex, at least for a time, or maybe they’re simply being extra deliberate in choosing a life partner—and if so, good for them.
Many—or all—of these things may be true. In a famous 2007 study, people supplied researchers with 237 distinct reasons for having sex, ranging from mystical (“I wanted to feel closer to God”) to lame (“I wanted to change the topic of conversation”). The number of reasons not to have sex must be at least as high. Still, a handful of suspects came up again and again in my interviews and in the research I reviewed—and each has profound implications for our happiness.
by Kate Julian, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Justin Metz/Mendelsund/Munday[ed. See also: How the GOP Gave Up on Porn (Politico)]
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Prince Charles on His Climate-Change Fight, Life with Camilla, and Becoming King
Anyone of my age knows that days pass at a far greater speed than when they were young,” a man nearing his 70th birthday recently told me. “But in my case there are so many things that need to be done.”
“Things that need to be done” takes on a strikingly different quality if you are on the verge of ascending the British throne. Past the age at which many people retire, Charles Philip Arthur George, the Prince of Wales, is still waiting to begin the job he’s been in line for since he was three years old, when his mother, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, began her monarchy in 1952. As she has become the longest-reigning sovereign in British history, he’s become the longest-waiting heir apparent. While the Queen, at 92, still vigorously carries out the major elements of her role as head of state, her reign is inexorably beginning to wind down. At her request, the Prince of Wales has begun to ramp things up.
“Charles figured out a very long time ago that he was going to be Prince of Wales for a very long time,” an English peer intimate with the royal family says. “He planned his life accordingly, and he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half of what he has if he had become King earlier.”
Dodging the sovereign’s constitutionally mandated straitjacket and muzzle, the Prince of Wales has been able to express strong opinions on many issues—including climate change, alternative medicine, and architectural preservation—for which he has been harshly criticized.
He has also been a prolific worker bee in the Windsor hive, his work constituting charity appearances and other public forays for the greater good. A tally of “jobs” attended by the royal family in 2017 attests to the amount of heavy lifting Charles is doing. With 546 under his belt, Charles was at the top of the list, while the Queen came in fourth (behind Princess Anne and Prince Andrew) at 296. Prince Harry and Prince William, future King himself, notched considerably fewer: 209 and 171, respectively.
As the United Kingdom lurches toward Brexit and relations with the European Union fray, the royal family’s soft power may be Britain’s trump card. They charm, they command respect; they impart a sense of stability and continuity. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth states—home to 2.4 billion citizens, a third of the world’s population—are ever critical. It was not just an act of fashion when Meghan had her 16-foot veil embroidered with flora from each of the 53 member nations. In April, the heads of these countries—which include India, New Zealand, and Nigeria—officially voted that Charles will succeed his mother as leader.
While his relatives and his subjects tiptoe around the mere thought of the Queen’s death, Charles has become a proxy head of state for his mother, while his own children have helped garner massive positive press for the royal family. (Some two billion people around the world tuned in to watch Meghan and Harry’s wedding and their baby news is a global preoccupation.) So, on May 7, when I boarded a plane with the Prince of Wales and his wife of 13 years, the Duchess of Cornwall, bound for an official royal tour through France and Greece, the couple was in high spirits.
“Things that need to be done” takes on a strikingly different quality if you are on the verge of ascending the British throne. Past the age at which many people retire, Charles Philip Arthur George, the Prince of Wales, is still waiting to begin the job he’s been in line for since he was three years old, when his mother, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, began her monarchy in 1952. As she has become the longest-reigning sovereign in British history, he’s become the longest-waiting heir apparent. While the Queen, at 92, still vigorously carries out the major elements of her role as head of state, her reign is inexorably beginning to wind down. At her request, the Prince of Wales has begun to ramp things up.
“Charles figured out a very long time ago that he was going to be Prince of Wales for a very long time,” an English peer intimate with the royal family says. “He planned his life accordingly, and he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half of what he has if he had become King earlier.”
Dodging the sovereign’s constitutionally mandated straitjacket and muzzle, the Prince of Wales has been able to express strong opinions on many issues—including climate change, alternative medicine, and architectural preservation—for which he has been harshly criticized.He has also been a prolific worker bee in the Windsor hive, his work constituting charity appearances and other public forays for the greater good. A tally of “jobs” attended by the royal family in 2017 attests to the amount of heavy lifting Charles is doing. With 546 under his belt, Charles was at the top of the list, while the Queen came in fourth (behind Princess Anne and Prince Andrew) at 296. Prince Harry and Prince William, future King himself, notched considerably fewer: 209 and 171, respectively.
As the United Kingdom lurches toward Brexit and relations with the European Union fray, the royal family’s soft power may be Britain’s trump card. They charm, they command respect; they impart a sense of stability and continuity. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth states—home to 2.4 billion citizens, a third of the world’s population—are ever critical. It was not just an act of fashion when Meghan had her 16-foot veil embroidered with flora from each of the 53 member nations. In April, the heads of these countries—which include India, New Zealand, and Nigeria—officially voted that Charles will succeed his mother as leader.
While his relatives and his subjects tiptoe around the mere thought of the Queen’s death, Charles has become a proxy head of state for his mother, while his own children have helped garner massive positive press for the royal family. (Some two billion people around the world tuned in to watch Meghan and Harry’s wedding and their baby news is a global preoccupation.) So, on May 7, when I boarded a plane with the Prince of Wales and his wife of 13 years, the Duchess of Cornwall, bound for an official royal tour through France and Greece, the couple was in high spirits.
by James Reginato, Vanity Fair | Read more:
Image: Alexi Lubomirski
Inmates Fighting California's Largest Fires Denied Access to Jobs on Release
As California struggles to contain the largest fire in state history, more than 2,000 inmates have volunteered to fight the flames. Offering just $1 an hour, the state has long encouraged low-level prisoners to risk their lives and serve alongside professional firefighters, who earn nearly $74,000 a year on average. Firefighting, along with less life-threatening trades like plumbing, welding, and cosmetology, is one of several vocational training programs offered to prisoners by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
But in a bitterly ironic twist, once inmates leave prison, they often can’t work as firefighters, despite their frontline experience. In California, nearly all counties require firefighters to become licensed emergency medical technician (EMTs) — a credential that can be denied to almost anyone with a criminal record.
Many are denied jobs for their criminal record
Nor are firefighters the only position off-limits. Under California law, the state’s licensing boards can deny a credential on the basis of an applicant’s criminal record or alleged misconduct. Thanks to the rise in occupational licensing, nearly 1,800 occupations now require a license, certification, or clearance in the Golden State, affecting one-fourth of California’s workforce. As a result, hundreds of different occupations are effectively barred to roughly 8 million Californians.
California’s firefighting felons are a particularly stark illustration of a growing, national problem. According to the American Bar Association, the nation’s occupational and business licensing laws contain over 27,000 restrictions on ex-offenders, including bans on working as barbers or hosting bingo games. Those barriers impose significant costs. Research by the Center for Economic and Policy estimates that in 2014, employment barriers for the incarcerated and those with felony convictions cost the nation’s economy up to $87 billion in annual GDP, equal to “the loss of 1.7 to 1.9 million workers.”
Not only do these policies slam the door on economic opportunity, they may also increase re-offending. A recent study from Arizona State University found that states with more burdensome licensing laws saw their average recidivism rates jump by nine percent. By comparison, states with fewer licensing restrictions and no moralizing provisions had recidivism rates decline by 2.5 percent, on average. In fact, licensing burdens were second only to the overall labor market climate when it came to influencing recidivism rates.
by Nick Sibilla, USA Today | Read more:
Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
But in a bitterly ironic twist, once inmates leave prison, they often can’t work as firefighters, despite their frontline experience. In California, nearly all counties require firefighters to become licensed emergency medical technician (EMTs) — a credential that can be denied to almost anyone with a criminal record.
Many are denied jobs for their criminal record
Nor are firefighters the only position off-limits. Under California law, the state’s licensing boards can deny a credential on the basis of an applicant’s criminal record or alleged misconduct. Thanks to the rise in occupational licensing, nearly 1,800 occupations now require a license, certification, or clearance in the Golden State, affecting one-fourth of California’s workforce. As a result, hundreds of different occupations are effectively barred to roughly 8 million Californians.California’s firefighting felons are a particularly stark illustration of a growing, national problem. According to the American Bar Association, the nation’s occupational and business licensing laws contain over 27,000 restrictions on ex-offenders, including bans on working as barbers or hosting bingo games. Those barriers impose significant costs. Research by the Center for Economic and Policy estimates that in 2014, employment barriers for the incarcerated and those with felony convictions cost the nation’s economy up to $87 billion in annual GDP, equal to “the loss of 1.7 to 1.9 million workers.”
Not only do these policies slam the door on economic opportunity, they may also increase re-offending. A recent study from Arizona State University found that states with more burdensome licensing laws saw their average recidivism rates jump by nine percent. By comparison, states with fewer licensing restrictions and no moralizing provisions had recidivism rates decline by 2.5 percent, on average. In fact, licensing burdens were second only to the overall labor market climate when it came to influencing recidivism rates.
by Nick Sibilla, USA Today | Read more:
Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
[ed. Maybe they could check with Kim and Kanye about becoming "Concierge" firefighters?]
The Optimized Anti-Style of Allbirds Shoes
The San Francisco-based brand Allbirds makes shoes so soft and flexible that you can bend them almost a hundred and eighty degrees in your hands. When worn, the lightweight rubber soles flare out at the ball of the foot, creating a slightly geriatric silhouette. The “S-curve tread array” carved into the bottom of the sole is supposed to distribute your weight evenly as you walk; the insoles caress your arches and make walking feel like gliding. The merino-wool fabric, in a variety of neutral and pastel shades, is reminiscent of an expensive Fair Isle sweater, except somehow not at all itchy. It is thin enough that you can see the outline of your toes as you walk. The eight lace holes of the original Allbirds “Runners,” embellished with contrast stitching, have a dad-ish quality to them. The only visible branding is a small tab on the back and a cursive, lowercase “allbirds” carved into the heel. The shoes are, for all my attempts to describe them, excessively nondescript. This is perhaps their biggest innovation. Allbirds are so meticulously basic that, when clad in them, your feet almost cease to exist.
For quite a while now, “sensible” footwear has been enjoying a curious vogue. Take the slow reinvigoration of Birkenstocks, or the popular #cloglife tag on Instagram, which features women sporting buttery leather clogs inspired by Dutch farm shoes. Or take the bizarre fact that Crocs has surged to No. 13 on the list of footwear brands that teen-agers desire most. Even high fashion is purposefully cribbing an “ugly” aesthetic from the world of Dr. Scholl’s inserts and podiatry foam; the new thousand-dollar Louis Vuitton “Archlight” sneakers look like something an extraterrestrial might wear to a Jazzercise class. But Allbirds, which are billed as “the world’s most comfortable shoe,” cannot really be categorized as ugly footwear, because the idea behind them is not proud unstylishness but technical perfection; the writer Emily Gould has aptly described her Allbirds as “an algorithm on my feet.” (...)
In their initial wave of popularity, Allbirds became an essential part of the daily uniform of Bay Area tech entrepreneurs. “Everyone’s wearing them,” a startup financier told the Times last August. “Sometimes it is awkward, especially if we’re wearing the same color.” But in the past year Allbirds have travelled outside the clean hallways of Silicon Valley headquarters and tipped into the mainstream. Mila Kunis wears Allbirds. So does Jennifer Garner. So do Park Slope dads and modern dancers and trendy teen-agers and kooky aunts and registered nurses and bartenders and pretty much every overworked, weary thirtysomething you see on the New York subway. Leonardo DiCaprio, an early adopter of eco-innovations, liked his pair so much that he became an investor in August, saying in a statement that the shoes are “crucial for creating a more sustainable future.” In October, the company announced a third round of funding, bringing its total valuation reportedly to $1.4 billion—which makes it a particularly precocious breed of unicorn (by comparison, Warby Parker, the digital-first eyeglasses company, took eight years to reach its current valuation of around $1.75 billion). (...)
I recently watched the fascinating documentary “Generation Wealth,” by the photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield, who has been chronicling American excess for two decades. Her work portrays the kind of ostentatious materialism—gold chains, stretch limos, marble toilets, super-yachts—that feels like it’s from another era. What’s more prevalent now is a softer, sneakier expression of affluence, the clean, clinical stylings of the technocratic class. Luxury is no longer about wearing so many diamonds that you topple over; it’s about driving the quietest car, living in the most automated home, reducing the amount of friction you have to navigate in the world. Allbirds might be the closest the world of everyday fashion has come to embracing this ideal of optimized efficiency.
by Rachel Syme, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Christie Hemm Klok / NYT / Redux
For quite a while now, “sensible” footwear has been enjoying a curious vogue. Take the slow reinvigoration of Birkenstocks, or the popular #cloglife tag on Instagram, which features women sporting buttery leather clogs inspired by Dutch farm shoes. Or take the bizarre fact that Crocs has surged to No. 13 on the list of footwear brands that teen-agers desire most. Even high fashion is purposefully cribbing an “ugly” aesthetic from the world of Dr. Scholl’s inserts and podiatry foam; the new thousand-dollar Louis Vuitton “Archlight” sneakers look like something an extraterrestrial might wear to a Jazzercise class. But Allbirds, which are billed as “the world’s most comfortable shoe,” cannot really be categorized as ugly footwear, because the idea behind them is not proud unstylishness but technical perfection; the writer Emily Gould has aptly described her Allbirds as “an algorithm on my feet.” (...)In their initial wave of popularity, Allbirds became an essential part of the daily uniform of Bay Area tech entrepreneurs. “Everyone’s wearing them,” a startup financier told the Times last August. “Sometimes it is awkward, especially if we’re wearing the same color.” But in the past year Allbirds have travelled outside the clean hallways of Silicon Valley headquarters and tipped into the mainstream. Mila Kunis wears Allbirds. So does Jennifer Garner. So do Park Slope dads and modern dancers and trendy teen-agers and kooky aunts and registered nurses and bartenders and pretty much every overworked, weary thirtysomething you see on the New York subway. Leonardo DiCaprio, an early adopter of eco-innovations, liked his pair so much that he became an investor in August, saying in a statement that the shoes are “crucial for creating a more sustainable future.” In October, the company announced a third round of funding, bringing its total valuation reportedly to $1.4 billion—which makes it a particularly precocious breed of unicorn (by comparison, Warby Parker, the digital-first eyeglasses company, took eight years to reach its current valuation of around $1.75 billion). (...)
I recently watched the fascinating documentary “Generation Wealth,” by the photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield, who has been chronicling American excess for two decades. Her work portrays the kind of ostentatious materialism—gold chains, stretch limos, marble toilets, super-yachts—that feels like it’s from another era. What’s more prevalent now is a softer, sneakier expression of affluence, the clean, clinical stylings of the technocratic class. Luxury is no longer about wearing so many diamonds that you topple over; it’s about driving the quietest car, living in the most automated home, reducing the amount of friction you have to navigate in the world. Allbirds might be the closest the world of everyday fashion has come to embracing this ideal of optimized efficiency.
by Rachel Syme, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Christie Hemm Klok / NYT / Redux
[ed. I have two pairs and they're wonderful.]
Amazon’s New Neighbor: The Nation’s Largest Housing Project
Amazon’s New Neighbor: The Nation’s Largest Housing Project (NY Times)
Image: Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
[ed. Hmm... wonder how that'll work out.]
Monday, November 12, 2018
How Harley-Davidson's Past Crippled Its Future
An hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve in 1985, a bunch of Harley executives sat in a room at a bank with two stacks of papers, one for bankruptcy and another for recapitalization, if their last gasp ask for fresh investment came in. They had given themselves until midnight to get new money or go bankrupt, and time was running out.
Many of the executives had, four years earlier, personally invested $1 million or more—while borrowing tens of millions more on top of that—to buy the company from the conglomerate AMF for $80 million and take it private. AMF itself had acquired the motorcycle manufacturer for $14 million in 1969 (about $100 million today) with a plan to expand production and squeeze out maximum profits. But a decade of labor trouble, declining build quality, and the dominance of Japanese motorcycles—Honda, in particular—had, by 1981, left Harley in dire straits.
It was kind of a miracle that Harley had lasted that long to begin with and, indeed, had almost done so by default. Such was the impact of 1969's Easy Rider that, without it, the company might not have existed much longer after it, since, historically, motorcycle companies in the United States came and went at the ferocious whims of the marketplace. Consider that, after Indian closed its doors in 1958, Harley was the only American motorcycle manufacturer left, having succeeded where hundreds of competitors had tried and failed.
By that time, market forces were already working against them, since by the 1950s in the U.S., no one really needed a motorcycle. Unlike in Europe, Asia and Africa, motorcycles and scooters never really became a viable and large-scale means of transportation—especially in urban areas—here in America. Besides, cars were getting safer and cheaper, and bikes had already become, in the public’s mind, tools of outlaws, thanks in part to 1953's The Wild One and the (often overhyped) emergence of motorcycle gangs.
And while that image has changed, motorcycles have remained hobbies for decades, the province of the weekend rider who has some money to burn.
“We’re in the fashion business,” Willie Davidson, the grandson of Harley co-founder William A. Davidson told People in 1981. “No one needs a motorcycle. It’s your toy or hobby. It has to do something for your ego.”
Harley has found, time and time again, however, that appealing to hobbyists isn’t always a great formula for business success. If the ‘70s almost killed them, the ‘80s were even less kind, though in that room at 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve in 1985, the Harley executives finally got a call. New investment had come through. The company would not go bankrupt. The executives in the room were jubilant, and, just seven months later, in July 1986, Harley went public.
The good times were back on for the next 20 years until recently, when sales dropped for the first time in decades, President Donald Trump imposed a damaging trade war, and Harley’s future began to look ever dimmer. It was a child of the 1900s, a warhorse of the 1940s, a Boomer icon of the 1960s, a lucrative source of nostalgia in the 1990s. Today, though, it’s just another shrinking piece of Americana.
Harley sales in the U.S. peaked at over 260,000 motorcycles in 2006, but have dipped to 147,972 last year, a number that is the lowest since 2010 and, before that, the lowest since 1993. (Retail sales fell 13 percent in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2018 compared to 2017, Harley said late last month.)
Harley’s longtime bread and butter has been Baby Boomers, those who grew up enamored with the outlaw image to the point that they were willing to spend $20,000 or more on the bikes and leather to live out that image. But the Boomers are getting older, increasingly physically unable to ride or dying out entirely. And Harley’s response—an electric bike called the LiveWire set to debut next year—isn’t so much of a Hail Mary as it is a capitulation. It also won’t be nearly enough.
“I think they have to completely reinvent the brand, and I don’t know if they can do it,” Erik Gordon, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said. “The jokes are true. When I go down the freeway, I always look to see if this cliche about Harley riders is true. And the crazy thing is that it is true. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone under 55.
“My generation viewed Harleys as American fast, loud, muscle. We liked that stuff,” Gordon said. “[My students] view it as the tired old folks who screwed up America.” (...)
With some fanfare, Harley unveiled its electric bike concept a few years ago, taking a prototype on a cross country tour and letting people test-ride it, as a trial balloon. The electric bike they put into production (and will debut next year) looks and operates very much like that prototype. Which is to say very much like Harley’s gasoline-powered motorcycles, with a twist-and-go throttle but no gears to speak of. Harley has spent the time in between the prototype and the launch of its first electric bike—dubbed the LiveWire—prepping its customers to a painful degree.
“An authentic Harley-Davidson expression of individuality, iconic style and performance that just happens to be electric,” text read on Harley’s website in the build-up. It’s electric, Harley’s saying, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The LiveWire will debut in a market—high-powered electric motorcycles—that essentially doesn’t exist yet, with fewer than 1,000 such motorcycles sold in 2017 in the U.S. and Europe, according to Cycle World. Part of the problem is inherent in the design.
Many of the executives had, four years earlier, personally invested $1 million or more—while borrowing tens of millions more on top of that—to buy the company from the conglomerate AMF for $80 million and take it private. AMF itself had acquired the motorcycle manufacturer for $14 million in 1969 (about $100 million today) with a plan to expand production and squeeze out maximum profits. But a decade of labor trouble, declining build quality, and the dominance of Japanese motorcycles—Honda, in particular—had, by 1981, left Harley in dire straits.It was kind of a miracle that Harley had lasted that long to begin with and, indeed, had almost done so by default. Such was the impact of 1969's Easy Rider that, without it, the company might not have existed much longer after it, since, historically, motorcycle companies in the United States came and went at the ferocious whims of the marketplace. Consider that, after Indian closed its doors in 1958, Harley was the only American motorcycle manufacturer left, having succeeded where hundreds of competitors had tried and failed.
By that time, market forces were already working against them, since by the 1950s in the U.S., no one really needed a motorcycle. Unlike in Europe, Asia and Africa, motorcycles and scooters never really became a viable and large-scale means of transportation—especially in urban areas—here in America. Besides, cars were getting safer and cheaper, and bikes had already become, in the public’s mind, tools of outlaws, thanks in part to 1953's The Wild One and the (often overhyped) emergence of motorcycle gangs.
And while that image has changed, motorcycles have remained hobbies for decades, the province of the weekend rider who has some money to burn.
“We’re in the fashion business,” Willie Davidson, the grandson of Harley co-founder William A. Davidson told People in 1981. “No one needs a motorcycle. It’s your toy or hobby. It has to do something for your ego.”
Harley has found, time and time again, however, that appealing to hobbyists isn’t always a great formula for business success. If the ‘70s almost killed them, the ‘80s were even less kind, though in that room at 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve in 1985, the Harley executives finally got a call. New investment had come through. The company would not go bankrupt. The executives in the room were jubilant, and, just seven months later, in July 1986, Harley went public.
The good times were back on for the next 20 years until recently, when sales dropped for the first time in decades, President Donald Trump imposed a damaging trade war, and Harley’s future began to look ever dimmer. It was a child of the 1900s, a warhorse of the 1940s, a Boomer icon of the 1960s, a lucrative source of nostalgia in the 1990s. Today, though, it’s just another shrinking piece of Americana.
Harley sales in the U.S. peaked at over 260,000 motorcycles in 2006, but have dipped to 147,972 last year, a number that is the lowest since 2010 and, before that, the lowest since 1993. (Retail sales fell 13 percent in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2018 compared to 2017, Harley said late last month.)
Harley’s longtime bread and butter has been Baby Boomers, those who grew up enamored with the outlaw image to the point that they were willing to spend $20,000 or more on the bikes and leather to live out that image. But the Boomers are getting older, increasingly physically unable to ride or dying out entirely. And Harley’s response—an electric bike called the LiveWire set to debut next year—isn’t so much of a Hail Mary as it is a capitulation. It also won’t be nearly enough.
“I think they have to completely reinvent the brand, and I don’t know if they can do it,” Erik Gordon, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said. “The jokes are true. When I go down the freeway, I always look to see if this cliche about Harley riders is true. And the crazy thing is that it is true. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone under 55.
“My generation viewed Harleys as American fast, loud, muscle. We liked that stuff,” Gordon said. “[My students] view it as the tired old folks who screwed up America.” (...)
With some fanfare, Harley unveiled its electric bike concept a few years ago, taking a prototype on a cross country tour and letting people test-ride it, as a trial balloon. The electric bike they put into production (and will debut next year) looks and operates very much like that prototype. Which is to say very much like Harley’s gasoline-powered motorcycles, with a twist-and-go throttle but no gears to speak of. Harley has spent the time in between the prototype and the launch of its first electric bike—dubbed the LiveWire—prepping its customers to a painful degree.
“An authentic Harley-Davidson expression of individuality, iconic style and performance that just happens to be electric,” text read on Harley’s website in the build-up. It’s electric, Harley’s saying, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The LiveWire will debut in a market—high-powered electric motorcycles—that essentially doesn’t exist yet, with fewer than 1,000 such motorcycles sold in 2017 in the U.S. and Europe, according to Cycle World. Part of the problem is inherent in the design.
by Erik Shilling, Jalopnik | Read more:
Image: Sam Woolley
Wells Fargo's 'Puffery' Defense
"Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man." (The Big Lebowski)
If you’ve ever wondered how businesses can get away with making transparently false or deceptive claims about themselves or their products — “The Best Tasting Juice in America,” Wrigley’s gum is “for whiter teeth, no matter what,” etc., etc. — the answer is an all-purpose legal dodge known as the “puffery” defense.
Simply put, judges and regulators have ruled that when a business makes a claim that is either vague or so obviously inflated that people simply won’t believe it, that’s “puffery,” and not actionable in court.
Wells Fargo, which is struggling to rebuild its reputation for integrity after a string of scandals involving consumer rip-offs, is testing the limits of the “puffery” defense. In a legal filing last week aimed at getting a shareholder lawsuit dismissed, the company asserted that statements that the bank was working to “restore trust” among its customers and “trying to be more transparent” about its scandals — statements made by its chief executive, Tim Sloan — were, well, just puffery.
The filing says these were generic statements “on which no reasonable investor could rely.” Therefore, even though the bank’s stock price fell sharply when evidence emerged that they were false, investors don’t have grounds to sue for their losses.
“This is just another example of corporate actors making statements to the market, and then trying to avoid liability for the representations they made,” says Darren Robbins, the San Diego lawyer bringing the shareholder suit.
If it sounds like a strange thing for a bank to say when it’s trying to present itself as a paragon of rectitude — in essence, “We can’t be sued because no one believed us anyway” — just wait. It gets stranger.
Wells Fargo says that even though the statements by its management fall within the legal definition of puffery, that doesn’t mean they’re untrue. “Wells Fargo stands behind the statements it made regarding its commitment to transparency and rebuilding trust with its customers,” the bank told me by email. “These statements were true then and remain so today.”
The lawsuit at issue concerns a scandal that erupted in public in July 2017, when it became known that for years Wells Fargo had been charging auto loan borrowers for unnecessary insurance on their vehicles. The lawsuit seeks class certification for all investors who bought the company’s stock from Nov. 3, 2016 — when Sloan announced at an investors conference that he was “not aware” of any undisclosed scandals in sales practices — through Aug. 3, 2018, the day before the bank formally disclosed the auto-loan issues in an earnings report.
The scam at the heart of this case was massively abusive, according to internal reports and assertions in a consumer lawsuit filed last week. Wells Fargo saddled roughly 600,000 auto loan borrowers — disproportionately lower-income customers — with insurance to cover the vehicles that collateralized the loans.
Many borrowers, however, already had insurance, so they didn’t need the additional coverage. Some didn’t even know they were being charged because Wells Fargo didn’t itemize the insurance fees on their loan statements.
When customers made monthly payments on their loans, according to the consumer lawsuit, Wells Fargo applied them in a way that pushed as many as 275,000 customers into delinquency, resulting in some 25,000 improper repossessions. The bank didn’t always fully or promptly refund the fees and late charges it owed the victimized customers, and didn’t always clean up credit reports that had been sullied by its illicit behavior. (...)
The shareholder lawsuit focuses on the efforts by Sloan and his fellow executives to conceal the auto-loan scandal from the public. While they were trying to clean up the splatter from the bank’s most prominent scandal, in which sales representatives secretly opened millions of accounts for consumers in order to meet punishing work quotas, the executives consistently stated that they were investigating high and low to make sure the bank was otherwise clean and would fully disclose anything they discovered.
“We want to leave no stone unturned,” Sloan told investment analysts during a conference call in January 2017. “If we find something that’s important, we’ll communicate that…. I think given our desire to be very transparent, we’ll probably err on the side of overcommunicating as opposed to undercommunicating.”
Yet by then, Sloan had received a report from the consulting firm Oliver Wyman that laid out the auto-loan scandal in great detail.
by Michael Hiltzik, LA Times | Read more:
Simply put, judges and regulators have ruled that when a business makes a claim that is either vague or so obviously inflated that people simply won’t believe it, that’s “puffery,” and not actionable in court.
Wells Fargo, which is struggling to rebuild its reputation for integrity after a string of scandals involving consumer rip-offs, is testing the limits of the “puffery” defense. In a legal filing last week aimed at getting a shareholder lawsuit dismissed, the company asserted that statements that the bank was working to “restore trust” among its customers and “trying to be more transparent” about its scandals — statements made by its chief executive, Tim Sloan — were, well, just puffery.
The filing says these were generic statements “on which no reasonable investor could rely.” Therefore, even though the bank’s stock price fell sharply when evidence emerged that they were false, investors don’t have grounds to sue for their losses.
“This is just another example of corporate actors making statements to the market, and then trying to avoid liability for the representations they made,” says Darren Robbins, the San Diego lawyer bringing the shareholder suit.
If it sounds like a strange thing for a bank to say when it’s trying to present itself as a paragon of rectitude — in essence, “We can’t be sued because no one believed us anyway” — just wait. It gets stranger.
Wells Fargo says that even though the statements by its management fall within the legal definition of puffery, that doesn’t mean they’re untrue. “Wells Fargo stands behind the statements it made regarding its commitment to transparency and rebuilding trust with its customers,” the bank told me by email. “These statements were true then and remain so today.”
The lawsuit at issue concerns a scandal that erupted in public in July 2017, when it became known that for years Wells Fargo had been charging auto loan borrowers for unnecessary insurance on their vehicles. The lawsuit seeks class certification for all investors who bought the company’s stock from Nov. 3, 2016 — when Sloan announced at an investors conference that he was “not aware” of any undisclosed scandals in sales practices — through Aug. 3, 2018, the day before the bank formally disclosed the auto-loan issues in an earnings report.
The scam at the heart of this case was massively abusive, according to internal reports and assertions in a consumer lawsuit filed last week. Wells Fargo saddled roughly 600,000 auto loan borrowers — disproportionately lower-income customers — with insurance to cover the vehicles that collateralized the loans.
Many borrowers, however, already had insurance, so they didn’t need the additional coverage. Some didn’t even know they were being charged because Wells Fargo didn’t itemize the insurance fees on their loan statements.
When customers made monthly payments on their loans, according to the consumer lawsuit, Wells Fargo applied them in a way that pushed as many as 275,000 customers into delinquency, resulting in some 25,000 improper repossessions. The bank didn’t always fully or promptly refund the fees and late charges it owed the victimized customers, and didn’t always clean up credit reports that had been sullied by its illicit behavior. (...)
The shareholder lawsuit focuses on the efforts by Sloan and his fellow executives to conceal the auto-loan scandal from the public. While they were trying to clean up the splatter from the bank’s most prominent scandal, in which sales representatives secretly opened millions of accounts for consumers in order to meet punishing work quotas, the executives consistently stated that they were investigating high and low to make sure the bank was otherwise clean and would fully disclose anything they discovered.
“We want to leave no stone unturned,” Sloan told investment analysts during a conference call in January 2017. “If we find something that’s important, we’ll communicate that…. I think given our desire to be very transparent, we’ll probably err on the side of overcommunicating as opposed to undercommunicating.”
Yet by then, Sloan had received a report from the consulting firm Oliver Wyman that laid out the auto-loan scandal in great detail.
by Michael Hiltzik, LA Times | Read more:
Image: The Big Lebowski
[ed. See also: Jury delivers $25.5 million 'statement' to Aetna to change its ways (CNN)]
[ed. See also: Jury delivers $25.5 million 'statement' to Aetna to change its ways (CNN)]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)