Business

No Image

Business January 6, 2017

A Detroit Urban Farm Preserves Black History In Jam Form

On the north side of Detroit, a community farm teamed up with a local arts and culture nonprofit to put its summer harvest to best use — while also honoring the legacy of the city’s black families. Their answer: Afro Jam, a line of preserves based on old family recipes. Martina Guzman for NPR hide caption

toggle caption

Martina Guzman for NPR

In the kitchen at Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, just north of downtown Detroit, Linda Carter and Shawnetta Hudson are in the final stages of making their newest jam creation: cranberry-apple preserves. Carter is meticulously wiping down tables while Hudson seals the lids on jars. Then comes the logo — a beautiful graphic of a black woman with afro hair made of strawberries. The kitchen is small and basic, but for the past year it has served as the hub of a community-based product called Afro Jam.

“The name Afro Jam and the logo are empowering, independent and strong,” Carter says. “That’s what we want our community to be.”

Carter, the food safety manager at the farm, recruited Hudson from the local community to help her keep up with making and selling the product. Strawberry, peach and blueberry are Afro Jam’s best sellers.

“Strawberry jam, that’s my thing,” says Hudson. “And when Linda and I work together, we’re on point at all times.”

Staying “on point” is a goal of Carter’s. The jam venture has to be profitable. So in the past year the small group of about a half-dozen women, rotating volunteers and three paid employees has made an aggressive push to sell the spreads at summer festivals and farmers markets.

Article continues after sponsorship

Afro-Jam is a product of One Mile, a neighborhood arts and culture organization, and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating healthy local food sources for the surrounding community. The farm is a project of Northend Christian Community Development Corporation — both are managed by Jerry Hebron. It has a vegetable garden and an apple orchard. Hebron also oversees a weekly farmers market in the summer.

Roughly 83 percent of Detroit’s population is black, an aftereffect of white flight that began in the 1950s. As the people left Detroit, so did the supermarkets — especially in poorer, blacker neighborhoods.

Fresh fruits and vegetables became much harder to come by for many city residents. As a result, gardens started popping up in Detroit, which currently has roughly 1,500 urban farms. Some are large and operate at an industrial scale; others are single lots that have been turned into vegetable gardens for a few families.

The idea for Afro Jam was born out of a need to generate revenue year round while also keeping the community involved, says Hebron. “The community is at the root of everything we do,” she says.

So Hebron began spreading the word at the farmers market: They wanted to start a new line of jams using old family recipes. Recipes for making preserves poured in – including some that had been handed down for generations.

Constance King, 67, heard the call and was excited to share her mother’s recipe with the folks from Afro Jam.

“My mother brought her jam recipe [from the South] with her — it belonged to her mother and to her mother’s mother,” King says. “I felt proud about being able to share that recipe. It’s a beautiful way of keeping my mother alive.”

A lifelong resident of Detroit, King loves the city’s rich African-American history. Making biscuits and jam, she says, was part of the Southern black experience – they’ve been a staple at the Southern supper table since at least the mid-18th century.

“This [growing fruits and vegetables] is a good idea, it’s something we can do with all of this empty land,” King says. “Our neighborhood used to be full of families — there was not a vacant block. There were hardware stores, delis and grocery stores. It was a Jewish/Black community.”

King’s family is originally from Georgia but moved to Detroit in the 1940s during the Great Migration, when millions of African-Americans left their homes in the rural South in search of better jobs and an escape from harsh segregationist laws.

Hebron says that among black Detroiters, the tradition of making homemade jams has largely fallen by the wayside in the modern era.

Oakland Avenue Urban Farms used heritage recipes from seven different families – unearthing them from hiding places in attics and long-forgotten recipe boxes.

In the fall of 2015, the ladies of the farm set out to make their first batch of jam. Some of the recipes they received took days to make and weren’t practical for production.

Carter and Hebron settled on strawberry jam as their first batch, which took several days and four people to make. “We bonded over making jam, laughing and sharing old family stories,” Hebron says.

“Gathering is what it’s all about,” Carter says. “There is nothing greater than bringing people together over food.”

Proceeds from the jam venture go to Northend Christian CDC, a nonprofit that’s aimed at revitalizing Detroit’s North End historic district, where One Mile and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm are based.

For Hebron, Carter and the rest of the women who make Afro Jam, this is a way to preserve the legacy of Detroit’s black families.

“It’s one of the most amazing projects I’ve ever worked on,” Hebron says.

Martina Guzman is a journalist based in Detroit. She’s currently the race and justice journalism fellow at the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

No Image

Business January 5, 2017

U.S. Likely To Become Net Exporter Of Energy, Says Federal Forecast

Workers move equipment at a natural gas well site near Burlington, Pa., in 2010. A federal report said Thursday natural gas production is on track to make the U.S. a net exporter of energy by about 2030. Ralph Wilson/AP hide caption

toggle caption

Ralph Wilson/AP

The U.S. could become a net exporter of energy in coming years, according to the federal government’s Annual Energy Outlook 2017. This continues a trend the Energy Information Administration has highlighted before in its annual report.

The EIA projects the country will continue to import oil through 2050, though at much lower levels than in the past. The main thing that will make the U.S. a net exporter of energy is natural gas.

Domestic natural gas production has risen by nearly 30 percent over the past decade, primarily because controversial technologies such as hydraulic fracturing have opened up new fields to drilling. Now companies are proposing and building natural gas export facilities around the country with the production boom expected to continue.

The EIA is quick to warn that there is a lot of uncertainty in projections like this. That’s why each year the agency considers a variety of factors and then develops multiple scenarios. It looks at things like production, demand, prices and technological advancements. Most of the agency’s seven scenarios show the country becoming a net exporter by 2030.

One scenario, in which crude oil prices rise sharply, projects the country would become a net energy exporter within just a few years. That’s unlikely to happen, though. The agency believes Brent crude oil prices this year will average around $51.66 a barrel — about half of what a barrel sold for in 2014.

Article continues after sponsorship

As part of its annual report the EIA also has projections for energy-related carbon emissions. EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski says emission levels will depend a lot on what happens with the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which is tied up in the courts now. Considering President-elect Donald Trump’s stated desire to boost the coal industry, he could choose to stop defending the plan.

“We see the highest emissions without the Clean Power Plan because we’ll continue to use more coal, and coal has more carbon dioxide than the other fossil fuels,” says Sieminski.

The report shows Americans are using energy more efficiently, and the agency projects that will continue. Despite a growing population and a growing economy, consumption is expected to be relatively flat through 2050.

The EIA believes gasoline will remain the dominant fuel for transportation in the U.S. for decades. Still, the number of electric vehicles is expected to increase from 1 percent of the cars on the road today to 6 percent in 2040. That may not seem fast enough growth if you’re an electric-car advocate, but consider that there are about 250 million cars in the U.S. now. Sieminski says, “There’s a lot of gasoline and diesel-powered cars on the road that are not going to be retired immediately.”

The fact that natural gas is replacing coal for electricity generation has been widely reported. The EIA data show more power comes from gas than coal now. And the agency projects that renewable forms of electricity, such as wind and solar, could overtake coal by 2030.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

No Image

Business January 4, 2017

Fires, Floods And Earthquakes: New Report Finds 2016 Was Particularly Disastrous

These houses in southwestern Haiti were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in October. Matthew was the most serious natural catastrophe in North America in 2016. Rebecca Blackwell/AP hide caption

toggle caption

Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Hurricane Matthew. The earthquake in Japan. Flooding in the Deep South, China and Europe. Wildfires in Canada.

Last year sometimes felt like one natural catastrophe after another. Now, new figures from reinsurer Munich Re suggest that it was indeed a particularly bad year.

Natural catastrophes caused the highest losses worldwide in the last four years, at $175 billion, Munich Re said. It recorded some 750 events globally, including “earthquakes, storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves.” The reinsurer added that about 30 percent of those losses were insured.

North America “experienced 160 loss events in 2016, the most since 1980,” the reinsurer added.

Globally, the costliest single event was the devastating earthquake on the Japanese island of Kyushu, at $31 billion. Here’s the breakdown of the five most costly disasters worldwide:

An infographic showing the five costliest natural catastrophes of 2016. Munich Re hide caption

toggle caption

Munich Re

In North America, the most devastating disaster was Hurricane Matthew, which killed hundreds of people, mostly in Haiti. The catastrophe caused some $10.2 billion in damage, Munich Re said.

Article continues after sponsorship

The report described an “exceptional” number of flood events, such as swollen rivers and flash floods. Such disasters made up 34 percent of all losses, compared with an average of 21 percent over the past 10 years.

2016’s high numbers point to the dangers of “unchecked climate change,” Peter Hoppe, head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research Unit, said in a statement. He explained:

“Of course, individual events themselves can never be attributed directly to climate change. But there are now many indications that certain events — such as persistent weather systems or storms bringing torrential rains – are more likely to occur in certain regions as a result of climate change.”

However, the new report does contain some good news: While 2016 had a high number of distinct events, it had a lower than average number of lives lost because of natural catastrophes.

“Some 8,700 lives were sadly lost as a result of natural catastrophes, far fewer than in 2015 (25,400) and also below the ten-year-average (60,600),” Munich Re says.

This article passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article: The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False.

No Image

Business January 3, 2017

For French Law On Right To 'Disconnect,' Much Support — And A Few Doubts

The new law was prompted by concerns over the intrusion of work into private lives. Carlina Teteris/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Carlina Teteris/Getty Images

Ah, to work in France: plenty of vacation and a 35-hour workweek. And, as of Jan. 1, a new law that gives French employees the right to disconnect. Companies in France are now required to stop encroaching on workers’ personal and family time with emails and calls.

The law was part of an overall labor bill that provoked months of street demonstrations and divided the country. The controversy was mostly over a single provision that made it easier for French companies to fire people. But nearly everyone supports the provision allowing workers to walk away from emails and ignore their smartphones when they’re out of the office.

French Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri commissioned a 2015 study that warned of the health impact of what she called “info-obesity.” It showed that more and more French people could not get away from work — even when they weren’t there.

Labor lawyer Patrick Thiebart argues that burnout and other health-related issues are on the rise because of an overload of digital demands on employees.

“If an employee receives emails during all their weekends and at night until 11 p.m., then I can assure you that at a certain point in time, it can negatively impact his health,” he says.

Article continues after sponsorship

French Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri commissioned a 2015 study that warned of the health impact of what she called “info-obesity.” It showed that more and more French people could not get away from the office, even when they weren’t there. Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images

The new law stipulates that companies with more than 50 workers must negotiate with employees and unions and agree on a policy to reduce the intrusion of work into private lives.

“Of course your boss shouldn’t send you emails on a Sunday when you’re at lunch, enjoying a leg of lamb and a good Bordeaux,” says Bernard Vivier, who runs the Higher Institute of Work, a think tank that focuses on the French workplace.

“It’s so French to throw a law at every kind of problem,” he says. But he doesn’t think a law can fix this one. Such ills must be changed by management and through new practices, he says.

It’s a complicated issue, notes Thiebart, the lawyer, because digital culture also offers employees freedom and flexibility.

“Everybody is happy with the smartphones and the new technology,” Thiebart says, “because employees can work at home and don’t have to spend time and money in commuting. And for companies, they can save money because they don’t need all the staff on the premises.”

Many large European companies and government departments already recognize the right of their employees to disconnect from work. Companies such as Volkswagen and Daimler, and French insurer Axa, have taken steps to restrict out-of-hours messaging — including Volkswagen’s limited email server connections on evenings and weekends.

Thiebart says that isn’t such a good idea, since many businesses operate across several time zones. But he says his clients, many of them large corporations, are not hostile to the new French law. They believe a lack of downtime decreases the productivity of their workforce.

At a Paris gym where people are working up a sweat after a day at the office, many are still attached to their devices. Jean Luc Bauché is lifting weights, wearing white earbuds connected to a smartphone in his pocket.

He says it’s a great idea to be able to disconnect. But he doesn’t think it’s possible.

“You can pass laws to protect people from dangers like speeding,” he says, “but this law won’t work because it’s counter to the way society is evolving.”

Bauché says he’s the only person he knows who turns his phone off at night when he sleeps.

“Most people don’t dare,” he says. “They’re afraid they’ll miss something.”

This article passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article: The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False.

No Image

Business January 2, 2017

Trump Organization Proceeds With Two Major Indonesia Projects

New York Times Washington correspondent Eric Lipton speaks with NPR’s Audie Cornish about how two projects in Indonesia could create conflicts of interest for him as he takes office.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Just last month, Donald Trump said that he would leave his businesses in the hands of his children. The president-elect announced on Twitter that there would be no new deals done during my terms in office. But the Trump organization has been moving forward with two projects in Indonesia, projects that put Trump into partnership with major political figures there. Eric Lipton writes about this in The New York Times. He joins us now via Skype. Welcome to the program.

ERIC LIPTON: Thank you.

CORNISH: So the deals you write about in Indonesia are for two resorts that will essentially, as I understand it, license the Trump name and be managed by Trump businesses. Who are these Indonesia business contacts?

LIPTON: The primary partner there is a billionaire media figure who is known by short name of Hary Tanoe and is building these projects in Bali and Lido in two prominent resort areas in Indonesia. And so there are resort developments with golf courses, and they will be branded as Trump buildings, and they will be managed by the Trump Organization.

CORNISH: Now, how close are these relationships, and why do they raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest?

LIPTON: In the case of a business partner who is going to be developing the hotels, he and the Trump family have become relatively close. There are many photographs of them with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump. He visited the Trump Towers. And they are side partners in this deal, and a deal which is already paying somewhere between $1 million and $10 million a year – that’s a big range but we don’t know the exact amount, it’s in the financial disclosure reports – to the Trump Organization. So they are going to be working quite closely because not only will the Trump name be on those towers, but the Trump Organization will be managing the properties.

CORNISH: Now, in what ways could this complicate the U.S. relationship with Indonesia? Is that the concern here?

LIPTON: Any time you have a president whose family is involved in international financial business arrangements, it creates at a minimum a question as to will those business relationships affect the president or his administration in terms of how they interact with that foreign country. And so simply having a business relationship with a prominent, you know, businessman in that country is an unusual and unprecedented thing in American history. On the surface there’s that, but then in this case it’s more complicated because his business partner in Indonesia has political ambitions himself. He ran for vice president unsuccessfully. And he’s talking already about possibly running for president of Indonesia. So this guy is a political figure as well as a business leader.

CORNISH: We’ve heard about how the Trump family has been dealing with their charitable foundations and projects. Can you talk about what action the Trump Organization has taken in the aftermath of the election? Have we actually seen fewer deals or deals dropped? What’s been going on?

LIPTON: There have been a number of deals that they are pulling out of or they’re terminating including in Argentina, in Brazil, in Azerbaijan, in the country of Georgia, and at least one project in India that they have told The New York Times in a series of interviews that they are no longer going to go ahead with. In some cases, for example, there’s a hotel in Rio that is already constructed that they’re going to remove the Trump name from. And there’s also a building in Azerbaijan that’s largely completed which that – will no longer have the Trump name, but it has not yet opened. And in those cases, they’re saying that the partners did not comply with the standards of the marketing and branding agreements, and so therefore they are terminating those.

So there are quite a number in different places around the world where they are pulling out of, and that will make their situation slightly less complicated. But there are still many others that will be on the books and continue to go forward while he’s president.

CORNISH: Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us.

LIPTON: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF M.O.O.N SONG “DUST”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

This article passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article: The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False.

No Image

Business January 1, 2017

Coal Miners Hope Trump Will Help Struggling Industry

Stricken by layoffs in the coal industry, Greene County, Pa., went for Donald Trump this election. Many think he will help the industry, despite disagreeing with some of Trump’s rhetoric.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The inauguration of President-Elect Donald Trump is just 19 days away, and coal miners nationwide are waiting to see if Mr. Trump keeps election promises he made of new jobs through reopened mines. Reid Frazier of The Allegheny Front spoke to coal miners who say they don’t expect miracles, but they do want results.

REID FRAZIER, BYLINE: It’s been over a year since the coal mine Dave Hathaway worked in closed. He spent most of 2016 sending out resumes, looking for work. The search gained urgency when his son Deacon was born in August.

DAVE HATHAWAY: I like when he gets milk drunk and just passes back out (laughter). Little coma.

FRAZIER: On Election Day, Hathaway made a choice he hopes will help his long-term job prospects.

HATHAWAY: I voted for Trump. I mean, a coal miner would be stupid not to.

FRAZIER: Hathaway has had a hard time finding a job to replace the $80,000 dollars he made in the coal mines under Greene County, Pa., a few miles from the West Virginia border. He just got hired at a nearby mine. He thinks the election of Donald Trump means he’ll have a better shot at keeping this job even though he didn’t really like a lot of the things Trump had to say during the campaign.

HATHAWAY: He is a wacko. He still – I mean, he’s never going to stop being a wacko. You know what I mean? But, I mean, the things that he did say, the good stuff, was good for the coal mining community. But we’ll see what happens.

FRAZIER: Trump won over coal country voters like Hathaway by promising to slash environmental regulations. That message clearly resonated in Greene County, where over the last four years a third of the coal mining jobs like Dave Hathaway’s disappeared. Trump won the county by 40 points eight years after Barack Obama basically tied John McCain here. Tom Crooks witnessed the decline in coal firsthand. He’s a vice president at R.G. Johnson, a construction firm that builds mine shafts.

TOM CROOKS: Two years ago this week we had 145 employees, and right now we have 22.

FRAZIER: Crooks doesn’t use the phrase war on coal, but he does think federal regulations mounted by Obama’s EPA have weighed down his industry. One example – the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. That rule, which Trump has pledged to eliminate, limits the amount of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants. Instead, Crooks wants to see more government research into making coal as clean as possible.

CROOKS: And really what’s happened over the last eight years is the smart people stopped working on coal, in part because of the way the federal government and the state governments looked at us. We just want them to start looking to coal as an option.

FRAZIER: Trump’s promise of bringing the coal industry back has attracted interest from at least one Democratic lawmaker in this corner of Pennsylvania. Pam Snyder is a state representative in Greene County. Snyder invited the president-elect to visit her district to tell coal miners his specific plan to help them, but she has yet to hear back from him. Snyder won’t say who she voted for, but she does think Trump can help the industry by rolling back environmental regulations.

PAM SNYDER: I care deeply about the environment. But there’s a social environment, too, that I have to care deeply about. And when a big chunk of my constituency is thrown into the unemployment lines, what about that social environment?

FRAZIER: Snyder acknowledges what many here know – there’s only so much Donald Trump can do to bring back coal. Probably the biggest factor in coal’s decline has been the low price of natural gas, some of it produced in gas wells right here in Greene County. Even though she doesn’t expect Trump to return coal to the position it once held here, at this point she’ll take a modest rebound over none at all. For NPR News, I’m Reid Frazier in Waynesburg, Pa.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

This article passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article: The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False.

No Image

Business December 31, 2016

Barbershop: 2016 Is Almost Over, But Was It Really The Worst?

NPR’s breaking news reporter Nate Rott, former political reporter Sam Sanders and senior business editor Marilyn Geewax talk about what happened in news during 2016.

MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Now it’s time for the Barbershop. That’s where we get a group of interesting folks together and ask what’s in the news and what’s on their minds. For our final Barbershop of 2016, we decided we wanted to talk about some of the biggest stories in the news in 2016, so we turn to our own folks for this.

In for a shape-up today as Nate Rott. He covers breaking news all over the country from his base at NPR West. Hi, Nate.

NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: Hey.

MARTIN: And here in Washington, D.C., is Sam Sanders, who was all over the country covering the 2016 elections.

SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: Hey there.

MARTIN: Hey. And also back with us – NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax. Marilyn, good to see you, too. Thank you for coming.

MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Hi, Michel. I’m glad to be here.

MARTIN: OK, so let’s start with the big question – at least the big question on social media. Was 2016 the worst ever (laughter)? It’s actually become its own meme on Twitter. People are posting pictures of things like burning dumpster fires and…

SANDERS: (Laughter).

MARTIN: …You know – and of course the many celebrities who’ve passed away. And you know what? One of my favorite comic strips actually had this as a storyline. One of the characters actually said, I just want 2016 to be over, to which I was, like…

SANDERS: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Really – “Judge Parker” – really?

(LAUGHTER)

MARTIN: So Sam, you wrote about this. So you know…

SANDERS: I wrote about 1,100 words on this very question…

MARTIN: Yeah. Tell me about this.

SANDERS: …Because I’m guilty of this, too. Like, for the last six months, I have been saying and tweeting, oh, my goodness – 2016 – this year is crazy. By some measures, it’s not that bad. And Marilyn can speak to this. But I wanted to ask the question, why is everyone going online, saying that this year is the worst?

MARTIN: Or maybe phrase it another way. Why is everyone online saying…

SANDERS: Yes.

ROTT: (Laughter).

MARTIN: …This is the worst year…

SANDERS: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Ever.

SANDERS: So I talked to…

MARTIN: So what did – yeah, tell me what you found out.

ROTT: I talked to a few smart thinkers, and I spoke with Nikki Usher at George Washington University, and she said we have experienced the kind of climax of what she calls ambient journalism. So when you consume media and social media and journalism on your smartphone, on your device, it’s always on you. It’s buzzing you. It’s in your face, and you’re constantly harassed by these negative headlines. And that makes things feel a lot worse than they really are.

And on top of that, this was a year where there was no part of the culture that offered something else. Usually pop culture is full of happy stories that get away from politics. But this year, think about it. Your favorite pop star probably endorsed a candidate for president. The NFL was taken over by silent protest. The biggest film of this year, “Captain America: Civil War,” was all about the modern security state. You just couldn’t escape this negativity. And I think that’s a part of it.

MARTIN: OK. Marilyn, what’s your take on this?

GEEWAX: I am just amazed at the impact that social media has had. When I think about where we were in December of 2008, that was bad. 2009, we had, like, 10 percent unemployment. Now it’s 4.6. We’ve been having low fuel prices, cheaper food. Inflation has been under control. Mortgages have been really cheap for the most part. Home prices are rising. There are five-and-a-half million job openings right now. Corporate profits are up. The stock prices are up. Someday there will be a meme called, 2016 – the good old days, you know?

(LAUGHTER)

SANDERS: Are you sure about that?

GEEWAX: You know, like, we’re going to look back on this and…

MARTIN: Well, here’s a…

GEEWAX: Say, wow…

MARTIN: Well, here’s the…

GEEWAX: …That was great.

MARTIN: But here’s the hard question. Is this part of it – is it the celebrity deaths in part, or is it the election…

GEEWAX: I think…

MARTIN: …Which was so ugly. I mean…

GEEWAX: Yeah. I – to me…

MARTIN: Is it partly that?

GEEWAX: You know, to me, it was just – the election – the whole energy of it was so negative – people tearing each other down, calling each other names. You know, just – gosh, it was really negative and nasty compared with – in 2008, there was more of a sense of, this actually is a bad year; we need to pull together and do the best we can.

MARTIN: Interesting. Nate, what do you think?

ROTT: You know, no, it wasn’t the years – worst year ever. I mean we could all hope that it’s the worst year ever because that means 2017, like – things are looking up, right? I tried taking a positive tact on this because I do think that, you know, you are what you eat, right?

So, like, I think if we look at all this negative news, you consume all this negative news, I mean, yeah, the world looks pretty bleak and terrible. So I was trying to pick my brain earlier and think of things that were really good this year.

And I think objectively, we can say it was a great year for sports. The Cubs won the World Series. They broke their curse. That was pretty exciting. LeBron James fulfilled his prophecy and brought a championship…

MARTIN: Yay.

SANDERS: Oh, OK.

ROTT: …to Cleveland. You don’t sound so excited, Sam.

SANDERS: I don’t.

(LAUGHTER)

GEEWAX: I loved it, said…

MARTIN: Sam, it’s OK.

GEEWAX: …The Buckeye.

SANDERS: (Laughter).

MARTIN: That’s all right.

ROTT: I am a unhealthy Denver Broncos fan, and we won the Super Bowl, so that’s really good. So I mean I think there were – everything’s relative, right? I think for some people, it was, yeah, a really, really, really bad year. For some people, it wasn’t so bad. And it’s important to remember that.

MARTIN: And for Trump supporters, it was a great year.

SANDERS: It was a great year.

MARTIN: I mean one of our guests – one of our earlier Barbershop guests earlier in the year was saying, look; now we get a chance to see our ideas in practice. But moving on from that, let’s just – all right, you know, we were looking at a lot of the lists that were together by lots of news organizations about, like, the biggest stories of 2016. And it was interesting, Nate, going back to your point, about kind of where you stand depends on where you sit…

ROTT: Right.

MARTIN: …Or what you focus on yourself. So let me just start with you on that. What’s your take on the biggest and most important story in 2016?

ROTT: Well, I mean it’s hard to argue that the election wasn’t the biggest story of 2016. I was trying to think of some stories that we’re going to think about in, like, 10 years, right? We’re going to look back and say, oh, 2016 – that happened.

And I think a story that didn’t get a ton of play, was kind of overwrought with all the other stuff during the election – but cannabis, marijuana – now 1 in 5 Americans live in a state where recreational pot is legal for adults. And people that I’ve talked to in the cannabis industry say it’s a game changer. It’s a turning point, a tipping point, whatever you want to call it there. And I do think that that is something that we are going to be talking about going forward.

One other thing that I know is not sexy – I’m stepping out on a limb here. But public lands, land-use issues are near and dear to my heart, and they’re a big thing out here in the West. And they don’t usually get that much attention because they just really aren’t that interesting. It’s kind of boring and complicated.

And people on the East Coast don’t really understand it as much just because public lands aren’t as big of an issue there, but they’ve been in the news a ton this year, and those are big things I think we need to talk about if you’re looking at this urban-rural divide and what what’s important to people in different parts of the country.

MARTIN: Interesting idea. Marilyn, you want to jump in on this? What’s your idea of the…

GEEWAX: Yeah.

MARTIN: What do you think is the biggest story of 2016?

GEEWAX: You know, what was a big story seemed…

MARTIN: And it could be something you covered. I mean don’t be modest.

GEEWAX: Well, it seemed small in a way, and yet it was a huge story. The Carrier plant where the people got laid off – it’s a good example of why things – negative news gets amplified. And I named all those things that were great about the economy. Stocks are up and this and that. There are all these good things that happened.

But when you watch that video that somebody made with the little handheld smartphone, you get this video of people being told their lives are being shattered. You’re going to lose your job, and the way that guy did it was so cold. It was like, and we’re going to move, and you’re going to lose your job and blah, blah, blah. And these people – you could just hear this gasp of people saying, oh, my God. You know, your life is about to fall apart, and this guy’s just rattling on.

So that ability to take something that was a relatively small story but amplified across social media made people feel like 2016 was a lot worse than it was. I think that Carrier story really had an impact on the election and an impact on how we thought about trade deals, how it helped kill off the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. Those – that story reverberated in interesting ways.

MARTIN: Sam, what about you?

SANDERS: Yeah, I mean I think the default for someone who covers politics like me would be to say the story of the year was the election or Donald Trump or Russia. But I want to peel back those top layers and argue that the real story of this year was America’s changing consumption of news and media…

MARTIN: Yeah.

SANDERS: …And how that is shaping everything that’s going on right now. It definitely shaped this election. I mean think about it. We have seen this new economy where people are consuming the news not from an NPR website or a Washington Post website but from their social media feeds. They are feed first, social media first.

We’ve seen the rise of fake news. We’ve seen the rise of fake interaction in spaces like Twitter with all these bots doing God knows what. And so we’ve seen people more plugged in and more free to access all this information. But all of this freedom seems to have made us more divided.

And my question going forward for the next year is, like, what do we as journalists do to fix that problem? We have to ask ourselves every day, are we helping (laughter) ’cause, like, that needs to be fixed, and I’m not sure how.

MARTIN: And that is not a bad question to ask.

SANDERS: (Laughter) No.

MARTIN: I mean if you start out every day saying, what can I do to be constructive…

SANDERS: Yeah.

MARTIN: That – that’s – to me, that’s not a bad way to start the day.

SANDERS: It’s not.

MARTIN: So…

SANDERS: I mean because we’ve spent this whole year with everyone kind of just yelling for a year.

MARTIN: Well, that kind of leads really nicely into my last question for just resolutions of – New Year’s resolutions – so corny, but we all do it. I mean we all make them. So I wanted to ask.

SANDERS: Yeah.

MARTIN: Do you have any? Do you want to start, Marilyn?

GEEWAX: Wow, resolution – I want to just seriously continue to focus on context for things that – ’cause I think that’s what’s missing in this social media environment where people see things. Some bad thing happens, and it gets really blown out of context. You know, that we don’t – we need to step back. We need to be able to, as journalists, as Americans, as citizens, as voters – to look a little bit, to calm down and look at the big picture. That’s just my goal as a journalist – is to keep things in proportion and to keep things level-headed.

MARTIN: Nate, what about you?

ROTT: Disconnect – I want to disconnect more. I know it’s a hard thing to do sometimes with our job, but I think the importance of just getting away from your Twitter feed and the whole just waterfall of information and news and this and that and just, yeah, hang out, take a deep breath, talk to somebody face-to-face – I think those are things that I’m going to try to do a lot more of in the next year.

MARTIN: Sam, I’m giving you the last word.

SANDERS: I’ve been preaching this for the last year or so on the Politics Podcast. I think people should talk politics more with people in their lives in a constructive way. But what I’ve been hearing since the election is listeners right now saying, who are all these people on this other side that voted for that person? Who are they? Where are they? And it’s like, that’s your cousin. That’s the kid you went to high school with. That’s the person that bags your groceries. You just haven’t talked to them, and you don’t know what they’re seeing and thinking and feeling.

And so I urge people to talk about politics more but to listen and to engage not to persuade or to win but to learn. And I think so much of what we’ve seen in the aftermath of this election is people not actually knowing what their neighbors are doing or what they’re like or what they’re thinking. And that should change. And we can do that by talking about things like politics constructively.

MARTIN: Wow, OK – some good advice. I have a lot to think about.

SANDERS: (Laughter).

MARTIN: So thank you, all. Thank you, all. That is Sam Sanders. Nate Rott – he joined us from NPR West – here in Washington, D.C., Sam Sanders and Marilyn Geewax. Sam, Marilyn, Nate, thank you all so much for joining…

SANDERS: Thank you.

ROTT: Thank you.

GEEWAX: Thank you.

MARTIN: …Us for our very last Barbershop of 2016. And happy New Year to everyone.

SANDERS: Happy New Year.

ROTT: Happy New Year.

GEEWAX: Happy New Year to you all, too.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

This article passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article: The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False.

No Image

Business December 30, 2016

For Whistleblowers, Repercussions Are Felt Beyond Wells Fargo

Former workers at Wells Fargo who resisted pressure to push banking products on customers who didn’t want them say the bank retaliated against them by docking their permanent record, sabotaging future job prospects.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

2016 saw one of the biggest banking scandals in U.S. history. Regulators say Wells Fargo opened as many as 2 million credit card and checking accounts in customers’ names without their approval. On top of that, former Wells Fargo workers tell NPR that the bank destroyed their careers after they tried to report wrongdoing. Capitol Hill is investigating. We should say, NPR receives financial support from Wells Fargo. NPR’s Chris Arnold has our story.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: It hasn’t been the happiest holiday season for a former Wells Fargo worker named David. After the bank fired him from his job at a branch in Florida last year, David’s been making half of what he used to. He can’t afford his rent anymore. So instead of wrapping up presents, David’s been packing up his belongings.

DAVID: It is a strain. I’m packing boxes, putting stuff in storage. And I’m moving a one-bedroom apartment into a storage unit and then moving into one room in a person’s house.

ARNOLD: Which is not where David wants to be at 54 years old and heading into the new year.

DAVID: On New Year’s Eve, I will be moving.

ARNOLD: Over the past few months, NPR has talked to former Wells Fargo workers in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Los Angeles and San Francisco. They all say that managers at the bank retaliated against them for calling the company’s ethics line and pushing back against intense sales pressure to sign customers up for multiple credit cards and checking accounts.

DAVID: There’s no need to have all those accounts, especially when they’re charging you fees.

ARNOLD: So David says he refused to do it. It wasn’t fair to customers. After a heated argument with one manager about all this, David says he’d had enough.

DAVID: I contacted the ethics hotline. I contacted the HR department.

ARNOLD: It was after that that David was fired. And Wells Fargo wrote negative comments on what’s called his U5 document. It’s like a report card for bankers and brokers. David thinks the real reason he was fired – retribution because he resisted the sales pressure and reported coworkers who broke the rules. But David says with these comments on his U5 report card…

DAVID: I cannot get a job working at a bank anymore. I had to declare bankruptcy because, you know, currently I’m working for minimum wage. And my career is over thanks to Wells Fargo.

ARNOLD: David only wants to use his first name for fear of damaging his job prospects even more. NPR has reported on other workers who describe much the same thing. And these stories have lawmakers in Washington now demanding answers from Wells Fargo. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren…

ELIZABETH WARREN: We heard the reports on NPR about former Wells employees, and that’s what got us interested. And so we started looking at the U5 and digging and finding more and more evidence of a big problem at Wells.

ARNOLD: Warren and two other senators sent a letter asking for answers from Wells Fargo about whether the bank retaliated against whistleblowers. And Warren is asking more broadly whether this U5 report card system is fair to workers.

The system is run by an industry group called FINRA. That’s the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. On the one hand, if a worker takes advantage of customers, the system is effective at labeling the worker as a bad apple. But if a worker gets unfairly maligned by the bank or a manager, workers say it’s almost impossible to get their records corrected. So their careers can be unfairly destroyed. Elizabeth Warren…

WARREN: The Wells Fargo scandal exposes how vulnerable bank employees are under the current system. I hope that we’re going to see some changes come out of this.

ARNOLD: FINRA itself has launched an inquiry into Wells Fargo workers’ U5s. And Warren and a larger group of lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee just a few days before Christmas expressed frustration in a letter over the banks, quote, “slow and incomplete responses to a broader set of questions.” And they’re now demanding more answers.

WARREN: This isn’t over yet.

ARNOLD: Wells Fargo has told NPR in a statement that it’s, quote, “disturbing to hear claims of retaliation against team members who contacted the ethics line.” The bank says it’s investigating. The bank also says it now has a team to assist former employees who’d like to be rehired. Employees can email corporateer@wellsfargo.com.

After David relocates to his new rented room in January, he says he’s very interested in getting his job back, and he says he desperately wants to get these damaging remarks off his record. Chris Arnold, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALEX BLEEKER AND THE FREAKS SONG, “SPRING JAM”)

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

This article passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article: The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False.

No Image

Business December 29, 2016

From 'No Way,' To Global Success: The Inspired Journey Of GM's Design Chief

Ed Welburn, vice president of General Motors Global Design, stands with the Buick Riviera concept as it makes its North American debut at the North American International Auto Show in 2008 in Detroit. John F. Martin/Courtesy of General Motors hide caption

toggle caption

John F. Martin/Courtesy of General Motors

Car designers are a type. They stand out from the engineers, accountants and lawyers that populate the car business. By all accounts, Ed Welburn, General Motors’ first global head of design, is quiet, focused and congenial. This year, he retired after 44 years at GM.

“These are oversized individuals,” says Bill Pretzer, a curator with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He’s referring to famed auto designers like Chuck Jordan or Harley Earl. “They have huge personalities and are in many ways grandiose, and Ed is exactly the opposite,” Pretzer adds.

Welburn’s passion for cars started early. He didn’t come out of the womb thinking about cars, but by age 3 he was drawing them.

And before he could properly tie his shoes, he was fixing bikes in the backyard. In 1959, when he was 8, Welburn’s parents took him to the Philadelphia Auto Show and changed his life.

When Ed Welburn saw a 1959 Cadillac Cyclone concept — think rocket ship on wheels — at an auto show in Philadelphia as an 8-year-old, he knew he wanted to design cars. Courtesy of General Motors hide caption

toggle caption

Courtesy of General Motors

“I saw that car, and that car took me from being crazy about cars to this is it — this is what I wanna do,” Welburn says. That car was the Cadillac Cyclone, a concept car. Chuck Jordan, the famed promoter of the fin at Cadillac, was just arriving on the scene. When you look at the Cyclone now, it’s easy to understand how it would have captured a young boy’s imagination: It’s a rocket ship on wheels.

It wasn’t just that Welburn wanted to design cars. He wanted to design crazy new-age cars like the Cyclone. “It was an emotional connection,” he says. “And that’s what I strive for in every design that we develop. … That car connected with me,” he says wistfully, sitting in GM’s Burbank design studio, one of 10 around the globe that Welburn led for more than a decade.

Article continues after sponsorship

“It was through car magazines that I found out where that car came from,” he says. At age 11, Welburn wrote a letter to GM Design. “I want to be a car designer when I grow up. What courses should I take? What do I need to do?” he wrote.

GM wrote back! The head of personnel sent the young man brochures to the top design schools. The automaker knew he was 11, but it seemed to take him seriously.

When he was in high school, still obsessed with cars and designing them, Welburn began to apply to design schools. But his youthful enthusiasm soon met the reality of being an ambitious smart black man in the 1960s.

“You make it through the first wave because your grade-point average was excellent and then you present your portfolio,” he says. “Design school after design school that was on that list from GM rejected me. And that was this big shock to my system.”

It’s important to understand that getting into a car design program is a direct pipeline to designing cars. Students are recruited in their freshman year. An internship with a car company often turns into a job.

Bill Pretzer with the Smithsonian says that Welburn’s family was in many ways typical of their time, determined to move up the economic ladder. “There’s a phrase in many African-American communities called ‘making a way out of no way.’ … If confronted with obstacles you still find a way. And this was a family that consistently found a way to make a way out of no way.”

The Welburn family’s way was through Howard University. Welburn was accepted into the art school at the historically black college at a powerful moment at Howard and in the country. He was a sculpture student studying under the great Harlem renaissance painter Lois Jones.

The university already had a design program and a sculpture program. It created a car design curriculum for Welburn from within the art school. He says his unconventional school would become a benefit.

“You could hear Roberta Flack in the music studio studying. You go down the hall … and there’s Debbie Allen, Phylicia Rashad there studying. We were all students together. That was an incredible environment in which to grow,” he says. It was that environment in art school that burnished his skills as an artist and placed him firmly in the black art world.

Eventually, Welburn would get an internship in GM’s sculpture studio. It was a summer program and by then he was hooked. Welburn says he learned as much in those 10 weeks on the job as he would in two years in the classroom At the end of that summer, Welburn says he heard from his boss: “He said, ‘You just go back, finish your senior year at Howard. We wanna hire you.’ “

So Welburn went back, finished his senior year and turned the internship into a career that would last 44 years and make him the highest ranking African-American in the history of the auto industry. His first project was to design the tail lamp for the Pontiac Grand Ville.

Ed Welburn was an intern at General Motors Design in 1971. He began his GM career the following year as an associate designer assigned to the Advanced Design Studios. Courtesy of General Motors hide caption

toggle caption

Courtesy of General Motors

“The guy has impeccable design sense and judgement,” says Stewart Reed, a renowned car designer and chairman of Art Center Transportation Design. He says you can tell a Welburn design: “You know when it comes to seeing a car’s posture and proportion, and then right down to the details that support the overall character of the car.”

Welburn says it was during those early years that he came up with his chief principle — that design and engineer should be one. He came up with his philosophy:

  1. You have got to have a very clear vision of what you’re doing.
  2. You have to have great collaboration across the company in what you’re doing.
  3. There must be a collaboration between design and engineering.
  4. Most importantly: “I don’t design the cars for me. … You design it for your customers. You’ve got to listen to them, spend time with them.”

It was that kind of thinking that led Welburn to hit after hit in the car world.

In 1996, Ed Welburn began a two-year assignment at Saturn. That led to an assignment in Germany, where he worked on future GM global design programs. Courtesy of General Motors hide caption

toggle caption

Courtesy of General Motors

He led the design team at Saturn. He was instrumental in designing or redesigning vehicles such as the Volt, the Hummer, the Escalade, the Corvette and many others.

Reed says Welburn’s job and his impact is less about picking this fin or that color. He likens Welburn to the great conductors. He set a standard and allowed his designers freedom, Reed says.

“The guy that you want responsible for the orchestra should be an artist, a musician,” Reed says. “And maybe they’re not good at every instrument. Maybe they’re a pianist or something, but they have a sense of how all these talents work together for a result.”

Reed says that because of the dignity and the skill with which Welburn worked in the corporate environment, “he has placed design on a much higher plane. It’s respected more. Designers at GM are doing well. They’re respected, they’re getting great results. They’re supported by the rest of the corporation because of leadership.” All that, Reed says, is still somewhat unusual in the car business.

Glenda Gill is an automotive consultant, who spent years as a consultant and lobbied the industry for more diversity. She was executive director of the Rainbow PUSH Automotive Project.

“We always state about being twice as good. Just know that [Welburn] was three times as good in his industry, and well respected, and was a mentor to many,” she says. As the head of design, Gill says, Welburn reshaped car design but was also a beacon for African-Americans throughout the industry.

More importantly, she says, by his example he taught the car business a lesson. She says somebody decide to take a chance on him, “and guess what? They won.” She says Welburn is the embodiment of what diversity can bring to a company: “He’s great, he’s passed every test, we’re going to [pick] him based upon his merit and see what he does, and he did it.”

This article passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article: The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False.

No Image

Business December 28, 2016

Trump Reverses Obama Criticism, Touts New Jobs In Brief Remarks

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. Evan Vucci/AP hide caption

toggle caption

Evan Vucci/AP

President-elect Donald Trump and @realDonaldTrump are contradicting each other.

Wednesday afternoon, Trump emerged from his Mar-a-Lago resort to tell reporters that he and President Obama had spoken on the phone and had “a very nice conversation.”

“I appreciate that he called me,” Trump said.

The comment came hours after Trump blasted Obama on Twitter.

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition – NOT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

But asked by reporters Wednesday afternoon how that transition was going, Trump said, “I think very, very smoothly. Very good. You don’t think so?” (A “not” was not forthcoming in real life.)

The Obama tiff — or non-tiff, depending on which Trump you listen to — is the latest sign of a disparity between Trump’s public statements and his social media statements.

There’s long been a serious personal rift between the two, but with Trump set to take the oath of office in less than a month, the stakes are higher. Presidents’ words move markets and can create global tension.

Take Trump’s recent tweet about nuclear weapons, which quickly ricocheted around the world despite Trump aides’ efforts to minimize the importance of the statement.

On Wednesday Trump also highlighted a Japanese tech mogul’s plans to create 8,000 new jobs in the U.S.

Article continues after sponsorship

Trump had previously appeared with Masayoshi Son at Trump Tower, to announce Son’s promise to invest $50 billion in the U.S. and create 50,000 new jobs.

Wednesday, Trump offered what appeared to be more specifics as part of that plan: 5,000 jobs that Sprint will bring back into the U.S. from overseas. Son’s company, SoftBank, owns about 80 percent of Sprint.

“They’re taking them from other countries. They’re bringing them back to the United States,” Trump said.

In a statement on its website, Sprint said it “anticipates these jobs will support a variety of functions across the organization, including its customer care and sales teams.” But the jobs aren’t finalized yet — the company said it will “begin discussions immediately with its business partners” and aims to fill the positions by the end of the 2017 fiscal year.

“We are excited to work with President-Elect Trump and his Administration to do our part to drive economic growth and create jobs in the U.S.,” Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said in the statement. “We believe it is critical for business and government to partner together to create more job opportunities in the U.S. and ensure prosperity for all Americans.”

The additional 3,000 jobs come from a $1 billion SoftBank investment in OneWeb, a Virginia company that will set up a factory in Florida to manufacture satellites to provide broadband Internet access.

Trump said the jobs are being created “because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope” around his election. He had previously taken credit for the Carrier Corp.’s keeping hundreds of jobs in Indiana — which came with tax concessions from the state where Trump’s incoming vice president, Mike Pence, currently serves as governor.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)