Why Are So Many Farmers Markets Failing? Because The Market Is Saturated
Nationwide, there are too few farmers to populate market stalls and too few customers filling their canvas bags with fresh produce at each market.
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Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images
When the Nipomo Certified Farmers’ Market started in 2005, shoppers were eager to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as pastured meats and eggs, directly from farmers in central California.
But the market was small — an average of 16 vendors set up tables every Sunday — making it harder for farmers to sell enough produce to make attending worthwhile.
“The market in Santa Maria is 7 miles in one direction [from Nipomo], and the market in Arroyo Grande is 7 miles in the other direction. Both are bigger markets, so shoppers often went to those markets instead,” explains market manager and farmer Glenn Johnson.
The decision to host the market on Sundays also proved detrimental. Many of the farmers participated in six or more additional markets each week and wanted Sundays to rest, says Johnson.
In 2018, with attendance down and just five vendors signed on to sell produce, organizers of the Nipomo Certified Farmers’ Market decided to shut down the event at the end of last season.
Nationwide, the number of farmers markets increased from 2,000 in 1994 to more than 8,600 in 2019, which led to a major problem: There are too few farmers to populate the market stalls and too few customers filling their canvas bags with fresh produce at each market. Reports of farmers markets closing have affected communities from Norco, Calif., to Reno, Nev., to Allouez, Wis.
Markets in big cities are hurting too. The Copley Square Farmers Market in Boston reported a 50 percent drop in attendance in 2017. In Oregon, where 62 new markets opened but 32 closed, the researchers of one multiyear study concluded, “The increasing popularity of the markets is in direct contrast with their surprisingly high failure rate.”
Diane Eggert, executive director of the Farmers Market Federation of NY, received numerous reports of closings; she believes the problem is one of pure mathematics.
“There are way too many markets,” she says. “The markets have started cannibalizing both customers and farmers from other markets to keep going.”
Eggert also points to myriad other options that consumers have for accessing fresh foods, including community-supported agriculture and home delivery options from companies such as Amazon, Instacart or Blue Apron that might be more convenient than shopping at a Saturday morning market.
The farmers market in downtown Manteno, Ill., couldn’t compete with larger markets, according to Sarah Marion, president and CEO of the Manteno Chamber of Commerce.
Organizers kept the market going for more than a decade. In 2014, when the number of farmers and customers began to decline, the Chamber of Commerce changed the market’s location and switched from Thursday to Tuesday evenings in hopes of reviving the market. Its efforts failed, and Manteno hosted its last market in the summer of 2018.
“At the end, we had two farm vendors, and the customers would tell us, ‘There are only two farm vendors, so we stopped coming,’ ” Marion recalls.
Like other market managers, Marion cites fierce competition among local farmers markets.
Just 10 miles south of Manteno, the Kankakee Farmers’ Market is still going strong. Peggy Mayer, executive director of the Kankakee Development Corporation, believes the success is due in part to the longevity of the market.
“Some farmers aren’t willing to take a chance on a new market,” Mayer says. “Our market has been around for 25 years; we have a track record in the community. This is a market where [farmers] know they’re going to sell out.”
The market, which is held on Saturday mornings from May through October, attracts up to 50 vendors each week. Many of the farmers have tried participating in other markets, but most aren’t producing enough food to serve multiple locations, according to Mayer.
Marion believes that customers are drawn to bigger markets for more variety and one-stop shopping (and farmers benefit from selling all of their harvest through one large market). Still, smaller markets continue popping up, often in close proximity to other smaller markets.
Eggert says that communities, often hyperfocused on improving access to fresh, locally grown foods and caught up in the excitement of a new neighborhood amenity, fail to think through the logistics: There are too few farmers and too few customers to make multiple markets viable. Rather than packing up their tents, smaller struggling markets could combine forces with each other to create a single, stronger farmers market.
Before setting up farmers markets in every available park, public square and church parking lot, Eggert encourages would-be organizers to consider if the demand for fresh foods is being met through existing markets and whether it makes sense to partner with a neighboring community to establish a market.
“Farmers markets are a key source of local food, but we’d like to see communities working together,” says Eggert. “If five communities partnered on one market instead of starting five different markets, that one market would be a more exciting venue for customers and a more profitable market for farmers. We don’t need more markets — we need stronger and more viable markets.”
Jodi Helmer is a North Carolina journalist and beekeeper who frequently writes about food and farming.
With Planes Grounded, Boeing Considers Its Next Steps
The FAA has ordered airlines to stop flying certain Boeing models after two crashes. Boeing is still making the planes but they’re not going to customers and a bottleneck may be brewing.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Boeing’s 737 Max 8 and Max 9 planes were grounded this week. The company continues to manufacture them, but the planes are not going to airlines. And Boeing remains in limbo as the company figures out its next steps. NPR’s Daniella Cheslow reports.
DANIELLA CHESLOW, BYLINE: Boeing gets nearly a third of its sales from the 737 Max. But now, those planes are grounded, and it’s threatening Boeing’s financial future. Jon Ostrower is a veteran aviation reporter and editor of the site The Air Current.
JON OSTROWER: This is Boeing’s cash cow. The enterprise cannot survive without the 737. It needs this program to be successful.
CHESLOW: The 737 Max is the fastest-selling plane in Boeing’s history. It’s a fuel-efficient, single-aisle plane that competes directly with a similar model made by Europe’s Airbus. And Boeing has more than 5,000 orders of them. Boeing will continue to make the planes at a rate of 52 a month out of a plant in Renton, Wash. But the manufacturer is pausing delivery of the planes to airlines. It will have to find a place to store these planes and deal with a financial hit. Ostrower says Boeing has some insulation. Airlines usually pay about 40 percent of the cost of the plane upfront before delivery.
OSTROWER: That goes to pay for parts, labor, all through the supply chain everything Boeing buys to put, you know, the quarter-million parts in a 737 together.
CHESLOW: That buys Boeing some breathing room, and it keeps business flowing to all the companies making its components. But it can’t go on forever.
OSTROWER: There’s a time limit on that. How long can that be sustainable without essentially that remaining 60 percent?
CHESLOW: Aerospace analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu at Jefferies investment bank says Boeing’s fix will likely include additional pilot training and a software update. She told CNBC it will cause a two-month delay at $500 million a month.
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SHEILA KAHYAOGLU: So a billion dollars in total would be pushed out to next year. It might be hard to make up.
CHESLOW: For perspective, last year Boeing’s revenue topped $100 billion. It can absorb a fair amount of losses, but there are other costs. Airlines can demand reimbursement for grounded planes. Families of victims will likely sue Boeing. Erik Bernstein, a crisis management expert, says Boeing has fumbled this moment. After two crashes in five months, he says the company should have taken the initiative to ground its own planes.
ERIK BERNSTEIN: Boeing instead said it’s not an issue, it’s not an issue. And then that’s been contradicted immediately by governments around the world who say, oh, yes it is.
CHESLOW: Boeing didn’t reply to an NPR request for comment about that. In the U.S. government, lawmakers are taking a closer look at the nation’s top exporter. The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on aviation safety. Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio chairs the House Transportation Committee. He says he will conduct a, quote, “rigorous investigation” into how the Federal Aviation Administration decided to certify the plane to fly. Daniella Cheslow, NPR News, Washington.
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'Tampon Tax' Repeal Benefits Women But Comes At A Cost To States
Most U.S. states have a sales tax on menstrual products. But some states have repealed the tax on the grounds that it’s unfair to women. But the repeals come at a cost to consumers and state revenues.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Those of you who don’t have to buy tampons may not know that in many states, you pay a sales tax on menstrual products. Several states, though, have either eliminated that tax or are considering doing so. Stacey Vanek Smith and Constanza Gallardo from Planet Money’s The Indicator have been adding up the costs of the so-called tampon tax.
STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Sales tax – most people in this country pay sales tax on most of the things they buy. It’s a big source of state revenue. Some items like food or water that are seen as, like, necessary to survival are not subject to this tax.
CONSTANZA GALLARDO, BYLINE: Prescription and nonprescription drugs are also exempt – medicines like aspirin, DayQuil or Viagra – also medical equipment and supplies, which can be things like ChapStick or gauze.
VANEK SMITH: But tampons, pads, cups and all of the menstrual hygiene products do not fall into the medical supply category in many states. And a lot of people argue that’s not fair.
GALLARDO: Zoe Salzman is one of the lawyers that filed a lawsuit in New York to eliminate the sales tax on menstrual products back in 2016. Salzman and her team argued these products are a medical supply, and they should be tax-exempt.
ZOE SALZMAN: And one example the department of tax gave was things like bandages, gauze and dressings. And so those are items that are used to staunch the flow of blood from the human body. And tampons and pads, as well as cups and panty liners – those are used to staunch the flow of blood from the uterus. So again, clearly, you know, these items have to fit within that definition.
VANEK SMITH: Zoe made her case, and the New York Legislature took notice and, in fact, passed a bill back in 2016 to exempt feminine products in New York from sales tax. So that extra cost here in New York – we do not pay it anymore.
GALLARDO: Yeah. But many other women in other states do pay it. And over time, that cost adds up. And a study published this year by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that 2 out of 3 low-income women in the U.S. couldn’t afford mental products at least once a year. And nearly half of them struggled to buy both food and menstrual hygiene products over the last year. In fact, there’s economic research that the tax break on tampons really benefits low-income people. That’s based on consumer data after New Jersey’s tampon tax was repealed back in 2005. Research showed that by eliminating the tax, it made products cheaper and more accessible to lower-income women.
VANEK SMITH: But some people say the tampon tax needs to stay.
NICOLE KAEDING: When you start moving into this world of exemptions, you start adding complexity because you have to define what is and is not a qualified good under the exemption.
VANEK SMITH: Nicole Kaeding is with the Tax Foundation, a think tank that studies tax policy. She says sales tax exemptions can be problematic because they can mean that states don’t have enough money to fund public policies or programs, and as a result, states may have to increase other types of taxes to get that funding back.
GALLARDO: Back in 2016, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that planned to eliminate the state’s tampon tax. He argued that by not taxing menstrual products, California could lose up to $20 million in annual taxes.
VANEK SMITH: And the governor has a point. Here in New York, where we eliminated the tax on menstrual products, we’re losing about $14 million a year in lost tax revenue. Of course, this isn’t just an economic issue. It’s a political issue, too. Last year, for example, Nevada voted to make menstrual products tax-exempt.
GALLARDO: And this year, Michigan, Georgia, Ohio and California are pushing for legislation to repeal the tampon tax.
VANEK SMITH: Stacey Vanek Smith.
GALLARDO: Constanza Gallardo, NPR News.
Copyright © 2019 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.
The Evolution Of Antitrust Laws In America
With presidential candidates talking about breaking up big companies, NPR’s Planet Money looks at the origins of America’s antitrust laws.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
When Senator Elizabeth Warren called for the breakup of some big tech companies last week, our Planet Money team sprang into action. They have been studying the evolution of antitrust law in America. One of the most important antitrust cases in this country started with a teenage girl who grew up to take on one of the richest men on Earth. Julia Simon reports.
JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: One hundred and fifty years ago, Titusville, Pa., was a booming oil town – lots of nice houses, including this wood house with a glass tower where a teenage girl used to look down on the horses and wagons carrying oil. Her name was Ida Tarbell. Tarbell became a journalist. And biographer Kathleen Brady explains that around 1900, Tarbell was hanging out with her editor, thinking about story ideas.
KATHLEEN BRADY: They decided to take up the trust, the question of the trust, which they regarded as the question of the age.
SIMON: Trusts were a bunch of smaller companies legally stitched together, and they were everywhere. There was a sugar trust, a meat trust, a rope trust. Tarbell knew one trust particularly well.
BRADY: And Ida was saying, well, it’s got to be something like what happened in the oil industry.
SIMON: Her own recollections.
BRADY: Her own recollection of the oil industry.
SIMON: Tarbell’s editor was like, yes, you will write about one of the biggest trusts around – Standard Oil. And you will profile the head of it, one of the richest men in the world – John D. Rockefeller. At this point, Rockefeller controlled at least 90 percent of oil refining in America.
BRADY: And Ida thought, piece of cake because there are all these court records.
SIMON: She thought she’d just find the records from some Standard Oil cases and use that for her writing, but that’s not what happened. The records had disappeared.
BRADY: Standard Oil had bought up all the copies of this man.
SIMON: Oh, man. Had they burned them or, like, just kept them?
BRADY: I don’t know what they did with them, but they – I would assume they did. They didn’t want them in circulation.
SIMON: But she finally finds this record that she thought had been destroyed that helps her understand how Rockefeller conquered the oil industry. Rockefeller got big enough that he had gone to the railroads and said I ship a lot of oil, if you want my business, I want a discount. But let’s make this look like I get the same rate as everybody else, then give me money back later.
And also he said I’m not so crazy about you carrying my competitors’ oil. I’ll let you do it, but every time, you need to pay me too. These were bombshell details. It meant Standard Oil had a secret, possibly unfair advantage over its competition. Rockefeller would say to rival refineries, you can either join me or you have to compete with me. And if you do that, I will crush you. Tarbell started publishing her stories.
Everybody’s reading this around America.
BRADY: Everybody’s reading it. Everybody’s reading this around America. It was an enormous success.
SIMON: So successful that it reached the desk of President Theodore Roosevelt. The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Standard Oil, and in 1910, they ended up before the Supreme Court. It was an important test of this law called the Sherman Antitrust Act that had been around but that people hadn’t used that much because it was so broad and confusing.
The Sherman Antitrust Act said trusts that were in restraint of trade were illegal, but until this point, the country hadn’t worked out exactly what restraint of trade meant. The justice said, well, some of the things that Ida Tarbell uncovered like making secret deals with the railroads that force your competitors out of business, that’s restraint of trade. The Supreme Court ordered the breakup of Standard Oil into 34 companies.
Today, antitrust types are talking about Ida Tarbell again. This time, it’s not big oil, it’s big tech. But they’re asking the same question – if, yet again, it’s time for another big company breakup. Julia Simon, NPR News.
Copyright © 2019 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.
For Boeing, Costs Of Grounding Jets Have Only Just Begun
A Norwegian Air Boeing 737 Max 8 is parked on the tarmac at Helsinki Airport on Wednesday after the airplane model was grounded in most of the world.
Lehtikuva/Heikki Saukkomaa/Reuters
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Lehtikuva/Heikki Saukkomaa/Reuters
With its fastest-selling plane grounded in the U.S. and around the world, Boeing faces potential hits to its bottom line as well as to its reputation. A lengthy delay could cut Boeing’s revenues by billions, some analysts say.
On Wednesday, the United States followed Europe, China and other countries in grounding the Boeing 737 Max airplane after a plane crash in Ethiopia last weekend killed all 157 people on board.
Investigators are still working to determine exactly what went wrong, but this was the second 737 Max 8 to crash in nearly five months — a Lion Air crash killed 189 people off the coast of Indonesia in October. And there are similarities between the crashes which prompted the planes to be grounded.
From rebookings to refunds, from jetliner parking to pay for idled flight crews, plane groundings are pricey.
About 370 of the jets are grounded around the world.
“This is costing millions of dollars per day,” says Phil Seymour, who runs an aviation consultancy called IBA.
And it’s not just the airlines on the hook. Boeing may have to pay up, too.
“Typically, once an airline takes the aircraft, Boeing makes some guarantees in terms of the performance of that aircraft, and one of them is that the aircraft should be airworthy,” says Chris Higgins, an analyst at Morningstar.
And if it’s not, airlines will demand compensation.
Norwegian Air CEO Bjorn Kjos said his company, for one, plans to do so. “We will send this bill to those who produce this aircraft,” he said.
“I would like to apologize to those customers who have been affected by the temporary grounding of our 737 MAX aircraft. Our customers are our main priority now,” says Norwegian’s CEO Bjørn Kjos. #flynorwegian pic.twitter.com/xZLmKTIa0A
— Norwegian (@Fly_Norwegian) March 13, 2019
And Seymour says it’s important that Boeing keep those airlines happy: They’re repeat customers, after all.
It’s unclear how much those payments will be. But there are clues from the last time the FAA grounded an airplane in the U.S. — in 2013, when the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had a problem with lithium-ion batteries catching fire.
“Boeing had to pay out airline compensation for that grounding,” Higgins says. “They never disclosed how much it was, but guesstimates at the time put it around $500 million.”
And that was with a much smaller fleet of airplanes affected.
There’s another way the 737 Max groundings could hurt Boeing. The company has a lot of future deliveries lined up and airlines might refuse or delay those deliveries. Boeing says it has received more than 5,000 orders for the fuel-efficient plane from more than 100 customers worldwide.
Analysts at Jefferies estimated as the groundings began on Monday that a two-month halt in deliveries could cost Boeing $5 billion in revenue.
Boeing can afford to take a hit. Last year its revenue topped $100 billion and it has been raking in profits.
But Higgins notes there’s more at stake.
“A worst-case scenario, if you see deliveries kind of level out, there’s a lot of implications beyond Boeing,” he says.
Boeing makes planes, but other companies make the engines, the seats, the landing gear and fuselage.
“Seventy percent, 80 percent of most aircraft that’s done by the supply chain, not by Boeing,” Higgins says. “There are thousands and thousands of jobs and hundreds of companies that are supplying into Boeing’s final assembly lines.”
The ripple effects of the groundings could hurt Boeing’s suppliers across the U.S. and around the world.
Dozens Of Countries Ground Boeing's 737 Max 8 Following Deadly Crash In Ethiopia
Members of the ground crew chat near a Boeing 737 Max 8 plane operated by Shanghai Airlines and parked on the tarmac at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport in China. On Monday, the Civil Aviation Administration of China ordered all the country’s airlines to ground their Boeing 737 Max 8 planes after Sunday’s fatal crash of the same model plane in Ethiopia.
AP
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AP
Airline regulators across the globe are grounding Boeing 737 Max 8 planes, joining an ever expanding list of countries banning the plane from their airspace. This comes in the wake of Sunday’s deadly plane crash in Ethiopia that killed all 157 people on board. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
The latest move came Tuesday from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) when it announced a suspension of two Boeing 737 Max models in all flights in the European bloc.
The wave of bans follows the Civil Aviation Administration of China’s decision on Monday to order the country’s airlines to suspend all commercial operations of their Boeing 737 Max 8 jets.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration does not plan to ground the jets in the United States but is facing growing pressure to do so.
The FAA & the airline industry must act quickly & decisively to protect American travelers, pilots, & flight attendants. All Boeing 737 Max 8s should be grounded until American travels can be assured that these planes are safe. https://t.co/6yRQFasFHR
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) March 12, 2019
The FAA announced Monday that it would require a series of design changes for the Boeing 737 Max fleet.
In the U.S., Southwest Airlines uses a fleet of 34 Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft and is not planning any change in service. Likewise, American Airlines, which operates 24 of the planes, is not planning to ground them.
The full list of countries and airlines that have announced a ban is below:
—Argentina (Aerolíneas Argentinas)
—Australia
—Austria
—Belgium
—Brazil (GOL Linhas Aéreas)
—Cayman Islands (Cayman Airways)
—China
—Ethiopia
—EASA member states
—France
—Germany
—Iceland (Icelandair)
—India
—Indonesia
—Ireland
—Italy
—Malaysia
—Mexico (Aeromexico)
—Mongolia (MIAT Mongolian Airlines)
—Morocco (Royal Air Maroc)
—Netherlands
—Norway (Norwegian)
—Oman
—Poland
—Singapore
—South Africa (Comair)
—South Korea (Eastar Jet)
—Turkey
—United Kingdom (TUI Airways)
How Boeing Is Dealing With The Aftermath Of Ethiopian Airlines Crash
The 737 Max 8 has been the best-selling Boeing aircraft, but now China, Indonesia and several airlines have grounded the planes. What does this all mean for Boeing?
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Meanwhile, a lot of eyes are turning towards Boeing, which built the planes involved in both the Ethiopian air crash and that Lion Air crash in Indonesia less than five months ago. This morning, Boeing’s stock tanked 12 percent before recovering much of that ground. NPR’s Camila Domonoske has been looking at what all of this means for Boeing. She’s in the studio. Hey, Camila.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: So what has been the official response from Boeing?
DOMONOSKE: The company expressed, quote, “heartfelt sympathies” and is sending a technicals team to the crash site to help investigate. Boeing says, quote, “based on the information available, we do not have any basis to issue new guidance to operators.” And internally, the CEO sent a letter to staff encouraging them to stay focused and saying he’s confident in the safety of this model of plane.
KELLY: And talk to me about this specific model. This was the Boeing 737 MAX 8, a very important plane for Boeing. They’ve got a lot riding on it.
DOMONOSKE: Yeah. The 737 MAX, like you heard Russell explain, is a more fuel-efficient version of this pre-existing plane that’s very popular, the 737. So this new version has been even more popular. It’s the fastest-selling plane the Boeing’s ever had, more than 350 delivered so far. But some 5,000 orders are in, so there’s going to be even more of these planes in the air in the future. And Boeing needed this version of the plane in order to compete with a fuel-efficient plane from its European rival Airbus. About a year ago, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said he was feeling bullish about the 737 MAX.
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DENNIS MUILENBURG: The airplane is performing well in the field. Reliability for the fleet in the field is very high, so we’re pleased with the performance of the program.
DOMONOSKE: So reliable – sales and production since then kept going up and up. Boeing was making a ton of money off of this plane. It looked great. But now with two deadly crashes in just a few months, it’s a really different picture.
KELLY: And a really complicated picture. I mean, the scale of this is enormous. Boeing is America’s biggest exporter. Is that right?
DOMONOSKE: Yeah, period, across all sectors. The company employs more than 150,000 people worldwide. It’s got more than a hundred billion in revenue last year. And the company has been doing really, really well in large part because of the success of this 737 MAX model.
So then cut to today. This morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average took a dip, and people pointed to Boeing. The company’s success had been driving the Dow up, and when it went down, it weighed down the entire average although the Dow did manage to close higher today.
KELLY: Next steps for Boeing – do we know?
DOMONOSKE: Yeah, well, we now know that the company was already working on a design change as part of the FAA’s investigation into the earlier crash. We don’t know yet whether there will be any more updates as a result of this more recent crash. But big picture, Boeing has to prove that these planes are safe. There have been hundreds of thousands of safe flights. But the focus now of course is on these two crashes. I spoke with aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, who says these terrible crashes probably aren’t going to cause a sudden change to Boeing’s sales. You have to consider these planes are ordered years in advance.
RICHARD ABOULAFIA: If it is the worst-case scenario and it’s the same as Lion Air, they could be looking at a very expensive bill. But in the broader context, the sheer scale of their business and the profitability of their business, it’s not going to sink the company.
DOMONOSKE: But in the short term, people are very alarmed. You know, there have been groundings of these planes across the country – China, Indonesia in particular. And some passengers are worried enough that they’re trying to rebook their flights although, again, to emphasize, we don’t know what happened in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
KELLY: And, again to emphasize, so far here in the U.S., these planes are not grounded.
DOMONOSKE: That’s right.
KELLY: All right.
DOMONOSKE: They’re still flying.
KELLY: NPR’s Camila Domonoske.
Copyright © 2019 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.
'Miami Herald' Reporters Investigate Ties Between Massage Parlor Owner, Trump
The Miami Herald has detailed how a woman who once owned a chain of day spas in Florida allegedly steered Chinese businessmen to a fundraiser for President Trump. NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Herald reporter Caitlin Ostroff.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
By now, you’ve probably heard the reports about Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots. He’s been charged with soliciting prostitution at a day spa in Florida. And while at first, this story may have played like another embarrassing tale about celebrity mischief, it has now revealed much more. It’s led to deeper reporting about how the sex trade actually works and how it’s connected to human trafficking.
And now, thanks to reporting by the Miami Herald, yet another story has emerged. This one is about a woman who founded a chain of day spots where prostitution is alleged to have taken place and how she may have steered Chinese business executives to a fundraiser for President Trump. There’s a lot to get through here, so we’ve called up Caitlin Ostroff. She’s part of the team of reporters at the Miami Herald who broke this story, and she is with us now.
Caitlin, thanks so much for talking with us.
CAITLIN OSTROFF: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: I’m going to start by asking you to tell us about the woman in question and how she got involved in politics. And I do want to make clear she founded the day spa where Robert Kraft was arrested, but she sold it several years ago, and she has not been charged in this case. But tell us more about her.
OFTROFF: Yeah. So that’s kind of the big mystery – that when we were researching the spa where Kraft was busted, we wanted to know who owned it, who had founded it. And when we started looking up Cindy Yang – Cindy is the first name that she typically goes by – we were just following through her Facebook page, and all of a sudden, we found all of these pictures that popped up of her posing with President Trump and other high-ranking Republican officials.
She wasn’t politically active before a couple years ago, so she hadn’t really made political contributions. She hadn’t registered to vote until a little bit before the 2016 general election. And so we were trying to figure out, how did she go from a business owner to donating a lot of money to Republican candidates and being in a position with high-ranking officials?
MARTIN: So, according to your reporting, she arranged for a group of Chinese business executives, Chinese nationals, to attend a fundraiser for President Trump. What more do we know about that? And is there anything wrong with them attending the fundraiser?
OFTROFF: It depends. And this is what, again, our reporting is kind of seeking to pose the question of and answer. So it’s illegal for foreign nationals to directly contribute to a campaign. And so the question of that fundraiser, which happened in December of 2017 in New York – it was an RNC fundraiser – is how did Chinese residents happen to be at that fundraiser? How did they pay for their tickets to the event? And was there any influence of that exacted on the president or on other Republican officials?
MARTIN: So they could attend – foreign visitors can attend fundraisers as long as they don’t pay their own way, and they cannot reimburse a U.S. citizen for paying their way.
OFTROFF: Yes.
MARTIN: So that is the question that you are investigating. Do you know the role that Cindy Yang played in getting those executives to that fundraiser?
OFTROFF: So we don’t know exactly how she arranged for them to attend the fundraiser. But we do know that she had started a consulting business called GY US investments. And through that company, there was promises of getting Chinese investors into the president’s orbit. So we do know that she has boasted of her political ties in order to get Chinese businessmen into the presidential orbit and give them access. But we don’t know exactly how she got them into that fundraiser in New York.
MARTIN: And what does the RNC have to say about that? Have they responded to your queries?
OFTROFF: The RNC hasn’t said how they got there or why they were guests yet.
MARTIN: That is Caitlin Ostroff of the Miami Herald. We reached her at a conference in California.
Caitlin, thanks so much for talking with us.
OFTROFF: Thanks for having me.
Copyright © 2019 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.
Amnesty International: New Twitter Feature Leaves Burden On Users Experiencing Abuse
Twitter is developing a feature aimed at making the site less toxic for users. NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Amnesty International’s Rasha Abdul-Rahim, who has studied harassment on Twitter.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We’re going to return now to our Troll Watch series.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: This is where we bring you stories of cybersecurity attacks, bots and of course, internet trolls. This week, Twitter confirmed that users will eventually be able to press a button that says hide tweet that would, as you might imagine, allow users to hide certain responses to their tweets. And that means if you tweet something and you get nasty or abusive replies back, you could make those replies invisible to others.
Now one reason this is of interest of course is the abuse directed at women on Twitter, something Amnesty International researched extensively in a report recently. We spoke with Amnesty about that report, so we wanted to follow up to ask them what they make of this new planned feature. Joining us now is Rasha Abdul Rahim, deputy director of Amnesty Tech. She’s with us via Skype from London. Rasha, thanks so much for talking to us.
RASHA ABDUL-RAHIM: No problem. Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: So tell us about this new Twitter feature. What’s your understanding of how it would work?
ABDUL-RAHIM: Yeah, so my understanding is that Twitter’s developed this new feature as a way to allow people – women – who received tweets that may not reach the threshold of being abusive or hateful to allow them another way to hide problematic tweets they may be receiving so that they’re not as visible to them and to others. But my understanding is that people will still be able to view those tweets if they click the tab that shows the hidden tweets.
MARTIN: So what are the pros and the cons of this?
ABDUL-RAHIM: I see four different issues with this. I think the first one is the – I think there’s a danger here of brushing the issue under the carpet, so brushing the issue of problematic tweets under the carpet and not holding people who are sending those tweets accountable. So these kinds of tweets, as I said before, may not necessarily reach the threshold of abuse or hateful conduct, but they still contain hurtful or hostile content, and especially if they’re repeated to an individual on multiple occasions.
And these are the kinds of things that can reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes against a group of individuals, such as women, such as women of color. And they may still have a silencing effect on them. So I think here is – the key is, you know, will the effect of this be that those kinds of repeat offenders will not have any kind of accountability leveled to them for sending, you know, a barrage of these kinds of problematic tweets?
MARTIN: Two criticisms I’ve seen come from different angles – one is that this still puts the onus on women to solve the problem…
ABDUL-RAHIM: Absolutely. Yeah, that was the next point I was going to make.
MARTIN: …As opposed to putting the onus on Twitter. But the other side of the equation is some are arguing that this allows for censorship. I mean, it could allow for say, public officials to, you know, decide that they don’t want other people to see legitimate criticism directed at them just cause they don’t like it.
ABDUL-RAHIM: Yeah, totally. These are two issues as well that we’ve spotted. So the burden is still, as you say, on the individuals experiencing the abuse to label or to hide every single tweet. And this doesn’t only take time, but it also takes an emotional toll on those individuals who are receiving that abuse. And it’s almost as if Twitter is kind of outsourcing that responsibility to the people who are experiencing this abuse. And as you say, it could also have a silencing effect on free speech if powerful public figures such as politicians can hide dissent or prevent users from holding public figures to account.
MARTIN: Could you just remind people for those who did not hear our prior conversation why you feel that abusive tweets, this kind of communication, rises to the level of a human rights concern, such that Amnesty would take as much time and effort as it has to investigate it? Why do you think this is a problem?
ABDUL-RAHIM: It’s a problem because if women are disproportionately experiencing abuse or harassment or are targets of problematic tweets, then this means that this could have a silencing effect on them. And this is something that we found in our research that women tend to change the way in which they interact on these platforms. They tend to, you know, withdraw from Twitter or change the way in which they use their language on Twitter in order to not subject themselves or open themselves up to abuse.
And, you know, our research has shown that 7.1 percent of tweets that were sent to women in this study were problematic or abusive, which amounted to 1.1 million tweets mentioning 778 women across the year, which amounts also to one every 30 seconds. And we also found that women of color were 34 percent more likely to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets than white women. Black women were disproportionately targeted, being 84 percent more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets.
So this is clearly a problem. And if Twitter is not responding or addressing this problem effectively, then this obviously will have an impact on women’s ability to freely express themselves on the platform.
MARTIN: That’s Rasha Abdul Rahim, deputy director of Amnesty Tech at Amnesty International. We reached her via Skype in London. Rasha, thank you so much for talking with us.
ABDUL-RAHIM: Thank you, too. Good bye.
Copyright © 2019 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.
In One Pennsylvania County, Economic Woes Impact Political Leanings
Labor uncertainty in Erie County, Pa. — a county that narrowly flipped for Donald Trump in 2016 — may now be impacting how voters in the region feel about the president.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
One of the keys to President Trump’s success in the 2016 election was his campaign promise to bring back American manufacturing jobs. This week, some 1,700 union members at a manufacturing plant in northwest Pennsylvania were on picket lines in a labor dispute with their employer. NPR’s Don Gonyea was there. He spoke with them about the president, the economy and the 2020 presidential race.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Over loudspeaker) What do we want?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Fair contract.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Over loudspeaker) When do we want it?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Now.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: This demonstration took place this week outside of Pittsburgh at the headquarters of Wabtec Cooperation. Many of the picketers with the Union of Electrical Workers came by bus two hours from Erie, Pa., where they had been on strike for more than a week. The issue – a concessionary contract that would include lower wages for new hires.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Unintelligible) is a union town. Stand up, stand down. Erie is a union town. Stand up, stand down.
GONYEA: The strike has since ended as negotiations continue, but it’s where I talk with union member Sharon Ruperto.
Can I ask who you voted for for president?
SHARON RUPERTO: Trump.
GONYEA: You voted for Trump.
RUPERTO: Yes.
GONYEA: Are you still on board with Trump?
RUPERTO: Yes, I am.
GONYEA: Trump narrowly won Erie County, Pa., a place that had gone twice by wide margins for Barack Obama. Trump’s win there and statewide in Pennsylvania was helped by votes from white working-class voters, many of them union members. Ruperto drives a forklift at the plant and says she’s an Obama voter who switched to Trump. She thinks Democrats have moved too far to the left, and she doesn’t know why union leaders are so quick to vilify Trump.
RUPERTO: Trump hasn’t said anything about a union. I have not heard him try to break unions. They keep saying he’s against unions, but I’ve never seen him go after a union.
GONYEA: The unemployment rate in Erie County has improved by two points since Trump took office. It’s now 4.7 percent. But while the president pledged to bring back manufacturing, the share of the local workforce represented by manufacturing jobs continues to decline. That and the strike add to the anxiety of workers like 55-year-old Ron Dombkowski.
RON DOMBKOWSKI: I can show you pictures of me at the Trump rallies because I was a Trump supporter, a big Donald Trump supporter because I wanted to keep jobs in America.
GONYEA: Today, he sees pressure to cut wages at his own plant. He sees the big GM Lordstown assembly plant nearby in Ohio closing. He sees his son, even with a college degree, struggling to make a decent wage. I asked him about Trump.
You’re kind of soft-spoken when you’re talking about him, and is it disappointment with him?
DOMBKOWSKI: Well, I’m also a veteran, so I like what he wants to do, you know, for people in the armed forces and for veterans. So, I mean, yeah, there’s still things I like about Donald Trump, but I think he’s letting the American worker down.
GONYEA: Donald Trump no longer has his vote. Sixty-year-old union member Dale Meyer was also at the protest.
DALE MEYER: Yeah. I mean, there are some of us that do agree with Trump, and there’s a lot of people that don’t agree with Trump.
GONYEA: OK. So you voted for Trump.
MEYER: I did. I did.
GONYEA: Are you still with him?
MEYER: I’m not against him, but I would be with him…
GONYEA: But he is far from gung-ho and says he’s not sure how he’ll vote in 2020. Scott Slawson is president of the Union of Electrical Workers in Erie. It’s a union that endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. Slawson says Democrats better have learned this lesson – never to take votes for granted.
SCOTT SLAWSON: Back in 2016, Donald Trump took this county. And I think one of the fatal mistakes that was made was the Democrats just simply overlooked this county.
GONYEA: As for union members who voted Trump, Slawson says they’ve always made up their own minds. Slawson says there are signs of renewed union activism nationally. He points to all the teachers’ strikes we’re seeing. That, he says, is an opportunity, but you still have to do the work to convert it into votes in Erie, Pa., or anywhere. Don Gonyea, NPR News.
Copyright © 2019 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.
