Yes, forgive me for using the US context of liberal and conservative when discussing US newspapers and websites. Just to clarify, Fox News does not want to restore the Monarchy and the NY TImes does not want to erect statues in honor of Marx.
But as you point out, the bondholders were also aware of this. I don't know what the precedent is - I suspect it will depend on whether the pension accounts are seen as Detroit money or money owned by the retirees/employees. If it is Detroit money, it will almost certainly get returned to the bondholders, but IANAL.
I agree completely. My point isn't about the biases in journalism - those are plain as day. My main point was the quality of the reporting varies tremendously. Huff Post and NY Times are more or less aligned ideologically, but the quality of reporting is staggering. Unless or until these internet sites do something to improve quality, there is a definite loss when the printed papers die away. Unfortunately, I don't see an economic incentive for web sites to clean up their acts, since any damn fool (or smart entrepreneur) can throw together an aggregating site and sell ads. At least in the old days there was an economy of scale that favored a large viewership, which pushed papers to at least be credible. Now an impression is an impression, a click is a click. You can host a thousand crappy sites on the same hardware as a single big site - why spend money on making yourself credible?
The reason for the the two different valuations is based on what discount you use to value the future obligations and potential gains.
Yes, that is one explanation. There are also claims of outright fraud. All of this will be an interesting fight. In any case, they didn't do any funding at all of the health care benefit, so those retirees will almost certainly be moving to Medicare. I am of the opinion that the bondholders should eat it, since the bond was clearly and transparently intended to fund the retirement plan. Anyone who bought those bonds should have known that and priced them accordingly. Naturally, this will probably be a lot of OTHER people's retirement plans will lose value. Ay, what a mess...
The Detroit pensions (though not the health care), were supposedly funded. But one of the ways they did that was by borrowing money from bondholders. So they were taking on debt to pay current liabilities... a very nasty habit that will always land you in trouble. If you owned stock in a company doing that, you'd be selling. Now the pensioners and the bond holders will have to fight it out in court. The situation is not being helped by the conflicting assessments of pension health from the two different accounting firms involved. The pension auditor says that everything is (from memory) something like 87% funded. Another accounting firm using different assumptions and accounting is saying, no, it's more like 60%. In no event will the retirees get any of their health benefits, which were completely unfunded.
Personally, I think that governments should have to present unfunded pension obligations on a balance sheet, just like private companies do. That would make it easier to judge your risk as a bond holder - who might rightly feel mislead in the case of Detroit. That city was in more debt than it seemed when you include the health care promises to retirees.
They haven't exactly been getting away with anything, though. They've been paying federal insurance on pensions, and companies with unfunded pension liabilities have to list them on their balance sheet (which is why 1/4 of companies simply fund their pensions to avoid the bad balance sheet). If we had been demanding the same for our federal employees, we wouldn't have quite the same house of cards. In other words, the companies have been getting away with a lot less than the public sector, so glass houses and all that.
The NY Times does some pretty good journalism. Yes, in aggregate they have a liberal view of the world, and their stories are written with a narrative that reflects this. But most of the time they get their facts right, and they have things like an internal investigation team to "prosecute" their own reporters. Read another liberal-leaning (more like propaganda) site like the Huff Post and you will see how far down journalism can go. The scary part is that many people get their news from the Huffington Post and think they just read something educational. I don't mean to pick on the Huff Post - it is just one example. There are conservative propaganda sites, natural food propaganda sites, etc - but none as polished and well disguised as a news site IMHO.
Another thing that I've noticed is that the motivation for propaganda sites has changed. It used to be that you would see obvious propaganda, and you would know that some interest was behind it. A site sponsored by some trade association, or with some corporate, political, or religious backing, for instance. But now, these sites are just playing on our propensity to seek out self-affirming worldviews to sell ads. If you think that kale can cure cancer, some enterprising soul has set up a site with a cut-and-paste of every positive article about kale they can find. And of course, Fox News figured this out years ago on cable:)
HR problem? People make more mistakes than computers. Sure, there are programming errors - but those are likely to affect multiple people and get caught. I wouldn't worry too much about those after a business has been around for a little while.
And I'd rather deal with an automated service, rather than a minimum wage human who will manage to screw something up even when everything has had to be repeated three times.
Agreed. I just had a screwup for a human-made reservation from the airport. They had me scheduled for the wrong time (PM instead of AM) and then when they fixed that, they entered the wrong MONTH! If I hadn't checked the day-of by calling, I would have had to split our party into several regular cabs. Not the end of the world, but at least with a web form or app I can be pretty sure that if a mistake is made, it is mine.
I love the fact that they kept their file menus in addition to the ribbon - it is such a "fuck you" to the other Office division. In all fairness, it would look absurd to have a blank file bar across the top of the screen on their Mac product. At least with Windows they can reclaim the screen real estate.
As for quality, their Mac BU has been uneven. Sometimes you get a pretty good release like 2011. Sometimes they do something like strip out VBA and make you wonder why it is you are using Office at all. Entourage was an embarrassment compared to Outlook on the PC. And of course they abandoned IE completely, which is a shame because that always made it hard to use some intranet sites.
That's like saying the car's engine is not important as the user is interacting with the steering wheel and pedals.
That's true to a large extent, though, isn't it? Sure if you put a really crappy one in there people would notice, but there are other "engines" available that are nice, too. I know there is a port of Android to the FreeBSD kernel, and Apple seems to do pretty well with a Mach derivative.
They also have a games division, a phone division, and a bunch of other stuff... but the fact is that most of their money is either directly made from Windows, or from a product anchored by their Windows desktop monopoly. I suspect that even their Mac sales are mostly from people who need to stay compatible with their Windows-using colleagues/customers.
So now the Dem's are just as bad as the Rep's because they haven't done enough to clean up the mess left by the previous administration? Seriously, did you criticize W for not cleaning up the horrible mess left by Clinton. Oh wait. There was no horrible mess.
They didn't simply "not clean it up", they actively renewed it. Clinton left some terrible messes, including the dot-com bust, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I can't think of a president that has left a completely tidy situation for his successor, nor do I think that is possible.
Yeah, the Rep plans that guarantee even greater profits for the medical and insurance industries to the detriment of patients because basic meds and tests are not on the approved list. Yeah, wonderful health care record that.
1/3 of Obama's plan does exactly the same thing by expanding Medicare. Another 1/3 drives currently uncovered people into private insurance, and then does free marketing and sales through exchanges. The last 1/3 consists mostly of college students (who cost almost nothing to insure) getting included on their parents' plans. I'd love to know how you think Obama's plan insures millions of additional people without enriching the people who provide health care for profit.
If anything, the Dem's are just following the Rep's lead when it comes to being evil.
If you want to play the "who started it" game, that's fine. I dislike them all.
I don't think they are the same, but I do think that they are almost identical on any substantial issue. They differ considerably on "wedge issues" that get people fired up, but do not have first-order effects on most of society.
That is because the Democratic party is vastly different from your dearly beloved Republican party.
I can tell, because in addition to the end of secret courts and the rest of the Patriot Act, Guantanamo closed, we left Iraq on the Bush timetable, and drone strikes have ceased.
Or did you think the Republicans were going to pass socialized health-care?
You mean like the Medicare Part D that was passed by a Republican House, Senate, and President? You are right, that would never happen.
Otherwise, it goes a bit too far, but is a pretty solid troll.
I suspect you need a higher-amperage charger, and not one marked higher amperage but made for iThings. If you do have an Apple charger, you need a special "charging" cable for most Android devices, though I think there is a hack to force some into high-current mode without such a beast.
I didn't say there wasn't a definition of race, I said it wasn't scientific. And it's not. It was all the rage to try and classify people based on trait in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was abandoned as a scientific pursuit. Humans are not reproductively isolated except for a few island populations, and even then there were immigrants, emigrants, and trade. And the islands were populated a few thousand years ago - hardly enough time to develop anything but a few superficial traits.
No you are a denier because you deny the existence of a field of science that rubs you the wrong way. Your picture of the way the world works clashes with the way it actually works, and you choose to deny reality rather than re-examine your beliefs.
Although your usage of the word "God" in uppercase is a big warning sign for a mental illness [religious schizophrenia] where people obsessively don't want to understand and prefer to live in a fantasy world.
I'm not religious, but I follow proper grammar rules. I would capitalize "Jupiter" or "Saturn" or "Zeus" or "Buddha" or any other proper name. "God" is considered a proper name in this context. I think you need to brush up on psychology - religion is by far more common than atheism and is not, by itself, a sign of mental illness. I know that I constantly fight my instincts to be superstitious.
The problem starts, when you start to see your own employees as your enemies.
I'm not saying to view them as your enemies, but certainly don't assume that they share your moral or ethical standards. Rules have to be very clear, and compliance has to be verified. There are a large number of people who will mistake kindness for softness and attempt to fleece you. You have to be mannerly, polite, but firm. I would never advocate being a "monster", but nor would I suggest trying the "best buddy" approach. It's a difficult balance to strike, and you have to adapt to different environments. I think that is why it is hard to find a good manager. I'm not sure I'd consider myself a good manager - I'm probably too hands-off.
Also, you're supposed to test them before you hire them. That's what those first 3-6 months are for!
I'm not sure where you are from, but in the US there is no 3-6 month probation period by statute. Generally work is at-will, so you can fire at any time for almost any reason except racial, age, or sexual discrimination. Chances are that you will not figure out that someone is a thief until after you catch them.
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Yes, forgive me for using the US context of liberal and conservative when discussing US newspapers and websites. Just to clarify, Fox News does not want to restore the Monarchy and the NY TImes does not want to erect statues in honor of Marx.
But as you point out, the bondholders were also aware of this. I don't know what the precedent is - I suspect it will depend on whether the pension accounts are seen as Detroit money or money owned by the retirees/employees. If it is Detroit money, it will almost certainly get returned to the bondholders, but IANAL.
I agree completely. My point isn't about the biases in journalism - those are plain as day. My main point was the quality of the reporting varies tremendously. Huff Post and NY Times are more or less aligned ideologically, but the quality of reporting is staggering. Unless or until these internet sites do something to improve quality, there is a definite loss when the printed papers die away. Unfortunately, I don't see an economic incentive for web sites to clean up their acts, since any damn fool (or smart entrepreneur) can throw together an aggregating site and sell ads. At least in the old days there was an economy of scale that favored a large viewership, which pushed papers to at least be credible. Now an impression is an impression, a click is a click. You can host a thousand crappy sites on the same hardware as a single big site - why spend money on making yourself credible?
The reason for the the two different valuations is based on what discount you use to value the future obligations and potential gains.
Yes, that is one explanation. There are also claims of outright fraud. All of this will be an interesting fight. In any case, they didn't do any funding at all of the health care benefit, so those retirees will almost certainly be moving to Medicare. I am of the opinion that the bondholders should eat it, since the bond was clearly and transparently intended to fund the retirement plan. Anyone who bought those bonds should have known that and priced them accordingly. Naturally, this will probably be a lot of OTHER people's retirement plans will lose value. Ay, what a mess...
Yup - I used to be a religious user of NoScript, but gave up when I started allowing JavaScript to use even, uh, less than trustworthy sites.
The Detroit pensions (though not the health care), were supposedly funded. But one of the ways they did that was by borrowing money from bondholders. So they were taking on debt to pay current liabilities... a very nasty habit that will always land you in trouble. If you owned stock in a company doing that, you'd be selling. Now the pensioners and the bond holders will have to fight it out in court. The situation is not being helped by the conflicting assessments of pension health from the two different accounting firms involved. The pension auditor says that everything is (from memory) something like 87% funded. Another accounting firm using different assumptions and accounting is saying, no, it's more like 60%. In no event will the retirees get any of their health benefits, which were completely unfunded.
Personally, I think that governments should have to present unfunded pension obligations on a balance sheet, just like private companies do. That would make it easier to judge your risk as a bond holder - who might rightly feel mislead in the case of Detroit. That city was in more debt than it seemed when you include the health care promises to retirees.
They haven't exactly been getting away with anything, though. They've been paying federal insurance on pensions, and companies with unfunded pension liabilities have to list them on their balance sheet (which is why 1/4 of companies simply fund their pensions to avoid the bad balance sheet). If we had been demanding the same for our federal employees, we wouldn't have quite the same house of cards. In other words, the companies have been getting away with a lot less than the public sector, so glass houses and all that.
The NY Times does some pretty good journalism. Yes, in aggregate they have a liberal view of the world, and their stories are written with a narrative that reflects this. But most of the time they get their facts right, and they have things like an internal investigation team to "prosecute" their own reporters. Read another liberal-leaning (more like propaganda) site like the Huff Post and you will see how far down journalism can go. The scary part is that many people get their news from the Huffington Post and think they just read something educational. I don't mean to pick on the Huff Post - it is just one example. There are conservative propaganda sites, natural food propaganda sites, etc - but none as polished and well disguised as a news site IMHO.
Another thing that I've noticed is that the motivation for propaganda sites has changed. It used to be that you would see obvious propaganda, and you would know that some interest was behind it. A site sponsored by some trade association, or with some corporate, political, or religious backing, for instance. But now, these sites are just playing on our propensity to seek out self-affirming worldviews to sell ads. If you think that kale can cure cancer, some enterprising soul has set up a site with a cut-and-paste of every positive article about kale they can find. And of course, Fox News figured this out years ago on cable :)
HR problem? People make more mistakes than computers. Sure, there are programming errors - but those are likely to affect multiple people and get caught. I wouldn't worry too much about those after a business has been around for a little while.
And I'd rather deal with an automated service, rather than a minimum wage human who will manage to screw something up even when everything has had to be repeated three times.
Agreed. I just had a screwup for a human-made reservation from the airport. They had me scheduled for the wrong time (PM instead of AM) and then when they fixed that, they entered the wrong MONTH! If I hadn't checked the day-of by calling, I would have had to split our party into several regular cabs. Not the end of the world, but at least with a web form or app I can be pretty sure that if a mistake is made, it is mine.
Those bastards should have phrased it as a question!
I love the fact that they kept their file menus in addition to the ribbon - it is such a "fuck you" to the other Office division. In all fairness, it would look absurd to have a blank file bar across the top of the screen on their Mac product. At least with Windows they can reclaim the screen real estate.
As for quality, their Mac BU has been uneven. Sometimes you get a pretty good release like 2011. Sometimes they do something like strip out VBA and make you wonder why it is you are using Office at all. Entourage was an embarrassment compared to Outlook on the PC. And of course they abandoned IE completely, which is a shame because that always made it hard to use some intranet sites.
I did, too - and after searching for "pressure cooker backpack" on Google News. My week is going to be hectic.
Huh.
That's like saying the car's engine is not important as the user is interacting with the steering wheel and pedals.
That's true to a large extent, though, isn't it? Sure if you put a really crappy one in there people would notice, but there are other "engines" available that are nice, too. I know there is a port of Android to the FreeBSD kernel, and Apple seems to do pretty well with a Mach derivative.
They also have a games division, a phone division, and a bunch of other stuff... but the fact is that most of their money is either directly made from Windows, or from a product anchored by their Windows desktop monopoly. I suspect that even their Mac sales are mostly from people who need to stay compatible with their Windows-using colleagues/customers.
So now the Dem's are just as bad as the Rep's because they haven't done enough to clean up the mess left by the previous administration? Seriously, did you criticize W for not cleaning up the horrible mess left by Clinton. Oh wait. There was no horrible mess.
They didn't simply "not clean it up", they actively renewed it. Clinton left some terrible messes, including the dot-com bust, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I can't think of a president that has left a completely tidy situation for his successor, nor do I think that is possible.
Yeah, the Rep plans that guarantee even greater profits for the medical and insurance industries to the detriment of patients because basic meds and tests are not on the approved list. Yeah, wonderful health care record that.
1/3 of Obama's plan does exactly the same thing by expanding Medicare. Another 1/3 drives currently uncovered people into private insurance, and then does free marketing and sales through exchanges. The last 1/3 consists mostly of college students (who cost almost nothing to insure) getting included on their parents' plans. I'd love to know how you think Obama's plan insures millions of additional people without enriching the people who provide health care for profit.
If anything, the Dem's are just following the Rep's lead when it comes to being evil.
If you want to play the "who started it" game, that's fine. I dislike them all.
I don't think they are the same, but I do think that they are almost identical on any substantial issue. They differ considerably on "wedge issues" that get people fired up, but do not have first-order effects on most of society.
That is because the Democratic party is vastly different from your dearly beloved Republican party.
I can tell, because in addition to the end of secret courts and the rest of the Patriot Act, Guantanamo closed, we left Iraq on the Bush timetable, and drone strikes have ceased.
Or did you think the Republicans were going to pass socialized health-care?
You mean like the Medicare Part D that was passed by a Republican House, Senate, and President? You are right, that would never happen.
Otherwise, it goes a bit too far, but is a pretty solid troll.
I suspect you need a higher-amperage charger, and not one marked higher amperage but made for iThings. If you do have an Apple charger, you need a special "charging" cable for most Android devices, though I think there is a hack to force some into high-current mode without such a beast.
Even if after the school loans and the insurance and taxes that $120,000 comes to $60,000, it puts them in the upper tenth of all US workers.
Well, I'm certainly glad to see I've talked you down by an order of magnitude.
I didn't say there wasn't a definition of race, I said it wasn't scientific. And it's not. It was all the rage to try and classify people based on trait in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was abandoned as a scientific pursuit. Humans are not reproductively isolated except for a few island populations, and even then there were immigrants, emigrants, and trade. And the islands were populated a few thousand years ago - hardly enough time to develop anything but a few superficial traits.
Really? The Edge that does not yet exist? By the time that thing exists it will be a mid-range phone like my Exhibit.
No you are a denier because you deny the existence of a field of science that rubs you the wrong way. Your picture of the way the world works clashes with the way it actually works, and you choose to deny reality rather than re-examine your beliefs.
Although your usage of the word "God" in uppercase is a big warning sign for a mental illness [religious schizophrenia] where people obsessively don't want to understand and prefer to live in a fantasy world.
I'm not religious, but I follow proper grammar rules. I would capitalize "Jupiter" or "Saturn" or "Zeus" or "Buddha" or any other proper name. "God" is considered a proper name in this context. I think you need to brush up on psychology - religion is by far more common than atheism and is not, by itself, a sign of mental illness. I know that I constantly fight my instincts to be superstitious.
The problem starts, when you start to see your own employees as your enemies.
I'm not saying to view them as your enemies, but certainly don't assume that they share your moral or ethical standards. Rules have to be very clear, and compliance has to be verified. There are a large number of people who will mistake kindness for softness and attempt to fleece you. You have to be mannerly, polite, but firm. I would never advocate being a "monster", but nor would I suggest trying the "best buddy" approach. It's a difficult balance to strike, and you have to adapt to different environments. I think that is why it is hard to find a good manager. I'm not sure I'd consider myself a good manager - I'm probably too hands-off.
Also, you're supposed to test them before you hire them. That's what those first 3-6 months are for!
I'm not sure where you are from, but in the US there is no 3-6 month probation period by statute. Generally work is at-will, so you can fire at any time for almost any reason except racial, age, or sexual discrimination. Chances are that you will not figure out that someone is a thief until after you catch them.