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Submission + - Amid coronavirus stimulus push, Kentucky Republican manages to anger everyone (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: Massie was drawing flak from across the political spectrum after indicating that he may call for a roll-call vote in the House for a $2 trillion stimulus package, in a development that could delay passage of the measure. Trump, for his part, tweeted Friday that the Kentuckian is “a third rate Grandstander” who can’t stop the package but only delay it. The president said that would be dangerous and costly, and he suggested Massie should be thrown out of the Republican Party.Massie, a libertarian-leaning conservative who has been called “Mr. No,” has said he objects to the huge package because of how much it adds to the national debt, and he has said he could support it if the legislation were just about helping people get more unemployment benefits. He is known for moves such as providing the lone vote against a recent Hong Kong human-rights bill.

Submission + - Italy extends its quarantine to the entire country (cnbc.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: Italy will expand the lockdown of the Lombardy region to the entire country, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Monday as Italy’s case count surged, making it the country with the most COVID-19 cases outside of China. People throughout the country of 60 million should not travel other than for work and emergencies, Conte said. He added that all public gatherings will be banned and sporting events suspended. The decision was made to protect the most vulnerable people in the country, he said, and the measures will take effect Tuesday and last until April 3. Italy also reported a surge of 1,807 confirmed cases nationwide, bringing the total to at least 9,172 confirmed cases

Submission + - NTSB calls Tesla Autosteer 'completely inadequate' (cnbc.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: The National Transportation Safety Board slammed Tesla at a hearing on Tuesday for failure to prevent sometimes deadly misuse of its Autopilot advanced driver assistance systems, which are now standard in the company’s electric cars. The remarks were made at a hearing about a fatal Tesla Model X crash that occurred in 2018 near Mountain View, California, when Apple engineer and game developer Walter Huang was driving with Autopilot engaged, and while using a game app on a work-issued mobile device. The NTSB said that although Huang was a distracted driver, Tesla’s forward collision warning system did not provide an alert, and its automatic emergency braking system did not activate as his Model X SUV with Autopilot switched on accelerated into a highway barrier. Among other things, the office wants Tesla to improve its driver engagement monitoring systems. Tesla relies on sensing a driver’s hands on the steering wheel to know if they are attentive enough to the road while using Autopilot features. Other auto makers use cameras to ascertain whether a driver’s eyes are on the road.

Submission + - Behind Amazon's HQ2 Fiasco: Jeff Bezos Was Jealous of Elon Musk (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: When Elon Musk secured $1.3 billion from Nevada in 2014 to open a gigantic battery plant, Jeff Bezos noticed. In meetings, the Amazon.com Inc. chief expressed envy for how Musk had pitted five Western states against one another in a bidding war for thousands of manufacturing jobs; he wondered why Amazon was okay with accepting comparatively trifling incentives. And so, when Amazon launched a bakeoff for a second headquarters in September 2017, the company made plain that it was looking for government handouts in exchange for a pledge to invest $5 billion and hire 50,000 people.To understand why that happened, Bloomberg interviewed 12 people familiar with Amazon’s effort. Their story, outlined here for the first time, depicts a team that became the victim of its own hubris. Bezos’s frustration with what he deemed meager government largess prompted executives to scrap lessons learned through the years in favor of an unapologetic appeal for tax breaks and other incentives.

Submission + - Paid parental leave may be coming to more than 2 million Americans (cnbc.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: More than 2 million Americans could soon have access to mandatory paid parental leave. Senior congressional members have reached a bipartisan deal that would provide federal workers with 12 weeks of guaranteed paid time off for parents following the birth, adoption or fostering of a child.The proposed policy, which would apply to the 2.1 million civilian workers employed by the federal government, is part of a broader $738 billion legislative package on defense spending for the government’s upcoming fiscal year.

Submission + - A Climate Modeler Spills the Beans 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A short post discusses Dr. Mototaka Nakamura's published critique of the current Climate Models claiming that they are woefully inadequate and only suited for research and wholly inappropriate for forecasting. Titled, Confessions of a climate scientist: the global warming hypothesis is an unproven hypothesis, it delves into the myriad of inadequacies and false assumptions in the current crop of models relied on by IPCC. Note to Editors, I fully expect this to be rejected as it is contrary to the God of Climate Science.

Submission + - Maximizing shareholder value can no longer be a company's main purpose (cnbc.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: Shareholder value is no longer the main focus of some of America’s top business leaders. The Business Roundtable, a group of chief executive officers from major U.S. corporations, issued a statement Monday with a new definition of the “purpose of a corporation.” The reimagined idea of a corporation drops the age-old notion that corporations function first and foremost to serve their shareholders and maximize profits. Rather, investing in employees, delivering value to customers, dealing ethically with suppliers and supporting outside communities are now at the forefront of American business goals, according to the statement. Along with Dimon, the statement received signatures from chiefs including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, Dennis A. Muilenburg of Boeing and GM’s Mary Barra.

Submission + - why the swiss still love cash (bbc.com) 2

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: Last month, the Swiss unveiled a smart new banknote to stash in their wallets. The purple 1,000 franc bill was the latest in the Swiss National Bank (SNB) series to undergo a revamp. But this revamp comes as other nations are phasing out their high-value notes and as cash usage declines in European nations, albeit at greatly differing rates. In Switzerland, cash remains the dominant payment method. Here, there’s an assumption everyone carries cash, even in an increasingly digital economy. Most don’t get caught out buying a sandwich or paying for a haircut when the card payment machine is out of order. If you have to pay for a coffee with a 100 franc note, no need to apologise – no one will ask if you have something smaller. And for those big-ticket items, some banks even allow you to withdraw up to 5,000 francs per day (or 10,000 a month) at the cash machine without advance notice. Buying a car that costs tens of thousands with cash is also not that unusual.

Submission + - Job Cuts Show Tesla's Not That Different From Other Carmakers (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: Tesla Inc. prides itself on doing things differently than the major carmakers it’s trying to unseat: a loose interpretation of meeting targets, building autos in a tent and a chief executive officer who sleeps at the factory — all fueled by a mission to make transport sustainable. On Friday, the electric-car leader moved a bit closer to being the real car company CEO Elon Musk declared Tesla to be in July. He warned that “the road ahead is very difficult” in making battery cars price-competitive with their combustion-powered rivals. More than 3,000 jobs will go. That type of move is more familiar at industry stalwarts like Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co., which have laid off thousands of people over the decades spanning the ups and downs of a cyclical industries. They too are cutting jobs again, offset costly investments in electrified powertrains and self-driving car technology. For Tesla, the challenge at hand is to prove it can profitably sell the mass-market Model 3 and broaden the appeal of battery cars beyond high-end customers.

Submission + - Democrats introduce bill to hike federal minimum wage to $15 per hour (cnbc.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday to gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, a long-shot plan that comes as the party tries to bill itself as a champion of the working class. The Raise the Wage Act, backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and several declared or prospective 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, would hike the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024 through annual increases. The bill will spark opposition within the business community, which largely aligns with Republicans on wage issues. Democrats say the proposal will put more money in the pockets of tens of millions — particularly women and workers of color — and boost the economy through their increased spending power. But powerful business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argue a $15 per hour U.S. wage will burden small-business owners, force cuts to workers' hours and hamper companies in areas where living expenses are relatively low. The push for a higher federal floor comes as numerous states and localities hike their minimum wages — even in red states such as Arkansas and Missouri.

Submission + - President Trump's truthiness makes history as betting site pays out bigly (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: Donald Trump’s loose grip on the truth just cost one gambling site dearly. Before the president’s prime-time address on border security Tuesday night, Bookmaker.eu put the over/under on the number of lies he’d spew at 3.5. For bettors, it was a no-brainer, as hundreds of thousands of dollars loaded up on the over. Before the president’s prime-time address on border security Tuesday night, Bookmaker.eu put the over/under on the number of lies he’d spew at 3.5. For bettors, it was a no-brainer, as hundreds of thousands of dollars loaded up on the over. Lester explained that no matter how much he adjusted the odds, hardly anybody seemed interested in taking the under. Smart move, considering the Washington Post found that there were at least six false statements during the address.

Submission + - Wall Street Rule for the #MeToo Era: Avoid Women at All Cost (bloomberg.com) 1

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: No more dinners with female colleagues. Don’t sit next to them on flights. Book hotel rooms on different floors. Avoid one-on-one meetings. n fact, as a wealth adviser put it, just hiring a woman these days is “an unknown risk.” What if she took something he said the wrong way? Across Wall Street, men are adopting controversial strategies for the #MeToo era and, in the process, making life even harder for women.In finance, the overarching impact can be, in essence, gender segregation. Now, more than a year into the #MeToo movement — with its devastating revelations of harassment and abuse in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and beyond — Wall Street risks becoming more of a boy’s club, rather than less of one. On Wall Street as elsewhere, reactions to #MeToo can smack of paranoia, particularly given the industry’s history of protecting its biggest revenue generators. There are as many or more men who are responding in quite different ways. One, an investment adviser who manages about 100 employees, said he landed on the solution: “Just try not to be an asshole.”

Submission + - Sedans Aren't Dead. American Sedans Are (bloomberg.com) 3

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: With the recent news that both General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. will soon be exiting the sedan market in the U.S., to focus on high margin trucks and SUVs, I got to wondering just how badly things have deteriorated for the U.S. car makers. Much of the analysis about Ford and GM’s exit from the sedan market stressed that sedan sales have lost ground in recent years “as consumers have gravitated toward pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles,” as the New York Times put it. If you look at the historical sales figures of the top Japanese sedans, you’ll see a small decline in recent years, but nothing like the big drop-off in sales that have hammered the American companies. So in addition to the overall decline in sedan sales, there is a second, largely overlooked, dynamic taking place: Americans have only stopped buying American sedans, not Japanese sedans. The American car companies now say they are going to count on profits from trucks and SUVs while moving toward autonomous and all-electric vehicles. They had better hope that transition takes place quickly. the leading American SUV? It’s the Chevy Equinox. Last year, Chevrolet sold 290,000 of them — 100,000 fewer than the Toyota Camry.

Submission + - How overparenting in America has created a generation of snowflakes (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: author and NYU professor Jonathan Haidt talking to the Big Think blog about how parenting changed [for the worse] in the 1990s and where exactly he believes we took a wrong turn when it comes to raising our children. He says that when he toured the country to promote his book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” he would always ask audiences the age when their parents allowed them to go outside and play without supervision. The over-40 set would invariably answer between 5 years old and 8 eight years old. The under-25 group would say 12 to 16. Yes, 16 years old. Haidt said this shift toward helicopter parenting began to take place in the 1990s. As the crime rate was plummeting, as American life was getting safer and safer, Americans freaked out and thought that if they take their eyes off their children, the children will be abducted,” Haidt noted. “It’s not until the 1990s that we really start locking kids up and saying you cannot be outside until you’re 14 or 15.”

Submission + - What Minimum-Wage Foes Got Wrong About Seattle (bloomberg.com) 1

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: The dire warnings about minimum-wage increases keep proving to be wrong. So much so that in a new paper, the authors behind an earlier study predicting a negative impact have all-but recanted their initial conclusions. However, the authors still seem perplexed about why they went awry in the first place. Seattle, like some other thriving West Coast cities, a few years ago passed an ordinance raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour in a series of steps. The reaction was immediate, strident — and deeply wrong. The increase was an “economic death wish” that was going to tank the expansion and kill jobs, according to the sages at conservative think tanks. Despite their dire forecasts, not only were new restaurants not closing, they were in fact opening; employment in food services and drinking establishments has soared,

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