Category: employment

And the Former Walmart Board Member Goes Back to F%$#ing the American Worker

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Hillary just promised to preserve the H1B Visa in all its corrupt wage depressing glory:

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton vowed on Thursday to uphold the high-skill visas prized by the tech industry as part of comprehensive immigration reform, clarifying media reports that suggested her position on immigration policy would make it harder for Silicon Valley companies to hire talented workers.

“Part of what we have to be strong in standing for is a credible path forward for reform that is truly comprehensive, addressing all aspects of the system. Including immigrants living here today, those who wish to come in the days ahead. From highly skilled workers to family members. To those seeking refuge from violence wherever that might occur,” Clinton said, speaking to a room full of Latino activists during a speech at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) conference luncheon.

“To families this is an issue that matters more than we can measure. There’s nothing I take more seriously.”

The tech industry has been a major supporter of immigration reform in general, but particularly favors the high-skill or H-1B visa program, which allows companies to hire immigrants to fill technical positions.

The H-1B system is supposed to allow companies to employ foreigners who have unique skills not available in the us.

In truth, it allows the importation of cheap slave labor.

H/t ECop at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Good Jobs Stats this MOnth

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287,000 new jobs in June:

Quashing worries that job growth is flagging, the government on Friday reported that employers increased payrolls by 287,000 in June, an arresting surge that could reframe the economic debate just weeks before Republicans and Democrats gather for their conventions.

The official unemployment rate did rise to 4.9 percent, from 4.7 percent, but that was largely because more Americans rejoined the work force. And average hourly earnings ticked up again, continuing a pattern of rising wages that brought the yearly gain to 2.6 percent.

“Wow, this one takes my breath away,” said Diane Swonk, an independent economist in Chicago.

An unexpectedly grim employment report in May combined with Britain’s vote to leave the European Union had fanned wider concerns that the American economy was in danger of stalling. During its meeting last month, the Federal Reserve unanimously decided to postpone increasing the benchmark interest rate.

It’s just one month, and part of that number is Verizon strikers returning to work, and it follows a horrible May.

About all we can say is that the Fed almost certainly won’t do anything with rates before the election.

Good Point

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Over at Angry Bear, Sandwichman makes a good point: For all the claims that “workplace flexibility” increases employment, the societies with the fewest worker protections have the lowest workforce participation rates:

In its report on “The long-term decline in prime-age male labor force participation,” President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers writes:

Conventional economic theory posits that more ‘flexible’ labor markets—where it is easier to hire and fire workers—facilitate matches between employers and individuals who want to work. Yet despite having among the most flexible labor markets in the OECD—with low levels of labor market regulation and employment protections, a low minimum cost of labor, and low rates of collective bargaining coverage—the United States has one of the lowest prime-age male labor force participation rates of OECD member countries.

Although it has indeed become conventional, the ‘flexible’ labor markets mantra is not a theory. It is dogma. An article of faith. The theory behind the nostrum of flexible labor markets is Milton Friedman’s natural rate theory of unemployment, which, as Jamie Galbraith pointed out twenty years ago, was constructed by adding expectations to the empirical Philips Curve observation of a relationship between unemployment and inflation:

The Phillips curve had always been a purely empirical relation, patched into IS-LM Keynesianism to relieve that model’s lack of a theory of inflation. Friedman supplied no theory for a short-run Phillips curve, yet he affirmed that such a relation would “always” exist. And Friedman’s argument depends on it. If the Phillips relation fails empirically— that is, if levels of unemployment do not in fact predict the rate of inflation in the short run—then the construct of the natural rate of unemployment also loses meaning.

Obama and his evil minions® should not be surprised by this.

Endorsing general crappiness to the working man has never increased labor force participation rates, because, absent a hyper-Dickensian society, people then opt out of the workforce if they can.

About F%$#ing Time

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I’m not calling for reinstituting the draft, but it’s good that they have stopped excluding women from Selective Service registration:

By a 85-13 vote on Tuesday, the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year. It did not include amendments that would have required greater authorization for conflicts, and did not include an amendment from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to end Selective Service. Instead, it welcomed women into Selective Service for the first time, starting in 2018, unless that policy is stripped when the bill goes to conference.

The vote contained some element of surprise, as Republicans had stopped the female draft provision in the House. In fact, its presence in that version of the NDAA was a kind of ruse gone wrong. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a military veteran opposed to women serving in combat, proposed the draft amendment during mark-up, to make a point. Expecting the amendment to fail, he voted against it, ready to argue that Democrats and other supporters of women in combat were hypocrites.

Hopefully this makes it to Obama’s desk.

So Now Clippy will Be In Charge of My Online Job Search

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Microsoft is buying LinkedIn:

Microsoft is buying LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, a deal in which one of the world’s biggest social networks will join a software and computing giant as it tries to broaden its reach in online services.

Under the agreement the two companies announced Monday, LinkedIn will continue to operate independently, and LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner will report to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella. The deal with Microsoft values each of LinkedIn’s shares at $196; LinkedIn’s stock was up nearly 47 percent at the end of Monday trading.

The two companies cater to similar customers. Under Nadella’s tenure, Microsoft has sought to become a cloud-computing powerhouse that largely serves businesses. LinkedIn also primarily targets professionals and is the United States’ 11th-largest website by traffic and visitors, according to the online index Alexa. In a sign of LinkedIn’s importance to corporations, executives have been known to publish blog posts on the platform that act as corporate statements.

Monday’s deal will allow Microsoft to infuse its professional software and services with LinkedIn’s technology, a move that could give users of Windows, Microsoft Office and even the company’s personal assistant, Cortana, access to new features and elevate Microsoft’s suite of enterprise products. Meanwhile, by tapping into Microsoft Office’s user base of 1.2 billion people, LinkedIn hopes to become a central player in many companies’ day-to-day business, increasing engagement with the platform.

LinkedIn is kind of a roach motel, and deleting your account difficult, but thanks to Kevin Drum, here is the primer on how to deactivate your account.

Considering what Microflaccid tid to Skype, expect the crapification of LinkedIn to commence.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS

Ruck Falph

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What a surprise, Ralph Nader’s PIRGs, which have been abusing and burning out idealistic college students for more than 40 years, hates the new overtime requirements, because it would force them to treat their employees fairly:

Scott referred to this in his post yesterday, but PIRG’s statement opposing the new overtime rule is outrageous and entirely appropriate given its founding, history, and mode of operation. The argument itself is pure Lochner* (public interest indeed!)

Doubling the minimum salary to $47,476 is especially unrealistic for non-profit, cause-oriented organizations. Organizations like ours rely on small donations from individuals to pay the bills. We can’t expect those individuals to double the amount they donate. Rather, to cover higher staffing costs forced upon us under the rule, we will be forced to hire fewer staff and limit the hours those staff can work – all while the well-funded special interests that we’re up against will simply spend more.

 The logic of the rule, as applied to non-profit, cause-oriented organizations, makes no sense. A person of means – in service of a cause to which they feel deeply committed – can volunteer to work for our organization for free for as many hours as they wish, but a person of lesser means – who is no less committed to the work we do – cannot agree to work for our organization for less than $47,476 without having their work hours strictly limited in order to keep our costs affordable. This raises First Amendment concerns.

Yes, paying people overtime is a violation of their First Amendment rights! If this theoretical and entirely non-existent individual who wants to work for low wages specifically for PIRG and finds themselves limited to a mere 40 hours a week of this work, there are clearly no other outlets for their speech! Of course, this is complete garbage. Said individual could always donate the extra pay she made back to the organization, for instance.

 PIRG is an utter disaster of an organization. It identifies an always available source of labor–young people, usually college or immediate post-college students, who don’t have a good job lined up and want to do some good. That’s actually a good thing–I wish other left-leaning organizations could find a way to take idealistic people and put them to work doing some good. But all PIRG uses them for is door-to-door fundraising. PIRG has no interest in building organizing skills in these people, no interest in long-term movement building, no interest in helping these people advance to long-term investment in either the organization or larger progressive causes. You can work there for years and advance no further than supervising other fundraisers. All it does it burn out those idealistic people.

………

None of this should be surprising because Ralph Nader, founder of PIRG, has always hated unions in his own shop.

Ralph Nader, and his orgs, have been a horror show for a very long time before his campaign in 2000.

*This refers to the Lochner Era, when the Supreme Court invalidated almost all forms of workplace and safety regulations, because of an imaginary “liberty of contract”.

Millions Benefiting, and Republican Heads Exploding.

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It’s a win-win.  Obama just doubled the minimum pay at which salaried employees can be denied overtime:

The Obama administration unveiled a new rule Wednesday that will make millions of middle-income workers eligible for overtime pay, a move that delivers a long-sought victory for labor groups.

 The regulations, which were last updated more than a decade ago, would let full-time salaried employees earn overtime if they make up to $47,476 a year, more than double the current threshold of $23,660 a year. The Labor Department estimates that the rule would boost the pay of 4.2 million additional workers.

 The change is scheduled to take effect Dec. 1.

 The move caps a long-running effort by the Obama administration to aid low- and middle-income workers whose paychecks have not budged much in the last few decades, even as the top earners in America have seen their compensation soar. The last update to the rules came in 2004, and Wednesday’s announcement is the third update to the salary threshold for overtime regulations in 40 years.

 ………

 About 35 percent of full-time salaried employees will be eligible for time and a half when they work extra hours under the new rule, up significantly from the 7 percent who qualify under the current threshold, according to the Labor Department.

 The shift was swiftly criticized by small business owners, nonprofit groups and universities that say they may have to switch some salaried workers to hourly positions to afford the new threshold. And instead of seeing bigger paychecks, some salaried workers may be assigned fewer hours, they said.

It means that you won’t be getting free labor out of people by pretending that they are management.

And then there is this bit from the halls of overpaid administrators in education:

Some colleges said they worried they might have to cut services or raise tuition to keep up with the guidelines. Linda Harig, vice president of human resources for the University of Tennessee, estimates that the university would need to spend an additional $18 million to afford overtime pay for employees who would become eligible under the new guidelines, such as admission staff, hall directors and people with post-doctoral positions. That is the equivalent of a 4.3 percent increase in tuition, Harig said.

Because working 60 hours a week for 40 hours worth of pay is such a good thing.  And post docs aren’t basically legalized slavery.

If there additional costs, I would suggest cutting the pay people of people like, “Linda Harig, vice president of human resources for the University of Tennessee.”

Why does the head of HR need to be a VP level position? Now there is some useless fat to trim.

Not Enough Bullets

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In the brave new world of f%$#ing over the American worker, we have the financial innovation (hold on to your wallets) of payroll cards:

Hey, remember our old friends, Darden Restaurants? They’re the dickbag parent company of Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, and (formerly) Red Lobster, who (allegedly knowingly) source from slave labor and who are legendary within the restaurant industry for screwing over their workers. Yeah, turns out they have a fun new way of screwing their employees out of their hard-earned money. The best part? It’s (mostly) perfectly legal.

The secret is a fun (not at all fun) method of paying their employees called payroll cards. The way payroll cards work is that instead of actual paychecks, employees are given what amounts to a debit card they can use to access their pay. Some (assholes) have argued that this is actually good for workers, because it means they can access their money immediately. But a new report from Restaurant Opportunities Centers United sheds some light on the practice and, well … Darden doesn’t come out of it looking pretty. Among other things, the report found that:

  • 23% of employees surveyed said they were never given instructions on how to use the cards
  • 42% had trouble accessing their money using the cards
  • 63% weren’t told about the fees associated with the card when it was foisted on them
  • 49% said they had no access to an ATM from which they could withdraw their money without a fee
  • 24% reported fees at point of purchase — meaning they had to pay fees when they tried to use the payroll card for a purchase, rather than just a withdrawal

Payroll cards are great for banks: they get to charge exorbitant ATM fees to people whom they would otherwise have never been able to gouge. They’re just as great for the companies themselves, especially in Darden’s case: all told, the practice of using payroll cards saves the company $5 million per year, according to the report. The only people they’re not great for are actual workers, who (as per usual) get hosed in a big way.

Employers are required to offer an alternative, but a lot of them don’t, and those that do try to hide it from their workers.

F%$# these folks, without lube.

Not Enough Bullets

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The pay of hedge fund managers, who have underperformed the market forever, and lost money last year, is simply obscene:

The world’s top 25 hedge fund managers earned $13bn last year – more than the entire economies of Namibia, the Bahamas or Nicaragua.

Kenneth Griffin, founder and chief executive of Citadel, and James Simons, founder and chairman of Renaissance Technologies, shared the top spot, taking home $1.7bn each – equivalent to the annual salaries of 112,000 people taking home the US federal minimum wage of $15,080.

The earnings of the best-performing hedge fund managers, published by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine on Tuesday, dwarfs the pay of top Wall Street executives who have been under fire for their multimillion-dollar pay deals. The best paid banker last year was JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who collected $27m.

The huge pay at the top comes despite a tumultuous year on Wall Street that has led many well-known hedge funds to lose billions of dollars and others to close down. Daniel Loeb, CEO of Third Point, a hedge fund that manages $17.5bn, has described market conditions as a “hedge fund killing field”.

The, “Heads I win, tails you lose,” system of remuneration in Wall Street is wrong, and creates a lot of evil in our society.

PayPal to Homophobic Bigots in North Carolina: Drop Dead

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2 weeks ago, Paypal announced it was beginning a major expansion in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Following the signing of an anti-gay bill into law by the governor, PayPal has canceled these plans:

Two weeks ago, PayPal announced plans to open a new global operations center in Charlotte and employ over 400 people in skilled jobs.  In the short time since then, legislation has been abruptly enacted by the State of North Carolina that invalidates protections of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens and denies these members of our community equal rights under the law.

The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture.  As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.

This decision reflects PayPal’s deepest values and our strong belief that every person has the right to be treated equally, and with dignity and respect. These principles of fairness, inclusion and equality are at the heart of everything we seek to achieve and stand for as a company. And they compel us to take action to oppose discrimination.

Our decision is a clear and unambiguous one. But we do regret that we will not have the opportunity to be a part of the Charlotte community and to count as colleagues the skilled and talented people of the region. As a company that is committed to the principle that everyone deserves to live without fear of discrimination simply for being who they are, becoming an employer in North Carolina, where members of our teams will not have equal rights under the law, is simply untenable.

While we will seek an alternative location for our operations center, we remain committed to working with the LGBT community in North Carolina to overturn this discriminatory legislation, alongside all those who are committed to equality.

We will stand firm in our commitment to equality and inclusion and our conviction that we can make a difference by living and acting on our values.  It’s the right thing to do for our employees, our customers, and our communities.

Dan Schulman, President and CEO, PayPal

Good for them, and a well deserved bad for North Carolina.

It is Called Ticket Punching

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With about 5000 US troops in Iraq, there are 21 generals leading the troops there.

Typically, a full bird colonel would command a unit with 5000 soldiers, but there are 21 Generals:

In the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the U.S. military is notably short on soldiers, but apparently not on generals.

There are at least 12 U.S. generals in Iraq, a stunningly high number for a war that, if you believe the White House talking points, doesn’t involve American troops in combat. And that number is, if anything, a conservative estimate, not taking into account the flag officers running the U.S. air war, the admirals helping wage the war from the sea, or their superiors back at the Pentagon.

At U.S. headquarters inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, even majors and colonels frequently find themselves saluting superiors at a pace that outranks the Pentagon and certainly any normal military installation. With about 5,000 troops deployed to Iraq and Syria ISIS war, that means there’s a general for every 416 troops, give or take. To compare, there are some captains in the U.S. Army in charge of that many people.

Moreover, many of those generals come with staffs and bureaucracy that some argue slows decision-making against an agile terror group.

The Obama administration has frequently argued that the U.S. maintains a so-called light footprint in Iraq to reassure the American public that its military is not back in Iraq. Indeed, at times, the United States has not acknowledged where it has deployed troops until one of them died.

There are this many generals in Iraq because of the career needs of the general officer corps, not out of military need.

Getting a combat posting, even a useless one, paves the way to further promotions.

We saw something similar in the cruise missile attacks against Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, when the navy held off launching missiles for hours, so that more ships could get into position so that their captains could get it into their service records.

The missiles missed bin Laden by minutes as a result.

Between the military-industrial complex revolving door and up or out, our military is seriously, and deeply broken.

Bad Bosses Strike Back!

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In Oregon Maine, where they are proposing raising the minimum wage, along with eliminating the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, the worst boss in the world wrote an editorial saying that her workers hated the idea of being paid fairly.

Her workers responded by resigning en masse and described their dysfunctional workplace, and their dysfunctional boss, in exquisite detail:

Oh hey, it’s a Maine story (about the minimum wage, no less) that doesn’t directly involve Gov. Paul LePage!

Five servers at a restaurant in Portland called Five Fifty-Five have quit in one hell of a mic drop, giving their notice in a Portland Press Herald op-ed. The inciting incident was when their boss, Michelle Corry, wrote an op-ed that claimed to speak for her employees about the citizen-initiated ballot referendum in the state to both increase the minimum wage to $12 and eliminate the tip credit (also known as the “sub-minimum wage”). It’s the latter point that had Corry in such a huff.

………

Opponents of eliminating the tip credit say that doing so would bring about a restaurant industry apocalypse and there would be much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Restaurant owners in states like California, Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota, which pay their servers a guaranteed living wage and, at last check, had not devolved into a Road Warrior-esque hellscape, say “Um, not so much?”

Right, back to Maine and Michelle Corry’s op-ed. So, Corry argued strongly for a counter-proposal to the ballot initiative that would raise the minimum wage to only $10 and keep the tip credit intact. Since at last blush 75 percent of the state is in favor of raising the minimum wage, anti-minimum wage douchebuckets (even LePage — dammit, he showed up in this post despite our best efforts) know they’re going to have to compromise at least a little bit here, and the counter-proposal is that compromise. But in arguing for it, Corry tried to speak for those it would directly affect:

Ask any tipped employee at a restaurant near you if they would prefer to make a set wage or hustle and create their own destiny. The employees at my restaurant would always choose their own initiative.

Putting words in her servers’ mouths turned out to be a less-than-ideal move on her part.

There have been many issues at the restaurant, from capricious schedule changes to questionable practices on wages and tips. This latest insult of our boss falsely claiming to speak publicly on our behalf on an issue we care deeply about is just the final straw. We are submitting our notice and will be leaving her employment.

Translation: whatever the incredibly white Maine equivalent is of “oh HELL naw.”

The kicker to all of this is that Michelle Corry is the vice chair of the Maine Restaurant Association.

It is highly unlikely that I am going to be in Portland, Maine in the near future, but if I do, I won’t be going to Five Fifty-Five.

H/t Atrios.

Credit Where Credit is Due: This Police Chief Expects his Deputies to do their F%$#ing Job

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We’ve all seen the video of the Trump supporter sucker punching a protester as he was being escorted out by deputies.

Well, the police chief was not impressed with the lack of response of his deputies on the scene, and he lowered the boom on them:

Five sheriff’s deputies in North Carolina have been suspended without pay following a Donald Trump rally where a protester was sucker-punched as he was being escorted out, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.

Videos recorded at the March 9 rally in Fayetteville, N.C., showed a Trump supporter assaulting an anti-Trump protester, who was then detained by numerous uniformed men as his assailant walked away.

“The actions of the deputies and their failures to act in situations such as that which occurred during the Trump rally at the Crown Coliseum have never been and will not ever be tolerated under the policies of this office,” Sheriff Earl Butler said in a statement.

………

As Jones walked toward the exit, a man, who appeared to be white, emerged and punched him in the face.

“Boom, he caught me,” Jones told The Post in a telephone interview. “After I get it, before I could even gain my thoughts, I’m on the ground getting escorted out.”

John Franklin McGraw, 78, was not detained at the time. He was charged the following day with assault and disorderly conduct.

Jones told NBC affiliate WRAL that “I thought I was being arrested” by the deputies after being punched. “I saw, later on, that [McGraw] went back to his seat so I am trying to figure out why was he able to go back to his seat,” he said.

Three of the deputies have been demoted in rank and suspended for five days. The two others were suspended for three days.

Butler said the deputies were being disciplined for “unsatisfactory performance and failing to discharge the duties and policies” of the department.

What most of us saw was thuggish behavior by a Trump supporter.

To his credit, what Sheriff Butler saw was police officers literally turning their backs to a crime that was committed right in front of them.

He took names and kicked but.

Good for him.

India Can Go Cheney Itself

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India is taking the US to the WTO over the increase in fees for H1B visas:

India has complained to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) about the United States’ decision to increase visa application fees.

The USA last year doubled the fee required to apply for an H1-B visa, a class of temporary visa for skilled workers. Fees rose to US4,000 per application.

Indian technology companies have complained long and loud about the cost of H1-B visas, arguing that they need to bring workers from India to the USA to grow their businesses. US businesses retort that Indian companies could hire locals with comparable skills, but prefer to import people who they pay lower wages.

………

India’s now formally complained to the WTO, which sets the clock ticking on a 60-day mediation process. If nothing can be resolved, the WTO can rule on the dispute.

If I had my druthers, I’d shut the whole program down.

It’s rife with abuse, and depresses wages in technical fields in the United States.

This Ain’t Just About Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. It’s Also About Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

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That’s gonna leave a mark

Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who is generally considered someone to watch in the Democratic Party, has resigned from the Democratic National Committee to endorse Bernie Sanders:

Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii, resigned as a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday in order to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for president.

The endorsement came a day after Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary in South Carolina by a huge margin — she captured nearly 74 percent of the vote — in a signal of her support in the South right before several other Southern states vote in Tuesday’s primaries.

Ms. Gabbard explained her decision in a video on YouTube in which she said that, as a military veteran, she wanted the United States to avoid “interventionist wars of regime change.”

“As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know first hand the cost of war,” said Ms. Gabbard, one of the first female combat veterans to serve in Congress. “I know how important it is that our commander-in-chief has the sound judgment required to know when to use America’s military power and when not to use that power.

This is a harsh, and IMNSHO justified critique of Clinton’s blithely bellicose foreign policy, but I have to think that a lot of this is that she no longer wants to deal with Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Just to remind you, Wasserman-Schultz banned Gabbard from the debate audience for calling for more debates, so I am inclined to think that part of this is being driven by her no longer wanting to work with the hacktacular DWS.

Based on various statements from the Beltway media, I get the sense that it is not only Representative Gabbard who is getting sick of Wasserman-Schultz.

The DNC chair appears to be high handed, self absorbed, and threatened by competence around her, and that is a toxic mix in any organization.

Remember When I Wrote About a College President Who Described Shooting His Student and Drowning Them Like Bunnies?

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Basically, it was his plan to game the college ratings.

Well, as I mentioned in the above link, the President of Mount St. Marys University used these analogies for his plan to artificially boost the retention numbers throwing out higher risk students in the first 3 weeks of class, when they don’t count:

You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.

It made the national news, and the college, and its President, former bankster Simon Newman, were held up for condemnation.

Unsurprisingly, President Newman is handling this like the guardian of capitalism that he is: killing he messenger:

When student reporters at Mount St. Mary’s University, a small Catholic institution in Maryland, published an article in January that quoted the university’s president likening struggling freshmen to bunnies that should be drowned, they knew it might get a big reaction.

 It finally came this week, it appears — in the form of a pink slip for the faculty adviser of the campus newspaper.

 The university informed the adviser, Ed Egan, that he had been disloyal and was now fired, a move seen by many on the campus in Emmitsburg as a retaliatory strike.

 The decision, along with other recent punishments of faculty members at Mount St. Mary’s, has triggered outrage well beyond its rural campus in northern Maryland, earning condemnation from thousands of academics across the country as well as national monitors of academic and journalistic freedom.

 The article, by Rebecca Schisler and Ryan Golden, was published in The Mountain Echo under Mr. Egan’s tutelage on Jan. 19 and presented two explosive pieces of news.

 ………

 The report said that the administration was planning to cull struggling freshmen from the institution as part of an effort to improve retention numbers — a big factor in rankings published in outlets like U.S. News & World Report — and that the university’s president, Simon Newman, had used disturbing language to sell the idea to a skeptical professor last fall.

 “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t,” Mr. Newman is quoted as saying. “You just have to drown the bunnies.”

 He added, “Put a Glock to their heads.”

 ………

 “Ed, as the faculty adviser, could really frame the battlefield, if you will, around what the issue was,” Mr. Coyne said. “We had a president in a private conversation with a colleague says the bad-metaphor-hall-of-fame statement, and that was the story. And the position behind it about a retention program that was never enacted, was suddenly lost in the conversation.”

 Mr. Egan and both student reporters, who said they had spent weeks investigating their article, rejected Mr. Coyne’s depiction of editorial manipulation. (The private conversation, the students reported, was relayed by two professors who were there.)

 “There was no pressure at all,” Ms. Schisler, a junior, said. “We are a student-run paper. All of the articles are the ideas of students, and all of them are written by students.”

 Mr. Golden, a senior who is also The Echo’s managing editor, said the newspaper’s staff members had been blindsided by the administration’s move to fire Mr. Egan, who, he said, had been a staunch advocate of their work.

 “We were really appalled by it,” Mr. Golden said. “He’s really a good mentor for a lot of students at this school. He absolutely encouraged us to pursue journalistic integrity, absolutely encouraged us to be ethical, to be fair, to be thorough, to be objective and to do the best work that we could.”

 Mr. Newman, a former private equity chief executive, was hired last spring to help raise the college’s national profile and increase its endowment. Some faculty members have since pushed back against what they see as his sharp-elbowed business approach.

 Mr. Egan’s dismissal was the third case in less than a week of faculty members’ facing censure from Mr. Newman’s administration. The cases were being portrayed by some professors and alumni as a concerted effort to purge the faculty of those with dissenting views.

There have been two other people fired, including a tenured faculty member, and get a load this bit from his dismissal letter:

“As an employee of Mount St. Mary’s University, you owe a duty of loyalty to this university and to act in a manner consistent with the duty,” read the letter addressed to Dr. Naberhaus and signed by Mr. Newman. “However, your recent actions, in my opinion and that of others, have violated that duty and clearly justify your termination.”

Between potential lawsuits, bad PR, and what I am sure is quite a few enraged alumni, Egan is a 2nd generation alumnus, it does appear that I was being prophetic, and not just sarcastic, when I suggested that when Simon Newman wanted to run the University like a business, it meant, “Burning it down for insurance money.”

This is what happens when you hire finance types to do real jobs, BTW.

Well, This Explains Why the Young-Uns Like Bernie

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Unpaid internships are the bane of many people starting off in life:

Employers may argue that professional experience gained via an internship pays for itself – which is hopefully the case, as most of the presidential candidates are not prepared to pay you to work for them.

A new study has revealed that only one presidential hopeful out of a total of 16 candidates pays their interns.

Bernie Sanders, Vermont Senator and Democrat, pays his interns $10.10 per hour, as reported by The Washington Post.

Christina Greer, assistant professor of political science at Fordham University, and Alexis Grenell, a political strategist and columnist, hired a student at $15 per hour to find out how each candidate employs interns.

 BTW, the term for the Sanders campaign is doing is, “Walking the walk.”