ARTS & FARCES internet

Business

Still looking for proof that the US needs labor protections on a par with the EU? Consider the Ikea plant in Danville, VA. Nathaniel Popper, writing for the Los Angeles Times, reports “state and local officials offered US$12 million in incentives” to bring the plant to Danville three years ago. But Ikea’s Danville plant is accused of racial discrimination, actively trying to prevent workers from unionizing, mandatory overtime, and exceptionally high turnover. Popper reports that Ikea’s code of conduct—called IWAY—“guarantees workers the right to organize and stipulates that all overtime be voluntary.” Except in the company’s US plant. Ikea’s European workers have a minimum wage of about US$19 per hour plus mandated five weeks paid vacation. Ikea’s US workers have a minimum wage of US$8 per hour and 12 vacation days, eight of which are determined by Ikea.

Matt Tiabbi is back with another barn-burner for Rolling Stone. Taibbi has picked up at Rolling Stone where Hunter Thompson and Bill Greider left off and it’s really good to see. Taibbi’s lede identifies America’s two budgets—the official one on the public record; and the secret one that got out of control during the financial crash of 2008. Congress has forced a policy of open books on the sentinel of the secret budget—the Federal Reserve—and some wildly disturbing things are finally coming to light. “It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure,” Tiabbi writes. Tiabbi singles out one recipient of Federal Reserve largesse—Waterfall TALF Opportunity—to get a sense of which way the wind blows. Waterfall is run by Christy Mack, the wife of Morgan Stanley chair John Mack, and Susan Karches, the widow of Peter Karches who was formerly president of Morgan Stanley’s investment-banking division. The two Wall Street wives were given a quarter billion dollars of low-interest bailout loans (guaranteeing them millions in risk-free income) even though neither has a shred of business experience. Mack and Karches received the money through the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) program. But, as Taibbi writes, “the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called ‘giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all.’” Taibbi reports that Mack and Karches ponied up US$15 million and almost immediately received US$220 million in cash from the Federal Reserve with which they bought student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were structured so that Mack and Karches would get 100 percent of any profits and the US taxpayers would take 90 percent of the losses in the shorts.

Censorship

Maureen Dowd and other US critics displayed their ignorance of both Bob Dylan’s repertoire and subversive politics in their reviews of Dylan’s sets in China and Vietnam. In his Beijing show, Dylan performed “Ballad of a Thin Man” followed by “All Along the Watchtower,” both of which are quite revolutionary. Both of which were repeated at the Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam show. “The Times They Are A-Changin’” was also included in the Beijing set. The Shanghai set included “Desolation Row.” The reports I’ve read of the China and Vietnam shows indicate that Dylan opened with “Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking” (look up the lyrics; especially the first verse)—heavy apocalyptic Christian overtones and all—for the Beijing and Shanghai shows. If you want accurate criticism from an American journalist, James Fallows’s piece for The Atlantic is the only thing I’ve seen even remotely worth your time. Judging from the setlists, Dylan’s shows in China and Vietnam were, for the most part, on a par with the last Dylan show I saw: Election night 2008 at the University of Minnesota.

Internet

The US House of Representatives has voted to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from regulating how internet service providers manage their networks, directly opposing the already weak network neutrality provisions in the FCC’s “Preserving the Open Internet” (.pdf; 82KB) order. House Republicans argued that the FCC’s order exceeded the agency’s authority. The measure will likely be defeated in the US Senate but who knows. The resolution, because it was brought up under the Congressional Review Act, cannot be filibustered and requires support from only 30 senators to bring it to the Senate floor.

Media

One of the few remaining advertising-free mediascapes was book publishing. That’s changed as Amazon has announced a US$25 discount for its Kindle ereader for customers who agree to allow advertising on the device’s screen savers and home page. Thankfully, reports indicate that advertising will not appear inside the ebooks themselves. At least not yet. Media writers are almost unanimous in believing this to be yet another step for Amazon becoming a full-blown media company—with full-blown tablet devices—in order to compete more effectively against Apple’s iOS devices and Google’s Android. Last month, Amazon unveiled its Android app store. Claire Cain Miller, writing for the New York Times, cites Craig Bierley, Buick’s director of advertising and promotions on the Kindle ads: “Buick’s Kindle ads will show photographs of four of its cars and text that relates to reading, like a reference to a car owner’s manual…. Because reading books is an intimate experience, he said he hoped people might pay more attention to the ads.” Owner’s manuals? Really? Apparently, customers could buy the discounted Kindle and avoid the advertising simply by turning off Wi-Fi.

Jay Rosen tweeted the eight key ideas he presented at the Media140 conference in Barcelona: The Great Horizontal: When people are connected across to other people as effectively as they are connected “up” to Big Media. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and today almost anyone can own one. We’re in a golden age of press freedom. Anyone can doesn’t mean everyone will. But the fact that anyone can matters to everyone. And if it doesn’t now, wait: It will. The more people who participate in the press the stronger the press can be. But there are many hard problems to solve first. What Rusbridger calls “the mutualization of journalism” is a retirement program for bloggers v. journalists. When the same network that floods us with too much information works to filter that flood, verification itself begins to scale. Journalists: Instead of crying about Google stealing your news, steal from Google. Start “organizing the world’s information.” Instead of the readers, the viewers, the listeners, or the audience, call them “the users.” This helps correct the imagination.

Politics

Three decades into the economic experiment known as supply-side economics has been a total failure. Starting with Milton Friedman—who thought public parks were socialistic—all the way through George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich (which Barak Obama extended for two additional years). David Cay Johnston, one of the best tax writers plying the trade just now, has an absolutely stunning piece in Willamette Week, “Nine things the rich don’t want you to know about taxes.” Before 1980’s Reaganism, when all this started, the bottom 90 percent of the US population saw their incomes grow faster than the top one percent. Since Reagan, almost all growth have been restricted to the top. If you think the rich pay their share, please listen to Cay Johnston who spells it out as clearly as possible: “It’s true that the top one percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government. Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners. That’s because, once you reach US$106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who earns US$106,800.” And the very, very rich pay no current income tax at all. Highest recommendation.

Privacy

If US Senators John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and John McCain (R-Arizona) get their way, companies doing business on the internet will be required to disclose precisely what personal information they’re collecting from visitors to their websites and how that information is used. Proposed legislation from the odd couple—the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights (.pdf; 78KB)—would also require companies to offer easy opt-out mechanisms and a complaint process. The bill would require users to be notified whenever a third party accessed personally identifiable data. Unfortunately, the currently proposed legislation does not offer any sort of “do not track” mechanism, specifically prohibits the states from offering stronger protections, and prohibits individuals from bringing legal action against privacy violating companies.

Publishing

Denny Chin, a Second Circuit Court of Appeals judge in Manhattan, has rejected Google’s 2008 revised settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers that would have allowed it to make books available online. The settlement allowed Google’s book scanning operation to continue with advertising while requiring Google to establish a US$125 million registry to allow copyright owners to get paid when their works are viewed online. Chin, in his 48-page decision, ruled that the settlement would give Google the ability to exploit books without permission. Rejecting the settlement without prejudice, Chin suggested that copyright owners be allowed to opt-in to the settlement instead of the default opt-out Google currently requires.

Bobbie Johnson, writing for GigaOm, absolutely nails the problem with traditional publishers while reflecting on the London Book Fair: “But in some ways, it still feels like a clash of civilizations. Publishers talking with each about what the next big thing might be, while Amazon and Google and the rest simply go and make the next big thing.”

Spirituality

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has issued a statement on the situation at Kirti Monastery in northeastern Tibet’s Ngaba. Armed Chinese military forces have surrounded the monastery, home to some 2,500 monks, and at one point blocked food and supplies from entering the area. Local Tibetans have, in turn, surrounded the Chinese soldiers. On 16 March 2011, a monk set himself on fire, observing the third anniversary of peaceful protests that took place in Tibet. Police, instead of putting out the fire, beat the monk, contributing to his death. The Dalai Lama reaches out to the international community to “persuade the Chinese leadership to exercise restraint in handling this situation.”

Sustainability

Zipcar, one of the leading car-sharing companies which unfortunately has yet to turn a profit since its 2000 launch, went public this week. The company offers cheap rental cars—by the hour or the day—in 14 metropolitan areas and 230 college campuses. The initial public offering (IPO) raised a stunning US$174.24 million with shares priced at US$18. Within hours of the stock’s availability, the price had run up nearly 60 percent, bouncing around US$28 per share. What that means in the real world is that Zipcar’s underwriters—Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan—underpriced the stock, allowing their closest institutional investors to cash in on the gift US$18 price—to the cumulative tune of US$50 million—before the stock was publicly available. Aside from that, the Zipcar IPO is tremendous news for the sustainable option of car-sharing where cars are used as a service instead of owned. The company currently has 560,000 members. Katie Fehrenbacher, writing for GigaOm, cites Frost & Sullivan as saying, “the revenue from car sharing programs in North America will increase to $3.3 billion in 2016, up from $253 million in 2009.”

User experience

Colleen Jones, writing for Smashing magazine, discusses a coherent set of solutions to common content problems. She begins by pointing out two of the most common false solutions: Search engine optimization (SEO) snake oil and overpromised technology. The only real solution is appropriate (and therefore difficult) planning, designing, and development. Jones advises focusing your content strategy efforts on three areas: Analysis, editorial, and architecture.