Joining Morning Joe today is/are Mike Barnicle, Mark Halperin, Harold Ford Jr., Jeremy Peters, Lisa Lerer, Joe Conason, Andy Card, Howard Dean, Larry Summers, Megan Murphy, Andrew Maraniss, Kasie Hunt, Sen. John Thune, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Frankie Muniz, Melissa Fitzgerald, Jayson Floyd and more
End of an era. The David Letterman show ends tonight. Tonight is the last show. It looked like quite a party last night on that set.
David Letterman is not leaving. Sure, tonight he will sign off from “Late Show with David Letterman” after nearly 22 years behind the desk.
But we’ll still encounter something of Letterman on every late-night TV talk show from now until they stop making them. That’s how big his impact has been.
Need proof? Late night’s two Jimmys, NBC’s Fallon and ABC’s Kimmel – the very guys hastening Letterman’s departure – have gone out of their way to pay their respects to their rival at CBS. Fallon spent five minutes praising Letterman on “The Tonight Show.” Kimmel has scheduled a rerun tonight in honor of Letterman’s farewell.
Nearly everyone hosting a late-night show these days – not just the Jimmys, but Conan O’Brien and Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers and Letterman’s pending replacement, Stephen Colbert – owe a tremendous debt to the guy from Indiana with the gap-toothed smile and the irrepressible ability to turn everything into a joke.
Only Letterman’s mentor, Johnny Carson, who hosted “The Tonight Show” on NBC from 1962 to 1992 and forged the late-night talk show into an American institution, was as meaningful to the genre.
“I think he is as important as Carson,” said Ross Brown, who teaches at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University in Orange. “They are different in what they contributed. Johnny was very respectful of the form. But Dave really broke through and found a style that has become much more of what’s happening today.”
For all of his innovation, though, trends in television are pushing Letterman, 68, off the “Late Show” stage just as surely as his desire to retire.
Since taking over as host of “The Tonight Show” from Jay Leno in February 2014, Fallon has turned what had been a battle between Leno and Letterman into a rout. The most recent Nielsen ratings show Fallon averaging 4 million viewers a night for 2014-15, while Letterman has 2.8 million.
Kimmel, whose “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” started from scratch 12 years ago, is in a virtual tie with Letterman for total viewers but outstrips him by 20 percent among the advertiser-preferred demographic of adults younger than 50.
More importantly, the Jimmys kill Letterman in social media. Today, marketing a late-night brand extends far beyond the airing in its regular time slot. Clips are stored on YouTube, shared on Facebook and repeated on Twitter, expanding the series’ reach – and profitability.
A generation ago, viewers might have propped open their eyelids to stay awake for Letterman’s top 10 list. Today, they can fall asleep knowing that Fallon’s thank you notes will be waiting in their Twitter feed the next morning.
Letterman has 332,000 followers on Twitter. Fallon has more than 25 million.
Chapman’s Brown says that these new platforms, which are turning all of TV upside down, perhaps have been most disruptive to late night.
“Time-shifting has made watching those shows almost unnecessary,” Brown said. “You can cherry-pick the parts that you want to watch.”
But if it’s fair to say Letterman might not be leaving if Fallon weren’t around, it’s also fair to say that Fallon’s show might not exist without Letterman.
In fact, Letterman was something of a disruptive force himself when “Late Night with David Letterman” launched on NBC in 1982. It followed Carson’s show at 12:35 a.m. and, though made with Carson’s blessing and help, it was clearly not a second version of “The Tonight Show.”
Letterman played with the established format of late night. An astute student of comedy, he reached back to the 1950s to borrow bits from Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs, then buffed them up with a post-modern gloss. Kovacs might have introduced conceptual comedy to television, but he never dropped objects off the top of a building just to see what would happen.
But it wasn’t just the bits that were different, it was Letterman’s entire style. Talk-show hosts before him were funny, but they took their hosting gigs seriously. Letterman we weren’t so sure about.
There was a degree of self-awareness we hadn’t seen before. He was hosting a talk show while somehow standing apart from it and saying, “Isn’t this kind of silly?” He was simultaneously a teenager too cool for school and a 10-year-old boy driving Dad’s car around the parking lot.
Notably, where Carson would engage celebrity guests and trade friendly banter, Letterman was just as likely to provoke them by saying something inappropriate – if it seemed funny. This led to some awkward moments and occasional allegations of sexism, but those never stopped Letterman.
“Part of Dave’s persona, for better and sometimes for worse, is that he’s a smart aleck,” Brown said.
Letterman seemed primed to take over “The Tonight Show,” but when Carson retired in 1993, the executives at NBC went with Leno, whose style was closer to Carson’s. Letterman almost immediately signed a deal with CBS to create the rival “Late Show.”
Leno and Letterman engaged in a back-and-forth battle for ratings until Leno retired last year. But in terms of legacy, Letterman is the clear winner. Leno was the last of his breed; Letterman was the first of his.
It’s hard to watch Conan’s monologue, Kimmel’s interviews or Fallon’s goofy games and not see Letterman’s influence.
However the late-night genre evolves from this point, it is certain to bear some of Letterman’s stamp.
The next mutation is likely to come from Chelsea Handler, the former E! host who will introduce a “late-night” talk show via Netflix next year. Not only will she be one of the ultra-rare female hosts (Joan Rivers briefly had her own series on Fox), Handler’s show will be available for viewers to watch when they please.
That could well be a huge disruption to the business. But Handler, as self-aware and ironic as any comic around, will no doubt do it with large doses of Letterman’s sensibility.
Court reminds State to produce Clinton emails in ‘shortest’ time possible.
An appeals court gently warned the State Department on Friday to release relevant public documents quickly from among the large batch of emails Hillary Clinton turned over to the agency from her private server.
The U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia ruled the best way to handle a Freedom of Information Act case involving the emails would be to send it back to the district court, which will determine the “most efficient way to proceed under FOIA.”“In doing so, we remind the State Department that, although it may choose of its own accord to release the emails to the public at large, it has a statutory duty to search for and produce documents responsive to FOIA requests ‘in the shortest amount of time,’ ” the three-judge panel wrote.
A controversy engulfed Clinton earlier this year when it was revealed she used a private email account during her time as secretary of State. She handed over about 55,000 pages of emails to the department last year, but she also deleted about 30,000 that she said were personal.
Clinton, who has since launched a presidential bid, has asked the State Department to release the batch of emails she turned over publicly. The agency is sorting through the emails for potential redactions in process it says could take months.
In the meantime, outside groups have argued their previous Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department were incomplete because they lacked Clinton’s emails.
The Justice Department has argued the quickest way for the FOIA requests involving Clinton’s emails to be satisfied is for the State Department to finish its review of the entire trove and post “them on a State Department website.” Lawyers argued it would be “considerably more efficient than reviewing the documents piecemeal in response to subject-specific FOIA requests.”
The ruling Friday involves a case brought by the conservative group Freedom Watch. The group requested documents from the State Department and other agencies related to a 2012 leak of information that implicated the U.S. in an operation crippling Iranian nuclear centrifuges with a virus called Stuxnet.
Freedom Watch wanted to know who in the government leaked the information to The New York Times.
During oral arguments earlier this month, Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman argued Clinton’s personal server should be turned over and also wanted conditions imposed on the State Department so the records request did not drag on for months.
Memo to Jeb Bush: This is how you answer the inquiry about whether it was a great idea for us to go into Iraq. Hillary Clinton Clearly Says What No Republican Will: Iraq Was a Mistake.
Some people can admit they were wrong. 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at a bicycle shop in Cedar Falls, Iowa Tuesday, responded to questions from reporters about Iraq. Unlike the Republican candidates who are falling over themselves to avoid saying that Bush got it wrong, that it was a mistake, Secretary Clinton came out of the gate charging with accountability for her past vote as a Senator to authorize the war in Iraq in 2003, one that upset the liberal end of the Democratic Party still burning with rage over the invasion of Iraq based on a lie.
“I know that there have been a lot of questions about Iraq posted to candidates over the last week. I’ve made it very clear that I made a mistake, plain and simple,” the Democratic former Secretary of State said.
Clinton added, “And I have written about it in my book, I’ve talked about it in the past, and what we now see is a very different and very dangerous situation. The United States is doing what it can, but ultimately this has to be a struggle that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people are determined to win for themselves.”
It’s not hard to admit a mistake. It means that you’re human. In this case, as it relates to foreign policy, Democrats see it as a dynamic, ever-changing situation that must constantly be adapted to as new information comes in, whereas Republicans believe that once they take a position, they will stake that position out in spite of changing evidence, information, and factors. Republicans see foreign policy as static. They freeze in WAR and never look back.
Hillary Clinton admits that the vote she took on Iraq was a mistake. Too bad the people who presented false information to her and other Senators in order to push them into voting the way they did have yet to say they are sorry, or even admit they were wrong. Of course they can’t really do that, because they weren’t “wrong”, they were deliberately cherry picking information in order to get Congress to authorize the war.
Hillary Clinton in 2015 is an improved candidate from 2012. She is confident enough to say she was wrong about Iraq. Her confidence is well warranted, as she has the most foreign policy experience of any 2016 hopeful. Being able to clearly own a mistake is something that helps voters feel they can trust a candidate. Clinton isn’t trying to walk any fine line, she’s giving it straight, as the voters deserve.
“I know that there have been a lot of questions about Iraq posted to candidates over the last week. I’ve made it very clear that I made a mistake, plain and simple,” the Democratic former Secretary of State said.
Clinton added, “And I have written about it in my book, I’ve talked about it in the past, and what we now see is a very different and very dangerous situation. The United States is doing what it can, but ultimately this has to be a struggle that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people are determined to win for themselves.”
It’s not hard to admit a mistake. It means that you’re human. In this case, as it relates to foreign policy, Democrats see it as a dynamic, ever-changing situation that must constantly be adapted to as new information comes in, whereas Republicans believe that once they take a position, they will stake that position out in spite of changing evidence, information, and factors. Republicans see foreign policy as static. They freeze in WAR and never look back.
Hillary Clinton admits that the vote she took on Iraq was a mistake. Too bad the people who presented false information to her and other Senators in order to push them into voting the way they did have yet to say they are sorry, or even admit they were wrong. Of course they can’t really do that, because they weren’t “wrong”, they were deliberately cherry picking information in order to get Congress to authorize the war.
Hillary Clinton in 2015 is an improved candidate from 2012. She is confident enough to say she was wrong about Iraq. Her confidence is well warranted, as she has the most foreign policy experience of any 2016 hopeful. Being able to clearly own a mistake is something that helps voters feel they can trust a candidate. Clinton isn’t trying to walk any fine line, she’s giving it straight, as the voters deserve.
In a Bloomberg poll of Iowa Democrats: Flawed Hillary Clinton Our Only Hope. A Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies focus group finds Democrats resolved over their presidential frontrunner.
Iowa Democrats see Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate who, despite her flaws, represents what they see as their only chance of keeping control of the White House in 2016.
During a Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies focus group conducted Monday in Des Moines, 10 Iowa Democrats were asked what thoughts they had about Clinton as a leader and a person.
“She's a bad mama jama. She's a strong, competent woman,” said Kiendra, a 33-year-old librarian. “She knows what she's doing. She's not afraid to step up. She's not afraid to take advice and she's not afraid to say, 'No, I don't want to do it that way. I'm going to do it this way.'” A school teacher named Al cited Clinton's political drive as positive.
“A lot of it, in fact, is made that, oh, she’s so ambitious,” Al said. “Well, you know what? If you’re going to be a politician, if you’re going to set yourself up to be elected to any office, you have to be ambitious. You have to have one big ego. And if you’re going for the higher offices, you’ve got to have an absolutely ego.”
While the consensus among those who participated in the focus group was that Clinton possessed the experience and policy positions required to be elected president, the group was less confident when it came to naming the former secretary of state's actual accomplishments.
“I really can’t name anything off the top of my head,” said Ryan, a 38-year-old event planner.
Following an awkward silence, a 22-year-old student named Amanda added, “I honestly can’t say I followed along everything that was going on.”
While some took issue with Clinton's ties to Wall Street, secrecy, and foundation contributions, the group, by and large, seemed resolved that she represented the party's best chance at fending off a Republican challenger.
“She’s been at a high level in numerous offices for about 25 years now,” Charlie, 24, who works as a graphic designer, said. “I mean it’s either going to be that or it’s going to be Scott Walker, you know, taking away, destroying America’s unions. And there’s just, you know, she’s not perfect. But she’s been in the eye for a long time, in the public’s eye, and you’re going to have some stuff on her. But she has great policies and she knows how to get stuff done.”
Bloomberg Politics, in conjunction with Purple Strategies, conducted two qualitative focus groups in Des Moines, Iowa, one of Democratic caucus participants and one of Republican caucus participants. Each group consisted of 10 participants, both men and women, and from a variety of ages and socio-economic and educational backgrounds. Qualitative research results cannot be statistically analyzed or projected onto the broader population at large. As is customary, respondents were compensated for their participation.
Severe storms speed across Texas and Oklahoma, at least two tornadoes confirmed. At least two tornadoes touched down late Tuesday as a series of severe storms caused damage and flooding in parts of north Texas and southern Oklahoma.
A second tornado was reported to have passed through the town at approximately 7:45 p.m. local time, but that was not immediately confirmed by the National Weather Service.
Earlier Tuesday, a tornado touched town in the town of Giddings, Texas, approximately 55 miles east of Austin. The city's emergency manager told the Star-Telegram that storm damaged some farm outbuildings and the roof of a Ramada Inn. One man who was a guest at the hotel was reported injured when debris blew in through a window and struck him in the head. He was taken to a hospital in San Marcos for treatment of head lacerations.
Storm systems across the southern Plans had brought heavy rain and flooding to the region over most of the day Tuesday. In West Texas, San Angelo Regional Airport was closed after the terminal became flooded. In the city of Abilene, firefighters blamed lighting for a fire that destroyed a home in that city.
In Oklahoma, tornado warnings were issued for the southern part of the state shortly before 10 p.m. local time. Flooding was reported in the university town of Norman, and forecasters called for up to eight-and-a-half inches of rain for the south-central part of the state. Overnight flash flood watches issued for Tulsa and northeastern Oklahoma.
Earlier Tuesday, authorities reported multiple small tornadoes had touched down near the town of Purcell in southern Oklahoma. Other tornadoes were reported in three counties, though no significant damage or injuries were reported.
Harold Ford Jr. had a baby this week. Congrats to him and his wife. 7 Pounds, 2 Ounces. Born Sunday Night.
And, Oh Jeez. Iraqi army 'abandoned tanks, artillery and Humvees' to Isil in fall of Ramadi. Extent of Iraqi army chaos revealed by Pentagon alongside claims that corrupt officers sold battle plans to jihadists.
“Corrupt ISF commanders in Ramadi took bribes in exchange for battle plans and logistical information,” Hashem al-Hashimi said on Twitter. “Clean” ISF commanders felt isolated by the corruption of those around them, he said. Sandstorms, exploding mechanical diggers, and ignominious flight through a minefield - the fall of Ramadi in full Shia militias and Sunni fighters join forces to counter-attack Isil in Ramadi. The Iraqi army’s elite “Golden Brigade” found itself surrounded and cut off at the end of last week after a major push at Ramadi’s weak points by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Thursday.
Survivors told The Daily Telegraph that they received no support as concerted suicide bombs, including a mechanical digger and a petrol tanker, were set off to clear the way into the central government compound area. It was in a separate attack on the main military base in the city that troops there fled, leaving their American-supplied equipment behind. The retreat mirrored the devastating loss of much of Sunni-occupied Iraq last summer, when the cities of Tikrit and Mosul fell in the space of a few days.
Immediately after the loss of Ramadi, the Obama administration tried to play down the defeat. John Kerry, the secretary of state, said he was "absolutely confident" that the situation could be reversed “within days”. However, the Pentagon meanwhile authorised US-led coalition air strikes on Isil positions in Ramadi to continue even though the forces called up to lead the fight-back by the Iraqi authorities include Iran-backed Shia militias.
In April, it took both the militias and US air strikes to oust Isil from the city of Tikrit.
“The US alone cannot defeat Isil, Iran cannot defeat Isil, Iraq alone certainly cannot defeat Isil,” said Hayder al-Khoei, an Iraqi analyst, speaking at Chatham House in London on Tuesday. “They need to come together to fight a common threat.”
Next stop: Sectarian civil war in Anbar, if not Baghdad. No matter what happens in Ramadi the next few months, warns Newsweek, the outcome is likely to be bad.
Earlier this month, the first 1,000 Sunni recruits joined a pro-government Sunni tribal militia that is slated to grow to 6,000. But the arming of Sunni militias in Anbar province has been delayed by the opposition of Shiite political leaders who doubt the loyalty of many Sunni Iraqis in an increasingly polarized sectarian atmosphere…
Abadi, a Shiite political leader who promised to lead a more inclusive government, reached a deal on sharing oil revenues with Iraqi Kurds and pushed for arming Sunni tribesmen to fight against ISIS. But Abadi’s plans to arm Sunni militias have been trimmed back by rival Shiite leaders backed by Iran, who favor the ruthless employment of Iranian-trained Shiite militias…
A military victory for Iran’s surrogate militias in Ramadi would amount to a political defeat for the United States and for Abadi. And such a victory could trigger a Sunni backlash that could boost ISIS and prolong, rather than shorten, Iraq’s civil war.
Yesterday the AP wondered how long it’ll be before the White House shifts to a containment strategy against ISIS. Iran presumably isn’t willing to pour endless men and materiel into Iraq to cleanse Anbar of its jihadis. The goal is protecting the southern and eastern Shiite parts of the country; once ISIS takes enough of a beating, they might be willing to reach a cold accommodation with Tehran in which everyone stays more or less in their own sectarian sphere. That’s tricky because it would also require some sort of accommodation between ISIS and Assad, as Iran’s not going to forfeit its chief Arab proxy. But who knows? As ISIS entrenches in Iraq and parts of Syria, maybe they’ll decide they’re better off building a caliphate there than dragging out the fight against Damascus, where they’re already at risk of being overtaken by Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front. If and when that happens, ISIS would in theory be left to consolidate power in its new jihadistan while AQ and Iran carve up what’s left of Syria. At which point we’d do … what? Send in ground troops to topple the caliphate? Double down on a losing effort to train a national army without a nation? Leave the new ISIS jihadistan more or less alone apart from pinpoint strikes like drone attacks and Special Forces raids on terror camps there? If “success” is this dangerous, what would failure look like?
The bottom line like Joe says is that Iraqi troops are untrainable. And, there are no allies like Turkey or Saudi Arabia that are worth anything in trying to help things over there.
Investigators believe DC family was held captive before murders, sources say. Sources close to the investigation into the murders of a married Washington, D.C., couple, their 10-year-old son and their housekeeper reportedly believe the couple was bound and held captive for at least one night before they were brutally killed and their mansion set on fire.
Savvas Savopoulos, 46, his wife, Amy Savopoulos, 47, their son, Philip, and housekeeper Veralicia Figueroa, 57, were found dead Thursday afternoon.
Over the weekend, D.C. police released a video of a person of interest in connection to the murders, which took place just blocks away from Vice President Joe Biden’s official residence. Authorities said at least three of the victims suffered stab wounds or blunt-force injuries..
Los Angeles Lifts Its Minimum Wage to $15 Per Hour. The nation’s second-largest city voted Tuesday to increase its minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15 an hour by 2020, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far for labor groups and their allies who are engaged in a national push to raise the minimum wage.
The increase, which the City Council passed in a 14-to-1 vote, comes as workers across the country are rallying for higher wages and several large companies, including Facebook and Walmart, have moved to raise their lowest wages. Several other cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Oakland, Calif., have already approved increases, and dozens more are considering doing the same. In 2014, a number of Republican-leaning states like Alaska and South Dakota also raised their state-level minimum wages by ballot initiative.
The effect is likely to be particularly strong in Los Angeles, where, according to some estimates, almost 50 percent of the city’s work force earns less than $15 an hour. Under the plan approved Tuesday, the minimum wage will rise over five years.
Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, right, on Monday. He said in an interview on Tuesday that “we’re leading the country.” “The effects here will be the biggest by far,” said Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was commissioned by city leaders to conduct several studies on the potential effects of a minimum-wage increase. “The proposal will bring wages up in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s. There’s a sense spreading that this is the new norm, especially in areas that have high costs of housing.”
The groups pressing for higher minimum wages said that the Los Angeles vote could set off a wave of increases across Southern California, and that higher pay scales would improve the way of life for the region’s vast low-wage work force. Supporters of higher wages say they hope the move will reverberate nationally. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced this month that he was convening a state board to consider a wage increase in the local fast-food industry, which could be enacted without a vote in the State Legislature. Immediately after the Los Angeles vote, pressure began to build on Mr. Cuomo to reject an increase that falls short of $15 an hour.
“The L.A. increase nudges it forward,” said Dan Cantor, the national director of the Working Families Party, which was founded in New York and has helped pass progressive economic measures in several states. “It puts an exclamation point on the need for $15 to be where the wage board ends up.” The current minimum wage in New York State is $8.75, versus a federal minimum wage of $7.25, and will rise to $9 at the end of 2015. A little more than one-third of workers citywide and statewide now make below $15 an hour.
Los Angeles County is also considering a measure that would lift the wages of thousands of workers in unincorporated parts of the county. Many cities have enacted or proposed legislation in recent years to create a local minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum and their state’s minimum, if there is one.
Note: Most minimum wages take effect in the next few years, some gradually. Much of the debate here has centered on potential regional repercussions. Many of the low-wage workers who form the backbone of Southern California’s economy live in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Proponents of the wage increase say they expect that several nearby cities, including Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Pasadena, will also approve higher wages. But opponents of higher minimum wages, including small-business owners and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, say the increase approved Tuesday could turn Los Angeles into a “wage island,” pushing businesses to nearby places where they can pay employees less.
“They are asking businesses to foot the bill on a social experiment that they would never do on their own employees,” said Stuart Waldman, the president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, a trade group that represents companies and other organizations in Southern California. “A lot of businesses aren’t going to make it,” he added. “It’s great that this is an increase for some employees, but the sad truth is that a lot of employees are going to lose their jobs.”
The 67 percent increase from the current state minimum will be phased in over five years, first to $10.50 in July 2016, then to $12 in 2017, $13.25 in 2018 and $14.25 in 2019. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees will have an extra year to carry out the plan. Starting in 2022, annual increases will be based on the Consumer Price Index average of the last 20 years. The City Council’s vote will instruct the city attorney to draft the language of the law, which will then come back to the Council for final approval.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, had proposed a slightly different increase last fall and later negotiated the details with the Democratic-controlled Council. Mr. Garcetti said Tuesday that he would sign the legislation and that he hoped other elected officials, including Mr. Cuomo, would follow Los Angeles’s path.
“We’re leading the country; we’re not going to wait for Washington to lift Americans out of poverty,” Mr. Garcetti said in an interview. “We have too many adults struggling to be living off a poverty wage. This will re-establish some of the equilibrium we’ve had in the past.” A rally supporting a wage increase for fast food workers in Los Angeles last December. New York City does not have a separate minimum wage, but Mayor Bill de Blasio has spoken out in favor of higher wages statewide. “Los Angeles is another example of a city that’s doing the right thing, lifting people up by providing a wage on which they can live,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement “We need Albany to catch up with the times and raise the wage.”
The push for a $15-an-hour minimum wage is not confined to populous coastal states. In Kansas City, Mo., activists recently collected enough signatures to put forward an August ballot initiative on whether to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2020. The City Council is deliberating this week over how to respond and could pass its own measure in advance of the initiative.
As the Los Angeles City Council considered raising the minimum wage over the last several months, the question was not if, but how much. The lone councilman who voted against the bill — a Republican — did not speak during Tuesday’s meeting.
Still, for all their enthusiasm, some Council members acknowledged that it would be difficult to predict what would happen once the increase was fully in effect. “I would prefer that the cost of this was really burdened by those at the highest income levels,” said Gil Cedillo, a councilman who represents some of the poorest sections of the city and worries that some small businesses will shut down. “Instead, it’s going to be coming from people who are just a rung or two up the ladder here. It’s a risk that rhetoric can’t resolve.”
Even economists who support increasing the minimum wage say there is not enough historical data to predict the effect of a $15 minimum wage, an unprecedented increase. A wage increase to $12 an hour over the next few years would achieve about the same purchasing power as the minimum wage in the late 1960s, the most recent peak. Many restaurant owners here aggressively fought the increase, saying they would be forced to cut as much as half of their staff. Unlike other states, California state law prohibits tipped employees from receiving lower than the minimum wage. The Council promised to study the potential effect of allowing restaurants to add a service charge to bills to meet the increased costs. And while labor leaders and the coalition of dozens of community groups celebrated in the rotunda of City Hall after the vote, they acknowledged there was a long way to go.
“This says to Los Angeles workers that they are respected, and that’s an important psychological effect,” said Laphonza Butler, the president of Service Employees International Union-United Long Term Care Workers here and a leader of the coalition. “To know that they have a pathway to $15, to getting themselves off of welfare and out of poverty, that’s huge. This should change the debate of the value of low-wage work.” Jennifer Medina reported from Los Angeles, and Noam Scheiber from Washington.
Larry Summers is on Morning Joe now. Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times reports that Many on Wall Street Say It Remains Untamed.
The past several years have been filled with headline-grabbing legal settlements by financial services firms — $11 billion here, $5 billion there. Most of them involved conduct that took place before the 2008 crisis. Virtually every major Wall Street firm has pledged to redouble its efforts to instill an ethical culture. And virtually all the large firms said that if there was bad behavior, it is behind them.
Well, it isn’t.
A new report on financial professionals’ views of their industry paints a troubling picture. Rather than indicating that Wall Street has cleaned itself up, it suggests that many of the lessons of the crisis still haven’t been learned. And the mind-boggling settlement numbers, as well as stringent new rules, like the of Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul in 2010, appear to have had little deterrent effect. In the study, to be released Tuesday, about a third of the people who said they made more than $500,000 annually contend that they “have witnessed or have firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace.”
Just as bad: “Nearly one in five respondents feel financial service professionals must sometimes engage in unethical or illegal activity to be successful in the current financial environment.” One in 10 said they had directly felt pressure “to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.”
And nearly half of the high-income earners say law enforcement and regulatory authorities in their country are ineffective “in detecting, investigating and prosecuting securities violations.” Two years ago, this column reported on an earlier version of this report. The attitudes were concerning then.
This year, the University of Notre Dame — on behalf of the law firm Labaton Sucharow — expanded its questionnaire to more than 1,200 traders, portfolio managers, investment bankers and hedge fund professionals both in the United States and Britain. Its results appear even more noteworthy today for the sheer number of individuals who continue to say the ethics of the industry remain unchanged since the crisis (a third said that, by the way).
Every report has an asterisk of some sort and this one does, too: Although it was conducted by Notre Dame and surveyed a large number of people in the industry, it was paid for by Labaton Sucharow, a firm that often represents whistle-blowers in cases against the financial services firms.
But if anything, the opinions expressed demonstrate that despite the very public campaign by the government to root out bad behavior in finance, it remains a problem that still deserves attention, notwithstanding the industry’s protestations that it has changed.
“The pattern of bad behavior did not end with the financial crisis, but continued despite the considerable public sector intervention that was necessary to stabilize the financial system,” William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a speech late last year on Wall Street culture. “I reject the narrative that the current state of affairs is simply the result of the actions of isolated rogue traders or a few bad actors within these firms.” Is there something inherent to Wall Street that leads to bad behavior?
Mr. Dudley challenged the view that “risk-takers are drawn to finance like they are drawn to Formula One racing.”
But there is truth to that. Wall Street is a business of risk-taking and those who seemingly do it most successfully find that edge of the line and get as close to it as possible without crossing it.
Mr. Dudley, however, also made the case that “the degree to which an industry attracts risk-takers is not preordained, but reflects the prevailing incentives in the industry. After all, risk-takers have options. Second, and, more importantly, incentives matter even for risk-takers.”
If incentives are the problem, the perspectives suggest a dire situation. Nearly one-third of those asked “believe compensation structures or bonus plans in place at their company could incentivize employees to compromise ethics or violate the law.” Crime is an act of desperation. Everyone knows the global economy is a house of cards choking on its own emissions. It would be an enlightening study to see how many of these crooks began their cheating careers in school. I would guess the majority. It is unfair to suggest the entire industry is a den of thieves. In many ways, Wall Street is quite different than it was before the crisis, and for the better.
Structurally, Wall Street firms carry much less risk than they did years ago. Capital requirements are significantly higher. Indeed, even the moniker “Wall Street” has shifted as the power of the big banks has diminished and the influence of asset managers has increased.
But when it comes to the ethos of the industry just as it is reaching pre-crisis levels of employment and compensation, whatever change has taken place remains an open question.
While Wall Street often takes the brunt of the criticism about culture, an extra heaping might be due those who work in the financial industry in Britain.
On virtually every question, those in Britain seem to indicate that ethics problems could be even more widespread there. “Respondents from the U.K. are either more willing to commit a crime they could get away with — or are more frank about it,” the report’s authors write.
One of the big problems, it seems, is that so few people in finance are willing to speak up and report bad actors, even after the Securities and Exchange Commission developed a whistle-blower program.
Many of those asked said they worried “their employer would likely retaliate if they reported wrongdoing in the workplace.” And quite a few said that they had signed, or been asked to sign, a confidentiality agreement that would prohibit them from reporting illegal or unethical behavior to the authorities.
Equally disturbing was that many respondents said they would use nonpublic information to make a guaranteed $10 million, if there were no chance of getting arrested for insider trading. A quarter said they would do so. That’s up from two years ago, and it is that attitude of “getting away with it” that worries many who hope to root out problems in the industry. “The vast majority of people are good and ethical, but they have become desensitized on Wall Street,” said Jordan A. Thomas, a partner at Labaton Sucharow.
Cannes faces backlash after women reportedly barred from film screening for not wearing high heels. Emily Blunt among those critical of festival’s apparent dress code after staff refuse a group of women wearing flat shoes entry to a red carpet screening.
The red carpet at the Cannes film festival is an elysium of old-fashioned glitz and glamour, but the festival faced controversy on Tuesday after it emerged that it takes the odd bout of tyrannical fashion policing to keep it that way. A group of women in their 50s were turned away from the gala screening of Todd Haynes’s Carol for allegedly not wearing high-heeled shoes, according to industry newspaper Screen Daily. The women, some of whom had medical conditions, were apparently barred entry for wearing rhinestone flats.
The festival is facing a backlash from film fans protesting against what many perceive as a sexist dress-code policy, even though Cannes’s director, Thierry Frémaux, has denied that high heels are obligatory. “The rumour saying the festival insists on high heels for women on the red carpet is unfounded,” he said in response to critics on Twitter.
Among those joining the backlash was actor Emily Blunt, who was due to walk the red carpet on Tuesday night in support of her new film, the FBI drama Sicario. “Everyone should wear flats, to be honest. We shouldn’t wear high heels,” said Blunt, when asked about the controversy at the Sicario press conference. “That’s very disappointing, just when you kind of think there are these new waves of equality.”
Sicario director Denis Villeneuve joked that he and Blunt’s co-stars, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin, would wear high heels to the premiere in solidarity. Del Toro then mimed wobbling along the red carpet from his seat. However, Villeneuve and his actors wore men’s shoes when they appeared on the red carpet before the early evening premiere.
Also critical of the dress code was Asif Kapadia, director of the Amy Winehouse documentary, Amy, which premiered in Cannes last week. Kapadia tweeted that his wife had initially been denied entry to the screening because of her footwear, but was eventually allowed in.
It has also been reported that a film producer who has had part of her left foot amputated has also been stopped for not wearing high heel shoes. Valeria Richter told the Telegraph she had been reprimanded on the red carpet for her footwear, despite missing her big toe and part of her foot. She said she had been stopped four times by officials at the premiere for The Sea of Trees, but had eventually been allowed to proceed. Richter said: “We put on the dress and make an effort to be formal and festive, but to demand heels is not right.”
Cannes’s red-carpet screenings are by invitation only. The official dress code is explained to guests after they collect a ticket for their film. Published guidelines are hard to come by, but it is generally understood that men must wear black tie with black shoes and women must be elegantly dressed with smart footwear. Festival staff questioned by the Guardian seemed unclear as to whether high heels are obligatory at red-carpet screenings or not.
Gender equality has been a key theme in many of the films in year’s festival selection. Ironically, Carol, the film to which the flat-wearing guests were allegedly denied entry, is perhaps the film in competition at Cannes with the strongest feminist message. Based on the book by Patricia Highsmith (herself an avid fan of loafers), it tells the story of a young shop assistant, played by Rooney Mara, who embarks on an affair with a married older woman. Outside the Palais, 20-year-old Tami was one of many film fans hopeful of being given a spare ticket to the Tuesday-night premiere by a charitable delegate. She was carrying her high heels in a plastic bag.
“It says on your ticket that you have to be smartly dressed,” she said. “For women that means high heels. I wish we didn’t have to. They’re uncomfortable.”
And, wow. Sham cancer charities face federal charges of stealing $187M. Charities that claimed their funds were helping patients fighting cancer but were actually spending the bulk of donations on vacations, concerts and other luxurious perks are facing federal charges that they stole more than $187 million from consumers in one of the biggest charity fraud cases ever filed.
The Federal Trade Commission, along with law enforcement officials throughout the U.S., filed the complaint against the Cancer Fund of America, Children's Cancer Fund of America, The Breast Cancer Society and Cancer Support Services, along with several of those organizations' executives.
"The defendants' egregious scheme effectively deprived legitimate cancer charities and cancer patients of much-needed funds and support," Jessica Rich, director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. "The defendants took in millions of dollars in donations meant to help cancer patients, but spent it on themselves and their fundraisers. I'm pleased that the FTC and our state partners are acting to end this appalling scheme."
The complaint charges that the charities were shams, calling, mailing and passing out materials through the Combined Federal Campaign, which collects donations from federal workers for non-profit groups, based on the premise that they helped cancer patients in a variety of ways, including getting them to chemotherapy treatments and providing them with pain medication and hospice care.
In reality, the organizations were used to provide cushy gigs for family members and friends, while donations went toward plush trips, Jet Ski outings and college fees. Professional fundraisers who were brought on board often got 85% or more of each contribution.
The Children's Cancer Fund of America and its president and executive director, Rose Perkins, along with The Breast Cancer Society and its executive director, James Reynolds II, and Cancer Support Services' chief financial officer, Kyle Effler, have agreed to settle the charges that they are facing.
The three executives will be barred from managing charities, fundraising and overseeing charity assets. The Children's Cancer Fund of America and The Breast Cancer Society will also go out of business. The other parties in the complaint will continue to face legal action.
Daniel Borochoff of the group CharityWatch said in an email that he was "grateful that our government regulators are working to put a stop to these four outfits that have been misleading the public and wasting America's precious charitable dollars for far too long. ... This claim illustrates why we need better charity accountability and more regulatory enforcement.''
Takata doubling U.S. recall for defective air bags to 34 mln vehicles. Japanese air bag manufacturer Takata Corp <7312.T> is doubling a recall of potentially deadly air bags to nearly 34 million vehicles, making it the largest automotive recall in American history, U.S. safety regulators said on Tuesday.
The recall involves passenger and driver-side air bag inflators in vehicles made by 11 automakers, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Takata said. It expands on the 16.6 million vehicles called back for repairs for the same issue in previous regional and national recalls, and boosts the number of vehicles affected globally since 2008 to more than 53 million.
Regulators on Tuesday linked six deaths worldwide to defective Takata air bags which exploded too violently and shot shrapnel into the vehicles. Takata CEO Shigehisa Takada said in a statement: "We are pleased to have reached this agreement with NHTSA, which represents a clear path forward." The company declined to say whether markets outside the United States would be affected.
It was only under pressure from U.S. regulators that Takata agreed to the expanded recall. It had previously resisted expanding the recalls, saying the defect cited by automakers was not "officially recognized."
Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, Nissan Motor Co <7201.T> and Honda Motor Co <7267.T> had expanded their Takata recalls over the past week.
The automakers have said they decided to proceed with their recalls after finding some Takata air bag inflators were not sealed properly, allowing moisture to seep in to the propellant casing. Moisture damages the propellant and can lead to an inflator exploding with too much force. The six deaths linked to the defective air bags have all been in cars made by Honda, which has borne the brunt of the Takata recalls to date. Honda gave a disappointing profit forecast last month due to higher costs related to quality fixes.
Takata shares fell by as much as 12 percent to their lowest in more than a month in Tokyo on Wednesday, and traded 9.7 percent lower in the afternoon. Honda shares were flat. U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said NHTSA also issued a consent order to Takata, requiring the supplier to cooperate in the safety agency's probe as well as any oversight.
NHTSA also said it will "organize and prioritize the replacement of defective Takata inflators" under its legal authority. This is the first time the agency has used this power since 2000, when Congress granted it under the TREAD Act. "We will not stop our work until every air bag is replaced," Foxx said.
'OWNING UP TO THE CRISIS'
Foxx and NHTSA's new administrator, Mark Rosekind, have been aggressive in tackling auto safety issues. On Monday, NHTSA escalated a regulatory battle with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles <FCHA.MI>, saying it could impose "multiple penalties" on the automaker and order a public hearing to examine the automaker's handling of 20 recalls affecting more than 10 million vehicles.
NHTSA had slapped Takata in February with a $14,000 per-day fine for failing to fully cooperate with a probe, but Rosekind said that was now suspended. Takata's recall will cost the supplier and its automaker customers an estimated $4-$5 billion, said Scott Upham, president of Valient Market Research, which tracks the air bag industry.
Takata has said it expects to return to profit this financial year, but its chief financial officer told analysts last week it would not set aside more cash to pay for the expanding recalls.
Last November, sources told Reuters that bankers with relationships with Takata were brainstorming financing proposals, although not directly with the supplier. Raising new capital could threaten the control of the Takada family, but potentially boost governance and oversight. The Takada family holds about 59 percent of the world's second-largest air bag inflator maker.
"TAKEN FAR TOO LONG"
A Honda spokesman had no immediate comment on how the replacement air bag inflators will be produced for such a large number of vehicles. Industry officials have turned to Takata's rivals for help in obtaining replacement parts.
Takada, whose family founded the supplier, said analysis of the problem "was not within the scope of testing specifications" set by its automaker customers.
"While it's taken far too long, Takata finally seems to be owning up to the air bag crisis that has plagued vehicles of all shapes and sizes," said Kelley Blue Book analyst Akshay Anand. "A recall of this size is unprecedented in any industry." U.S. lawmakers, who had pushed for a broader recall, welcomed the news.
"Folks shouldn’t have to drive around wondering if their air bag is going to explode in their face," Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson said. "Let’s hope Takata’s admissions today tell us the whole story."
Takata faces multiple class actions in the United States and Canada as well as a U.S. criminal investigation and a regulatory probe. Tuesday’s announcement will "tremendously bolster our claims," said Peter Prieto of law firm Podhurst Orseck, who leads the group of plaintiffs’ lawyers appointed to oversee the U.S. cases. Those cases have been consolidated in federal court in Miami. (Additional reporting by Jessica Dye in New York, Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru and Chris Gallagher in Tokyo; Editing by Simon Jennings, Matthew Lewis and Ian Geoghegan)
Joe and Mika will be at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square tomorrow night to discuss her (Mika) new book, 'Know Your value.'
Regardless of it all, Stay in Touch Please.
