Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Sen. Burr: No Raises for Congress

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From Sen. Richard Burr's blog:

It’s easy for Members of Congress to spend the people’s money without much thought to the overall cost–just look at congressional pay. As the law is currently written, Congress has to hold a vote to disapprove an automatic pay raise. As you can guess, these votes don’t occur too often. In fact, a raise has only been disapproved once since 2000, and only six times total since the law was established in 1975. To help bring some perspective to those who are crafting the law, I am introducing an amendment to the “stimulus” legislation that would eliminate automatic congressional pay adjustments. With every American family tightening belts in these tough times, Congress needs to follow suit. 

Since Sen. Burr is a home boy from Winston-Salem and a Wake Forest grad I have a pre-disposition to liking him, but it's his approach to his position that I've really liked.  I think this is a very smart amendment, especially considering what Congress is asking everyone else in the country to sacrifice to get the economy turned around.  Yes it's largely symbolic, but that's the point.

Foothills Brewing’s Valentine Beer

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At the Dishing it Out blog Michael Hastings has a Valentines gift selection if your dearly beloved is a beer lover.  It's a limited edition brew from Foothills Brewing called Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout.  If you like beer it sounds like there's a lot to like about this brew, including the 9.75% alcohol content.

Sexual Chocolate is being sold on tap starting at 6 p.m. this evening and they will start selling 600 hand numbered bottles tomorrow (Saturday the 7th) at 11 a.m.  Hastings says that last year they sold 500 bottles in 49 minutes so you may want to get there early.

Closures and Layoffs in Forsyth County

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Alert reader Peggy emailed me to point me to a page on the North Carolina Employment Security Commission's site that links to a database of permanent layoffs and business closures throughout the state.  The database is a compilation of filings with the state and a survey of published news stories.  While the data isn't definitive (there's a disclaimer on the site stating that the data doesn't meet the Labor Market Information Division's standards for accuracy), but it does provide a good indication of what's going on out there.  I ran the numbers for Forsyth County for all of 2008 and it returned 32 reported closings and 13 layoffs.  What's particularly interesting is that it provides company names, industry, number of people affected, effective date and the reason for the closing/layoff.

I decided to run all of the years between 1998 and 2007 and compare the numbers to 2008. Here's what I found:

Year Closings Layoffs
2008 32 13
2007 31 13
2006 24 4
2005 17 11
2004 32 8
2003 31 5
2002 19 11
2001 16 15
2000 24 6
1999 14 11
1998 12 6

I was a little surprised because I figured that 2008 would have been significantly higher than other recent years due to the recession, but I think the numbers really do highlight that things have been tough around here for a lot longer than they have been in much of the rest of the US.

In the end I found the reasons for closings and layoffs to be starkest reminder of how personal this all is.  Just as poker chips tend to disguise exactly how much money you're actually losing, numbers tend to hide the true emotional impact of all these layoffs. The reasons range from "economic conditions" to "consolidation" to "bankruptcy". Here are some that really hit home to me:
  • Forsyth Medical Center's layoff of 145 people for the stated reason of "outsourcing" in January 2008.    
  • Triad Appliance Center's bankruptcy in December, 2008.  That case received a lot of notoriety because the store's customers were stiffed and the folks at WXII picked it up. But in all the hubaloo about the customers' problems we lost sight of the fact that 18 people lost their jobs.   
  • Reynolds' layoff of 1,700 people in September, 2004 for "restructuring" 
  • Aon Consulting's December, 2006 layoff of 100 people for "outsourcing and restructuring" 
  • Hanesbrands' June, 2007 layoff of  590 for "offshoring production" and August, 2007 layoff of 260 for "restructuring"
  • Circuit City wins the award for harshest sounding reason with their March, 2007 layoff of 15 people for "payroll purge"  I guess they didn't purge the right people huh? 

I could go on and on but you get the picture.   

Apples and Oranges

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We had to know this was coming; now that the President and some in Congress are seeking to limit executive pay at companies that received bailout funds, and since many of these same executives are being criticized for perks like flying on corporate jets, there are some who are comparing those perks to what POTUS gets.  They point out that he gets to use a bigger jet than they do, that he has a fleet of cars at his disposal, that he gets free lodging, that he has an entourage, etc.  Hmm, what could be different about their situations?

BTW, did you know that the President and his family have to pay for their own groceries?  The White House chef will prepare the meals for them (nice perk for sure), but they have to pay for the food themselves.  Learn something new every day.

I Really Hope They Ignore Me

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StarbucksStrategy
Earlier today I looked at the traffic reports for this little ol blog and noticed quite a few people visiting my post that offered tongue-in-cheek strategic advice to Starbucks.  Basically I said they should play up the recent study that showed that coffee consumed in large quantities helps prevent dementia, and then also claim that their coffee is a male enhancement treatment just like Enzyte does.  It appears that Google loves my post because if you search on the term "starbucks strategy" I appear on the first page of results.  It probably won't last long (I fell from the #9 result to #10 as I typed this) but I truly hope that for their own sake the folks at Starbucks totally ignore me.  Either that or put me on some sort of mega-dollar strategic consulting retainer.  (Picture is the screen shot of the search results).

Random News: W Offered Job as Greeter; Laid Off Wall Streeters Offered Lifeguard Jobs; Mom Assaults Son’s Middle School Coach; More Stories

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I figured we could all use a little Random News today.  The following items came from various feeds in my Google Reader:

That's it for this edition of Random News.

Government by Facebook

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Over in Greensboro there's been a push to reinstate protest petitions and it's a pretty heated battle.  It's a complicated story and if you don't track Greensboro politics it is kind of hard to follow. To summarize let's just say that in most of North Carolina residents can file a protest petition if they don't like something going on near their property.  In Greensboro residents don't have that capability (again, a long story), but now there's a grass roots effort to get protest petitions reinstated. At a recent Greensboro city council meeting the council decided to address the issue but they left things a little confused.  From what I can gather they asked a group representing the development side (TREBIC) to work with those who want the protest petition reinstated to work out a proposal to be sent to the state legislature.  That's where things stood as far as I understood it.

Then I read Ed Cone's blog this evening that said that State Senator Don Vaughan announced on his Facebook page that he'd co-sponsored Senate Bill 67 titled Greensboro/Restore Zoning Protest Rights.  And Ed reports that Senator Vaughan's wife left a quick comment that said the House posted a bill with the same name (#64).

I guess this is what they mean by "Government 2.0".

President’s Day, MLK Day and Confederate Memorial Day?

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Here's an interesting item from our neighbors to the south.  A Democratic state senator in South Carolina has gotten a subcommittee's approval of a bill requiring all cities and counties in South Carolina to give their employees a paid day of vacation on Confederate Memorial Day or lose state funding.  Here's the kicker: the senator is African American.  From the article on ABC News:

Democratic Sen. Robert Ford's bill won initial approval from a Senate subcommittee Tuesday. It would force county and municipal governments to follow the schedule of holidays used by the state, which gives workers 12 paid days off, including May 10 to honor Confederate war dead. Mississippi and Alabama also recognize Confederate Memorial Day.

Years ago, Ford said, he pushed a bill to make both that day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day paid holidays. He considered it an effort to help people understand the history of both the civil rights movement and the Confederacy in a state where the Orders of Secession are engraved in marble in the Statehouse lobby, portraits of Confederate generals look down on legislators in their chambers and the Confederate flag flies outside.

"Every municipality and every citizen of South Carolina, should be, well, forced to respect these two days and learn what they can about those two particular parts of our history," Ford said Tuesday.

In a state steeped in a segregationist past, "there's no love in this state between black and white basically," he said. That's not apparent at the Statehouse, where black and white legislators get along, "but if you go out there in real South Carolina, it's hatred and I think we can bring our people together."

Not surprisingly the leader of the state's NAACP doesn't agree with the Senator.  It's an interesting story so go ahead and read the whole thing.

Phone Trees and TV are So, Like, Old

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I was out last night when the Winston-Salem Forsyth County schools announced today's closure, so my kids called to tell me and to inform me that they were planning on staying up to the wee hours to celebrate.  When I asked them how they heard about the closing they said they'd gotten a text alert from their school's Facebook account.  How very 2009, huh?

When I looked for the West Forsyth account and tried to "friend" it I found that it was moderated, which means they have to approve me as a "friend" in order to see the West Forsyth page.  That's good to know.  I asked the kids if it was an official school page and they said they thought so.  If it's not an official school account then someone could send out bogus info, say a false school closing, but if it is real then my hat goes off to the school for reaching the kids where they live.

When I was looking at this I also saw that the West Forsyth administrator also created a weather info group for all of Winston-Salem Forsyth County schools which is public.  Another good idea.

BTW, I hate to say I told you so.