Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 114

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John Kasich keeps trying really, really hard to reach millennials

John Kasich (Credit: Getty/Mark Wilson)

John Kasich looks to be eying another presidential run. Rather than playing the role of the responsible dad of the Republican party, like he did during his failed 2016 run, it appears as if Kasich is trying a different strategy: cozying up to millennials.

Kasich is once again positioning himself as the cool, moderate Republican, this time vying directly for the millennial vote. In an interview with BuzzFeed, the incumbent Ohio Governor and failed GOP presidential candidate, revealed his fondness of the cohort of adults born between 1981 and 1996, raising speculation that he’s hoping to win the next presidential election with the help of millennials.

“You know, age is actually a number, and it’s a state of mind,” Kasich told BuzzFeed during his visit to New Hampshire. “Because I happen to like popular music, people think, Well, that’s because of your daughters. That’s not true. The reason why I do certain things is I have a young mind, and my mind is always working and finding new things to talk about and think about and explore, and that’s how you stay young. I admire the young people because I feel they’re idealists, and I’m an idealist.”

He even went on to throw a small diss at his fellow baby boomers — calling them “cynical,” and praising millennials for their infamous optimism.

“It seems as though we’ve all become so cynical now,” he said. “Nobody does anything because it might be the right thing to do. If you help a woman get across the street, it must be you want something. That’s a dangerous place to be. The millennials, I don’t believe, are cynical. We are cynical. Grown-ups. Older people. Cynical. Bad.”

Any smart politician will try and reach millennials in the 2020 presidential election, a generation that’s predicted to surpass baby boomers in population by 2019. Millennial voter turnout for the 2016 presidential election was higher than previous years, but still relatively low, which leaves room for more millennials to show up to the polls this year. As a Pew Research survey explained, millennials are also on their way to hold more sway in the electorate. According to a separate analysis, 58 percent of millennials identify with the democratic party, or lean towards it; 34 percent lean right or Republican.

“I think I’m increasingly viewed now as not just a Republican but as something different, kind of a hybrid,” he told the New York Times recently.

If anything, this confusion underscores Kasich’s fear of leaving the Republican party — and that’s the last thing a majority of millennials want. If Kasich’s team had done any diligent research on this generation, they’d know how important transparency and authenticity are to millennials. Thus, any attempt to pretend to be something that’s he not is unlikely to win Kasich points with twenty and thirty-somethings. Plus, it doesn’t help when he appears to be unsure how to identify himself.

As BuzzFeed pointed out, Kasich has talked a lot about Justin Bieber, social media and YouTube star Logan Paul lately. But if Kasich thinks that’s all millennials care about (which news flash: those aren’t even prime topics of interest) he’d be bound to have a short run.

As the sitting Ohio governor, Kasich’s positions and previous moves haven’t exactly aligned with millennials’ social views either. Case in point: Kasich signed into law one of the strictest restrictions on abortion access in the nation. The former president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, once said that a Kasich presidency would be “a complete and utter disaster.”

“He’s signed 17 separate bills to restrict reproductive access in the state,” Richards said. “It’s really rivaling Texas as the worst place for women to get access to healthcare and so we’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure folks know about his record and where he really stands.”

But Kasich is focusing on stricter gun control laws as part of his pre-presidential candidacy promo tour.

“Has this stuff that’s been happening all over the country — whether it’s Las Vegas, whether it’s Parkland, has it influenced me? Hell yes, it has,” Kasich told BuzzFeed, adding that he “cannot believe” how some adults have attacked the Parkland teens who advocated for increased gun control.

Millennials don’t want a candidate who tries to understand their generation, they want someone who actually does. Perhaps that’s why many millennials grew fond of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 election. Sanders’ outspokenness on reducing corporate profits resonated with a generation that has more people living in poverty than the baby boomers did at their age in the 1980s. His support for healthcare for all struck a chord with a generation who can’t always afford healthcare.

If Kasich wants to connect with millennials, he should just try following Sanders’ lead and stop trying so hard.

Al Pacino brings the Penn State coach to life in “Paterno,” a painfully appropriate film for our era

Kathy Baker as Sue Paterno and Al Pacino as Joe Paterno in "Paterno" (Credit: HBO/Atsushi Nishijima)

Near the end of “Paterno,” one character chides another for asking about how the alleged cover up of Jerry Sandusky’s pedophilic predations will impact the legacy of Penn State’s iconic head coach, Joe Paterno. The man dismisses the question as “spectacularly unworthy of conversation” — a noble enough sentiment, given the countless children whose lives were ruined by Sandusky, but also a tad disingenuous coming from the filmmakers. After all, if the question of Paterno’s legacy is spectacularly unworthy of conversation, then why did HBO make a movie that justifies its existence by stirring up talk about precisely that topic?

While I can’t answer that question for the filmmakers, I can say that “Paterno” is one of the quintessential movies of the 2010s. It tells a tale that has become depressingly familiar in this decade: A revered celebrity is revealed to have done something unconscionable that not only changes our opinion of him or her, but ultimately destroys their reputation. It is easy to think of this in the context of The Weinstein Effect, but the Paterno scandal didn’t simply precede the post-Weinstein allegations by more than half a decade. It also destroyed a man who had been a central figure in Pennsylvania’s culture for half a century, so much so that even people in the state who don’t follow college football were familiar with (and usually had at least a casual respect for) both the man and what he represented.

Of course, you can’t separate the reverence for Paterno from the obsessive football culture that made it possible — one that has recently reached a new fever pitch in Pennsylvania due to the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl victory — and the film establishes that fact right away. In the first ten minutes, it shows the titular Penn State football coach (not so much played by Al Pacino as resurrected by him) intensely focused on winning his 409th game, the most for any head coach in college football history. As we’re being entertained by the drama and athleticism on the field, however, powerful men are quietly panicking about a crisis that threatens their impending glory right down to its moral foundations. Paterno himself remains oblivious to it all, though, his advanced age having already eroded some of his mental acuity while his longstanding calcification against factors that might distract him from his work does the rest.

The opening sequence captures the themes that dominate the rest of the story, both the one on screen and that which unfolded in real life. As it became increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that Paterno knew about at least some of what Sandusky had done and conspired to cover it up, people who had once held him in high regard began to grapple with the grief of losing an idol. Some reacted with anger, demanding that he resign; others with profound disappointment and heartbreak, including (at least according to the film) his own children; and still others blamed the victims, from the bullies who tormented one of Sandusky’s accusers to the Penn State rioters who overturned a news van in rage upon learning that Paterno had been fired.

While “Paterno” chooses to focus on the Paterno family’s response to the unfolding public scandal, the movie’s beating heart is revealed when it profiles a community’s reaction to the moral flaws of a man it once held up as a hero. Their reaction calls to mind a quote by President Bill Clinton about his father-in-law Hugh Rodham, one that (appropriately enough) I gleaned from a book I found at a Pennsylvania garage sale called “Quotable Joe: Words of Wisdom by and about Joe Paterno, College Football’s Coaching Icon”:

“Until his dying day, he thought if there was a perfect person on Earth, his name was Joe Paterno.”

There are a lot of “perfect people” out there who wind up being exposed as not only imperfect (which is universal and thus forgivable), but deeply morally compromised. Moreover, there are many fans of those “perfect people” who refuse to accept the full truth once it has been exposed. I personally know quite a few individuals who refuse to realize that Al Franken engaged in sexual misconduct, that Bill Cosby was a rapist and that Kevin Spacey didn’t “just do one thing many years ago.” Similarly, there are many people Penn State alums — people who I’ve known for years and respect — who are reluctant to let go of the unassailable living deity he used to be.

“As a Penn State graduate, I feel the focus of this film is misguided, in that it should concentrate on the strength and resilience of the Penn State Community in the wake of the Sandusky scandal, and not Joe Paterno,” Jessica told Salon. “Coach Paterno did incredible things for Penn State, its students and the community, all of which are now overshadowed by this scandal.”

Her thoughts were echoed by Sal.

“As far as JoePa’s overall legacy, the man was so much more than a football coach. As someone who went to Penn State and worked for the university for 8 years I saw first hand how much good he and his whole family did; how much they gave back to the community. I don’t think this should tarnish his legacy forever or ruin or negate all the good he did,” Sal told Salon.

She added, “I’m a diehard fan, but I’m also not blind. I’m not one of the people who will tell you he did nothing wrong and he’s completely innocent. I do think he could have and should have done more, and I think, looking back on it all those years later, he realized that too. But I also truly believe that at the time, he thought he did exactly what he was supposed to do. I don’t believe he was maliciously trying to cover anything up. I think, at the time, he really believed he did the right thing by reporting it to his superiors and trusting them to take over the investigation and see it through.”

These are the people who most need to see “Paterno,” even though they’re the ones least likely to agree with its thesis. It is a movie that I would recommend to just about anyone who is interested in how celebrities try to preserve their good names after past misdeeds are brought to light, or who simply enjoy great acting (again, all props go to Al Pacino here). The film is not without its flaws — the pacing lags at times and some of the more interesting subplots are buried under scenes that repetitively show the Paterno clan trying, and failing, to put out the fire — but it hits home not only because the crimes it profiles are so heinous, so unconscionable, but because the entire subject is so agonizingly relevant today.

Here is the underlying problem that we have to grapple with as a culture: The people who we think of as our heroes often have aspects to their character which we cannot condone as a civilized people. They are broken idols, individuals who loom too large in their respective fields to be simply forgotten or written off, and yet whose legacies have still been forever ruined. Our society is searching for a way to figure out what to make of these people, but no obvious answers are apparent. The best thing we can do, right now, is insist that the whole truth be accepted no matter how heartbreaking, and accept that virtue and success are not always one and the same.

Or as Paterno put it, which I know from that garage sale acquisition:

“Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.”

Google employees protest joint Pentagon drone program: We shouldn’t be in “the business of war”

The Pentagon (Credit: AP/Shutterstock)

Google has proudly touted the motto “Don’t Be Evil” but the tech titan’s ties to the Pentagon are quite strong, presenting a moral dilemma for thousands of the company’s employees who claim they’ve unwittingly been rendered culpable in aiding American warfare.

A letter addressed to Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, raised concerns over the company’s role in Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program that has sought to improve “artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery” which “could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes,” according to The New York Times.

The letter has been signed by over 3,100 Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers.

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” the letter reads. “This plan will irreparably damage Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent.”

It continues, “Amid growing fears of biased and weaponized AI, Google is already struggling to keep the public’s trust.” The letter expressed fears among employees that Google would join the ranks of top defense contractors such as Palantir, Raytheon and General Dynamics.

“The argument that other firms, like Microsoft and Amazon, are also participating doesn’t make this any less risky for Google,” the letter states. “Google’s unique history, its motto Don’t Be Evil, and its direct reach into the lives of billions of users set it apart.”

The company didn’t directly address the letter but said that “any military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns,” according to the Times. Google went on to say it is “actively engaged across the company in a comprehensive discussion of this important topic.”

As for its role in Project Maven, Google said it was “specifically scoped to be for non-offensive purposes.” The project is said to cost $70 million and will “find ways to speed up the military application of the latest A.I. technology,” the Times noted.

The tech giant has close ties with the Defense Department, as Google’s former executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, serves on the Defense Innovation Board for the department. Schmidt is still a current member of the Alphabet’s executive board, which is Google’s parent company, the Times noted. Schmidt pointed out last November that there was “a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly, if you will,” the Times reported. But he added that his role in serving on the board was “to at least allow for communications to occur,” because, he said, the military claimed to “use this technology to help keep the country safe.”

The Times noted that “improved analysis of drone video could be used to pick out human targets for strikes, while also better identifying civilians to reduce the accidental killing of innocent people.”

But it’s also important to note that drone technology is deeply flawed, and the use of drones as a weapon in war zones has been widely condemned and thought to only breed more terrorists. While the internal debate continues about whether or not Google or its employees should assist drone technology for military operations, consider that the public has been robbed of a debate on the use of drones as a concept of warfare in the first place.

Exclusive: Scott Pruitt, Trump’s embattled EPA chief, involved in shady 2011 real estate deal

Scott Pruitt (Credit: Getty/Saul Loeb)

Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s embattled EPA administrator, finds himself under attack this week after news broke that he had rented a Washington townhouse at below-market rates from the wife of a lobbyist who represents major fossil fuel companies. That was not the first time Pruitt has exercised questionable judgment around a property transaction, according to documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit watchdog group.

In 2011, Pruitt and his wife, Margaret, bought a property in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just days before a court ruled that it had been fraudulently transferred by a Las Vegas developer who was on the hook for a $3.6 million loan default. Pruitt, who was then Oklahoma attorney general, apparently flipped the property for a $70,000 profit four months later, selling it to a dummy corporation set up by a major campaign contributor, Kevin Hern.

Hern, a successful Tulsa businessman and the finance chair of the Oklahoma Republican Party, has been a major donor to Pruitt and other Republican candidates in the state over the years. According to records on file with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, Hern contributed $3,500 to Pruitt between 2010 and 2014, and has given a total of $33,625 to Oklahoma candidates since 2006.

Hern attended Pruitt’s Senate confirmation hearing in January 2017 and posted about it on his Facebook page. He is now a Republican candidate for Congress in Oklahoma’s 1st congressional district.

The circumstances surrounding Pruitt’s apparent sweetheart deal remain murky.

In 2010, an affiliate of Rialto Capital Management (RCM), a company based in Miami, sued a developer named Keith Lyon in Arizona federal court for defaulting on a $3.6 million loan that Lyon had guaranteed in 2007 with a number of Las Vegas and Tulsa properties. RCM won a $2 million judgment against Lyon and other defendants on Aug. 25, 2011. 



Lyon then apparently vanished, after transferring 27 of those properties in 2009 to entities controlled by a woman named Pamela Rex (formerly Pamela Rooks), a fitness model who had lived with Lyon from 1998 to 2008. 



RCM then sued Rex for fraud under the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, seeking $4.7 million in damages, claiming that Lyon had fraudulently transferred the properties and other assets worth $7.5 million to Rex for no monetary payment. 

One of those properties was at 1801 Forrest Drive in Tulsa, which was transferred to the Rooks Trust, an entity solely controlled by Pamela Rex. Pruitt bought the vacant lot from the Rooks Trust on Aug. 16, 2011 — just 10 days before the federal court judgment against Lyons — for $415,000.

Four months later, on Dec. 22, 2011, Pruitt sold the property for $485,000 — a $70,000 profit — to a previously unknown company called KNJ Construction, LLC. That entity was set up by Kevin Hern two days before the sale and has been inactive ever since.

Evidence suggests that Pruitt planned the quick turnaround on the property in advance. On Sept. 1, 2011, about two weeks after the purchase, Pruitt and his wife took out a short-term, 15-month mortgage from Security Bank in Tulsa. Hern built a luxury house on the property after purchasing it from Pruitt, and sold it 18 months later for $1.7 million. 

While this transaction raises numerous questions, there is nothing on the face of these documents that is clearly illegal. If any of the parties involved knowingly arranged for a preferential transfer to avoid a court judgment, however, that would imply significant legal issues. The same would be true of any pre-arranged deal to flip the property in a way intended to provide Pruitt, who was then Oklahoma’s top law enforcement official, with a quick windfall profit.

Pruitt’s office did not respond to requests for comment from Salon. At press time, a Hern spokesman had not provided a statement for this story. Salon also sought comment from Rex but a phone number for her could not receive calls or voice messages.

Gaza’s nonviolent protesters exploited by Hamas, but feared by Israel

(Credit: AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

Last Friday was an important day for Christians and Jews around the world. For Christians, it was Good Friday, the day that commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus; and for Jews, it was the beginning of the Passover holiday, which commemorates their liberation from slavery and exodus from Egypt.

Friday was also an important commemoration for Palestinians, called “Land Day.” It marks the date in 1976, when six Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli security forces.

Now future generations of Palestinians may well also remember Friday, March 30, 2018, as “Bloody Friday.”

On this day, near the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel, 18 Palestinians were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. It was the highest Palestinian death toll since the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, when more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians.

For observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, indeed for anyone even remotely acquainted with it in recent years, this latest bloodshed might seem depressingly common — just another tragic episode of what is often characterized as a cycle of violence.

But what happened in Gaza last Friday was, in fact, quite different from what many people might assume. While the violence has dominated the news headlines, it is not the only big story from that day.

Majority were peaceful protesters

The deaths of 18 Palestinians should not distract all attention away from the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians had gathered at six different places near the border between Gaza and Israel in peaceful protest.

They were protesting Israel’s ongoing blockade of the small crowded coastal enclave now in its 12th year. They were calling attention to the resulting humanitarian crisis in Gaza. And they were demanding that Palestinian refugees and their descendants (who make up roughly two-thirds of Gaza’s 1.9 million population) be allowed to return to their former homes and reclaim their lands in Israel.

An estimated 35,000 Palestinians participated in this protest, including many families who picnicked in several large tent encampments that had been set up hundreds of meters from the border fence. The vast majority of the protesters were unarmed and nonviolent.

Only a relatively small number of them — mainly young men — hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers and rolled burning tires toward them. Just a few approached the fence and tried to damage or breach it.

Although it was not completely peaceful, this mostly nonviolent mass protest by Gazans is just the beginning of a six-week campaign of nonviolent popular protests that organizers have called the “Great March of Return.”

The campaign will culminate on May 15, which Palestinians commemorate as “Nakba Day.” The Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to Israel’s founding in 1948 and the expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians that accompanied it.

Palestinian nonviolent resistance

This is by no means the first time that Palestinians have staged mass protests or used nonviolent tactics — what they call “popular resistance” — to confront and challenge Israel and raise international awareness about their plight.

Most famously they did this during the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993), which began in Gaza in December 1987.

More recently, masses of Palestinians in East Jerusalem peacefully protested last summer when Israel installed metal detectors at the entrances of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.

Palestinians, in other words, have a long history of nonviolent popular protests, so there is nothing really new about the current campaign in Gaza.

What is new, however, and potentially very significant, is the involvement of Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamist group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007.

Hamas violence

Israel, the United States and the European Union all classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. There’s good reason for that, given Hamas’ track record of indiscriminate violence against Israelis, including dozens of suicide bombings during the second intifada and the launching of thousands of rockets into Israel since then.

Hamas is more than just a terrorist group. It is also a political party and a social service organization that funds hospitals, clinics, schools, orphanages and soup kitchens. But violence against Israel, including Israeli civilians, has always been a core component of its ideology and strategy, and, you might say, its “brand.”

Hamas shows no signs of abandoning its armed struggle against Israel. Its new “policy document,” issued last year, still emphasizes “armed resistance,” just as its 1988 founding charter did. Its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, continues to prepare and build up its arsenal for the next round of warfare with Israel.

But Hamas’ willingness to endorse and actively promote the so-called “Great March of Return” campaign, which was initiated by independent Palestinian activists in Gaza, suggests that it might be shifting its tactics away from relying upon violence, since that has proven to be disastrous for Gazans and ineffective for Hamas.

New tactic for Hamas

Instead of firing rockets (that Israel’s Iron Dome system can intercept), or using underground tunnels to ambush and capture Israeli soldiers or carry out terror attacks (which Israel’s new anti-tunnel system can now detect and destroy), Hamas has, at least for now, apparently embraced mass protests as a relatively peaceful means to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza and, it hopes, delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world.

This allows Hamas to avoid a costly and destructive war with Israel. Another war would not only be unpopular among Gazans and unappealing to Hamas’ allies, Qatar and Turkey. It would also be potentially fatal to Hamas’ ability to remain in control of Gaza and its ambition to eventually take over the West Bank as well.

If Hamas can continue to mobilize tens of thousands of Palestinians to protest against Israel on a weekly basis, then it can ensure that the blockade of Gaza receives much more attention in international media and is placed higher on the diplomatic agenda of the international community.

Israel’s PR problem

For Israel, Hamas’ new tactic represents a completely different challenge than the military and terrorist threat that it has long been accustomed to and which it has largely succeeded in containing.

There is no high-tech Israeli answer to masses of unarmed Palestinian protesters congregating at Israel’s border fence or even trying to swarm over it. Israeli soldiers are ill prepared and ill-equipped for this kind of confrontation, as last Friday’s killings arguably demonstrated.

However much Israeli officials insist that Palestinian protesters are really terrorists trying to infiltrate into Israel, many people and many governments around the world are likely to sympathize more with the long-suffering Gazans, isolated and impoverished, than with Israel, especially when its troops fire live ammunition at demonstrators.

Mass demonstrations and marches by Palestinians are, in short, if nothing else, a public relations nightmare for Israel.

No wonder, then, that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh declared after last Friday: “We wish to tell the world that the March of Return was peaceful and civilized, and women, youths, children and elderly participated in it.”

The fact that this was not entirely true is beside the point. What matters more is how the world perceives the protest, and whether more of these popular protests, on a similar scale or larger, will take place over the coming weeks.

Dov Waxman, Professor of Political Science, International Affairs and Israel Studies, Northeastern University

Rex Tillerson downsized State Department, but paid consultants

Rex Tillerson (Credit: Getty/Salon)

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hardly left anything positive behind at the State Department, but what he did leave behind is a blueprint that sought to only accelerate a problem that has plagued Washington for years: giving more money to private contractors, while slashing the federal workforce.

Tillerson’s once-highly touted “redesign” cost the department $12 million, mainly charged by one private consulting firm, and consultants who charged an exorbitant fee of more than $300 per hour, according to a new report of materials and figures obtained by Politico. The consulting firm Deloitte ate up most of the money, and the cap on federal contracts was also lifted from roughly $140 million to $265 million.

The goal of the revamp was to “transform the Department of State and USAID, a document showed, according to Politico. The plan would consist of restructuring “bureaus and offices and their reporting chain to improve efficiency,” that could bring about “consolidation, streamlining, or elimination of offices or functions.”

But some congressional aides and former department officials said Tillerson was too reliant on outside consultants, who were ill-equipped to handle a restructuring of a department they knew little about. They also indicated that he neglected more simple options, such as using public sources that would not eat up taxpayer funds.

Politico elaborated:

Some also said that rather than rely on an army of high-priced consultants, Tillerson could have turned to public sources that would cost taxpayers nothing. One, for example, was the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), launched under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It suggested, among other things, ways to streamline workloads and improve technology.

Tillerson and his top aides “had disdain for the professionals,” one former senior State Department official said. “You had years of blueprints for reform developed internally, two QDDR documents, and thousands of career officers and civil servants who crave change and reform and would’ve been thrilled to work on this effort at no added taxpayer expense.”

“Instead,” the former official added, “they chose to lavish money on contractors and consultants who knew nothing about the organization.”

It’s evident that Tillerson didn’t value the opinions of State Department careerists either. A survey that 35,000 staffers from both the State Department and USAID responded to, was conducted by a group called Insigniam, otherwise known as “a consulting firm that also has been a subcontractor of Deloitte’s,” Politico reported. The contract was worth at least $850,000, one document showed, but others indicated it could have been as high as $1 million.

A State Department staffer specifically expressed discontent with Insigniam consultants. “It was painful,” the staffer said of one meeting. “We were literally objecting to the way they were talking. We were trying to educate them on what we did so that they could actually help do the job they were hired to do.”

When February rolled around, Tillerson all but admitted defeat as frustration over the secrecy of his plans mounted from bipartisan legislators. The plan shifted from a department revamp to what he dubbed the “Impact Initiative,” which consisted of “improving the department’s technology, human resources procedures and management training,” according to Politico.

Tillerson left behind a beat up Department of State, and staffers that felt as if they had no sway in plans for a major restructuring, which was something they ultimately wanted, just not the way it had been handled. The current situation has set up a potential contentious hearing for former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who President Donald Trump tapped to lead the department last month, as lawmakers have sought to further understand what steps will be taken next.

“I believe we must look into how taxpayer money was spent on this botched project and will continue to call for the committee to examine these issues in open hearings in the near future,” Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., told Politico. He serves as the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was highly critical of the “lack of transparency” between the department and members of his panel.

Despite his tumultuous relationship with the president, Tillerson’s vision for the State Department fits right in with the broader theme of the Trump administration, which has consisted of privatization and cutting back on the bureaucratic process.

 

Sinclair-style employment contracts that require payment for quitting are very uncommon

Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc.'s headquarters (Credit: AP/Steve Ruark)

Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company that owns local news stations across the country, is itself in the news for requiring its newscasters to read a script about “one-sided news stories plaguing our country.”

While that kind of top-down editorial order might prompt some journalists to quit for ethical reasons, some Sinclair employees have said that their employment contracts made it prohibitively expensive to walk away. And not just in usual the “I’m making too much money and don’t want to adjust my lifestyle” kind of way. Instead, their contracts actually force them to pay Sinclair a huge fine if they quit.

Can that possibly even be legal?

Before becoming an academic, I represented companies in employment law matters, which often involved advising on employment contracts. A Los Angeles Times journalist posted an excerpt of a contract that he claims to have received from a Sinclair employee. After reviewing it, I agree with other attorneys who noted that the legality of the provision depends on whether the fine is similar to the costs Sinclair would incur if the employee leaves prematurely.

The more interesting question to me, however, is why more employers don’t try to do the same thing.

Guaranteed work

One reason is that the supposed Sinclair contract provided for a special perk: guaranteed employment for a fixed period of time. In exchange, the employee agreed to work for Sinclair for that period.

This is highly unusual. The default rule in American law is “at will” employment, meaning an employee can be fired (or quit) at any time, for any reason, without notice. If the contract allows you to quit at any time, you haven’t breached the contract by quitting. Without a breach, there’s no legal basis for the company to demand payment.

Companies are generally very reluctant to offer anyone — even CEOs — a fixed period of employment because they are always worried that business conditions might change — and so too their sentiments about the employee’s value to the company.

However, in rare situations involving creative talent such as TV anchors or radio hosts, companies will sometimes make these promises to individuals whose departure would be really bad for business. For example, if a recognizable news anchor and local celebrity decided to quit and, say, start a YouTube channel criticizing their former employer in the middle of ratings, that’d be bad news.

“Won’t you stay . . .”

But companies have only limited tools at their disposal to force employees to stay if they break their promise to complete the term of employment. Courts won’t issue an order telling an employee he or she must stay at a particular job because the 13th Amendment prohibits involuntary servitude.

So companies try other ways to get valuable employees to stick around. They might offer them an obscene amount of money or stock options — this is known as the “golden handcuffs” approach. Or they will include a noncompete clause that makes it harder for the employee to find another job without moving away or switching professions. The Sinclair contract included one of these.

What is unusual about the Sinclair contract is that it required an outright payment for quitting, regardless of whether the employee worked for a competitor. The contract posted on Twitter demanded a payment of 40 percent of the employee’s “annual compensation” multiplied by the percentage of the term remaining on a contract.

So if the employee quit halfway through the contract, he would owe 20 percent of his annual compensation. The contract included an exception if the employee provided 45 days of notice and quit for a “permitted reason,” but the excerpt provided did not specify what that meant.

“Go jump in a lake”

There are a lot of reasons why demanding payment for quitting is very uncommon. For starters, employees valuable enough to be offered a term contract might not respond favorably. It’s like inviting someone to an expensive dinner and then threatening to steal her wallet if she has a bad time and decides to leave early. Not exactly an enticing offer.

Most employers also know intuitively that penalties are simply bad PR. And that demanding various payments from employees after they’ve left is chasing good money after bad. The litigation cost of recovering the money is almost always more than the amount of money at issue.

Nevertheless, Sinclair has in fact sued a former anchor who quit, requesting US$5,700 in damages and other costs. That was less than the $25,000 the company initially demanded, but still too much for the man to bear.

Sinclair eventually appeared to realize this was a mistake and offered to settle with the former employee for $1,700 in exchange for a gag order. But by that point the reporter was so fed up that he told them to “go jump in a lake” and has since shared his story with many news outlets.

I suspect the next up-and-coming news anchor will say the same thing if Sinclair offers a similar contract.

Elizabeth C. Tippett, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Oregon

Why Mueller’s move on Trump is the beginning of the endgame

Robert Mueller; Donald Trump (Credit: Getty/Alex Wong/Chris Kleponis)

With the Washington Post’s revelationthat President Trump is not the “subject” of criminal investigation, special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s strategy for completing his probe is coming into view.

Mueller has pinned down Trump with two grand juries, issuing a wide net of indictments on diverse charges that have kept the president off-balance. The sentencing of Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer working for indicted Trump aide Rick Gates, underscored a message for the president: those who lie to investigators face swift consequences.

What has seemed like an interminable inquiry now looks like it will terminate in a one-two punch: an interview with Trump followed by a report on the question of obstruction of justice.

All of this may well happen before the 2018 midterm elections.

Subject to change

The president’s defenders can take solace in the studiously telegraphed message of the Post’s article: that Trump is not the “target” of investigation. In law enforcement terms, a subject is a person who has engaged in conduct that is under investigation, but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges.

Substantively, this is not a huge new development. The Post reported last June that Mueller was investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice. What’s new is how Mueller plans to finish the job.

What Mueller is saying, via the Post, is that he does not have sufficient evidence to charge the president with wrongdoing. Through deft use of leaks — and we can be sure Mueller is not unhappy about the Post story — Mueller is sending the message that he wants to talk to the president, sooner rather than later.

Some of the president’s advisers intuit Mueller’s endgame, according to the Post. They “noted that subjects of investigations can easily become indicted targets — and expressed concern that the special prosecutor was baiting Trump into an interview that could put the president in legal peril.”

That is exactly what Mueller is doing.

Team turmoil

With the president’s legal team in turmoil, Trump is already in peril. His attorney John Dowd, a heavy-hitter from Wall Street, resigned last month after Trump rejected his advice to refuse Mueller’s request for an interview.

As Mueller closes in, Trump is poorly equipped to fight back.

He can’t find a replacement for Dowd. In normal circumstances, the most famous and capable conservative lawyers in Washington would welcome the chance to represent a Republican president. Ted Olson was the lead attorney in the Bush v. Gore case, which decided the 2000 election. Brendan Sullivan was attorney for right-wing hero Oliver North during the Iran-contra scandal. Both men declined to join Trump’s team.

Trump then hired hatchet man Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney whose TV talking-head skills exceed his courtroom reputation. DiGenova lasted only a few days and was relieved, apparently for reasons of “chemistry.”

Report due

Mueller is also letting the public know that his investigation is beginning to end, at least on the question of obstruction of justice.

From the Post:

Mueller’s investigators have indicated to the president’s legal team that they are considering writing reports on their findings in stages — with the first report focused on the obstruction issue, according to two people briefed on the discussions.

“They’ve said they want to write a report on this — to answer the public’s questions — and they need the president’s interview as the last step,” one person familiar with the discussions said of Mueller’s team.

If the president refuses to be interviewed, Mueller’s team can start writing their report. If Trump agrees to sit down with Mueller, the report will have to wait a little longer. Either way, Mueller’s report on the obstruction of justice question seems likely to be finished well before the November midterm elections.

Mueller then has to submit his findings to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervises the special prosecutor because Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself. It is Rosenstein, not Mueller, who must decide if Mueller’s findings should be made public.

It is not hard to figure what Rosenstein will do. He is a career Justice Department attorney and a civil servant, like Mueller. He appointed Mueller last May. In December, he deflected demands for Mueller’s head. And — another timely disclosure by Mueller’s office this week — Rosenstein authorized Mueller’s investigation of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

All in all, it’s bad news for the White House. Mueller’s clock is running out and Team Trump is in disarray.

Employers to women: Could you be any dumber (please)?

(Credit: AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

In yet more evidence that oppression is the business model and the entire economy is based on fuckery, a new study finds that being an academic superstar might actually hurt women’s job prospects. (Breaking news: Men, not so much.) The study also found that while men’s employability is determined by their level of capability and dedication, women were judged on their “likeability.”

The conclusions of the study from Ohio State University suggest that companies are responsive to women who do well, as long as they don’t do too well. Ohio State sociologist Natasha Quadlin created resumes for 2,106 recent college graduates. Using an online employment database, Quadlin sent “two applications — one from a man and one from a woman” — to entry-level job listings. An Ohio State article about the study notes that “both applications included similar cover letters, academic history and participation in gender-neutral extracurricular activities.”

 Quadlin found that fictional male applicants received responses expressing interest at the same rate across GPA levels. But as the pretend women’s GPAs increased, there was a correlating drop-off in the number of callbacks they received. In fact, high-grade-scoring men were 50 percent more likely to get a response from a potential employer than high-scoring women.

“We like to think that we’ve progressed past gender inequality, but it’s still there,” Quadlin said in a statement. “The study suggests that women who didn’t spend a lot of time on academics but are ‘intelligent enough’ have an advantage over women who excel in school.”

For women in science, technology, engineering and math fields, good grades were particularly harmful to post-collegiate career success. Men with high GPAs in those fields were three times as likely to get a response than their female academic peers.

“There’s a particularly strong bias against female math majors — women who flourish in male-dominated fields — perhaps because they’re violating gender norms in terms of what they’re supposed to be good at,” Quadlin noted.

The findings, which are as surprising as that part in a movie when the ugly girl turns into a hot chick after she takes off her glasses and scrunchie, were further driven home by the second part of Quadlin’s study. The sociologist surveyed 216 hiring managers and found that they looked for “competence and commitment” in male applicants, while prioritizing “likeability” in women job-seekers.

“This helps women who are moderate achievers and are often described as sociable and outgoing, but hurts high-achieving women, who are met with more skepticism, the study found,” the OSU article points out.

There’s no indication of intersectionality in the study’s notes — meaning that indicators of race or other factors might have weighed on outcomes — but previous studies have indicated that job-seekers with names perceived to be black or Hispanic were less likely to get callbacks from hiring managers. Quadlin’s study more generally jibes with prior research indicating that successful women are perceived as being less likable. An oft-cited 2003 study at Columbia Business School found that when presented with a hypothetical successful male and female venture capitalist, identical in every way but their gendered names, students found the woman “significantly less likable and worthy of being hired” than the man.

Power and success are seen as masculine virtues, and women who possess one or both are penalized for essentially not staying in what’s perceived to be their lane. This is what New York University psychology professor Madeline Heilman labels “lack of fit” between gender-based behavior stereotypes that leads to “gender bias in judgments” when those behavioral expectations are defied. Sociologist Marianne Cooper, writing at the Harvard Business Review, explains further.

What is really going on, as peer-reviewed studies continually find, is that high-achieving women experience social backlash because their very success — and specifically the behaviors that created that success — violates our expectations about how women are supposed to behave. Women are expected to be nice, warm, friendly, and nurturing. Thus, if a woman acts assertively or competitively, if she pushes her team to perform, if she exhibits decisive and forceful leadership, she is deviating from the social script that dictates how she “should” behave. By violating beliefs about what women are like, successful women elicit pushback from others for being insufficiently feminine and too masculine. As descriptions like “Ice Queen,” and “Ballbuster” can attest, we are deeply uncomfortable with powerful women. In fact, we often don’t really like them.

Somewhere, Hillary Clinton is reading about Quadlin’s study and sarcastically muttering, “You don’t say.” So is Michelle Obama, maybe in a room with her Harvard and Princeton degrees hanging on the wall, only she also understands how those sexist descriptors mingle with racist ones — “uppity,” “angry black woman” — when success and power are mixed with black womanhood. In any case, the obvious answer for smart women is not to dumb it down, but to rev it up.

“These are the people who will be advocates for you throughout your career,” Quadlin offered as a reminder, “those who support you early on and appreciate your intelligence and hard work.”