GUNS IN AMERICA - The NRA/Gun Debate

"Trump says it’s O.K. to fight the NRA ‘every once in a while’" PBS NewsHour 2/26/2018

WARNING:  Trump lies and panders to NRA.

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SUMMARY:  President Trump called again for banning bump stocks during a listening session with the nation's governors, even if it means breaking with the NRA.  But in returning to the idea of arming trained teachers, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee urged him to take it off the table.  Meanwhile, lawmakers on Capitol Hill face a number of proposals, but it’s not clear if anything can pass.  Hari Sreenivasan reports.

"How this powerful NRA lobbyist transformed U.S. gun laws" PBS NewsHour 2/26/2018

IMHO the NRA is a domestic terrorist organization.

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SUMMARY:  As Florida's legislature begins to consider changes to gun laws in the wake of the deadly shooting at a Parkland high school, the question of whether anything will pass has a great deal to do with the powerful voice of the NRA in that state.  Mike Spies, a staff writer for The Trace who wrote about the NRA's past successes for The New Yorker, joins Hari Sreenivasan for more.

"Congress is chewing over several gun proposals.  What’s really possible?" PBS NewsHour 2/27/2018

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SUMMARY:  Students-turned-activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were in the halls of Congress on Tuesday to press for more gun control.  Senate Republicans pointed to a bill that would push more agencies to work with the background check system.  But Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer says that doesn't go far enough.  Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff for more.

"Trump, lawmakers seek common ground on gun control" PBS NewsHour 2/28/2018

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SUMMARY:  Students returned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday for their first classes since a Valentine's Day shooting, with many saying they would keep fighting for stricter gun control laws.  Meanwhile, President Trump met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to talk about legislation, backing better background checks and arming teachers or other school workers.  John Yang reports.

"Here’s how American companies are responding to the Florida school shooting" PBS NewsHour 3/1/2018

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SUMMARY:  Students and educators were gunned down at their school in Parkland, Florida, two weeks ago, and corporate America is responding.  Kroger announced that stores will no longer sell firearms and ammunition to buyers under 21, joining Walmart and Dick's this week in restricting sales of various items.  Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports other companies are distancing themselves from the NRA.

"Will corporate leaders taking a stand on guns have a contagious effect?" PBS NewsHour 3/1/2018

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SUMMARY:  As public demand for action on gun control gains traction in the wake of the Florida school shooting, companies such as Delta Air Lines and Walmart are taking steps to distance themselves from the NRA.  Hari Sreenivasan is joined by Nancy Koehn of the Harvard Business School to discuss what is triggering corporate America to engage in the gun debate and whether this can lead to change.

THE MEGA CORP - Are They Going the Way of Dinosaurs?

"Will mega-corporations give way to a local manufacturing renaissance?" PBS NewsHour 9/15/2016

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SUMMARY:  Big companies today aren't creating nearly as many middle-class jobs.  Instead they're hiring out much of the work to contractors around the world.  But what if we could reverse engineer our technology to bring about a new era of local manufacturing in the U.S.?  Economics correspondent Paul Solman talks with Jerry Davis, author of the new book “The Vanishing American Corporation.”

PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour):  A must-see stop on the grand tour of decaying Detroit, the plant that, for decades, clanked out auto chassis for GM.

GERALD DAVIS, University of Michigan:  General Motors at its height had 900,000 employees, career ladders galore.  They were providing a lot of benefits, creating good middle-class jobs.  GM today has about 220,000 employees around the world.  It's about as many as it had in 1928.

PAUL SOLMAN:  But sociologist Jerry Davis says the GMs of yesteryear, though models of productivity and even of economic equality, are history.

JERRY DAVIS:  What happened to General Motors didn't just happen to General Motors.  There are about half as many public corporations today as they were 20 years ago.

PAUL SOLMAN:  So, instead of General Motors, U.S. Steel, Eastman Kodak, and I could go on and on, what have we got?

JERRY DAVIS:  The big corporations today don't really have that many employees.  They're not providing career ladders.  They're not creating middle-class jobs.  Blockbuster had 80,000 employees and 9,000 stores across the country.  Netflix does the same thing with fewer than 4,000 people.

If anybody tells you they work at Facebook, probably they mean they are a contractor, because only about 12,000 people actually work at Facebook.  They are worth $300 billion, but very few people actually work there.

PAUL SOLMAN:  In a new book, Davis calls it the vanishing American corporation and poses a pivotal question:  What will rise from the wreckage?  Mega-firms that hire relatively few workers?  Made-anywhere product peddlers like Nike?

JERRY DAVIS:  They're the biggest sneaker and sporting goods company in the world, but they don't actually make most of the stuff with their name brand on it.  They design it, they market it from Oregon, but the production is done by contractors all around the world.  And that model is spread widely.

It's not just sneakers, it's not just garments.  Electronics, pharmaceuticals, pet food, you name the product, and you can find somebody to manufacture it and put your name on it.

SOCIAL MEDIA - Book on Erosion of Privacy

"How can we return privacy control to social media users?" PBS NewsHour 4/7/2015

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SUMMARY:  What’s the cost of being constantly connected through social media?  A new book, “Terms of Service” examines the erosion of privacy in the digital era.  Author Jacob Silverman sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss what data is being tracked, stored and sold.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Now the latest addition to the NewsHour bookshelf, “Terms of Service.”  It’s a look at the erosion of privacy in the age of social media.

Jeffrey Brown recently talked to author Jacob Silverman at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant and bookstore chain in and around Washington.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Welcome to you.

JACOB SILVERMAN, Author, “Terms of Service”:  Thanks for having me.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The case you’re making — and it’s a strong case — we don’t know or we don’t seem to care enough about what we’re giving away in our digital lives.

JACOB SILVERMAN:  Right.

Well, the same systems that make it so easy to communicate with one another and live these lives where we’re essentially all public figures now also make it very easy to sort of spy on us, to collect personal information, whether you’re companies or governments or other bad actors.

And I think that a lot of people don’t really realize how much is being collected on each and every one of us, that there are big data brokers out there forming dossiers on hundreds of millions of people.

JEFFREY BROWN:  There’s been a lot of emphasis on government surveillance.   Here, you’re really pointing to what we perhaps don’t know as much about, corporate surveillance.

JACOB SILVERMAN:  Right.

Well, actually, corporations have really led the way turning the Internet into what is really a remarkable surveillance machine.  Ever since the introduction of the cookie about 15 years ago, we have sort of shifted paths to make the Internet all about monitoring what users do, so that we can direct ads toward them.

CORPORATE CLOSET - CEO Opens the Door

"Apple’s CEO helps open the corporate closet" PBS NewsHour 10/30/2014

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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Celebrities, athletes and politicians have increasingly gone public about their sexual orientation.  But the corporate closet has mostly remained closed.

Today, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, opened that door a but more, declaring in an essay for Bloomberg Businessweek he is gay.

“While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either until now,” he wrote.  “So let me be clear.  I’m proud to be gay and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”

Cook becomes the most prominent business leader to come out, but what difference will it make?

Kara Swisher, who has long covered the tech industry and is co-executive editor of the tech news website re/code, joins me now.

So, Kara, in this day and age, why does what Tim Cook had to say matter?

KARA SWISHER, re/code:  Well, he is the most prominent executive in tech, and he’s running the most valuable company in the world.

And so he has a lot of prominence, and this is a big deal for him to come out and say that.  And the fact that no Fortune 500 executive has done this is a milestone.

GWEN IFILL:  So, why now?  Tell us about Tim Cook.

KARA SWISHER:  I don’t think there was an occasion.  He didn’t just decide, like, wake up this morning.

This is something — he’s been out among his friends, as he wrote, but he had never acknowledged it in public.  And people have been talking about it in Silicon Valley a lot.  There was a lot of hubbub a couple of months ago when a CNBC exchange discussed it.  Everybody knows he’s gay and stuff like that.

And I think he just wanted — he’s been moving slowly towards it.  He’s been making — he appeared at the Gay Pride Festival here in San Francisco this year.  He made a speech just recently about gay and lesbian rights related to Alabama, where here’s from.

So he’s been moving towards this very clearly.  And I think probably he just woke up and said enough.  I will just acknowledge it and say it and it’s not a big deal.  And me holding back probably makes it more of a big deal.