What would you say are the defining characteristics of the American eater?
If you look at our obesity rates, they'd suggest we’re mostly overeaters. But beyond that, the question is tougher.
It’s not so much that we lack a U.S. food personality — if anything, we have multiple, conflicting ones. At the same time, more consumers are demanding that their food be “natural,” organic and GMO-free, even as Taco Bell sells record numbers of Doritos Locos tacos. We seem more interested in celebrity chefs, cooking shows and recipe videos than ever before, and yet we’re also spending a record amount of money eating out and ordering in.
To address our nation’s diet-related concerns, it would seem necessary first to better understand what we eat, how we eat it and, of course, why.
In her new book, Devoured: From Chicken Wings to Kale Smoothies — How What We Eat Defines Who We Are, Culinary Institute of America program director and food writer Sophie Egan digs into these questions.
It turns out previous attempts to dissect our dietary schizophrenia have ignored some important pieces. Principal among those, Egan argues, are the ways in which Americans working longer hours than the rest of the industrialized world has impacted both their motivation — and ability — to make healthier food choices daily.
So how do we go about resetting our workplaces, cafeterias and the norms they help instill to a healthier default? The Huffington Post recently spoke with Egan about the challenges ahead and the reasons for hope.
What prompted you to explore this question of how we wound up with the food culture we have today?
I’ve been working in food professionally for a number of years and was thinking about how powerful a mirror food is for who we are at a much deeper level. I was tired of hearing that in the U.S. we’re so diverse and are such a huge country that we don’t have anything we could identify as a national food culture. I felt like, well, what can be said? I dug into that question of who we are as eaters, these core values we have as Americans -- these are things we don’t even see sometimes because they’re so deeply ingrained in how we think.
And that led you to this discussion of how the way we work impacts the way we eat. It almost seems so obvious now that I’m asking you about it, but we don’t really talk about that relationship. Why is that?
It really comes down to a reframing of how we look at the root causes of our eating choices. We typically center those conversations around individual willpower or these character accusations, if you will: That Americans don’t cook because they’re lazy or we just follow whatever we saw on TV. But I would say work is a root cause. In addition to a lack of financial resources [being a factor for many people], another important root cause of some eating behaviors that maybe aren’t as healthy as people would like is lack of time. If we’re working more than we used to, something is falling by the wayside.
What was stunning to me was seeing how technology has really blurred the lines between work and home for many people. This mindset of, well, if you can work, why wouldn’t you? Whether it’s on vacation, in the evenings or on weekends, all of it. So with the increase in the numbers of hours we’re spending working, we’re not focusing on food. We look at food as fuel. You squeeze in a sandwich if you have three minutes in between meetings, or grab a Kind bar when you’re racing to catch the subway in the morning. Eating is a secondary need as opposed to something people used to design their days around.
And this starts in childhood. Kids in K-12 schools usually don’t have enough time to eat, so they’re scarfing down pizza or hot dogs or whatever is being served in their cafeteria in 10 minutes. By the time you’re in college, it’s a grab-and-go, grazing mentality. So you’re trained from an early age to see food as secondary. This is a huge cultural norm that’s very difficult to reverse.
Credit: Seth Perlman/Associated PressStudents at many schools are rushed to eat their lunches quickly. The Culinary Institute of America's Sophie Egan argues this helps instill a mindset that food is principally fuel, rather than something to be savored or celebrated.
I’ve noticed that the “food as fuel” mindset is behind a lot of the marketing of Soylent and similar products. I tried one last year and thought it tasted just as joyless as you would think. Why is this sort of message at the heart of a lot of so-called “foods of the future” today?
Culturally speaking, Soylent is a huge step backward. There’s this sense that we can take food and improve on it, to take what nature gave us and say there’s got to be a better way. A life-hacking approach. A Silicon Valley approach. But [AOL co-founder] Steve Case has this great quote that food is not something disrupting the disrupting you have to do.
Soylent is an extreme, but I would say it represents a larger idea of reducing food to its nutrients. Food is so much more than that. It does nourish us and we need certain things to survive, but I hope that people are starting to realize that flavor and taste and joy are some of the greatest pleasures of life. I think in the U.S., we have a very related discomfort with leisure and with pleasure. It’s sort of unspoken that if you sit around and do nothing, you’re lazy and you’re lesser. I think similarly there’s this sense of taboo around pure enjoyment of taste and of eating food with other people.
There’s also an element of purity to utilitarian foods like that. In the book, you make a strong case for food — whether it be a particular diet or the practice of going to brunch — as a sort of "secular church." Is that a hypothesis you held going into this, or did it develop along the way?
I started with this question about the contradiction of why we’re willing to spend basically the whole day seeking out brunch when our typical mindset is to go to extreme lengths to minimize the time we spend obtaining, eating and cleaning up after food. So it was more of this question of what is so different about that. Very quickly, my research led me to this discovery about how different our weekday eating habits are from our weekend eating habits. We spend the least amount of time of any major developed country preparing and eating food. We’re hardwired in terms of that idea of efficiency.
But looking back, it’s very clear weekends are about indulgence and treating yourself after a long, hard week. These are also some of the only times we aren’t as scheduled, though many families have soccer games and a million other activities too.
Your book also discusses how Americans are so used to getting our food exactly the way we want it, and points out how companies are always pushing new flavors and innovations or “stunt foods” like Doritos Locos. How do you balance these trends with ideas that could push us in a healthier direction? The answer can’t be to go back to the “good ol' days,” right?
This is a really tough question. It’s not just that we all should return to the old ways, because there’s clearly some innovation or new ways forward that should be welcomed. But what kinds of pieces from our past do we really want to resurrect?
Everyone talks today about how people are paying more attention to food than ever before, but from a policy standpoint, a number of things are still missing. One is the amount of time in schools for lunch. I think, at a broad level, going forward what I’m hoping for is for us to collectively find ways to focus on food more. And what I mean by that is, if more employers could make the American lunch break the norm in office settings. I’ve heard of a handful of companies where they ring a cowbell and everyone knows to take a break. You can’t expect individual change in the midst of the same larger environment, not only the physical marketing environment, but the cultural environment. I’m calling for cultural change, and it has to come from the top down.
I think the piece most worth resurrecting from the past would be teaching people to cook. You don’t have to call it home economics. But it should be painted as essential life skills. What if, in order to graduate from college you had to demonstrate that you knew how to cook an omelette so that you could feed yourself? If it was considered the same way as learning a language or riding a bike?
We’ve outsourced the preparation of food to the professionals. Are we going to stop eating food that comes in packages? Of course not. But we would be wise to see for what it is the availability of real, whole foods and the power that comes with feeding yourself and preparing food yourself instead of being sort of over-reliant on new solutions.
Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesMany "Big Food" brands like Kraft have been altering some of their trademark packaged foods to contain fewer artificial ingredients and flavors in recent years.
Are you optimistic that we're moving in the right direction, toward getting back into the kitchen and eating more “real” food? Or are we too set in our ways at this point?
I am optimistic. I think our appreciation for novelty and innovation is a double-edged sword. We’re eating more foods from around the world than five years ago, which is a silver lining to how much more we’re eating out. But it’s really brought a world of flavors to the masses. It has tremendous potential for healthier eating habits, because some of those other cuisines taste amazing and happen to be good for you without being positioned as good for you. That’s the best way to go.
I’m also optimistic about how much consumer awareness can change Big Food, and we’re seeing that in food companies removing artificial flavors and colorings, or antibiotics. Consumers’ collective demands are really starting to make change happen faster. I think in some ways we’re more empowered than ever before.
It is only with this greater awareness that we can we collectively take more control over our food choices. And with that, we can celebrate the aspects of our food culture that we sometimes overlook, and change those aspects of our food culture that are hurting us so that we can end up with healthier, happier relationships with the food we eat.
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Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food and water. In addition, Erbentraut explores the evolving ways Americans are identifying and defining themselves. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.
The attorney general of New York filed a lawsuit against Domino's on Tuesday, accusing the pizza giant of systematically shorting workers' pay.
Fast-food restaurants are sued all the time for alleged wage theft. What makes this suit different is who's included among the defendants: Domino's itself, as opposed to just the franchisees who run Domino's shops.
"At some point, a company has to take responsibility for its actions and for its workers’ well-being," Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, said in a statement.
The lawsuit claims workers at 10 Domino's shops in New York were underpaid by a total of at least $565,000. Schneiderman said that his office's investigation revealed "intensive involvement by Domino’s headquarters" in the alleged labor violations, and that Domino's should therefore be considered a joint employer alongside the franchisees.
“New York law -- as well as basic human decency -- holds Domino’s responsible for the alleged mistreatment of the workers who make and deliver the company’s pizzas, and it is incumbent upon Domino’s to fix the problems," Schneiderman said.
The fast-food industry is predicated on a franchise system, with the owners of individual outlets -- franchisees -- paying fees to the company in exchange for an established name and business model. The franchisees sign workers' paychecks and are typically considered the employers in this equation. When workplace laws get broken, they're usually the ones on the hook for the violation.
But in this case, New York alleges that Domino's really controls the work inside the pizza shops, and therefore should be held accountable for any violations of the law. The lawsuit claims that Domino's headquarters directed franchisees to discipline certain employees, dictated staffing levels and hours at the shops, and even tried to scuttle a union campaign by workers.
In a statement, Domino's said the lawsuit "disregards the nature of franchising and demeans the role of small business owners." The company said it worked with Schneiderman's office for three years to help franchisees understand and comply with the different wage and hour laws.
"It’s unfortunate that these steps were not enough, and that the Attorney General now wants the company to take steps that would not only deprive our independent business owners of the opportunity to make their own employment decisions, but could impact the viability of the franchise model, the many opportunities it offers to those looking to start their own businesses, and the millions of jobs those franchised businesses create," the company said.
According to its most recent annual report, Domino's has more than 4,800 franchised locations in the U.S., owned by 841 franchisees who each have an average of six locations. Domino's itself only owns 384 stores.
According to Schneiderman's office, Domino's required franchisees to purchase an online software system called PULSE, and encouraged them to use it for payroll reports. The lawsuit alleges that PULSE routinely miscalculated workers' gross wages, and that these mistakes led to workers being shorted on their paychecks. Domino's headquarters, the suit claims, was aware of the problems, but deemed the miscalculations a "low priority."
The sale of PULSE, Schneiderman contends, amounted to "fraud" perpetrated on the franchisees by Domino's.
Domino's isn't the first fast-food company to be sued alongside some of its franchisees. In 2014, workers in three different states filed lawsuits against McDonald's, saying the company violated minimum wage and overtime laws. As in the Domino's complaint, the plaintiffs in that suit argued that McDonald's steered in-store work policy and was therefore liable for the alleged violations. The cases are pending.
Schneiderman's office has aggressively pursued criminal cases against fast-food operators, and Domino's stores have been in the attorney general's crosshairs in the past. In 2014, a group of Domino's franchisees agreed to pay workers nearly a half-million dollars to settle wage theft claims brought by the attorney general.
This story has been updated with comment from Domino's.
A little more than a year ago, when Hillary Clinton officially launched her history-making campaign for the presidency, she did something else unprecedented. She hired Bernard Coleman as the campaign’s chief diversity officer.
The 36-year-old is responsible for helping Clinton -- the first woman with a real shot at the White House -- build a staff more reflective of the voters she hopes to win over, beyond the usual scrum of white guys who run political campaigns.
Coleman, who says he is the first chief diversity officer ever employed by a presidential campaign, briefly held a similar role at the Democratic National Committee where he was director of human resources for six years.
Clinton desperately needs Coleman, who is also the campaign's head of human resources, to succeed. A diverse staff is key to helping her understand an increasingly diverse electorate, where whites represent a declining percentage of voters. Without votes from people of color, Clinton likely cannot win the presidency -- a lesson she learned in 2008.
“We want to have the most representative staff,” Coleman told The Huffington Post. “We’re always trying to crush it."
And by all accounts they are: Thirty percent of the 700 or so people on the Clinton campaign staff are non-white and 52 percent are women, according to data provided to The Huffington Post by Inclusv, a group that finds diverse candidates for political campaigns, advocacy groups and policymakers and also is pressing for candidates to report their staffs demographic data. (Former Obama campaign staffers founded the group last year.)
Senior leadership on Clinton's staff is 54 percent women and 34 percent people of color, according to the latest data available, from March 31. The campaign won’t break down those figures any further to show what percent of staff are Hispanic or African-American. And, worryingly, the numbers haven't grown since the last time the campaign reported its diversity data in February.
Yet it’s fairly clear -- just on the gender stats alone -- that in terms of staffing, this is likely the most diverse serious presidential campaign in U.S. history. (The smaller Bernie Sanders campaign hasn't yet reported its March data to Inclusv. But in February, a report revealed that, though 31 percent of the campaign's staff are people of color, all of its top paid staff are men.)
There is not an official account of the Obama campaign staff's demographics -- nor of any campaign's prior to this year -- but Clinton 2016 is probably out ahead, Alida Garcia, executive director and cofounder of Inclusv, told HuffPost.
"The [Clinton] headquarters in Brooklyn is likely more diverse than the 2012 operation in Chicago," said Garcia, who worked on Obama's 2012 campaign helping turn out the Latino vote. (Garcia also works with FWD.us, the immigration reform group founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.)
Clinton's achievement is the result of a deliberate strategy spearheaded by the candidate herself, burned by her loss in the Democratic primaries in 2008, when her campaign seemed targeted mainly to white voters. She's of course spurred forward by the rapidly changing demographics of the country.
“Clinton is really hitting diversity and it’s not by accident,” said Erikka Knuti, a political strategist who’s worked on Democratic campaigns and currently is a communications director for the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union. “The fact that she is doing it speaks to who she is and lessons learned,” she told HuffPost.
Clinton campaignBernard Coleman is the first chief diversity officer to staff a presidential campaign.
Hiring a chief diversity officer is a tactic straight out of corporate America's playbook. Sixty percent of Fortune 100 companies employ a chief diversity officer, according to a 2012 analysis from executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles.
Clinton's campaign has far surpassed the business world in diversity, though. The country’s biggest businesses still are remarkably homogenous -- particularly at the highest levels. Fewer than 4 percent of the chief executives who run S&P 500 companies are women, and the number has been falling. For African-Americans the numbers are even more grim. According to data cited by Fortune, black men and women make up 4.7 percent of executive team members in the Fortune 100. There have only been 15 black CEOs on the Fortune 500 -- ever.
There’s plenty of evidence that a more diverse company will see a higher stock price and profits. And it's clear that the demographics of the nation -- i.e. consumers -- require a change. But companies have been slow to move, Billy Dexter, a partner at Heidrich & Struggles, told HuffPost.
“If corporate America wanted to do this, they could,” he said. “Some organizations have.”
The companies that have made inroads have approached the need to diversify as a business imperative, not just a moral one. The idea, Dexter said, is to make hiring diverse people as important as hitting profit goals: assign your best people to the task and look at the numbers quarterly. And the CEO must play a key role in driving the strategy.
As diversity has clearly become a political imperative -- particularly for a Democratic candidate -- Clinton has done just that. In November, one-third of eligible voters in the U.S. will be Hispanic, black, Asian or belong to another racial or ethnic minority group, according to a report out from the Pew Research Center earlier this year. Democratic voters are even more diverse: 40 percent of Democrats identify as nonwhite, compared with 11 percent of Republicans, according to Gallup data from 2012.
Women, of course, are not a minority -- though they seem to get treated as one. We comprise 52 percent of the voting population.
Whites, meanwhile, are a declining interest group. This is well evidenced by the obvious racial panic behind Donald Trump's campaign, and in the data: In 2016, whites are projected to make up 69 percent of eligible voters, down from 78 percent in 2000.
Clinton learned all of this the hard way. She lost her bid for the Democratic nomination in 2008 in part by running a campaign that seemed to position her as the mainstream (read: white) candidate in contrast to Barack Obama.
In a tactic the New York Times and others decried as “race-baiting,” she downplayed the amount of white support her opponent had.
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she told USA Today in 2008. “Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.”
Obama's path to the nomination and the presidency came with the help of record black and Hispanic turnout. Now, turning out the African-American and Hispanic vote is recognized as critical to a Democratic victory in 2016.
Given these realities, Coleman's mandate to diversify the campaign comes straight from the top, he said.
“If she didn’t say this is important, then no one would move,” he told HuffPost. “The country is evolving and changing. Having diverse voices helps us message. It helps almost every facet.”
The pressure to hire diverse staff is “constant,” Coleman said. “We talk about it with senior staff every week.”
Just this week, the Clinton campaign hired Jess McIntosh, vice president of communications for EMILY’s List. She is known for being skilled at bringing in women and diverse voices, Knuti told HuffPost before the hire was announced.
Coleman said a big part of his job is simply helping the campaign find good people -- and not allowing anyone to take “shortcuts” in hiring. Campaign hiring moves at lightning speed and the temptation is to just quickly bring in people you know well. Unfortunately, that's the easiest way reinforce a culture of sameness. It's how tech companies, which have also grown quickly, wind up hiring bro after bro after bro. One guy knows another guy who looks just like him.
One thing Coleman's learned is if his colleagues take a little more time to think of good candidates, they find they actually know a pretty diverse group. People just need to focus, he said. “You need people to sit down in a room, get off their phones, open a Rolodex and say, 'Who do you know who does this?' You actually know a lot of people. It has to be deliberate.”
After six years with the DNC, Coleman knows a lot of people. The bonus, he said, is people really want to work for the campaign, so they take his calls -- and help him find good candidates.
Even the private sector wants to help. Coleman mentioned that the “open a Rolodex” strategy came from “a guy at Google,” whom Coleman declined to name, who wanted to help the campaign. Google, notably, has a large diversity team, as well as a chief diversity officer, though it hasn't seen much progress.
It is easier to build a diverse campaign staff than a diverse company staff. Coleman has had the benefit of hiring a team from scratch. An established corporation cannot get rid of all its workers and start all over -- it can only hire so many new people every year. And the sense of urgency in a campaign, which comes with a built-in expiration date, is absent from a company.
Chris McGrath via Getty ImagesClinton seems to have learned a lot from her failed bid in 2008.
As Nov. 8 looms closer and the pace of hiring picks up, the Clinton campaign’s challenge will be to maintain its diversity, Garcia, of Inclusv, told HuffPost. There’s still room for improvement, she said, noting that the most recent data showed the campaign had stalled out in its push to diversify and that the percent of people of color on senior staff fell slightly to 34 percent from 36 percent.
Inclusv wants to make sure thosenumbers rise as staffing scales up for a national campaign. It has been working with the campaign since last year, helping find candidates.
“Quite honestly, based on our prior experience [with Clinton] we anticipated pushback,” said Garcia. “In reality, what we found was a willing and welcoming partner in Bernard Coleman to build upon an accessible ongoing conversation.”
The end goal, of course, is a diverse White House. “At the end of the day, a lot of campaign staff ends up in government managing key policy initiatives for elected officials,” Garcia said.
Coleman is aware of this. “Being White House chief diversity officer,” he said. “That would be pretty cool.”
Detroit’s historic bankruptcy was complex and unique -- but it offers some surprisingly universal lessons for anyone who struggles with money.
When the city announced it was broke in 2013, its budget was crippled by declining revenue stemming from population loss, the financial crisis and disinvestment from the state. At the same time, officials made avoidable mistakes, according to Nathan Bomey, author of Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back.
Bomey, a USA Today reporter, covered the bankruptcy trial for the Detroit Free Press. Released last month, his book takes a behind-the-scenes look at how major players engineered an agreement that cut pensioner benefits, settled with creditors, and secured hundreds of millions in aid from foundations and the state. The city emerged from Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2014, shedding $7 billion in debt.
While the bulk of Detroit Resurrected tracks the dramatic bankruptcy trial and tense closed-door negotiations, Bomey also clearly charts the financial missteps from the previous decade that helped put Detroit on a path to insolvency.
He occasionally puts them in familiar terms. One deal is compared to putting monthly expenses on a credit card; another to “a toxic mortgage that could not be refinanced.”
Detroit Resurrected isn’t intended to be a personal finance guide. But it reminded me of some of the financial mistakes I’ve made, and the difficult task of getting one’s finances back on track.
Here are a few of Detroit's money mistakes to avoid, and a couple decisions worth emulating.
Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe skyline of Detroit on July 19, 2013, the day after it became the largest city to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The city's financial missteps have similarities to mistakes individuals make with debt and managing personal finances.
There are no simple fixes for financial shortfalls, and borrowing now can can cost big later.
The “point of no return” for Detroit was an inventive and irresponsible borrowing scheme the city cooked up in 2005, according to Bomey. Under then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the city borrowed $1.44 billion to plug a huge hole in the pension funds. Only a few years later, the city risked defaulting and negotiated an even worse deal.
The one-time fix let political leaders avoid making unpopular but necessary cuts at the expense of the city’s future financial health, Bomey argues.
“What they did in 2005 was refuse to make the tough decisions that they needed to make to protect the city's retirees and to ensure that the budget was balanced,” he said.
Likewise, financial experts discourage individuals from taking on long-term debt for anything other than big expenses that have a potential return, like a mortgage or student loan.
Just because you qualify for a loan doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
While the Kilpatrick deal looks like a terrible bet in hindsight, at the time it was heralded by city officials and Wall Street. Banks were all too willing to help Detroit borrow exorbitantly, whether or not it was fiscally responsible.
Bomey sees parallels to banks’ loosened restrictions for homeowners.
“In that era, Wall Street was lending money to homeowners who couldn’t afford to borrow, so it should come as no surprise that they were also willing to lend to a city that couldn’t afford to borrow,” Bomey said.
“This was like a subprime loan on steroids,” he writes in Detroit Resurrected.
You can’t fix financial problems until you own up to them.
The way Bomey tells it, Kilpatrick’s borrowing scheme was a way of hiding the extent of Detroit’s financial problems.
“Kwame Kilpatrick refused to tell [pensioners] the truth, which is that they couldn’t afford to pay certain benefit levels anymore, and instead we just lied to retirees for years,” he said.
When the moment of reckoning came, the problem had only gotten worse and pensioners were shocked by the proposed cuts -- the equivalent of a woman finding out her husband had racked up to $80,000 in credit card debt to keep up their lifestyle after he took a pay cut.
It’s not uncommon for people to hide their money troubles from their family. A third of people with combined finances admitted to lying to their partner about money, according to a 2014 survey of 2,035 adults conducted by the National Endowment for Financial Education.
Paying only the minimum on debt exacerbates the problem.
It might seem responsible to faithfully pay the minimum on a credit card balance each month, but you’re actually losing money and keeping yourself trapped in debt. According to debt management site Ready for Zero, it could take over five years to pay off $1,000 if you're just paying the minimum, and you’d spend $566 on interest alone.
Detroit took a similar approach. After borrowing $1.44 billion, the city only made payments on the accumulating interest for years.
“That deferred the pain temporarily but only made things worse when the city finally went broke,” Bomey said.
Plan for the future -- and expect the worst.
Detroit made a smart move during bankruptcy when it determined what return rate to expect from pension fund investments, Bomey said. They settled on 6.75 percent, one of the lowest rates in the country.
“A responsible family is going to manage their budget with relatively conservative expectations, and if you have a surplus at the end, great,” Bomey said. “If you take an irresponsible approach and expect more money to come in than eventually comes in, then you have to adjust your budget. And that can be very painful.”
Balance paying debt with investing in the future.
If you’re trying to eliminate debt, it can be tempting to cut expenses to the bone and put every penny possible toward your balance. But in many cases, it’s smart to continue saving money for emergencies and retirement to guarantee future financial well-being.
Until bankruptcy, Detroit was putting little money toward maintaining or improving city conditions -- four out of every 10 budget dollars were going toward debt, pensions and health care benefits for retirees, and that figure was set to rise to seven out of 10 by 2020.
Joshua Lott / ReutersA man walk past graffiti in Detroit on Dec. 3, 2013.
The city was beset with problems like the fire department’s malfunctioning emergency alert system. Bomey describes one station where firefighters rigged a replacement system using a fax machine that would print notifications, knocking a soda can over. A lack of basic services was one of the factors driving out residents: Garbage collection was irregular, 40 percent of the city's street lights were out and police response times were nearly triple the national rate.
The bankruptcy agreement was designed to allow Detroit to spend money on the essentials that allow residents to have a decent quality of life -- and will stabilize the city in the future.
“They are reinvesting in raises for police officers, new fire equipment, new buses, basic technology like software systems in the city that they need to improve tax collections,” Bomey said. “Bankruptcy is the first moment Detroit finally put its people before its creditors.”
Kate Abbey-Lambertz covers sustainable cities, housing and inequality. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow her on Twitter.
Some office perks may include free coffee and bagels, but at one biotech startup company employees get a free Tesla car.
Practichem, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, has announced plans to reward each staffer with a Tesla Model 3, courtesy of their boss.
The flashy electric sports car, that carries an estimated $35,000 price tag, will be doled out to current and future employees upon its expected 2017 release, the company said Thursday.
“We just announced it to the employees last night as they were leaving and said by the way you're going to be getting a Tesla,” company Press Director Ann Revell told The Huffington Post by phone.
Their reaction was "pretty remarkable,” she said. “They were like, 'Wow, I’ve never driven a car that's younger than 20 years old!'”
Justin Pritchard/APPractichem's CEO has said that they chose Tesla because the motor company shares their goal of positively impacting humanity.
The incentive behind the grand giveaway is to attract the best talent out there, Revell said.
“The whole point, one of the many points, was to make sure that they understand the value that they’re bringing to this organization,” she said of Practichem's employees.
Ideally, it'll also provide a little mental boost during their morning commute and get them "inspired when they get to the office," she said.
“I mean it’s not a toaster, right?” she laughed.
Practichem currently employs 10-15 people, Revell said. The company's core mission it to develop biological research tools to “cure humanity’s diseases,” according to the company website. That humanitarian focus is what led them to select Tesla, which designs all-electric vehicles.
“Our vision shares similarities with Tesla Motors; both companies positively impact humanity with real change,” Nick DeMarco, Practichem’s founder and CEO, said in a release. “People driven to solve big issues share core values. Many of our employees have marveled at Tesla’s approach. Their compelling all-electric vehicles drive us to make real change in our field.”
The vehicles, which are advertised as being able to travel 215 miles on a single electric charge, will be provided to employees while they’re working for the company. Reservations have already been made on the vehicles, Revell said.
And it's not too late to add to the orders: Revell is looking to expand the company. “We have 10 positions we need to fill, immediately,” she said.
The Chicago-based international law firm Winston & Strawn LLP announced Wednesday that it is creating a gender-neutral parental leave policy, as well as a broader policy intended to help lawyers with the often hectic process of taking parental leave and then returning to work.
The policy includes 20 weeks of paid parental leave for associates and of counsel attorneys. It applies to parents of any gender and in any country, and the leave time can be taken in either one or two separate chunks within the first year of a child's life. Parents also aren't required to designate a "primary caregiver."
This is a pretty big deal in the legal industry, even if it falls somewhat short of the policies offered in other professions, according to Vivia Chen, a senior columnist at The American Lawyer. "Law firms are a bit behind other industries, especially the financial and other professional service industries, when it comes to more innovative family measures," she said.
Many tech firms, including Netflix, Facebook and Spotify, have introduced generous gender-neutral parental leave policies in recent months. Just a few weeks ago, the consulting firm EY announced a 16-week paid leave policy that will start in July. But Winston & Strawn is the first law firm to have a policy this expansive -- or at least the first to announce it publicly.
Getting women back to work after having kids -- and allowing men to take time off as well -- is a way for firms to help women ascend the career ladder. Currently, only 18 percent of equity partners in American law firms are women, even though women account for 47 percent of the country's J.D. degrees.
In addition to the 20 weeks of leave, the firm is also creating a few different ways to ease the transitions of taking leave and returning to work. There will be a "parental leave liaison" to assist people coming back to work, as well as career coaching services and lower billable-hour requirements for people who are just about to take leave or are just coming back to the firm.
"Traditionally for women, if you take a long leave, easing back in can be difficult. You might have hesitation about going back," Chen told The Huffington Post. Having someone act as a sort of coach, encouraging people to come back from leave, just might be the nudge new parents need to get back into the swing of things after having a baby.
To be clear, Winston & Strawn isn't acting altruistically here: The firm's move is intended to attract and retain high-level attorneys. Practice attorneys, who are low-level attorneys usually brought on for specific projects and who are outside the traditional partner-track framework of the firm, won't get the same 20-week benefit. Neither will the firm's other staff members, such as paralegals and office assistants.
However, it's relatively common for benefits in big law firms to be stratified, according to Chen. Winston & Strawn says its U.S. employees in lower positions will get increased paid leave time and an extra two weeks of paid time off.
Claire Underwood certainly would not stand being paid less than a man for the same work -- and neither did her real-life counterpart, Robin Wright.
The actor, who plays the formidable first lady on Netflix's "House of Cards," opened up about demanding higher pay in an interview at The Rockefeller Foundation on Tuesday.
Until recently, Wright was paid less than her co-star Kevin Spacey, who was reportedly making $500,000 per episode on the show. The fourth season of the drama was just released on Netflix in March.
“I was looking at statistics and Claire Underwood’s character was more popular than [Frank’s] for a period of time. So I capitalized on that moment. I was like, ‘You better pay me or I’m going to go public,’” Wright said, flashing her trademark smile. “And they did.”
Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin had asked her about the barriers women face in getting ahead, and Wright mentioned the gender pay gap. In 2015, women still make just 79 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. The gap is worse for women of color.
Their conversation was part of a series called “Insight Dialogues,” discussions with thought leaders and activists hosted in New York. The Huffington Post is a media partner with The Rockefeller Foundation on the series.
The pay gap is so pernicious that women earn less than men in 439 major occupations, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Watch Wright's interview here (she mentions her demands for equal pay around 7:15):
Wright said that one of the things holding women back is the time out they take to raise children, mentioning that her career took a hit after she had her kids in the '90s -- just as she was gaining fame after starring roles in "The Princess Bride" and "Forrest Gump."
“Because I wasn’t working full time, I wasn’t building my salary bracket. If you don’t build salary bracket with notoriety and presence, then you’re not in the game anymore," Wright said.
Her kids are apparently doing their part to help her catch up. Last year, Wright's daughter, Dylan Penn, told Marie Claire that it was "crazy" her mother wasn't making the same as her co-star: "They both equally grab the attention of the audience."
Women in Hollywood have been speaking up more about equal pay ever since Patricia Arquette called for equality in her acceptance speech at the Oscars last year. Arquette, who was accepting an award for her role in the film "Boyhood," has since lost out on a couple of roles for taking a stand, she said earlier this year at a dinner in Beverly Hills, California, that The Huffington Post attended.
Still, since she spoke up, others have followed, including Jennifer Lawrence and Gillian Jacobs.
And judging from the Twittersphere, a lot of women are excited about this turn of events. Many were celebrating Wright's salary win on Tuesday and Wednesday.
That's what I'm talking about Claire Underwood. https://t.co/6xZwOmwIMQ via @EmilyRPeck @HuffPostBiz pic.twitter.com/FS7UASSkst
In an unprecedented move for a restaurant chain its size, Joe's Crab Shack announced in November that it had dropped tipped wages at 18 of its restaurant locations.
It was an experiment to determine whether customers would be happier not having to deal with that dastardly 15-20 percent calculation after a meal. The restaurant chain announced that food prices would rise in those locations to cover higher labor costs, and in turn, the average employee's $2-an-hour plus tip wage would rise to $12 an hour.
The problem is, nobody believed them.
Bob Merritt, the shack's new chief executive, told investors last week that both customers and employees weren't happy with the policy, according to The New York Times. Company research found that diners hated the price hikes, and 60 percent disliked the new tipping policy -- they were happy to throw a little extra cash toward their wait staff as an incentive for a better experience.
"The system has to change at some point, but our customers and staff spoke very loudly," Merritt told the Times. "And a lot of them voted with their feet."
Those 18 locations lost 8 to 10 percent of their customers, and former CEO Raymond Blanchette told CNNMoney that some employees quit over the policy.
Now Joe's Crab Shack is rolling back its plan, decreasing prices at 14 locations but keeping the no-tip measure at four locations as a continued experiment.
“We are going to try to figure out why it worked in some places and why not in others,” Merritt told Nation's Restaurant News. “The way we look at it is: We are really continuing the tests in place with where it works.”
Other, smaller ventures have also tried to implement similar policies and failed. According to Grub Street, Fedora in New York City announced Monday it will bring back gratuities due to customer complaints.
GOOCHLAND COUNTY, Virginia — Ever since Curtis Brown Jr. got his first Star Wars toy as a toddler, he has been fascinated by action figures. So much so that he has built a business customizing action figures for clients worldwide. But what could be a lucrative career has turned into an exercise in futility that traps Brown and his family in poverty.
That’s because Brown struggles every day with miserable Internet service. The only choice where he currently lives is an $80-a-month satellite connection. It’s slow and comes with such a low data cap that he exceeds it within a week or two. So Brown’s business comes to a halt. He can’t afford to buy more data. He can’t use his smartphone because the service is so bad he has to go outside to get a signal, and it’s too cumbersome to update the many websites he uses to conduct his business.
The constant interruptions limit Brown to about $400 a month in profit. Even with his wife Ashley’s income from an administrative job with the state's education department, Brown and his three stepchildren have to rely on help from relatives and food stamps to make ends meet. Brown would move if he could, but houses with fast Internet connections are in areas where the rent is too expensive.
An isolated case? Not at all. An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that even though Internet access has improved in recent years, families in poor areas are almost five times more likely not to have access to high-speed broadband than the most affluent American households. That means no access to online jobs, and no access to health care advice, education, government services and banking — everything needed to be a full participant in today’s society. This harsh reality has led to a new kind of segregation.
“Internet access,” says James Lane, superintendent of Goochland County Public Schools, “is the civil rights issue of our time.”
A Rope Ladder
Brown sells his custom action figures — Gamorrean Guards, Luke Skywalkers and Skeletors — out of his living room in a compact one-story brick house at the end of a dirt driveway just off Stokes Station Road in the western part of Goochland County. The neighborhood is about 20 miles west of the tony suburbs and manicured golf courses adjacent to Richmond — but it is worlds away. Next door to the Browns: an abandoned trailer home with broken windows and rusted siding.
Nearly every house in the area has a satellite dish bolted on the roof or perched on a pole in the yard. A satellite connection, like the one Brown gets from HughesNet, is the only option for Internet here. But it is expensive and doesnot provide what the federal government defines as “advanced telecommunications capability” or high-speed broadband, a download speed of 25 megabits per second or higher. That’s the speed both the feds and application developers say is the minimum needed to support both the numerous devices in a household today and the future applications that will create digitally interconnected homes and businesses.
Allan Holmes/Center for Public IntegrityCurtis Brown Jr.'s home in Goochland, Virginia.
Other Internet connections like DSL — offered by companies such as AT&T Inc., CenturyLink Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. — rely on telephone lines but typically don’t offer broadband speeds. Americans can get Internet on their smart phones, but the faster connections on those phones aren’t widely available and come with data caps that most people use up quickly. Cable and fiber connections, those offered by Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Verizon’s fiber-optic cable service mostly in cities, offer the faster speeds. But they aren’t available everywhere either — especially in low-income areas.
It’s that sort of fast cable or fiber connection that Brown says he needs to earn thousands of dollars more a month like he used to when he lived in another part of the county that had a fast connection —before a family matter caused financial difficulties and he had to move.
“It would be like when you are in a hole, it would be that nice rope ladder being lowered down to you so you can get yourself out,” Brown said. “That’s exactly what it would feel like for us.”
For now, though, that ladder lies just out of reach, less than five miles away on River Road, one of the main thoroughfares that roughly follows the James River, which flows east to and through Richmond. That’s where Comcast, the high-speed broadband provider for much of Goochland County, ends its high-speed Internet service. It also happens to be almost exactly where the median household income drops by more than a third and the poverty rate triples, according to the Center’s analysis.
That’s not the only place Comcast ends service at the doorstep of this low-income area. The same happens on Riddles Bridges Road just another two miles away. And again farther north on Forest Grove Road, where Comcast serves neighborhoods with $300,000-plus homes: service stops a few thousand feet before the line where poor neighborhoods start — such as a low-income black community a little more than a mile away. Here Internet access “is nonexistent,” said a young resident who declined to give his name. “It’s primitive out here.”
Internet providers say they don’t consider demographic data such as income levels and poverty rates when deciding where to hook up neighborhoods. Who gets a wired Internet connection and who doesn’t is one mostly based on population density, they say. Areas like where the Browns live are too sparsely populated for telecommunications companies to make a return on the high cost of wiring rural neighborhoods, they say. Comcast officials add that they are following a specific franchise agreement the company negotiated with Goochland County officials, which requires them to lay cable down streets only where there are 30 houses per mile.
Even so, it’s hard for Manuel Alvarez, a county supervisor who represents the district where the Browns live, to look at where Internet service ends and not wonder if Comcast purposefully avoids providing broadband to Goochland County’s poor.
“I can't believe that they wouldn't look at people's ability to pay before they run cable,” said Alvarez, who won a seat on the board in 2011 running on a platform to improve Internet access countywide. “I do believe that they run cable where they will get their money back.”
Not Even a Choice
Nationwide, families in neighborhoods with median household incomes below $34,800 — the lowest fifth of neighborhoods nationally — are five times more likely not to have access to broadband than households in areas with a median income above $80,700 — the top fifth, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation. The Center, which analyzed Federal Communications Commission and Census Bureau data, specifically looked at households that didn’t have access to wired broadband, which is fast Internet service that is readily available, as opposed to adoption, when a household has access to service and can choose to purchase it or not.
In Houston, high-speed Internet service becomes patchy between Interstate-69 and the Westpark Tollway, skipping clusters of apartment complexes where the median household income is less than $30,000 a year. Wealthier neighborhoods to the north, south and west enjoy more consistent coverage. Low-income residents in an area in East Cleveland don’t have access while wealthy areas just two miles away to the south do, according to the Center’s analysis. And in San Bernardino, California, people living in areas that have the lowest fifth of household income are about three times as likely to not have access to broadband as families living in areas where the household income is in the top fifth.
In all, in excess of 30 million Americans, more than half in areas with a median household income below $47,000 a year, do not have access to broadband, according to the Center’s analysis. That means difficulty streaming video or downloading or posting large files such as graphics and photographs, as Brown experiences. If more than one person in a household is online, interruptions can occur. And these families won’t be able to take advantage of future applications, such as home health care apps, that may require fast speeds to work properly.
“Internet access is the civil rights issue of our time.”James Lane, superintendent of Goochland County Public Schools
The Center’s findings closely match the FCC’s conclusion in its Broadband Progress Report, released in January. (The Center used more recent data that was released after the agency published its findings.) The FCC’s report was the basis for a commission ruling the same month that Internet providers weren’t deploying broadband in a reasonable and timely fashion, as required by law, opening up the possibility the agency may impose regulations to require providers to upgrade and expand their networks faster.
Compounding Difficulties
Many broadband experts and analysts say the real explanation for the difference in Internet access between the rich and poor is that providers can’t afford to wire rural areas, which have a larger proportion of low-income families than urban areas. Wiring rural areas is expensive, and providers can’t get enough return on investment because there are too few households to support the cost. Low-income households also tend to sign up for Internet service at less than half the rate of wealthier families, with the high cost of broadband connections the primary deterrent, according to the Pew Research Center. The providers are businesses, after all, goes the argument, and those businesses have the right to make money, and choose where to do business based on whether they can make a profit there or not. Last year, Comcast earned almost $12 billion in net operating income on its cable communications business.
The Center found that even controlling for population density, the rural poor are still in excess of one-and-a-half times as likely not to have high-speed broadband as rural wealthy families. Even in urban areas where 94 percent of households have access, low-income families are three times as likely not to have access as the wealthiest urban families, the Center found.
Eleanor Bell Fox/Center for Public IntegrityJames Lane, superintendent of Goochland County Public Schools.
Tanisha Fletcher is one of the nearly 7 percent of city residents who don’t have access. Fletcher, 36, is a resident of Juniper Gardens, one of the oldest public housing projects in Kansas City, Kansas. Time Warner Cable provides service for the buildings all around her block, but not for her apartment building, according to the FCC broadband database. Fletcher, 36, has to rely on a wireless connection that she said freezes so often that “it might as well be non-existent.”
Even though Fletcher earns just $1,100 a month as the office manager at Connecting for Good, a nonprofit that works with Internet providers to connect low-income areas, she said she would be willing to pay $20 or more a month for a connection so she could finish her college degree and stay in touch with family and friends.
“We kind of get looked over here, and I don’t really know why that it is,” Fletcher said. “It makes us feel like the cable company and the city just don’t care about us.”
Time Warner Cable did not respond to a request for comment.
The FCC maintains that disproportionate access between low- and high-income Americans is a top concern. The FCC said policies directed toward improving access in rural areas, like its rural healthcare fund, and a fund to connect schools and libraries are aimed at reducing the wealthy-poor divide. The FCC additionally says it imposes conditions in mergers between telecommunications companies that typically require a purchasing company to provide better access to the poor, such as with AT&T’s purchase of satellite provider DirectTV last year. And the FCC also has acted to reduce barriers to broadband expansion into unserved areas, as it did in preempting two state laws that prevented cities from expanding municipal-owned Internet networks, arguing the statutes limited broadband’s reach to rural areas and the poor.
“A lot of people say, well life is unfair, but I feel like there's a difference between unfair and the necessity of it.”Crystal Ware, mother of a fifth grader who doesn’t have Internet access at home
But not explicitly focusing on the digital divide between the wealthy and the poor can have significant adverse circumstances, said Sharon Strover, director of the Technology and Information Policy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies broadband’s impact on economic growth. .
In a 2013 study, Strover and her co-authors found that poverty rates in areas with a high-speed connection were significantly lower than those that didn’t have broadband. Median incomes also were higher in counties where adoption rates were above average.
“I think some of the difficulties that lower-income folks have now will just be compounded” if they don’t have access to high-speed broadband, Strover said.
The Digital Dividing Line
In Goochland, county leaders and residents are well aware that broadband access ends at the same place where incomes drop, and the poverty rate and percentage of minorities increase.
The wealthy area starts in the eastern part of the county, which abuts some of the most luxurious Richmond suburbs, where the median income is above $100,000 a year. Million dollar-plus estates with waterfront views sit close by to the exclusive private Kinloch Golf Club, with its Tudor-style clubhouse. Capital One Financial Corp., the eighth-largest U.S. bank, operates a sprawling 316-acre business campusabout a five-minute drive away. Residents here have a choice of buying Internet service from Comcast or Verizon, with speeds reaching as high as 500 Mbps, among some of the fastest available nationwide.
Eleanor Bell Fox/Center for Public IntegrityManuel Alvarez, a Goochland county supervisor.
But travel west and cross the halfway point of the county — past the recently built Goochland High School and just beyond Dogtown Road — and broadband mostly stops. No longer can you get Comcast’s fastest connection of 150 Mbps, and Verizon’s fastest speed drops from the 500 Mbps in the east to a sluggish 3 Mbps, to eventually no service at all. For sure, the county is more rural here, making it more costly for providers to lay cable or fiber, acknowledges Lane, the school superintendent.
At the same time, he says, “We know that in our community the fiber stops right at the moment where our low-income students are living.”
And the effects, he says, are profound. Three years ago, the school system began giving a laptop or iPad to each student. Teachers incorporate the devices into classroom exercises; in one recent class students searched the Internet to find requirements for their chosen careers. Teachers also would like to assign homework that requires accessing online resources when students leave school. But because many students have no broadband at home, the school has implemented a rule that teachers can’t assign homework that depends on the Internet. Even so, students without Internet are falling behind, Lane said.
“The kids who have access are learning anytime, anywhere they want to,” said Lane, who will become the superintendent of schools for neighboring Chesterfield County in July. “But the kids who don't have access at home, basically their learning stops at the moment they leave the school house.”
Like Cody Ware. A 12-year-old fifth-grader at Goochland’s Byrd Elementary School who likes science, Cody said the lack of Internet makes him nervous because he is afraid he may miss an assignment. “If I forget to take a picture of my homework on the iPad, then I can't do it on the iPad later that night because I don't have it,” he said. “And then I have to explain to my teachers why I didn't have it.”
Cody’s mother, Crystal, 38, said the family can’t afford to move to the part of the county with broadband access, even though it’s just a couple miles away. She recently had to make the hour-long, round-trip drive to the closest library so her son could download a study guide for an upcoming science test.
“A lot of people say, well life is unfair, but I feel like there's a difference between unfair and the necessity of it,” Ware said.
‘Bent on Regulating’
The FCC has the authority to determine if providers are deploying Internet service in a “reasonable and timely fashion,” as outlined in the 1996 Telecommunications Act. When the agency sees barriers to deployment, it has argued it can act in the public interest, as it did when it preempted the state laws barring cities from expanding their networks.
But the market for Internet service remains close to a monopoly in many places, and at best a duopoly in most areas. About 75 percent Americans have only one or two choices for providers, according to the FCC. And many providers tend to avoid competition that could lead to expansion of the networks, according to an earlier Center investigation.
When the FCC ruled that broadband wasn’t being deployed fast enough, it reported that “deployment, competition, and adoption [are] concepts that we continue to recognize are tightly linked.” But Internet providers such as AT&T and Verizon argued the opposite. They said the FCC’s own reporting showed the percentage of Americans without wired broadband access dropped from 28 percent in 2011 to 10 percent in 2014.
AT&T said in a filing that the FCC was “ignoring that this percentage was declining rapidly.” Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, one of two Republicans on the five-member commission, voted against the FCC’s finding that broadband was not being deployed fast enough. He said the FCC’s report “continues to show steady progress in connecting unserved Americans” and that “apparently no amount of progress will ever be good enough for a Commission that is bent on regulating broadband at all cost.”
Verizon claimed in a filing that the FCC should include wireless access in its assessment of broadband access, arguing the failure to incorporate “all broadband options that are available to and used by consumers was a persistent flaw in methodology.”
But the FCC also ruled in January that satellite and wireless connections were not a substitute for wired connections.
And back in Goochland County, most folks seem to agree. Superintendent Lane called O’Rielly’s assertion “ridiculous” and said Verizon’s claim that wireless should be considered in the broadband-access calculations isn’t feasible.
“Do you think that you could do your entire job on your cell phone?” asked Lane. “Because I can tell you that most people would say that you cannot.”
“We want to service as many people as possible.”Comcast Corp. official
Comcast officials said they do not use Census Bureau income or poverty data to determine where the company lays cable. Comcast conducts periodic surveys of the county to check where they need to provide service. Officials also said the company’s program to provide low-cost Internet connections is aimed at increasing adoption, although it doesn’t improve access to broadband. By serving urban areas, “arguably we provide service to more families in poverty or near poverty,” a Comcast official said. “We want to service as many people as possible.”
In Goochland County, similar to other areas, the company is obligated to follow a franchise agreement it negotiated with the county in 2011. These agreements, which number in the thousands nationwide, are typically renegotiated every several years. In Goochland County, that is a time when residents fill up the room where the board of supervisors meet to complain about lack of service, Alvarez said, but local boards typically don’t have a lot of power to negotiate expanded service into areas that are high-cost, which frequently also means low-income.
AT&T and Verizon, as well as Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink and Charter Communications Inc., didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Cox Communications Inc., which provides service in more than a dozen states from Rhode Island to California, said in an email that “100% of the residents in the markets we serve have access to Internet service if they choose it” and that the company follows agreements negotiated with local governments.
The Cost of Access
In many areas where Comcast runs cable, residents don’t have broadband access. Under its agreement, Comcast isn’t obligated to run a line from the street down a homeowner’s or renter’s driveway if the house sits more than 150 feet off the road.
The provision keeps even wealthier Goochland residents from getting connected. When Alvarez, the county supervisor, moved in 2004 to a Goochland neighborhood where many of the homes are valued at more than $500,000, he didn’t have fixed Internet, even though a cable ran down the road a few hundred feet from his driveway in the Mill Forest subdivision. Alvarez said local Comcast officials told him it would cost $2,300 to run a cable to his house and $250,000 to wire the entire neighborhood of more than 120 homes. Eventually, Comcast came down to $47,000 for the subdivision, or about $450 a house, Alvarez said. Most of the neighborhood residents paid the fee to get connected.
Alvarez, whose district he says includes “houses with dirt floors to houses with marble floors,” said Comcast and other providers should pay to connect homes where lines are readily available because the companies will eventually recoup their costs. He says the lack of Internet is also hurting job growth in the western part of the county, as businesses can’t get the fast speeds needed to compete in the modern economy.
Center for Public Integrity
What it all means, Alvarez asserts, is that high-speed Internet is really a “must have” in today’s world, not a luxury. The Internet is becoming a utility that is as much of a necessity as electricity, and that means the federal government may have to regulate it as one, he said.
“Then you can push for more coverage,” Alvarez said. Otherwise, he says, “Everybody who doesn't have high-speed Internet is going to fall behind.”
A Lifeline?
Last month the FCC passed reforms to a program that officials said should encourage providers to expand broadband to low-income areas. In a party-line vote, the agency voted 3-2 to expand the Lifeline program, which previously had subsidized the cost of cell phones for low-income individuals, to include fixed Internet service. Eligible participants can receive a $9.25 a month discount off their fixed broadband bill, paid for by the FCC. Officials hope the $2.25 billion program, funded by the existing universal service tax on customers’ Internet bills, will create a market in poor areas that Internet providers will want to reach.
FCC officials note that the agency’s $4 billion-a-year “high-cost” universal service program also includes subsidies to encourage wiring areas underserved by providers. The $1.7 billion Connect America Fund requires providers who accept money to offer a speed of at least 10 Mbps download as well as follow other requirements. But not all providers have accepted the cash. Verizon was offered $29 million in federal funds to expand service in Virginia, including about $265,000 in Goochland, but it didn’t take the money, according to the FCC. Other providers did, such as CenturyLink. Verizon didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“I can't believe that they wouldn't look at people's ability to pay before they run cable.”Manuel Alvarez, member of Goochland County’s Board of Supervisors
But some are skeptical of how much these programs will help. It is unlikely Lifeline will provide a big enough incentive to providers to upgrade networks or to expand wired service to poor areas.
Lifeline’s individual subsidy “is unlikely to make a dent in the under-supply of broadband in sparsely populated rural areas,” said Richard Bennett, who studies technology policy at the American Enterprise Institute, in an email. “Solutions to the extreme rural coverage dilemma are more likely to come from advances in technology and investment by public-private partnerships to bring new technologies … to market.”
Bennett said wireless broadband companies such as Bluebird Broadband, which offers service with no data caps, are likely one option for low-income households going forward. Bluebird Broadband, which services Northwest Louisiana and neighboring parts of Texas, offers a 20 Mbps package for about $89 a month, including a $9 router rental fee. That’s still more costly than most wired connections with faster speeds.
In Virginia, Last Mile Broadband LLC has begun to deploy an advanced wireless LTE technology to serve portions of Hanover County, just north of Goochland, that it says is faster and more reliable than current wireless technology. The company plans to cover Goochland County by the end of 2017. The company will offer speeds of 10 Mbps at about $80 a month, after a $199 fee to install equipment on a customer’s home, without any data caps.
“We’re going where no other company serves,” said Keith McMichael, Last Mile’s chief operating officer, who grew up in the area. “We’re trying to solve everyone’s problem. Low income or high income, everyone gets it the same way.”
But the cost may still be out of reach for low-income families, and the service doesn’t include TV or phone, requiring families to pay for a TV or satellite package with another company. Most providers that offer a wired broadband connection of 25 Mbps or more charge less per month and include phone and TV. Besides, the wireless companies are still in startup mode and have yet to spend the money to expand coverage.
Back in Goochland, Brown, the toy maker, says he can’t wait much longer.
“Our kids need this,” Brown said. “If wealthy people have better access, they're going to have more opportunities, which will increase their potential for wealth. While if you are in poverty and you have reduced access, you're going to basically fall further behind.”
CORRECTION, May 12, 2016, 4:22 p.m.:An earlier version of this article identified Ashley Brown as working for the Goochland County department of education. She works for the Virginia Department of Education.
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative reporting organization. Verizon is the parent company of AOL, which owns The Huffington Post.
In our lightning-fast, on-demand, plugged-in workforce, top executives can outsource pretty much any task they can't find the time or energy to do themselves.
Except, of course, sleep.
Lately, a growing wave of top business leaders have been pulling out all the creative stops to encourage employees to get more sleep. Executives from Aetna's Mark Bertolini to Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg have made statements about the importance of rest to their companies' success.
It's the sign of a shifting paradigm that has leaders asking their colleagues to work smarter, not harder. And smarter, as it turns out, means more and better sleep.
Erin Siegal / ReutersAn employee takes a nap in a nap pod which blocks out light and sound at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California
A host of corporations known for long working hours are now urging longer sleeping hours, instead. Aetna, for example, is offering to pay its employees up to $300 per year if they get seven hours per night, plus an additional $200 for committing to other "wellness activities" related to fitness and nutrition. Consulting firm McKinsey & Company conducted a study on the impact of sleep in the workplace. Nap rooms are a common sight at Google, Zappos and Ben & Jerry’s, to name a few, while Facebook has held sleep workshops to teach employees about the benefits of increased z's.
The sleep fascination has extended into brand identities, too: JetBlue, for example, installed nap pods in its new terminal at John F. Kennedy airport last month. And as part of a partnership with The Huffington Post, Marriott distributed cards with Arianna Huffington's sleep tips to its hotel guests last month, while publishing a series of articles on how to make vacation a time for both activity and healthy rest.
Though diverse, all of these programs have the same critical goal: to get us to sleep more, whether we're the consumer or the employee.
“How an employee sleeps at home directly impacts how they function at work," Nancy Rothstein, director of Circadian Corporate Sleep Programs, told HuffPost. "And that’s something [corporations] have never thought about... An employer cannot outsource an employee’s sleep.”
Tara Moore via Getty Images
Rothstein acknowledges that we're at a "tipping point," where sleep will soon emerge as the corporate zeitgeist of our day. Big companies have long focused on fitness and nutrition for their employees, she says, but the final and most important point of that triangle is sleep. And it took quantitative research to finally get companies to listen up.
One study that's been getting attention lately found people who are sleep deprived perform the same or worse as those who are legally drunk on a whole host of cognitive tasks. Another study, co-authored by sleep specialist Els van der Helm, found that sleep affects every key behavior needed for good leadership, even though 43 percent of corporate leaders don't get enough sleep for most of the week.
Paul Bradbury via Getty Images
Both Rothstein and van der Helm told HuffPost that data like these have succeeded at getting corporations to pay attention to the power of sleep. And this attention, they hope, will lead to workplace changes that stick.
"Once you believe you can change, you need to be convinced it's necessary and worth it," van der Helm says. She leads sleep workshops at companies like HuffPost and Facebook to do just that.
So where are we headed in this corporate #SleepRevolution? Companies often outfit their workers with fitness trackers to document sleep, but the ultimate answer goes beyond that, Rothstein says. She sees a future of sustainable change in which people get quality sleep, not just more of it. Office sleep programs that check in with workers week after week would majorly change corporate culture, she says. And with this newfound focus on the importance of sleep, they could be commonplace very soon.
These days, you don’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg to get great paternity leave.
Companies are offering new dads more time off than ever before, according to research from Fatherly, a dad-focused parenting site that compiles an annual list of the "50 Best Places To Work For New Dads."
This year, the site found that the average number of weeks offered for paternity leave has nearly doubled since last year. The average is now seven and a half weeks, up from four in 2015.
Fatherly compiled its 2016 ranking by using data from academics, activist groups, HR departments at large companies and more. The site didn't just factor in the amount of paid time off companies gave to new dads; it also considered companies' other family-friendly policies.
Some of the top firms from 2015 have dropped in the ranks -- not because their policies got worse, but because other companies' offerings improved. Google, for instance, famous for its family-friendly policies, fell from first to sixth. Netflix, which recently began offering a full year of leave for new parents of any gender, now sits in the number-one spot.
“By allowing me to figure out how to navigate this crucial time in my family’s development, my team is helping me be great, not just at home but at the office as well,” wrote Casey Rosenthal, a Netflix dad, in a LinkedIn blog earlier this year.
It seems that, during a year of forward momentum for parental leave in cities and states across the country, companies have finally caught on to the fact that parental leave is good for business -- and that moms aren’t the only ones who need support.
Here are the top 50 companies to work at if you’re a new dad:
1. Netflix
Policy: Unlimited first year
Industry: Media
2015 Rank: New entry
The policy allows parents to return part time or full time, or return and then go back out as needed, while continuing to to be paid normally.
2. Spotify
Policy: 24 weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: New entry
New dads can use the time however they see fit, up to their child’s third birthday.
The company also runs a “Welcome Back!” program, which lets employees ease back into a full schedule with telecommuting and flexible hours.
3. Facebook
Policy: 17 weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: 2
New parents at Facebook receive a $4,000 “new child benefit.”
Facebook supplements its health insurance with $20,000 worth of fertility and family planning benefits, covering everything from egg freezing and sperm retrieval to surrogacy agency fees, all of which are available to same-sex couples as well.
4. Patagonia
Policy: 12 weeks
Industry: Retail
2015 Rank: 4
Patagonia’s onsite child care is staffed with child development professionals.
New parents who have to travel for business are provided a traveling child care professional so they can bring their baby with them.
5. Pinterest
Policy: 16 weeks
Industry: Media
2015 Rank: New entry
In addition to Pinterest's 4-month paternity leave, the company offers new dads a fifth “transition” month, during which they can work a reduced schedule while still receiving full pay.
6. Google
Policy: 12 weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: 1
The company has one-on-one consultations to help parents figure out their options, including discounts for nanny placement agencies, five free days of backup child care and priority access to Bright Horizons child care centers.
It provides parents with $500 for "baby bonding."
7. Microsoft
Policy: 12 weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: 16
Microsoft offers a child care subsidy of up to 20 percent of tuition at national providers near its offices around the country.
The company's corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington, has an on-site health care clinic that provides same-day appointments with doctors, physical therapists and chiropractors.
8. Bank of America
Policy: 12 weeks
Industry: Finance
2015 Rank: 3
It provides confidential counseling and resources to assist with everything from financial planning to parenting issues.
The company's health insurance includes a service called TelaDoc, which lets employees talk to a doctor by phone or video chat for a $40 copay.
9. LinkedIn
Policy: 12 weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: 6
Parents receive a $2,000 annual child care subsidy.
The company recently moved from a "Paid Time Off" policy to "Discretionary Time Off," meaning employees work with managers to schedule their vacation days, with no set maximum.
10. Twitter
Policy: 10 weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: 11
It lets employees take whatever time off they need, as long as they meet obligations.
The company runs "Dads On Leave" roundtables, which bring together employees who have paternity leave experience to share tips and best practices.
11. AirBnB
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Hospitality
2015 Rank: New entry
All parents at AirBnB receive a complimentary membership to UrbanSitter.
Everyone receives a $2,000 annual traveling stipend.
12. Johnson & Johnson
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Biotech and pharmaceuticals
2015 Rank: New entry
Johnson & Johnson has seven on-site child care centers.
The company’s leave policy can be divided up as employees see fit any time during their kid’s first year.
13. Accenture
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Business services
2015 Rank: New entry
Accenture allows employees to work remotely for a full year after their kid is born.
14. MasterCard
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Finance
2015 Rank: 39
MasterCard provides employees preferred enrollment status and a 10 percent discount at a national network of child care centers, along with a subsidy of up to $2,000 annually.
The company also provides college scholarships to employees' kids.
15. Intuit
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: 29
The company’s scholarship program offers $5,000, which can be used for college, secondary school and even vocational schools for students of employees.
16. Intel
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: New entry
Intel covers $15,000 per adoption.
The company provides four weeks of paid sabbatical for every four years of employment. This can be combined with the existing eight weeks of parental leave.
17. Zillow
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Information technology
2015 Rank: New entry
It offers 16 days of backup child care.
The company also provides new parents with $1,000 “Baby Bucks” on Amazon.
18. Paypal
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Finance
2015 Rank: New entry
In addition to paid parental leave, PayPal also offers up to eight weeks of paid family care leave, for when a child gets sick.
PayPal offers employees unlimited vacation. And after five years with the company, employees earn a four-week paid sabbatical.
19. Bain Capital
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Business services
2015 Rank: New entry
Bain provides health and dental benefits immediately upon hire.
New hires also receive three weeks of vacation on day one. This offering expands to four weeks after two years at the company.
20. Yahoo
Policy: Eight weeks
Industry: Media
2015 Rank: 13
Employees get a monthly $500 "Daily Habits" stipend for things like child care, laundry and groceries.
After five years, employees earn an eight-week unpaid sabbatical.
21. Genentech
Policy: Six weeks
Industry: Biotech and pharmaceuticals
2015 Rank: 6
In addition to the six weeks of paid leave, employees can take another six weeks unpaid over the course of the kid's first 12 months.
A sabbatical program provides six weeks paid time off every six years.
22. Roche Diagnostics
Policy: Six weeks
Industry: Health care
2015 Rank: 9
Kids of employees at the Indianapolis headquarters are eligible for a summer camp operated by the city's YMCA.
23. CA Tech
Policy: Six weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: 18
The company runs a "phase back to work" program for new parents, allowing employees to work 50 percent of their normal schedule the first week back and 75 percent the second week back -- all at 100 percent pay.
The on-site child care centers are Montessori-certified and serve kids between the ages of 6 month and 6 years. The centers also offer a Summer Academy, plus care during school holidays.
24. Amazon
Policy: Six weeks
Industry: Retail
2015 Rank: New entry
A “Leave Share” program allows employees to share all or some of their six weeks with a spouse or partner who doesn’t have paid leave through their own employer.
Any primary caregiver can participate a “Ramp Back Program,” which eases him or her back into full-time work at 50-75 percent of their normal schedule for up to eight weeks.
25. Kimpton
Policy: Six weeks
Industry: Hospitality
2015 Rank: 12
All company meetings have an exercise component — like yoga or jogging — scheduled into them, to improve employee wellness.
26. Pricewaterhouse
Policy: Six weeks
Industry: Accounting and legal
2015 Rank: 10
PwC allows "Flex Days," days off employees can take, provided their work schedules allow for it and they still work a 40-hour week.
It also offers unprescribed sick days, whether it's an employee who is sick or their child, parent or spouse.
27. Arnold & Porter
Policy: Six weeks
Industry: Accounting and legal
2015 Rank: 8
Employees only have to work 25 hours a week to qualify for benefits, and the firm maintains a panel of partners who advise employees looking to transition to part-time work.
It offers onsite child care at its D.C. headquarters.
28. Apple
Policy: Six weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: New entry
In addition to its standard vacation policy, Apple provides a paid week off during Christmas.
29. Alston And Bird
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Accounting and legal
2015 Rank: 25
The firm maintains a concierge service to cover errands, like car repairs, vacation planning, gift shopping or waiting on home maintenance appointments.
30. Akami
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: New entry
Akami provides its employees unlimited paid time off.
The company offers free premium memberships to Care.com and helps with child care assistance through an au pair program discount as well.
31. Ultimate Software
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Tech
2015: 47
It offers 100 percent health care coverage for employees and all of their dependents.
The company encourages employees to utilize its flex time policies, including weekly work-from-home days.
32. Adobe
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: New entry
Adobe provides paid time off for all employees over Christmas and July 4th, which don’t count against annual vacation days.
In addition to covering up to $1,200 in child care expenses, tax-free, the company provides access to Bright Horizon’s Care Advantage, a subsidized child care program that activates when a parent’s existing child care falls through for whatever reason.
33. Cooley
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Accounting and legal
2015 Rank: New entry
Employees at Cooley are eligible for up to 20 days of child care through Bright Horizon’s Care Advantage backup day care solutions.
The firm will cover a health club initiation fee plus up to $65 a month in dues, which can also be used for yoga classes, tennis lessons or other health activities.
34. Diageo
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Food and beverage
2015 Rank: New entry
Diageo claims that 95 percent of employees utilize flex time to some degree in their personal work schedules.
Offers employees Bright Horizon's Care Advantage, including up to 15 days of backup child care services at a cost of $15 per child.
Every month, employees receive eight hours of school activity leave (up to 40 hours per year).
35. Humana
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Insurance
2015 Rank: 50
Humana provides 23 vacation days per year.
Humana offers up to $5,000 tuition reimbursement, and its 401(k) is a 125 percent match for up to 6 percent of an employee's salary.
36. State Street
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Finance
2015 Rank: 5
The four weeks of paternity leave don't have to be taken consecutively.
37. Fannie Mae
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Finance
2015 Rank: 20
Fannie Mae’s flex time adoption by employees stands at approximately 30 percent.
Fannie Mae provides personal financial planners.
38. Red Hat
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: New entry
One quarter of Red Hat employees work remotely full time.
39. HP, Inc
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Tech
2015 Rank: New entry
HP offers up to eight weeks of paid leave for families going through the adoption process.
It offers Bright Horizon's Care Advantage backup day care solutions.
40. Discovery
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Media
2015 Rank: 17
Discovery offers on-site child care and an on-site medical center.
The company also offers a personal concierge service to handle tasks like grocery shopping, vacation research, car and home maintenance.
41. Viacom
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Media
2015 Rank: New entry
An employee resource group called “The Parenthood” creates programming and events for Viacom employees with kids.
42. Perkins Coie
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Accounting and legal
2015 Rank: New entry
Primary caregivers are given 140 hours of transition time that can be used to extend paid leave, or to “ramp down” before taking leave or “ramp up” prior to returning from leave.
Half of the firm’s attorneys use flex time to some extent in their personal work schedule.
43. Procter & Gamble
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Consumer goods
2015 Rank: 44
Procter & Gamble covers 80 percent of all continuing education expenses, up to $40,000 over the course of an employee's career.
44. Goldman Sachs
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Finance
2015 Rank: 32
Goldman provides a coordinator that helps arrange flex time and plans parents’ leave.
It doesn’t define primary and secondary caregiver along gender lines.
45. Power Home Remodeling Group
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Remodeling
2015 Rank: New entry
Flex time and telecommute policies are used by 35 percent of employees.
It has an annual three-day Mexico trip, where every employee is invited along with a guest.
46. Factset
Policy: Four weeks
Industry: Finance
2015 Rank: New entry
The company upped its paternity leave from one week to four.
Forty-five percent of employees use the company’s flex time policy in some capacity.
47. Allstate
Policy: Starts at four weeks; increases to six weeks after four years of employment
Industry: Insurance
2015 Rank: New entry
Allstate offers on-site child care at its largest offices and discounts at reputable nationwide chains elsewhere.
48. Wellstar Health Systems
Policy: Three weeks
Industry: Health care
2015 Rank: 21
An on-site concierge service is tasked with making sure errands like car service, holiday gift buying and dry cleaning are handled.
Wellstar offers adopting families $20,000.
49. McGraw-Hill Financial
Policy: Three weeks
Industry: Financial
2015 Rank: 27
The company lets employees contribute up to $5,000 pre-tax to a flexible spending account for child care expenses and, if they make less than $85,000 in salary, it will match the first $1,000 contribution to the account.
It provides annual $5,000 college scholarships for the kids of employees.
50. RSM
Policy: Three weeks
Industry: Accounting
2015 Rank: New entry
RSM provides “extended care cash” to parents who frequently work outside traditional hours or travel often. It can be used for extended day care or to bring kids on business trips.
The company runs a new parent coaching program that provides counseling services, tips and advice to new parents.
