Showing posts with label Apologizes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apologizes. Show all posts

Friday, February 21, 2014

President Obama Apologizes for Dissing Art History Degrees

If you got a degree in art history, your eye might have twitched a bit when President Obama said a few weeks ago that Americans would be more well off in the manufacturing industry as opposed to, say, having an art history degree. Well, there is literally nothing these days that doesn’t warrant an apology, and now Obama has apologized for that remark.

Art historian and University of Texas at Austin professor Ann Collins Johns sent a message on the White House website taking offense at Obama’s remarks, explaining the importance of art history and how art historians can help enrich the culture.

Well, apparently, they actually do read those website messages, because Johns received a response from the president personally apologizing for the remark. Here it is in full:

Ann,

Let me apologize for my off-the-cuff remarks. I was making a point about the jobs market, not the value of art history. As it so happens, art history was one of my favorite subjects in high school, and it has helped me take in a great deal of joy in my life that I might otherwise have missed.
So please pass on my apology for the glib remark to the entire department, and understand that I was trying to encourage young people who may not be predisposed to a four year college experience to be open to technical training that can lead them to an honorable career.
Sincerely,

Barack Obama

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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

I Should Kill That Motherf*cker: CNN Airs Uncensored Trial Testimony, Cooper Apologizes

Michael Dunn is currently on trial for fatally shooting a black teenager who was playing loud music, and during his testimony (in which he invoked a stand-your-ground defense), he dropped a few profanities to recount exactly what he heard in the moment. And CNN ended up airing those words without filtering them through a censor first. Whoops…

During his testimony, Dunn said, “I should kill that motherf*cker” and “this sh*t’s going down now,” two phrases he said he heard the night in question. Both soundbites were included in the CNN report on the trial, but were not bleeped out.

Immediately after the full CNN segment wrapped, Anderson Cooper took to Twitter to apologize.

In a totally unrelated story, last night CNN aired the video of a dead baby giraffe being eaten by lions.

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Christopher: AOL CEO Apologizes for Blaming Benefits Cuts on Two Specific Babies

This may sound like an Onion headline composed by Jonathan Swift, but America Online CEO Tim Armstrong has apologized for comments he made in a conference call last week in which he partially blamed benefits cuts on a pair of, and this is a quote, “distressed babies that were born.” In an email Saturday, Armstrong apologized, and announced the restoration of the company’s 401k benefits matching policy.
Armstrong, also known for firing employees live during conference calls, took major flak over comments he made during an AOL conference call last week, as well as a CNBC interview in which he explained the change to his company’s 401k plan by blaming Obamacare.
The part of that CNBC appearance that got all the attention was Armstrong’s insistence on blaming unspecified Obamacare costs totaling $7.1 million for his decision to cut 401k benefits, but there were two other interesting things from that interview. Armstrong described the 401k match as “probably the last thing on the list for us in terms of employee benefits that we wanted to keep.” But a bit later, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Armstrong about the potential harm of the 401k cut, and Armstrong called the 401k cut a “microscopic” part of their benefits package, and bragged about the company offering “free yoga, free gyms, free food in many offices,” all of which were presumably more important than leaving the 401k match policy in place. Armstrong also talks about the conference call he’s about to hold to explain the changes to employees.

On that conference call, Armstrong laid the blame for the 401k change, which switched the company match from a per-pay-period match to an end-of-year match, at the tiny feet of two babies. From a transcript of the call, via CapitalNewYork:
“Two things that happened in 2012,” he said, according to a transcript provided by an AOL employee. “We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general. And those are the things that add up into our benefits cost. So when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased healthcare costs, we made the decision, and I made the decision, to basically change the 401(k) plan.”
After you’ve let the implicit lament in “distressed babies that were born” sink in for a second, consider the health care policy subtext that is also being missed in this, which is that the reason AOL took such a hit on those two expensive little infants is because the company is self-insured.
Self-insurance refers to group health plans (for people who get their insurance through work) that are self-funded, which means that instead of an insurance company actually paying the dollars to doctors and hospitals for employees’ claims, the company they work for pays them. They’re usually administered by an insurance company, which charges the employer a fee for that service.
Self-insurance is also not new, but it does put employees at significant risk. Self-funded plans are exempt from many state insurance regulations, including important patient protections, and a requirement to maintain a cash reserve sufficient to pay unexpectedly high claims. Unlike a fully-insured plan, which shares the risk with the insurance company by baking it into the premium, self-insured plans assume all of the risk for potentially expensive care. As it happens, they are also exempt from many of Obamacare’s provisions.
If “self-insurance” sounds familiar to you, it’s because self-insurance is one of the ideas that Republicans are putting forward as an alternative to Obamacare. That’s great as long as your distressed babies don’t come along and ruin everything by being born. Otherwise, not so much.
After considerable blowback, Armstrong apologized in an email Saturday, and put the old 401k policy back in place. From the email, via CapitalNewYork:
The leadership team and I listened to your feedback over the last week. We heard you on this topic. And as we discussed the matter over several days, with management and employees, we have decided to change the policy back to a per-pay-period matching contribution. The Human Resource team will be in contact with all employees over the next week to explain the change and to answer any other benefits related questions you might have. We are proud to provide AOLers with a robust benefits offering that spans from exceptional healthcare coverage to 401K’s to AOL fitness programs and beyond. On a personal note, I made a mistake and I apologize for my comments last week at the town hall when I mentioned specific healthcare examples in trying to explain our decision making process around our employee benefit programs.

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