Phillips Foods Closing Baltimore Plant, Cutting 100 Jobs

It's a theme I've often repeated here at TDS...while the national media keeps selling the bogus "recovery" narrative, the local outlets haven't received the message. Here is the Baltimore Business Journal with the details:

Phillips Foods Inc. plans to close its Locust Point manufacturing and distribution facility in July, a move that will result in the loss of 100 jobs.

The seafood distributor said the layoffs will impact 13 percent of its Maryland workforce.
As part of the move, Phillips is shifting its warehousing and distribution to Baltimore-based Merchants Terminal Corp. with additional support from Dot Foods.

“We moved into our current plant in 2002 in hopes of growing our company, but given the difficult economic conditions and industry dynamics, we have not grown as we anticipated,” Phillips spokeswoman Caroline Tippett said in a statement. “Our Baltimore plant is simply too big, and we don’t have the capacity to fill the space.”

On a national level, statistics can be used to try and hide the ongoing devastation in the economy. But businesses have to make decisions based upon real world conditions. It's just that simple.

Stanley Black & Decker, Adventist Cutting 242 Jobs in Baltimore Area

Announcement: The mass layoff notices continue to come in fast and furious. Since I want to keep track of these, for those that are run of the mill I'm going to start putting them up as a fourth late evening daily post with minimal commentary.

In that spirit, here is the Baltimore Business Journal (note that there are actually two different layoff stories here):

Stanley Black & Decker is closing a West Baltimore facility and cutting 142 jobs, according to a notice with the state’s labor department. Meanwhile, Adventist Behavioral Health is closing a Crownsville facility and laying off 100 people, a separate filing with the state said.

Stanley Black & Decker plans to close its Baltimore Protection Net Center on Sisson Street, the filing said. The layoffs will take place in waves, starting April 1-14, and ending with a Oct. 23-Nov. 6 wave.

That's -242 more jobs in Maryland. Anyone still believe the nonsense spewed forth by the Bureau of Labor Lying Statistics?

Defense Contractor AAI Lays Off 184 Workers

Defense War spending is still rising, albeit at a slower pace than in recent years. But that is not enough to avoid defense contractors making layoffs because of reduced revenue. Here is the Baltimore Sun with the latest:

AAI Corp., the Hunt Valley company known for its Shadow spy plane, said Tuesday that it is laying off 184 workers from its Baltimore County location.

Workers were to be notified Tuesday. Before the layoffs, AAI employed more than 1,600 workers in Maryland.

Golly, sounds like wee need another war to get things moving again:

The move comes as the defense contracting dollars from the federal government are expected to dwindle. The overall national defense budget rose only slightly this fiscal year, and military leaders say they're taking a hard look at contracts for cost savings.

So less war = more layoffs. What a grim corner we have collectively managed to paint ourselves into.


Bonus: I guess it's good for keeping people employed, if nothing else

States Doubling Down on Bad Gambling Bets

I've posted several stories here on TDS about recent decline of the gaming gambling industry in the United States as the throngs who used to fill the casinos find themselves unable to come up cash to throw away on the slots or at the Blackjack table. And yet despite all of the evidence that the industry is in deep trouble and no longer the cash cow it used top be, there are still plenty of localities lining up, hoping to boost tax revenues by overcoming their previous resistance to legalizing gambling and opening casinos of their own. MSNBC has the details:

A Malaysian company's plan to build a $4 billion convention center and big-time casino on the outskirts of New York City could be the biggest shot fired yet in a tourism arms race that has seen a growing number of Eastern states embrace gambling as a way to lure visitors and drum up revenue.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last week that he would work with the Genting Group, one of the world's largest and most successful gambling companies, to transform the storied, but sleepy, Aqueduct horse track into a megaplex that would eventually include the nation's largest convention center, 3,000 hotel rooms, and a major expansion of a casino that began operating at the site in October.

The proposal came less than two months after once-puritanical Massachusetts passed a law allowing up to three resort casinos, plus a slot machine parlor, at locations around the state.

Ohio is poised to see its first commercial casinos open this year, after voters approved up to four gambling halls in 2009. Maryland's first casino opened last year, with more on the way. Pennsylvania's first casinos opened in 2006, and already the state is threatening to surpass Atlantic City as the nation's second-largest gambling market.

And in Florida, lawmakers are hotly debating a whopper of a bill that would allow up to three multibillion-dollar casinos, plus additional slot machines at dog and horse tracks. Genting appears confident the law will pass. It has already spent around $450 million to acquire waterfront property in Miami, where it wants to build a $3.8 billion complex that would include a casino, dozens of restaurants and a shopping mall.

States have embraced casinos, after years of trepidation about their societal costs, for two simple reasons: a promise of a rich new revenue source, plus the possibility of stimulating tourism.

The article itself actually does a very good job of raising questions as to whether this latest desperate revenue grab by the state governments is at all advisable:

Some experts, however, have questioned whether revenue bonanzas that large are realistic, and say states should be cautious about giving up too much to lure these projects. Competition for a limited pool of gambling and tourism dollars is already fierce, and recent years haven't been kind to casinos.

Nevada's larger casinos lost $4 billion in 2011, according to a report released this month by the state's Gaming Control Board, as the state continued to feel the effects of the global economic slump.

As gambling options have increased in the East, revenue has slid substantially at the pair of Indian tribe-owned casinos in Connecticut and declined by a dramatic 30 percent in Atlantic City, which has lost customers in droves to the new casinos in nearby Philadelphia, according to David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

So the latest players in the legalized gambling game plan to spend billions of dollars to spread the wealth that much thinner even as the slowly collapsing economy continues to squeeze the mass of players suckers they need to be able to make a profit.

How much more proof do you need that the so-called "leaders" of our society are completely out of ideas and have resorted to merely shuffling the deck chairs on the titanic?


Bonus: Wait a minute, is that music I hear on the promenade deck?

University of Maryland Builds $7.2 Million President's House Amid Budget Cuts

image: A huge salary and a free house (pictured) apparently isn't enough for the president of the University of Maryland

Back on November 26th, I posted a story called, "Sign of the Times: University of Maryland Cuts Eight Sports Programs to Save Money," which documented how the university was forced for budgetary reasons to make cutbacks in a number of its sports programs. As it turns out, non-revenue generating athletics at the university may be considered an unnecessary expense in these times of austerity, but that isn't stopping it from blowing more than (cue Dr. Evil) seven MEEELION dollars for fancy new digs for the university president. Here is the Washington Post with the details:

Construction crews are poised to demolish the president’s house at the University of Maryland this week and to pour the foundation for a new 14,000-square-foot on-campus mansion that carries a $7.2 million price tag.

But some question why the school would build such an elaborate house at a time when the flagship university is asking donors to support students who might drop out because they can’t afford tuition. And construction will begin just weeks after President Wallace D. Loh announced that he will cut eight varsity sports teams in June to save an estimated $29 million over the next eight years.

Yeah, that's certainly a question I would be asking if my kid were taking out student loans to pay the insanely high cost of tuition at the University of Maryland. So what's the explanation for building a ritzy new palace for the university's top dog?

University leaders say the school has a dire need for the new facility, which is designed to woo supporters and attract major donations at a time when state funds make up less and less of the overall budget. They say the bill will be picked up by about 30 private donors — not students or taxpayers — and will pay huge dividends. It also will replace a building plagued with problems.

The university will continue to pay for general upkeep and utilities for the mansion, which will be more than twice the size of the current home and will have dedicated entertaining spaces.

Because nothing would make me open my checkbook faster than seeing a clear demonstration that the university's "leadership" believes wasting millions of dollars on such frivolities is a higher priority that spending it on actual education programs for the students. Care to give us a few more details as to what you people were thinking?

“There’s never going to be a good time; it doesn’t matter what the economy is like,” said Brodie Remington, president of the University of Maryland College Park Foundation and a vice president at the school. “This is a good investment.”

Remington said the foundation’s trustees decided it would be easier to rip down the house and start fresh.

The “University House” is scheduled to open this fall and will have two distinct sections: One wing will contain a 4,000-square-foot private residence with four bedrooms that will cost about $2 million. The rest will be a 10,000-square-foot “events center” with a grand foyer, public living room, catering kitchen, office space, a formal dining room for small parties and a large hall that can seat 125. That section will cost $5.2 million.

Loh currently lives in a house he purchased near campus, and it’s unclear if he will relocate. Two university spokesmen declined to make him available for an interview.

“We’re not sure. That will be his choice entirely,” Remington said.“The facility is primarily for events.”

Unlike other entertaining venues, Remington said visiting the president’s house can elicit emotions similar to those felt when receiving an invitation to the White House, governor’s mansion or a friend’s home. “We informally call it the ‘power of the house,’” he said.

Oh, so your logic is that in order to get one-percenters to donate to your university, you have to have your president living like one of them. I got it now.

It seems to me that there is another way of looking at this abomination...that it instead sends the message that the senior leadership of the university only cares about their status and perquisites, and couldn't give a flying fuck whether the students who are impoverishing themselves to attend classes there wind up with an education that is worth anything more than the paper it is printed on in the real world. But maybe that's just me.


Bonus: But hey, maybe with a University of Maryland degree a graduate can become a really awesome street musician