Nursing Home Operator In New York Laying Off 100

Medicare and Medicaid cutbacks were the reason for this mass layoff story. Here is a local New York television station with the details:

Central New York’s largest operator of nursing homes is cutting 100 jobs as part of a restructuring plan. Loretto says the move is necessary to ensure its future.

Most of the layoffs are at the management level, while others include clerical and financial positions and don’t involve those who work directly with the residents. The cuts are across the board and do not impact any isolated facility.

With 18 different locations in addition to specialized programs for the elderly, Loretto serves more than 6,000 Central New Yorkers and their families.

“Most of the families who go into our facilities on a day-to-day basis are going to see no difference whatsoever…really the positions affected are not resident-care oriented,” said Loretto Senior Vice President Steve Volza.

While Loretto leaders say no further cuts are planned right now, they are continuing to work with a health-management firm to improve their efficiency as they adjust to new financial difficulties. Those challenges are tied directly to Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements from the government.

“Today, our funding levels are at 2006 levels. While everything is moving forward, ours has moved back. The reason why is to move people out of institutions and into more community-based settings and we understand what that message is about and that's what this change is about,” Volza said.

The company says the layoffs won't hurt the quality of care at its facilities. Sorry, but I don't believe them. It's also worth notingthat even with cutbacks like this, the costs of Meidcare and Medicaid have still been exploding. So what will happen to these nursing homes when the cuts REALLY start to bite?


Bonus: Not the best video quality, but here is Bill Burr on getting old

Orion Bus Company (New York) To Lay Off 538

Just when we should be building more buses for public transportation systems, one of the domestic manufacturers is shutting down. Here is a local New York television station with the details:

The employees union for the workers at Orion Bus in Oriskany says that all 538 workers will be laid off sometime in the next two years, and that the layoffs are only a matter of when.

Tim Banas at the United Auto Workers Union said that at least 12 employees at Orion were laid off Thursday morning and that the company expects to lay off more in the days to come.

On Wednesday, Daimler announce that it would stop all production on new bus orders at the Oriskany-based company, but would continue bus maintenance work.

This is why I am so convinced we are heading towards collapse. For years now we have been making all the wrong decisions at the worst possible time, and I see no reason why that will not continue.


Bonus: Today is the day for Lou Reed's New York album here at TDS

Betsey Johnson Files For Bankruptcy, Will Close Most of Its Stores

I guess I'm just not hip, because I had never heard of this fashion chain before reading this story. Here is New York magazine with the details:

Sad news: Betsey Johnson LLC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will close the majority of its 63 stores, according to WWD. Betsey Johnson the person will remain at the helm of the brand, which is still owned by Castanea Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm that took over the company in 2007. Moving forward, the label will focus on its lower-priced range of clothing, which is sold at Macy's and other mass retailers. Meanwhile, Steven Madden, Ltd., which has owned all of Betsey Johnson's intellectual property since assuming her $48.8 million in outstanding debts in 2010, estimated that the bankruptcy will cost about 350 jobs overall. Steve Madden himself assures WWD that there won't be any interruption in wholesale deliveries or e-commerce.

This development isn't a huge surprise (the Betsey Johnson brand has wallowed in debt for years), but it's really too bad. Johnson's wacky fashion shows — which she always concludes with her trademark cartwheel — are always a highlight at fashion week, and she's a beloved character in the New York fashion industry. Best of luck to her and her employees.

This development isn't a huge surprise because in the middle of a never ending economic recession very few people need overpriced clothes, no matter how stylish they are.


Bonus: Something tells me that notoriously gloomy New Yorker Lou Reed doesn't attend a lot of fashion shows.

Sealed Air Closing Two New York Plants, Laying Off 256

The always dreaded "economic reasons" were responsible for this mass lay off notice. Here is Plastic News.com (really?) with the story:

Sealed Air Corp. is closing two of its New York plants, according to WARN act notices filed Feb. 9.

The company will shutter plants in Rochester and Scotia, N.Y., for economic reasons, according to the notices.

The Rochester plant makes food packaging for Cryovac Inc., a division of Sealed Air. The closing will affect 186 workers. The plant will close May 10.

The Scotia facility manufactures polyethylene foam. It employs 70 and will close May 20.

I guess the famous advice that Mr. McGuire gave to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate that he ought to get into plastics no longer holds.


Bonus: "I want to say one word to you...plastics"

Gallup Poll Names Binghamton (New York) Least Optimistic City In The Country

One man's pessimism is another man's realism, I always say. Here is the story from Pressconnects.com:

Maybe it's the weather, even with the relatively mild winter. Maybe it's the region's long-term economic woes. Maybe it's fallout from last year's flood that left some people and businesses struggling to rebuild or relocate.

Whatever the factors, the Gallup polling organization says we're one pessimistic bunch.

Residents of the Binghamton metropolitan area, which covers Broome and Tioga counties, are the least optimistic in the country about whether their community is becoming a better place to live, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

Residents in 190 metro areas were polled for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being index, which tracks community satisfaction and optimism on a daily basis.

The Binghamton region ranked dead last in terms of optimism, with 27.8 percent of residents expressing a positive feeling about the community's direction in 2011. By contrast, Provo-Orem, Utah, led the list with 76 percent of residents expressing optimism.

People can point to the weather and the economy as reasons for pessimism, and those are valid points, said Benjamin Perkus, a psychologist licensed by the state and practicing in Binghamton.

The literal lack of sunlight does affect brain chemistry, with people suffering the doldrums from Seasonal Affective Disorder, he said.

But people's perceptions may also be a factor, he believes. "The community is rather conservative and not very open-minded, so it's stuck in the old paradigm of big industry, which is gone now, Perkus said.

This is actually kind of funny given peak oil author James Kunster's repeated assertions that upstate New York will be among the best places in the country to reside after the oil crash. I'm not saying he's wrong, just that plenty of his fellow citizens don't seem to agree.


Bonus: Patton Oswalt is NOT optimistic

Credit Suisse To Lay Off 109 Workers In New York

Okay, normally I do try to be sympathetic to people who are losing their jobs because of the economy. But I have to admit that right now I'm playing the world's smallest violin after reading this story from Huffington Post Business:

Wall Street keeps shrinking.

Credit Suisse will begin laying off employees in New York the second week of March, according to a company filing with the New York State Department of Labor and an item on the website Dealbreaker on Friday.

But...but...but, I thought we were in a rip roaring bull market. How can Wall Street be SHRINKING? Tell me more.

The fresh layoffs at Credit Suisse -– which is Switzerland’s second-largest investment bank behind UBS -- comes amid a broader contraction among Wall Street banks, as top dealmakers at Goldman Sachs begin to make an exit, and as other financial institutions shrink departments (such as proprietary trading) that brought in considerable amounts of money during the boom years.

Zero Hedge has been reporting repeatedly how all through this recent amazing market levitation that volume has been at an unprecedented low. I guess these investment banks don't need a huge staff to just borrow money from the central banks at zero percent interest and pump it into the stock market. Turn the volume up on that fiddle for me, will ya?


Bonus: Tell me this scene doesn't resonate even more today than it did 20 years ago. Mr. Pink could have been an investment banker. World's smallest violin, indeed

Broke Buffalo School District Provides Free Plastic Surgery To All Teachers

You can't explain this. No, I mean really, you can try all day and you will never come up with an explanation for this story from a local Buffalo television station that makes any sense whatsoever:

As thousands of teachers face layoffs across the country, teachers in Buffalo, New York are getting lipo? Yep. And nose jobs and whatever else they want. All on the taxpayers' dime. How is this happening?

This Buffalo plastic surgeon has a lot of happy patients. Dr. Kulwant S. Bhangoo says, "Let's just suppose I was a woman weighed 300 pounds, and I lost 150-160 pounds."

Indeed, that's what happened to Buffalo school teacher Valerie Akauloa, but it's not just the results that make her happy, it's the sweet deal that she gets.

The sweet deal that all the 3,400 teachers in Buffalo are eligible to get under one of their insurance plan options, they are billed nothing for any plastic surgery procedure, such as botox, liposuction, tummy tucks, and there is no deductible.

Linda Tokarz teaches second grade and says she gets regular treatments. She says, "I think its great for us. I wouldn't want to see it taken away."

Dr. Kulwant Bhangoo has been a plastic surgeon in Buffalo for almost four decades. He says, "I feel the teachers have paid their dues and it would be wrong to take it away from them."

While he does have plenty on non-teacher patients, Dr. Bhangoo does say three out of every 10 are Buffalo teachers and the school district's insurance covers every single penny. They will come in for hair removal on their face, liposuction, breast enhancement, and rhinoplasty.

Dr. Bhangoo is one of many plastic surgeons who advertise in where else the teachers union newsletter.

Last year, Buffalo's schools spent $5.9 million on plastic surgery which is also known as a cosmetic rider. And Buffalo teachers have had this rider for nearly four decades.

Now you might think Buffalo's school district must be flush with cash to be offering perks like free plastic surgery, right? Wrong. Louis Petrucci, the president of the Buffalo Board of Education says he is projecting a $42 million deficit in next year's school budget.

You don't have to be a brain surgeon to know that a plastic surgeon or a teacher would like this policy more than the typical taxpayer. But the teachers will tell you there is more to the story. They say the teachers contract with the city expired nearly a decade ago negotiations for a new one have failed.

And they add they are woefully underpaid.

That last sentence might be true, but its hard to feel any sympathy for a group of people who didn't long ago demand that this utter frivolous benefit be dropped so that maybe they could get a better pay raise. The story doesn't explain it, but I would really like to know what brainiac thought providing free plastic surgery to the teachers was a good idea in the first place.


Bonus: This video is dedicated to the Buffalo public school teachers

Cryovac to Close Plant, Cut 186 Jobs

The plant closings and mass layoff notices just keep on piling up. Here is the Democrat and Chronicle with the latest:

A maker of food packaging products plans to shut down its Gates plant over the next year.

According to paperwork filed Friday with the New York Department of Labor, the Cryovac Inc. plant at 1525 Brooks Ave. employs 186.

Cryovac is part of New Jersey-based Sealed Air Corp. In a statement Friday, Sealed Air said it plans to move the work done at the Gates plant to its other North American facilities. “This transition will occur gradually through 2012 and part of 2013,” according to Sealed Air.

Cryovac, which is based in South Carolina, makes vacuum shrink bags and materials, tray lid packaging and other types of plastic skins for food processors and food manufacturers, as well as for consumers.

So what was the official explanation?
Sealed Air said Friday that the Gates plant closing “was an extremely difficult decision ... to make, understanding the impact to our employees and the Rochester community. The company considered a number of criteria — including operating costs, strategic location, proximity to other facilities and levels of technology — and it was determined we can best serve our global manufacturing strategy from other locations.”

Globalizaton strikes again. But the employees at Cryovac are not the only ones feeling the pain:

Aurichio said Sealed Air also notified employees in the Schenectady suburb of Scotia this week that their plant will close in the next 90 to 120 days as part of the streamlining effort.

The Schenectady County protective packaging plant employs 70 and workers there “will have the opportunity to apply for jobs in Louisville and Holyoke, Mass.,” Aurichio said. “Employees in Rochester can apply for jobs at our facilities in South Carolina, Arkansas and Iowa Park, Texas.”

Wow--that's might big of them to say the laid off workers can APPLY for jobs at the other plants over 1,000 miles from home. What do you suppose the chances are that there would even be any openings for them?


Bonus: "This one's for the workers who toil night and day"

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?

Long Beach (New York) to Declare a Fiscal Emergency

The newsreaders and reporters stenographers who dominate the mainstream media can continue to blather on about "recovery" all they want. In the real world, things just keep getting worse, as demonstrated yet again by this article from Newsday:

Long Beach's newly appointed city manager, Jack Schnirman, and the new five-member City Council are poised to pass a resolution Tuesday night to declare a fiscal emergency, which would give Schnirman more authority to tighten and veto spending.

"We will scrutinize and sign everything by hand," he said. "We are not shy about sending things back for more information, more documentation or just plain saying no."

Long Beach owes $48.3 million in general obligation debt and last month was downgraded five investment rating levels by Moody's Investors Services to Baa3, the lowest investment-grade rating that Moody's issues.

Schnirman said the extent of the city's financial crisis becomes more apparent each day. One recent report, for example, showed nine departments already had exceeded their overtime budgets only halfway through the fiscal year.

Holy crap! Long Beach was downgraded by FIVE investment rating levels? I don't know about you, but if I had any of the city's bonds in my portfolio, I'd be selling them off, pronto.

So how did they manage to get into such a predicament?

John McLaughlin, the new council's lone Republican, said communication has been solid so far.

"As a minority member, I can't complain about being left out in the cold," he said. "Jack has been keeping me up to speed. And I think this council meeting will show we really have to tighten our belt."

But as a lifelong Long Beach resident, McLaughlin said he knows taxpayers are used to a high level of services, which he expects will be cut back this year.

"This is a tough town to keep everybody happy," McLaughlin said. "The same way the rest of the country has adjusted to it, we'll have to adjust to it."

So typical of Me First Nation. We want a high level of government services, but we don't want to pay for them. That's been the mantra for more than 30 years in this country, ever since Proposition 13 passed in California and Ronald Reagan was elected president two years later. Now the bills are coming due for three decades of childishness, and the spoiled brats aren't happy about it.


Bonus: Yep - Life's a Beach

Maybe the World Really IS Going to End in 2012

image: it's a little known fact the the picture above originally appeared on the last monthly page of the famous Mayan calendar

New Year's Eve, which I spent with my in-laws and a small army of nieces and nephews, was the last of three family gatherings for me this holiday season. All things considered, I made it through relatively unscathed. No major family arguments broke out and nobody got too wasted or acted in an overly inappropriate manner.

For me, the worst part was having to greet the new year by suffering through a couple of hour's worth of the most grueling of all the many cultural train wrecks on television these days, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, which my relatives insist upon watching every year. The producers of this hideous annual spectacle could hardly have done a better job were they TRYING to put together a lineup guaranteed to make me desperately wish for large pile of sharp objects with which I could poke out my own eyeballs, puncture my eardrums and then end the agony with an emphatic self-disembowelment. When about the least offensive person to appear on the screen the whole night is an American Idol host, you KNOW you're in for a long evening.

It's bad enough that they resurrect the mummified corpse of the eponymous host and prop him up in front of the camera every year. For about half a decade now, each time I've seen Dick Clark's decrepit form I keep saying this has GOT to be his last year doing the show. And yet the following year there he is again, looking ever more like his own caricature as designed by makers of the Spitting Image puppets from the rock band Genesis' famous "Land of Confusion" music video back in the mid-1980s.

This year we turned on the broadcast just in time to see Ryan Seacrest interviewing billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg was in full "I'm just a regular guy" mode, wearing a cheesy white sweater with an American Flag embroidered on the front instead of the Brioni suit, Rolex watch and Testoni shoes you know the sonovabitch normally prefers to wear. Bloomberg, of course, is trying to repair his image after the (ahem) beating it took from siccing Officer Tony Baloney and his thuggish cohorts on the Occupy Wall Street protesters. But sacrifices have to be made, and forcing himself to dress up like one of the unwashed masses was just the first one Bloomberg would make on this particular winter evening.

Seacrest then threw the proceedings over to Jenny McCarthy for some totally insipid street level interviews with various clods who had been wasting their lives standing around Times Square the whole day waiting for their fifteen seconds of camera time. McCarthy, of course, is a former Playboy playmate who somehow thinks that getting famous by taking her clothes off means she knows more about medical science than the legions of physicians who have actually studied in the field. I wouldn't begrudge McCarthy for her persistent ignorance about the benefits of childhood vaccinations, but for the fact that she has somehow managed to convince a large number of other dimwitted Americans that she actually knows what she's talking about. How did Mike Judge ever manage to avoid casting her in the movie, Idiocracy, anyway?

As midnight approached, all of the "musicians," that had been playing in Times Square earlier in the evening joined Seacrest on the main stage for some inane blather about what the new year's celebration meant to them. I put the word musicians in quotes because other than utter has been Carlos Santana, none of the rest merited having the word attached to what it is they do for a living, particularly that little cougar-bait twerp, Justin Bieber. The highlight of this portion of the show was a "song" performed by the culturally omnipotent Lady Gaga, wearing some absurdly hideous costume that made her look like a mentally challenged space alien, and was, I gather, meant to detract the listener's attention away from the utter vacuousness of her actual performance.

But the highlight of the evening, or the lowlight if you prefer, came with the inevitable dropping of the big ball. Not that ringing in the new year itself is so bad, but did we really need to be treated to the nausea-inducing sight of Ms. Space Alien and Mayor One-Percenter in full lip lock? I know it was late, and all, but this was supposed to be a family show and we had impressionable young children in the room with us.

Almost as bad was the subsequent image of the aforementioned over-the-hill centerfold for some bizarre reason playing tonsil hockey with a recent New York City police academy graduate. I half expected McCarthy to say, "That was just a reminder, Big Boy, of what exactly it is you'll be protecting the first time Boss Bloomberg calls you out to put a few uppity Occupy protesters in their proper place. Oooh, hey, is that your retractable baton right there, or are you just happy to see me?"

A few minutes after midnight, a collection of talent-free cretins called LMFAO then took the stage. When the live audience didn't take their band name literally and actually started to get into the alleged music, I excused myself for the evening and went upstairs to hit the rack. As I did I reflected on the fact that the only good thing about starting off the new year by observing such an awful spectacle is now it really has nowhere to go but up.


Bonus: "Because this is the world we live in...and these are the hands we're given"

Public Transportation Service Cuts/Layoffs Coming to Buffalo

As the peak oil era stretches on, and high oil and gasoline prices become the norm, one would think it should be obvious that the last place state and local governments should be making budget cuts is in public transportation. Sadly, that is not the case, as this story out of Buffalo shows:

The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority has approved a budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year. Cuts in state aid and dwindling revenue from NFTA owned properties have left the transportation authority with a 15 million dollar budget gap. To fill that hole the Board of Commissioners has approved several deep cuts in personnel and service routes.

- 50 positions are being eliminated. 20 of those positions come from the NFTA's police force.
- 81 bus service routes will be eliminated.
- 14 other routes will see reductions in service.
- Metro Rail service will be eliminated on Sundays after 8:00 pm.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown was at the budget meeting and addressed the Board shortly after the vote. Brown says up to 80 percent of the NFTA's bus customers are city residents and many rely on the bus system as their only source of transportation. Brown added that he has reached out to the state legislature, the Governor's office and the New York Power Authority for assistance. The NFTA will be holding several public hearings on the budget cuts in the coming weeks.

At least Buffalo's mayor is cognizant of the negative effects these cuts are going to have on the citizens who have to ride the buses to get around. The scary thought is contemplating what is going to become of these people when the day finally comes that the buses stop running altogether.


Bonus: looks like the boys from ZZ Top may be waiting for the bus a bit longer