Corporate landlords like Blackstone are riding this inflationary wave all the way to the bank

REUTERS/MIKE BLAKE

The landlord of this rental home, Blackstone, Inc. definitely doesn't live on-site.

FROM OUR OBSESSION
Rethinking cities
Cities have to accommodate more people, lessen their environmental footprint, and become more equitable.


By Camille Squires
QUARTZ
Cities reporter
Published January 29, 2022


Blackstone, one of the biggest corporate landlords in the US, reported its highest earnings year on record on Jan. 27, largely on the strength of rising rents in its real estate portfolio. Blackstone reported $1.4 billion in net income in the fourth quarter, and $5.9 billion for the year, nearly six times what they made the previous year.

That premium reflects the changing ways Americans live, work, and shop during the pandemic. Since 2019, more Americans have been looking for larger homes and buying more online. That’s spurred demand for warehouses and logistics facilities, as well as put pressure on residential rents.

Institutional investors like Blackstone, now valued $84 billion, have ratcheted up their assets in the sector. Much of Blackstone’s recent growth has been driven by the firm’s real estate holdings from residential to commercial buildings, especially warehouses.

On the Jan. 27 call with investors, Blackstone’s executives explained rents for real estate sectors in their portfolio had risen as much as two to three times faster than the overall inflation rate. Relatively short leases on their properties have allowed them to raise prices quickly, capturing more value from renters, even as the inflation rate in the US economy topped 7%. Blackstone’s property portfolio includes everything from massive data centers and industrial warehouses to apartments and single-family homes, mostly throughout the southern and western US. It’s leading a wave of institutional investors buying up homes in the suburbs.

The US saw significant, rapid rent increases in 2021 driven by surges in demand set off by the pandemic. In some cities, median asking rents went up 30% or more within the year. That has put pressure on some individual renters struggling to afford rent hikes, but it’s helped bring in massive profits for corporate landlords like Blackstone that own the real estate.

In remarks during the shareholders on Jan. 27, Blackstone president. and COO Jonathan Gray said, “In my 30-year career, I’ve never seen real estate fundamentals in the sectors where we are focused as strong as they are today.”
Blackstone’s banner year

Real estate has become Blackstone’s most lucrative business. Led by its Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust, the firm owns more than 3,000 properties, including some 950 million square feet of logistics real estate space. It also made a huge investment in single-family rental homes in July 2021 when it acquired Home Partners America, and its more than 18,000 single-family rental homes.

These investments have paid off—nearly half of Blackstone’s earnings for the year came from real estate, the most of any one sector of the business. In buying strategically in rental housing and logistics in particular, Blackstone has set itself up to dominate in two areas that have seen rapidly-growing demand; logistics companies like Amazon hunger for more space to expand e-commerce supply chains, and American families looking for single-family homes but unable to buy. A September 2021 report of Blackstone’s real estate holdings shows that nearly all of its residential and industrial rentals had occupancy rates above 90%.

Why the rent is so high

Even though demand for new home construction is rising, the inventory is not. New home construction has lagged behind population growth for years in the US. The construction industry has been hampered by labor shortages, material cost increases, and delays during the pandemic. The insufficient supply of affordable for-sale housing pushes more people into the rental market, keeping demand high.

Rental prices, especially for units with two bedrooms or more, soared in 2021. The latest national rent report from online rental platform Apartment List found rents rose 18% last year. The pandemic also set off huge swings in demand in rental markets, as people initially left cities en masse and rents decreased, then returned, creating a new wave of demand.

But much of this increase can be attributed to consumer price inflation as the US economy recovers from the impacts of the pandemic. As inflation rises and demand for rentals stays high, property owners are incentivized to raise rents. Commercial landlords like Blackstone have the opportunity to do so when leases turn over quickly, raising the value of what Gray called “short-duration hard assets.”

It’s possible these conditions will change. The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates as expected in 2022 helping curb inflation and cool off the rental market benefiting landlords.

THE TEA PARTY BECAME THE TRUMP PARTY

LA barbershop nails it: Electing Obama 'just really released a lot of hatred and racism'
Tom Boggioni
January 29, 2022

Barack Obama and Donald Trump

In interviews at Tolliver's Barber Shop in South L.A., regulars agreed that the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 plunged the Republican Party into a paroxysm of anger that metastasized and led to the election of Donald Trump as the Republican Party became more unabashedly racist.

According to LA Times columnist Steve Lopez, a visit to Tolliver's Barber Shop revealed Black voters who are equally bitter, angry and dismayed as they watch the GOP try to roll back voting rights -- and they tie the genesis of the anti-democratic movement to a knee-jerk reaction to Obama becoming the first Black president.

According to owner Laurence Tolliver, he recalled that he remarked "It’s a glorious day" on the day he cast his vote for Obama but, as Lopez wrote, "More than 13 years later, that road has taken a sharp turn, back into the past."

"We haven’t yet seen a move to reinstate the poll tax. Not yet, anyway. But Joe Biden’s sound defeat of President Trump in 2020 unleashed unhinged claims that the election was stolen, and more than a dozen states have since enacted voting rules expected to suppress minority votes," the LA Times columnist wrote before adding, "Last week, I met with the Tollivers and some of the longtime customers at the barbershop. The language was as sharp as Tolliver’s shears. The tone was a bitter blend of heartbreak, rage and resignation that the nation’s most reprehensible sins may never be buried."

Tolliver explained about his vote for Obama stating, "I was just so happy for America, and I said we had finally turned the corner,” before lamenting, “And as happy as I was then, I’m just as saddened, disheartened and discouraged by the acts going on now to suppress or deny the vote.”

Filling in the blanks, his wife Bernadette chimed in, "It just really released a lot of hatred and racism.”

Reacting to a viral video of an LA teen taunting a Black basketball player by calling him “a monkey” and asking “who let him out of his chains?” in nearby Laguna Beach, barbershop regular Nate Thibodeaux pinned the blame on Trump for making racism a central element of his appeal to his rabid fans.

“Trump actually fueled the fire there. I don’t know what the answers are, but it seems like it gets worse instead of better,” he remarked.

Mike Washington added that he believes the Republican party has been hijacked, adding, "It’s become the poster boy for Jim Crow.”

Barbershop regular William Taylor offered, "Our ancestors have given too much for us to lose the right to vote,” which led to the Rev. Ron Simmons of West Angeles Church of God adding that the attempts at voter suppression will only inspire more to turn out.

“I don’t think they’re going to be able to suppress the vote,” Simmons predicted “Because of everything going on now, people will get out there and vote.”

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Commentary: Columnist says California should abolish parenthood in the name of equity


Joe Mathews
Fri, January 28, 2022, 11:54 AM·3 min read

If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children.

Today’s Californians often hold up equity — the goal of a just society completely free from bias — as our greatest value. Gov. Gavin Newsom makes decisions through “an equity lens.” Institutions from dance ensembles to tech companies have publicly pledged themselves to equity.

But their promises are no match for the power of parents.

Fathers and mothers with greater wealth and education are more likely to transfer these advantages to their children, compounding privilege over generations. As a result, children of less advantaged parents face an uphill struggle, social mobility has stalled, and democracy has been corrupted. More Californians are abandoning the dream; a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll found declining belief in the notion that you can get ahead through hard work.

My solution — making raising your own children illegal — is simple, and while we wait for the legislation to pass, we can act now: The rich and poor should trade kids, and homeowners might swap children with their homeless neighbors.

Now, I recognize that some naysayers will dismiss such a policy as ghastly, even totalitarian. But my proposal is quite modest, a fusion of traditional philosophy and today’s most common political obsessions.

In his “Republic,” Plato adopted Socrates’ sage advice — that children “be possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own offspring or any child his parents” — in order to defeat nepotism, and create citizens loyal not to their sons but to society.

Today, a policy of universal orphanhood aligns with powerful social trends that point to less interest in family. Californians are slower to marry, and are having fewer children; our birth rate is at an all-time low.

My proposal also should be politically unifying, fitting hand-in-glove with the most cherished policies of progressives and Trumpians alike.

The left’s introduction of anti-racism and gender identity in schools faces a bitter backlash from parents. Ending parenthood would end the backlash, helping dismantle white supremacy and outdated gender norms. Democrats also would have the opportunity to build a new pillar of the safety net — a child-raising system called “Foster Care for All.”

Over on the right, Republicans are happy to jettison parents’ rights in pursuit of their greatest passions, like violating migrant rights. Once you’ve gone so far as to take immigrant children from their parents and put them in border concentration camps, it’s a short walk to separating all Americans from their progeny.

Universal orphanhood also dovetails nicely with the pro-life campaign to end abortion rights. In fact, a suggestion from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, during a recent case that could overturn Roe, inspired this column. She posited that abortion rights are no longer necessary because all 50 states now have “safe haven” laws allowing women to turn their babies over to authorities after birth. My proposal would merely make mandatory such handovers of babies to the state.

Perhaps such coercion sounds dystopian. But just imagine the solidarity that universal orphanhood would create. Wouldn’t children, raised in one system, find it easier to collaborate on global problems?

Now, I don’t expect universal support for universal orphanhood. A few contrarians might argue that pursuing your own conception of family is fundamental to freedom.

They also may suggest that people don’t really want to start or finish at the same point in life.

They may even say that what we really desire is what the title orphan of the musical “Annie” demanded: “I didn’t want to be just another orphan, Mr. Warbucks. I wanted to believe I was special.”

But don’t pay those critics any mind. Because they just can’t see how our relentless pursuit of equity might birth a brave new world.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

Spotify's communications chief reportedly told employees that Joe Rogan episodes 'didn't meet the threshold for removal'


Sarah Jackson
Sat, January 29, 2022

Vivian Zink/Syfy/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Spotify's communications chief reportedly told employees that episodes of Joe Rogan's podcast "didn't meet the threshold for removal."

The Verge published a list of Spotify's internal company content policies around healthcare Friday.

The controversy prompted singers Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to pull their music over Rogan's COVID-19 misinformation.

Leaked internal messages from Spotify offer a glimpse into the company's decision to keep airing Joe Rogan's podcast, which has come under fire for promoting COVID-19 misinformation.

The Verge reported Friday that Dustee Jenkins, Spotify's head of global communications and public relations, broached the subject with concerned employees in an internal Slack channel.

Jenkins told them the company reviewed multiple episodes of podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience" but concluded they "didn't meet the threshold for removal," according to leaked screenshots of her message that were viewed by The Verge.

"We apply our policies consistently and objectively," Jenkins wrote. "They are not influenced by the media cycle, calls from any one individual or from external partners. It doesn't mean I personally agree with this content. But I trust our policies and the rationale behind them."

The Verge also published Spotify's internal content guidelines pertaining to healthcare. They prohibit behavior such as denying that COVID-19 exists, suggesting that mask-wearing causes life-threatening physical harm, and "promoting or suggesting that vaccines are designed to cause death," according to the news site.

"What Spotify hasn't done is move fast enough to share these policies externally, and are working to address that as soon as possible," Jenkins wrote.

Earlier this week, "Heart of Gold" artist Neil Young demanded Spotify remove his music from its platform over COVID-19 misinformation, saying, "Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them." Young delivered an ultimatum, adding, "They can have Rogan or Young. Not both."

Spotify announced a few days later that it will pull Young's music catalog from its platform.

"We regret Neil's decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon," the company told The Wall Street Journal. "We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators."

Joni Mitchell announced Friday that she'll also be pulling her music from Spotify over "lies that are costing people their lives."

Earlier this month, 270 scientists, healthcare workers, and educators signed an open letter calling on Spotify to stop the spread of misinformation on its platform following an episode of Rogan's podcast in which he interviewed a doctor who baselessly claimed Americans were "hypnotized" into wearing masks and getting COVID-19 vaccines because of what he calls "mass formation psychosis." Psychology experts have said there is no such phenomenon.

Spotify did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Why don't Arizona cities require residents to conserve water? It's simple, really

Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic
Sat, January 29, 2022, 

Few Arizona cities mandate water conservation measures now,

 but most have plans to do so in the future.

Why don’t cities mandate conservation measures if Arizona needs to save water?

This is a question I get frequently, and there’s a simple answer: Because we’re not at that stage yet.

That doesn’t mean saving water is unimportant. Cities can and should be doing more to help residents use less.

But there are reasons why Arizona cities aren’t yet forcing residents and businesses to save – and we can see them playing out in California.
California has struggled to save more water

California has essentially cut off State Water Project supplies to many cities and farmers this year because there isn’t enough water to go around. It also has announced another round of mandatory statewide restrictions on things like outdoor watering and car washing.

The state enacted mandatory conservation measures for the first time in 2015 to reduce usage by 25%. Many cities have generally sustained those savings, the result of converted landscaping and other measures.

But the state also widely missed its target last year to save an additional 15% – in part because those 2015 mandates took out the low-hanging fruit. If California wants to save more water now, it’ll require behavioral changes that residents may not be so eager to make, much less sustain over time.

That’s the downside of mandatory measures. If people aren’t willing to play along, the only way to get there is by enforcement, which is expensive, time consuming and usually anger producing.

That’s why Arizona cities are loath to use mandates.

Nearly all Arizona cities will mandate, eventually

But nearly all have plans to enact them, eventually.

Arizona water providers are required to create a drought preparedness plan – somewhat of a misnomer, considering that they are really about handling water shortages, not preparing for drought.

Actions increase as the stages progress, though the triggers for each stage vary by provider. Scottsdale and Tucson tie their stages in part to levels of shortage at Lake Mead, which makes sense, considering that they rely on a larger portion of Colorado River water than other major cities. Other cities base their triggers on more general reductions to surface water or their overall supply.

The actions that cities will take at each stage also vary. Most begin with cuts to water use at city facilities and voluntary actions for homeowners and businesses, which grow into mandates as the stages increase.

Most cities spell out which mandates they will consider at various stages, such as turning off water to splash pads, limiting ornamental turf, creating restrictions on outdoor watering or imposing fines on water wasters. Some require city council approval for actions taken in later stages.
Scottsdale and Tucson are already in stage 1

Because Lake Mead has reached its first level of shortage, Scottsdale and Tucson have already moved into stage 1 of their plans.

Scottsdale will no longer make water available to those who live outside city limits and is asking residents to voluntarily conserve 5%, perhaps by replacing turf and water-intensive landscaping, choosing not to overseed grass in the winter or by scheduling a free, city-provided review of their water use.

The water department is asking for additional money this year to fund its turf removal rebate and is ratcheting up its messaging about saving water. Officials hope that the more they can conserve voluntarily now, the less they will have to mandate later as Mead sinks into deeper levels of shortage.

Meanwhile, Tucson is sharing information with homes and businesses about their historical use and will send targeted conservation recommendations to those who use more water than their peers. The city also is reviewing whether to suspend new requests to join its water service area.

Do more to save – but voluntarily, for now

Some argue that cities should already be doing this stuff, and they have a point. If most actions in the first stage of cities’ plans are voluntary, why wait for a shortage trigger to enact them?

But cities also are right that rather than jumping to heavy-handed mandates that people may reject over time, the focus now should be on creating a positive culture of water conservation, where everyone agrees that if we’re going to live in the desert, we need to use less water, and any water we use must be done wisely.

Cities have done a decent job of that so far. Existing voluntary measures, along with more efficient appliance standards, have vastly cut water use over time. Arizona uses less water now than it did in the 1950s, even though millions more people live here.

It’s also worth noting that while metro Phoenix’s largest cities are home to half of the state’s 7-plus million population, they use 11% of Arizona’s water supplies. Even drastic cuts in use among these cities probably wouldn’t be enough to keep Lake Mead from falling into deeper tiers of shortage.

That doesn’t mean water is OK to waste, or that cities shouldn’t do more to encourage residents and businesses to use less water.

But the balance between carrots and sticks matters. And while mandates won’t be off the table forever, they are probably not the best way to compel lower use now.

Reach Allhands at joanna.allhands@arizonarepublic.com. On Twitter: @joannaallhands.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why don't Arizona cities mandate water conservation?

South America squid left exposed amid surge in China fishing
JOSHUA GOODMAN, Associated Press
Jan. 28, 2022

The Chinese squid fishing vessel Fu Yuan Yu 7880 sails on the Pacific Ocean, July 18, 2021. The Pingtan-affiliated vessel was arrested by South Africa in 2016 after it tried to flee a naval patrol that suspected it of illegal squid fishing. The ship's officers were found guilty of possessing illegal gear and disobeying a maritime authority but were released after paying a fine.

Joshua Goodman/AP

MIAMI (AP) — Negotiators from the U.S., China and 13 other governments failed to take action to protect threatened squid stocks on the high seas off South America amid a recent surge in activity by China's distant water fishing fleet.

The South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization, or SPRFMO, is charged with ensuring the conservation and sustainable fishing off the west coast of South America.

At the SPRFMO's annual meeting that ended Friday, Ecuador and the European Union proposed measures that would require all ships to have observers on board by 2028 and mandate they unload their catches only in ports instead of at sea to giant refrigerated vessels — both considered key tools in limiting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

There were also competing proposals, one of them from China, to limit the amount of squid that could be caught.

However, none of the proposed measures were adopted during the closed-door meeting, thwarting the efforts of environmentalists and some seafood importers in the U.S. and Europe who have been pushing for restrictions of fishing on the high seas that make up about half of the planet.

CALAMASUR, a group made up of squid industry representatives from Mexico, Chile, Peru and Ecuador, attended the four-day virtual meeting as an observer and said it was deeply disappointed by the results, which it said expose the SPRFMO to being seen as “non-cooperative” in the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing,

“This situation cannot be accepted as an outcome,” the group said in a statement.

Craig Loveridge, the executive secretary of the New Zealand-based SPRFMO, did not respond to a request for comment.

The number of Chinese-flagged vessels in the south Pacific has surged 13-fold from 54 active vessels in 2009 to 707 in 2020, according to the SPRFMO. Meanwhile, the size of China's squid catch has grown from 70,000 tons in 2009 to 358,000.

Biologists warn that the boom has left the naturally bountiful Humboldt squid — named for the nutrient-rich current found off the west coast of South America — vulnerable to overfishing, as has occurred in Argentina, Mexico, Japan and other places where squid stocks have disappeared in the past.

An investigation by The Associated Press and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last year revealed how the traditionally lawless area has become a magnet for some of the seafood industry’s worst offenders, many of them Chinese-flagged vessels with a history of labor abuse accusations and convictions for illegal fishing.

Follow Goodman: @APJoshGoodman

An ICU nurse went viral for quitting after 19 grueling months of the pandemic. Now, he says he's more relaxed and is encouraging other healthcare workers to do the same.

Allana Akhtar

Sat, January 29, 2022,

Andrew Hudson's video on why he quit nursing in December 2021 has half a million views on Twitter.Andrew Hudson

• Andrew Hudson had nervous breakdowns after working an ICU for 19 months during COVID.

• Hudson posted a video explaining why he quit and it went viral, with half a million views on Twitter.

• He said he's happier podcasting and creating art, and encourages other nurses to quit.

Before nursing school, Andrew Hudson worked at a bar for five years where he became familiar with the smell of Tito's vodka.

In early 2020, as Hudson treated COVID-19 patients in a step-down unit at a major Detroit hospital, he noticed his hand sanitizer smelled like booze. He looked down at the packaging saw a Tito's label. At the time, the US allowed distillers to make ethanol-based sanitizers due to a nationwide supply shortage crippling healthcare's pandemic response.

Hudson laughed as he recounted the ironic twist of fate, but said these kind of federal stop-gap measures and the overall lack of support he and other nurses received led to burnout and mental health distress in his nearly two years as a COVID ICU nurse.

Hudson said he did not receive any hazard pay working between March 2020 and December 2021 as an ICU nurse in Michigan and Colorado. He re-used masks and gowns, and sent his patients' bodies to freezer trucks outside of his hospital.

By the end of his tenure in the ICU, Hudson came home from shifts in nervous breakdowns.

Hudson finally quit nursing in December 2021, in a now-viral video that has half a million views on Twitter.

Hudson said helping patients for months without proper staff and equipment "feels like emptying the ocean with a bucket."

"The way it is right now isn't normal," he said in an interview with Insider, "and I don't think it's helping patients in any way."

The earliest days of the pandemic were dark and uncertain

Hudson's first few months treating patients with COVID were a whirlwind. His team would experiment with the now-debunked treatment hydroxychloroquine because, back then, no clinician knew for sure how to treat the disease.

With his voice low, Hudson recalled calling 30 rapid responses in 2020 when his own patients went into a critical level, and many more for other nurses' patients. In the early months, Hudson bagged up dead patients and brought them to the morgue — and sometimes freezer trucks brought to hospitals to store bodies when death rates were over 100 per week in Michigan — several times a night.

What's worse, to protect morticians from exposure, Hudson gauzed and taped the eyelids, nostrils, and mouth of his dead patients.

"It felt macabre," he said. "It was pretty grim to look at and I felt like this feels kind of medieval in a way."

Insufficient staffing, aggressive patients, and nervous breakdowns

In 2021, Hudson moved to a small hospital in Denver treating underserved communities. He was again met with treating mostly COVID ICU patients due to the Delta variant.

Due to staffing challenges, Hudson said he cared for at least three patients at once. Safe staffing laws in Massachusetts recommend nurses care for just one ICU patients at once, and research from the University of Pennsylvania finds the more patients a nurse must care for, the worse care becomes.

Hudson's hospital hired travel nurses and newly graduated students to help on ICU floors, but their lack of experience wasn't enough to help manage the pandemic's toll.

Last year also brought out aggression from patients he hadn't seen before. Patients' families would tell Hudson not to intubated dying patients and instead give them the ivermectin, a parasite killer that does not work against COVID-19. "We just feel like we've vanished, like we can't do anything," he added.

Shortly before leaving his job, Hudson recalled coming home from his shifts feeling defeated.

Hudson said he became a nurse to help people and make a living wage out of it. In the last two years, he felt he was no longer making a reasonable wage for the unprecedented amount of work he did, and felt no matter how hard he tried to help, his patients would continue to die.

'The system is already collapsed, but now they're gonna have to deal with the ramifications of that collapse'

Hudson handed in his letter of resignation in the second week of December. Though he felt bad for his manager, he does not regret his decision.

"It was kind of the wild west," he said. "The units were a mess. We didn't have the resource as we need."

After spending some time with his family over the holidays, Hudson threw himself into hobbies: a comedy podcast he co-hosts with his friends, called E1 Podcast, and digital art. He said he'll use some time to "decompress" due to the stress of the past two years.

Hudson has a message for other fed up healthcare workers: quit.

"I'm encouraging healthcare workers, not just nurses, if you can leave your job, I think you should," he said. "I think that they should see that they need us more than we need them. And the system is already collapsed, but now they're gonna have to deal with the ramifications of that collapse."

Just-in-time gives way to "buy everything you can" as U.S. supply disruptions persist


FILE PHOTO: Container trucks , ships and cranes are shown 

at the Port of Long Beach. California

Fri, January 28, 2022
By Timothy Aeppel

(Reuters) - Stephen Bullock eight months ago gave up on the idea of buying raw materials and parts only shortly before they were needed on his assembly line.

Instead, he told his purchasing manager to "just buy everything you can," and they could store the excess, said Bullock, chief executive of Power Curbers Companies, a maker of heavy equipment used to build concrete sidewalks and other infrastructure projects.

Roughly two years into a pandemic that has snarled supply chains across the globe, U.S. companies are scrambling not just to produce enough to feed current demand - but to also refill inventory shelves. That buildup was key to the fourth quarter’s hefty 6.9% annualized growth in gross domestic product, with inventory investment contributing 4.9 percentage points, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

Spending shifted during the pandemic from services to goods, a boom that has strained supply chains and emptied warehouses. Excluding inventories, GDP grew at a more modest 1.9% rate in the latest period.

This boom in demand, coupled with shortages, has fueled a wave of inflation that increased at a pace last year not seen in nearly 40 years. This set the stage for the Federal Reserve to now look towards raising interest rates in March.

Bullock, whose company is based in Salisbury, North Carolina, said supply chain problems have continued to grow worse in recent months - not better.

Ditching the "just-in-time" inventory model in favor of building up supply to buffer stocks only made sense, he said, referring to a system that aims to buy parts and materials shortly before they're needed - to minimize the cost of holding supplies. Just-in-time has evolved into a standard worldwide in the era of globalized trade, one embraced across corporate America - until COVID-19's emergence upended it. Since the pandemic struck, many businesses found the system left them stranded when orders that normally took weeks suddenly took months to arrive.

Bullock's goal now is to snap up materials like steel whenever he can. "We've had to get creative in where to put all of it," he added. "We're using all the nooks and crannies to house those incoming items."

Supply chain problems are weighing on the results of some companies. On Thursday, Tesla Inc.'s shares slid after the electric car maker said it would delay releasing new vehicles until next year because of supply chain breaks that it said could last through this year. Earlier in the week, General Electric Co. reported a decline in quarterly revenue amid supply chain shortages.

Companies have grown creative to deal with the gaps in supplies.

Rockwell Automation Inc. Chief Executive Blake Moret, said his company has increased amount of "work in progress," in order to keep workers assembling goods as they wait for shipments of scarce computer chips. The chips are added just before the product is sent out the door.

Rockwell, which has benefited from a push to automate factories and warehouses during the pandemic, has "slightly" increased its inventory levels, said Moret, but not enough to have a meaningful impact on overall inventories.

The Milwaukee-based company on Thursday raised its earnings forecast for its fiscal year as it reported a 40% jump in orders in its first quarter, compared to a year ago. "We're in the early phase of multi-year economic expansion," said Moret.

(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel; Editing by Dan Burns and Diane Craft)

RIGHT WING CANCEL CULTURE VS FREEDOM OF SPEECH
NYC actress fired after rant over Jason Rivera funeral: Streets closed 'for one f------ cop'

Brie Stimson

FOX NEWS
Sun, January 30, 2022

A New York City-based actress was fired this weekend after backlash over her viral TikTok complaint that the city didn’t need to be shut down for "one f------ cop" whose funeral was held Friday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, according to a report.

New York City police Officer Jason Rivera was killed Jan. 21 by a suspect while responding to a domestic dispute in Harlem. A second police officer died days later.

On Friday, thousands lined Manhattan’s streets to mourn the 22-year-old Rivera, but actress Jacqueline Guzman likely wasn’t one of them, the New York Post reported.

The actress posted a TikTok rant about street closures prompted by the funeral.

"We do not need to shut down most of Lower Manhattan because one cop died for probably doing his job incorrectly," she said. "They kill people who are under 22 every single day for no good reason and we don’t shut down the city for them."

Thousands of police officers from around the country gather at St. Patrick's Cathedral to attend the funeral for fallen NYPD Officer Jason Rivera on Jan. 28, 2022 in New York City. Getty Images

She continued, "Like this is f–----- ridiculous. This is f–----- ridiculous. What if somebody is having a heart attack in this area? Nobody can get to them because it’s all blocked off for one f–----- cop."

She later deleted the post.

FALLEN NYPD OFFICER JASON RIVERA HONORED WITH MILES-LONG PROCESSION, HUNDREDS FLOCK TO ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL

Police officers and social media commenters rebuked Guzman’s complaints, calling her "disrespectful" and saying she should be "ashamed" of herself.

"Twitter is forever. Bless your unemployed heart," another wrote.

"New Yorkers turned out by the thousands yesterday to help us honor our fallen brother," New York City Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said in a statement, according to the Post. "One person spreading hate cannot erase that. This kind of garbage has polluted the conversation for far too long. We need the New Yorkers who are standing with us to speak up and push back."

Her employer, Face to Face Films, wrote on its Facebook page Saturday, it had "just been made aware of an insensitive video involving one of our members, Jacqueline Guzman. Face to Face Films does not support nor can condone these comments made about fallen Officer Rivera. As a result, she is no longer a member of our company."

Rivera’s partner Wilbert Mora, 27, also died of his wounds days after the attack.

Greenpeace fears 100,000 'ghost flights' in Europe this winter will cause major climate damage

By UPI Staff

German carrier Lufthansa said earlier this month that expects to operate 18,000 half-empty flights this winter to avoid losing access to some airports. 

File Photo by Jim Bryant/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Environmental advocates are expressing concern about a tactic that some airlines are taking this winter in order to keep their airport permits -- "ghost flights," which are commercial flights that carry few or no passengers.

Some carriers have said they have had to resort to ghost flights just to avoid losing the ability to fly into any given airport. The reason is because of fewer travelers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Environmental advocacy group Greenpeace said this week that it's concerned about the emissions those flights would create -- and worries that there could be more than 100,000 ghost flights across Europe this winter.

"We're in a climate crisis, and the transport sector has the fastest-growing emissions in the EU," Greenpeace spokesman Herwig Schuster said in a statement.

"Pointless, polluting 'ghost flights' are just the tip of the iceberg. It would be irresponsible of the EU to not take the low-hanging fruit of ending ghost flights and banning short-haul flights where there's a reasonable train connection."

"Under normal circumstances, airlines are required to run at least 80% of booked flights to secure their airport slots according to EU law," the environmental group added. "Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Commission temporarily reduced this threshold to at least 50% of flights, but it will be increased again to 64% of flights in March."

Greenpeace said that operating 100,000 ghost flights would be the emissions equivalent of 1.4 million vehicles on the road for a year.

Earlier this month, German carrier Lufthansa said it would have to operate about 18,000 ghost flights this winter to keep its runway slots. The airline operates about 17% of all European flights. Greenpeace said those flights alone would emit 360,000 tons of carbon dioxide.