Free ride: DC unveils bold plan to boost public transit



Public Transit Free Fares

The Washington DC government voted to waive fares for Metrobus rides within city limits starting July, 1, 2023, becoming the nation's most populous city to offer free public transit. 

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

HOPE YEN
Sun, December 11, 2022 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare for the District of Columbia and other major cities that public transit was a lifeline for essential workers and that even modest fares could be a burden to them. So the nation’s capital is introducing a groundbreaking plan: It will begin offering free bus fares to residents next summer.

Other cities, including Los Angeles and Kansas City, Missouri, suspended fare collection during the height of the pandemic to minimize human contact and ensure that residents with no other travel options could reach jobs and services at hospitals, grocery stores and offices.

But D.C.‘s permanent free fare plan will be by far the biggest, coming at a time when major cities including Boston and Denver and states such as Connecticut are considering broader zero-fare policies to improve equity and help regain ridership that was lost with the rise of remote and hybrid work. Los Angeles instituted free fares in 2020 before recently resuming charging riders. Lately LA Metro has been testing a fare-capping plan under which transit riders pay for trips until they hit a fixed dollar amount and then ride free after that, though new Mayor Karen Bass has suggested support for permanently abolishing the fares.

Analysts say D.C.’s free fare system offers a good test case on how public transit can be reshaped for a post-pandemic future.

“If D.C. demonstrates that it increases ridership, it reduces the cost burden for people who are lower income and it improves the quality of transit service in terms of speed of bus service, and reduces cars on the road, this could be a roaring success,” said Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. “We just don’t know yet whether that would happen.”

The $2 fares will be waived for riders boarding Metrobuses within the city limits beginning around July 1. In unanimously approving the plan last week, the D.C. Council also agreed to expand bus service to 24 hours on 12 major routes downtown, benefiting nightlife and service workers who typically had to rely on costly ride-share to get home after the Metro subway and bus system closed at night.

A new $10 million fund devoted to annual investments in D.C. bus lanes, shelters and other improvements was also approved to make rides faster and more reliable.

“The District is ready to be a national leader in the future of public transit,” said D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen, who first proposed free fares in 2019 and says the program can be fully paid-for with surplus D.C. tax revenue. Roughly 85% of bus riders are D.C. residents. The Metro system also serves neighboring suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.

About 68% of D.C. residents who take the bus have household incomes below $50,000, and riders are disproportionately Black and Latino compared with Metrorail passengers, according to the council's budget analysis.

Not everyone is a fan.

Peter Van Doren, a senior fellow at the D.C.-based Cato Institute, said the plan risks high costs and mixed results, noting that the opportunity to improve ridership may be limited because bus passengers have been quicker to return to near pre-pandemic levels. He said government subsidies to help lower-income people buy cars would go farther because not everyone has easy access to public transit, which operates on fixed routes.

"The beauty of automobiles is they can go anywhere and everywhere in a way that transit does not," he said. “We don’t know the subset of low-income people in D.C. where transit is a wonderful option as opposed to not such a wonderful option.”

The council's move, which will be finalized in a second vote later this month, came over the concerns of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who supports the concept of free fares but raised questions about the $42 million annual cost over the long term. “District residents and taxpayers will have to pay for this program,” she wrote in a letter to council members. “Our neighbors, Virginia and Maryland, should absorb some of these costs as their residents will benefit from this program as well.”

Allen also had proposed a $100 monthly transit benefit for D.C. residents to access the Metrorail system, but shelved the plan until at least fall 2024 due to the $150 million annual estimated cost. He described free bus fares as a “win-win-win” for the District because they will help the transit system recover and offer affordable, green-friendly travel while boosting economic activity downtown.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which currently faces a budget deficit of $185 million, part of which it attributes to fare evasion, praised the plan as “bold.” It said it looked forward to working with the city council, mayor and regional stakeholders “toward our goal of providing more accessible and equitable service for our customers.”

Nationwide, while transit ridership has returned to about 79% of pre-pandemic levels, that figure varies widely by region. In New York City, for instance, MTA chief executive Janno Lieber has suggested that city and state government step up to pay for trains and buses more like essential public services, such as a fire department, citing millions of transit riders he believes may never come back. In 2019, fares made up over 40% of total transit revenue there but have since slid to 25%, leading to an anticipated $2.5 billion deficit in 2025 along with the risk of soon using up the transportation authority's federal COVID relief funds.

In D.C., where bus fares amount to a modest 7% of total transit operating revenues, the transit agency may be able to more easily absorb losses from zero fares, said Art Guzzetti, the American Public Transportation Association’s vice president of mobility initiatives and public policy. He noted savings for city taxpayers from speeding up boarding, which could allow for more routes and stops, as well as reducing traffic congestion and eliminating the need for transit enforcement against fare evaders.

Currently, D.C. bus ridership stands at about 74% of pre-pandemic levels on weekdays compared to 40% for Metrorail.

Still, free fares can be a tough choice for cities. “If the consequence of a zero-fare program is you have less funds to invest in frequent service, then you’re going backwards,” Guzzetti said.

In Kansas City, which began offering zero-fares for its buses in March 2020 and has no planned end date, officials said the program has helped boost ridership, which has risen by 13% in 2022 so far compared with the previous year. The free fares amount to an $8 million revenue loss, with the city paying for more than half of that and federal COVID aid covering the rest through 2023, said Cindy Baker, interim vice president for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, who describes the program as a success.

The program has eliminated altercations between passengers and bus drivers over fares, although there have been more instances of passenger disputes due to an increase in homeless riders, according to the agency. Baker said the transit agency has been adding security in response to some rider complaints.

Ché Ruddell-Tabisola, director of government affairs for the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, cheered free fares as a much-needed economic boost, showing D.C.'s commitment to the well-being of late-night bartenders and restaurant workers needing an affordable way home.

“A lot of industries have moved on from the pandemic, but for D.C.'s bars and restaurants, the pandemic is still happening everyday,” he said, citing the effects of hybrid work, inflation, gun violence and other factors that have hollowed out the downtown. “Anything that helps encourage diners to get to downtown D.C. and enjoy the world-class dining and entertainment we have is a great thing.”

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Sanders calls Sinema ‘corporate Democrat’ who ‘sabotaged’ legislation


Zach Schonfeld
Sun, December 11, 2022 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) on Sunday as a “corporate Democrat” who “sabotaged” party priorities following her announcement that she was becoming an Independent.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” with co-anchor Dana Bash, Sanders said Sinema didn’t have the guts to take on special interests while attacking her voting record.

“She doesn’t,” Sanders said. “She is a corporate Democrat who has, in fact, along with Sen. [Joe] Manchin [D-W.Va.] sabotaged enormously important legislation.”

Sinema on Friday announced she was leaving the Democratic Party, a move that enraged many in the party and came three days after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) won reelection and gave Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority.

Sinema will keep her committee assignments through the Democratic caucus, which will allow the party to keep much of its newly gained power compared to the power-sharing agreement created by the current 50-50 makeup.

But her move now poses a key decision for Democrats as to whether they will still nominate a candidate for Arizona’s upcoming Senate contest in 2024.

Sinema has not yet said if she will run for reelection, but rumors had grown that Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) or another progressive would mount a primary challenge to Sinema.

“I happen to suspect that it’s probably a lot to do with politics back in Arizona,” Sanders said on CNN of Sinema’s decision.

“I think the Democrats, they’re not all that enthusiastic about somebody who helps sabotage some of the most important legislation that protects the interests of working families and voting rights and so forth,” he added. “So I think it really has to do with her political aspirations for the future in Arizona. But for us, I think nothing much has changed in terms of the functioning of the U.S. Senate.”

The Hill has reached out to Sinema’s office for comment.

Sanders is now one of three independents in the upper chamber, although he and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) both caucus with Democrats.

Sinema, along Manchin, was one of the most moderate members of the Senate Democratic Conference, at times drawing ire from others in the party as they attempted to pass major legislation with razor-thin majorities.

She has opposed efforts to eliminate the legislative filibuster, the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for passing most bills, and garnered accusations from progressives that she is cozy with corporate interests as she sparred over elements of Democrats’ massive social spending bill.

“Americans are told that we have only two choices – Democrat or Republican – and that we must subscribe wholesale to policy views the parties hold, views that have been pulled further and further toward the extremes. Most Arizonans believe this is a false choice, and when I ran for the U.S. House and the Senate, I promised Arizonans something different,” Sinema wrote in an Arizona Republic op-ed explaining her decision.

REST IN POWER
Pioneering Black feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes dies at 84


Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP



Associated Press
Sun, December 11, 2022 

NEW YORK — Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a pioneering Black feminist, child welfare advocate and lifelong community activist who toured the country speaking with Gloria Steinem in the 1970s and appears with her in one of the most iconic photos of the second-wave feminist movement, has died. She was 84.

Hughes died Dec. 1 in Tampa, Florida, at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, said Maurice Sconiers of the Sconiers Funeral Home in Columbus, Georgia. Her daughter, Delethia Ridley Malmsten, said the cause was old age.

Though they came to feminism from different places — Hughes from community activism and Steinem from journalism — the two forged a powerful speaking partnership in the early 1970s, touring the country at a time when feminism was seen as predominantly white and middle class, a divide dating back to the origins of the American women’s movement. Steinem credited Hughes with helping her become comfortable speaking in public.

In one of the most famous images of the era, taken in October 1971, the two raised their right arms in the Black Power salute. The photo is now in the National Portrait Gallery.

Hughes, her work always rooted in community activism, organized the first shelter for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development to broaden childcare services in the city. But she was perhaps best known for her work helping countless families through the community center she established on Manhattan’s West Side, offering day care, job training, advocacy training and more.

“She took families off the street and gave them jobs,” Malmsten, her daughter, told The Associated Press on Sunday, reflecting on what she felt was her mother’s most important work.

Steinem, too, paid tribute to Hughes’ community work. “My friend Dorothy Pitman Hughes ran a pioneering neighborhood childcare center on the west side of Manhattan,” Steinem said in an email. “We met in the seventies when I wrote about that childcare center, and we became speaking partners and lifetime friends. She will be missed, but if we keep telling her story, she will keep inspiring us all.”

Laura L. Lovett, whose biography of Hughes, “With Her Fist Raised,” came out last year, said in Ms. Magazine (of which Pitman was a co-founder along with Steinem) that Hughes “defined herself as a feminist, but rooted her feminism in her experience and in more fundamental needs for safety, food, shelter and child care.”

Born Dorothy Jean Ridley on Oct. 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia, Hughes committed herself to activism at an early age, according to an obituary written by her family. When she was 10, it said, her father was nearly beaten to death and left on the family’s doorstep. The family believed he was attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, and Hughes decided to dedicate herself to helping others through activism.

She moved to New York City in the late 1950s when she was nearly 20 and worked as a salesperson, nightclub singer and house cleaner. By the 1960s she had become involved in the civil rights movement and other causes, working with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and others.

In the late 1960s, she set up her West 80th St. community center, providing care for children and also support for their parents.

“She realized that child-care challenges were deeply entangled with issues of racial discrimination, poverty, drug use, substandard housing, welfare hotels, job training and even the Vietnam War,” Lovett wrote last year. Hughes “recognized that the strongest anchor for local community action centered on children and worked to fix the roots of inequality in her community.”

It was at the center that she met Steinem, then a journalist writing a story for New York Magazine. They became friends and, from 1969 to 1973, spoke across the country at college campuses, community centers and other venues on gender and race issues.

“Dorothy’s style was to call out the racism she saw in the white women’s movement,” Lovett said in Ms. “She frequently took to the stage to articulate the way in which white women’s privilege oppressed Black women but also offered her friendship with Gloria as proof this obstacle could be overcome.”

By the 1980s, Hughes was becoming an entrepreneur. She had moved to Harlem and opened an office supply business, Harlem Office Supply, the rare stationery store at the time that was run by a Black woman. But she was forced to sell the store when a Staples opened nearby, part of President Bill Clinton’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone program.

She would remember some of her experiences in the 2000 book, “Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! Whose Inner-City Is This Anyway!: One Woman’s Struggle Against Sexism, Classism, Racism, Gentrification, and the Empowerment Zone.”

Hughes was portrayed in “The Glorias,” the 2020 film about Steinem, by actor Janelle Monaé.

She is survived by three daughters: Malmsten, Patrice Quinn and Angela Hughes.

Court upholds Connecticut's transgender athlete policy


Bloomfield High School transgender athlete Terry Miller, second from left, wins the final of the 55-meter dash over transgender athlete Andraya Yearwood, far left, and other runners in the Connecticut girls Class S indoor track meet at Hillhouse High School, on Feb. 7, 2019, in New Haven, Conn. A federal appeals court on Friday, Dec. 16, 2022, dismissed a challenge to Connecticut's policy of allowing transgender girls to compete girls' high school sports, rejecting arguments by four cisgender runners who said they were unfairly forced to race against transgender athletes. 

(AP Photo/Pat Eaton-Robb, File) 

DAVE COLLINS
Fri, December 16, 2022 

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday dismissed a challenge to Connecticut's policy of allowing transgender girls to compete in girls high school sports, rejecting arguments by four cisgender runners who said they were unfairly forced to race against transgender athletes.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City upheld a lower court judge's dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the policy. The panel said the four cisgender athletes lacked standing to sue — in part because their claims that they were deprived of wins, state titles and athletic scholarship opportunities were speculative.

“All four Plaintiffs regularly competed at state track championships as high school athletes, where Plaintiffs had the opportunity to compete for state titles in different events,” the decision said. “And, on numerous occasions, Plaintiffs were indeed “champions,” finishing first in various events, even sometimes when competing against (transgender athletes).”

The judges added, “Plaintiffs simply have not been deprived of a ‘chance to be champions.’”

The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Council argued its policy is designed to comply with a state law that requires all high school students be treated according to their gender identity. It also said the policy is in accordance with Title IX, the federal law that allows girls equal educational opportunities, including in athletics.

The American Civil Liberties Union defended the two transgender athletes at the center of the lawsuit — Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood.

“Today’s ruling is a critical victory for fairness, equality, and inclusion” Joshua Block, a lawyer for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement. "This critical victory strikes at the heart of political attacks against transgender youth while helping ensure every young person has the right to play.”

Transgender athletes' ability to compete in sports is the subject of a continuing national debate. At least 12 Republican-led states have passed laws banning transgender women or girls in sports based on the premise it gives them an unfair competitive advantage.

Transgender rights advocates counter such laws aren’t just about sports, but another way to demean and attack transgender youth.

Christiana Kiefer, a lawyer with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom who represented the four Connecticut cisgender athletes, said she and other alliance attorneys are considering how to respond, including possibly asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review Friday's decision.

“Our clients, like all female athletes across the country, deserve fair competition,” Kiefer said in a phone interview. “And that means fair and equal quality of competition, and that just does not happen when you’re forced to compete against biological males in their sports.”

Kiefer added, “The vast majority of the American public recognizes that in order to have fair sports, we have to protect the female category, and I think you’re seeing that trend increasingly with states across the country passing laws to protect women’s sports. ... This is certainly not the end of the road in the fight for fairness for female athletes.”

The plaintiffs sought injunctions to bar enforcement of the state policy on transgender athletes and to remove records set by transgender athletes from the books, as well as money damages.

In arguments before a federal judge in Connecticut in February 2021, Roger Brooks, another lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said Title IX guarantees girls “equal quality” of competition, which he said is denied by having to race people with what he described as inherent physiological advantages.

Brooks said the transgender sprinters improperly won 15 championship races between 2017 and 2020 and cost cisgender girls the opportunity to advance to other races 85 times.

Miller and Yearwood, the transgender sprinters from Bloomfield and Cromwell, respectively, frequently outperformed their cisgender competitors.

The plaintiffs competed directly against them, almost always losing to Miller and usually finishing behind Yearwood. One of the plaintiffs, Chelsea Mitchell of Canton High School, finished third in the 2019 state championship in the girls 55-meter indoor track competition behind Miller and Yearwood.

All the athletes have since graduated from high school.

Report: World's coal use creeps to new high in 2022

Fri, December 16, 2022 

BERLIN (AP) — Coal use across the world is set to reach a new record this year amid persistently high demand for the heavily polluting fossil fuel, the International Energy Agency said Friday.

The Paris-based agency said in a new report that while coal use grew by only 1.2% in 2022, the increase pushed it to all all-time high of more than 8 billion metric tons, beating the previous record set in 2013.

“The world’s coal consumption will remain at similar levels in the following years in the absence of stronger efforts to accelerate the transition to clean energy,” the agency said, noting that “robust demand” in emerging Asian economies would offset declining use in mature markets.

“This means coal will continue to be the global energy system’s largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions by far,” the IAE said.

The use of coal and other fossil fuels needs to be drastically cut to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) this century. Experts say the ambitious target, which governments agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord, will be hard to meet given that average temperatures worldwide have already risen by 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.

The IEA said higher prices for natural gas due to Russia's war in Ukraine have led to increased reliance on coal for generating power.

“The world is close to a peak in fossil fuel use, with coal set to be the first to decline, but we are not there yet,” Keisuke Sadamori, the agency's director of energy markets and security, said.

Coal use is likely to decline as countries deploy more renewable energy sources, he said.

1919

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA

Protesters block India highway after Kashmir shooting


Fri, December 16, 2022 
By Fayaz Bukhari

SRINAGAR (Reuters) - Hundreds of protesters blocked a section of a main highway that runs through the Indian border region of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday over the killing of two men who worked as labourers at an Indian army base, a police official and residents said.

Residents said the men were shot dead earlier on Friday by army guards at the entrance of the base in Rajouri, 150 km (95 miles) south of Kashmir's capital Srinigar.

The Indian military said the two men were killed by militants outside the military hospital in Rajouri.

Protesters burned tyres and pelted the military base with stones hours after the shooting, said the police official, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media. Another man was also injured.

The mainly Muslim Himalayan region of Kashmir is claimed in full by both India and rival Pakistan, although both nuclear-armed neighbours only control parts of the region.

In 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government split the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) into two federally administered territories, a widely unpopular decision which has heightened violence in the region.

(Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari; Writing by Miral Fahmy; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Cherokee chief: Progress for one tribe is progress for all


Chuck Hoskin Jr.
Fri, December 16, 2022 a

Let us fight together. United we are stronger. We have a shared history of facing long-standing injustice at the hands of the United States government and are now at a time when we can make real progress. Intertribal conflict will only hold us back.

The last several years have marked historic progress for our communities. The Biden administration has pledged to usher in a new era of nation-to-nation engagement with tribes. Congress has more diverse voices than at any other time ― including five Native Americans from various tribes. It recently held the first hearing on seating the Cherokee Nation’s delegate that was promised in the 1835 Treaty of New Echota ― which led to the Trail of Tears ― in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The hearing addressed questions related to seating the Cherokee Nation’s congressional delegate, as well as issues raised by other tribes, such as the Delaware, including:

● The requests of individual tribes and their treaties should be dealt with separately. Members of Congress agreed that while they consider other tribes and their treaties with the U.S. government, that shouldn’t prevent them from taking action on the Cherokee Nation’s delegate. As Chairman McGovern (D-MA) said, “We need to look into everything … but … looking into everything doesn't mean that we have to wait …”

● While there may be unresolved questions stemming from other tribe’s claims, the Treaty of New Echota between the U.S. and Cherokee Nation is clear. Congress is duty bound to seat the delegate. As the Congressional Research Service’s legal expert testified, “The language of the Treaty of New Echota is the clearest of the treaties between the United States and various tribes.”

● The Delawares' claims require further consideration. My view is that tribes should support one another in this regard, and I fully support examination of the Delaware treaty reference to “representation.” Congress will need to carefully consider the implications of a treaty that was signed before the U.S. Constitution was signed. Congress will need to consider that the Delaware treaty contemplated the creation of a state that was never created. After three years of work to assert our explicitly treaty-based right to a “delegate in the House of Representatives,” I welcome the Delawares' new interest in their treaty and stand ready to assist them. But, halting our work makes no sense.

At its core, this issue is about getting a seat at the table and lifting up the voices of all Native Americans at the highest levels of the U.S. government where we can shine a light on issues that are important to Indian Country. This country is stronger when more communities have a seat at the table and an opportunity to shape the direction we’re headed. That is why I will continue to push for increased representation at all levels of government. There is widespread support for this effort from tribal voices across the country like the National Congress of American Indians ― the largest intertribal organization in the country.

As Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said, “I think it’s never too late to do the right thing.” I couldn’t agree more. Join us in asking the House to finally start doing the right thing for all of Indian Country. Progress for one tribe, is progress for all.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr.

Chuck Hoskin Jr. is principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, the largest tribe in the United States.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Cherokee chief: Let us fight together

Starbucks workers plan 3-day walkout at 100 US stores

Starbucks workers around the U.S. are planning a three-day strike starting Friday, Dec. 16, as part of their effort to unionize the coffee chain's stores. 

(AP Photo/Matt York, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

DEE-ANN DURBIN

Thu, December 15, 2022 

Starbucks workers around the U.S. are planning a three-day strike starting Friday as part of their effort to unionize the coffee chain's stores.

More than 1,000 baristas at 100 stores are planning to walk out, according to Starbucks Workers United, the labor group organizing the effort. The strike will be the longest in the year-old unionization campaign.

The union says it expects the strike will shutter some stores entirely; at others, managers or other workers may keep the stores open.

A message seeking comment was left with Starbucks Friday morning.

This is the second major strike in a month by Starbucks’ U.S. workers. On Nov. 17, workers at 110 Starbucks stores held a one-day walkout. That effort coincided with Starbucks’ annual Red Cup Day, when the company gives reusable cups to customers who order a holiday drink.

More than 264 of Starbucks’ 9,000 company-run U.S. stores have voted to unionize since late last year.

Starbucks opposes the unionization effort, saying the company functions better when it works directly with employees. But the company said last month that it respects employees’ lawful right to protest.

Tori Tambellini, a former Starbucks shift supervisor and union organizer who was fired in July, said she will be picketing in Pittsburgh this weekend. Tambellini said workers are protesting understaffed stores, poor management and what she calls Starbucks’ “scorched earth method of union busting,” including closing stores that have unionized.

Workers United noted that Starbucks recently closed the first store to unionize in Seattle, the company’s hometown. Starbucks has said the store was closed for safety reasons.

Starbucks and the union have begun contract talks in about 50 stores but no agreements have been reached.

The process has been contentious. According to the National Labor Relations Board, Workers United has filed at least 446 unfair labor practice charges against Starbucks since late last year, including that the company fired labor organizers and refused to bargain. The company, meanwhile, has filed 47 charges against the union, among them allegations that it defied bargaining rules when it recorded sessions and posted the recordings online.

So far, the labor disputes haven't appeared to dent Starbucks' sales. Starbucks said in November that its revenue rose 3% to a record $8.41 billion in the July-September period.

Jupiter's Moon Io Is Glowing With Volcanoes in New Image From NASA Probe

Kevin Hurler
Thu, December 15, 2022 at 1:40 PM MST·2 min read

This newly revealed image of Io was taken on July 5, 2022 from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers).

The latest image from NASA’s Juno mission reveals Jupiter’s moon Io in infrared, showing the volcanic hotspots that pepper its surface and fuel Jupiter’s auroras.

Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system, with hundreds of volcanoes peppering the moon’s silicate crust, which is teeming with molten sulphur. Some of these volcanoes can eject lava tens of miles off the surface. In the new image, taken on July 5 but released yesterday, the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft caught Io in all of its burbling glory. In the image, high-temperature areas appear brighter.


Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

These volcanic hotspots on Io are noteworthy because they are thought to contribute to the auroras on Jupiter’s poles, as discussed in research from the University of Leicester published earlier this year in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. Jonathan Nichols and Stan Cowley were co-authors the paper, and after analyzing data from Juno, they argued that volcanic emissions from Io interact with and travel along Jupiter’s magnetic field to the planet’s poles, where they create auroras.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft launched in 2011 and took five years to reach Jupiter. The original mission saw Juno taking 35 orbits—each of which lasted approximately 53 days—around the planet, collecting 375 gigabytes of data on Jupiter’s atmosphere and interior along the way. NASA extended the mission in 2018 and again in 2021, with a new scheduled completion date of September 2025.

“The team is really excited to have Juno’s extended mission include the study of Jupiter’s moons. With each close flyby, we have been able to obtain a wealth of new information,” said Scott Bolton in the NASA release. Bolton is the principal investigator for Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Juno sensors are designed to study Jupiter, but we’ve been thrilled at how well they can perform double duty by observing Jupiter’s moons.”

More: Meet the Woman Who Guides NASA’s Juno Probe Through Jupiter’s Killer Radiation

Survived the tech layoffs? Congrats, but you're not out of the woods yet.

Hasan Chowdhury
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Marc Benioff, the cofounder and co-CEO of Salesforce, where managers are identify the bottom 10% of employees.

Business Insider/Salesforce

Tech workers who survived layoffs this year will likely face tougher performance reviews next year.

Salesforce and Meta are asking managers to tag 10% to 15% of people on teams as low performers.

CEOs may see industry-wide turmoil as a chance to "spring clean" workers considered "dead weight."

For Silicon Valley's army of workers still clinging to their jobs, reaching the end of 2022 will feel like a relief after a year that saw 150,000 tech workers laid off. But they might not be out of the woods just yet.

From Meta to Salesforce, tech firms across the board are looking to tighten their belts further in 2023 using a tactic unpopular with workers: stack ranking.

Stack ranking evaluates employee performance by comparing them and deeming a certain percentage of workers as top performers and a certain percent as low performing.

Demanding that managers find a larger percentage of their reports as low performers has already been used by tech firms as part of "quiet layoffs" to cut costs, avoiding the PR pain of large-scale layoffs by managing out people through performance reviews and internal restructuring,

But a tougher labor market for tech workers Silicon Valley CEOs are much more comfortable using stack ranking to put more people into a low-performance bucket, in a reversal of power as management gains the upper hand over labor after years of competing for workers.

CEOs see a chance to 'spring clean'

For Stevie Buckley, the cofounder of Talent Stuff, a hiring platform for tech firms, it's unsurprising to see firms get more aggressive about performance during times of economic turmoil.

"In these scenarios where there's an industry-wide impact in terms of mass redundancies and layoffs, it's pretty standard practice to use that opportunity as almost — this is a horrific term — but ultimately a 'spring clean' of your employee roster," he said.

Buckley noted that scenarios like this make it easier for companies to offer increasingly vague notions of what counts as low performance.

Employees who are "proving to be difficult" or "dead weight" among senior management, he said, can be added to that category as "there's question marks over the value you're getting" from those employees.

How Silicon Valley is stacking up workers

In November, Insider reported that the software giant Salesforce had implemented a quota system that gave sales teams "unrealistic goals and difficult accounts," with insiders saying they felt set up for failure.

Salesforce contended in November that its "sales performance process drives accountability," and that could "lead to some leaving the business."

At the start of December, Salesforce managers were reportedly asked to update a ranking of their bottom 10% of employees, despite laying off hundreds of workers last month.

Meta has also put performance front and center. The company told directors to identify 15% of their teams as "needs support" in October, shortly before Meta laid off 11,000 people in November.

Now the company wants to identify more low performers. Last week, Insider reported that the number of people finding themselves in the lowest-performance categories come annual performance reviews in January will roughly double.

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, also used performance reviews prior to its layoffs. Managers were told to place 10% or more of their staff on performance-improvement plans at the beginning of summer. At the end of August, Snap cut roughly 20% of its full-time workforce.

Even Google's parent company, Alphabet, seen by many as the cushiest company to work for in Big Tech, has signaled it will be stepping up its performance reviews. Under a new system introduced this year, up to 6% of workers could be given a bad performance rating, up from 2% under the previous system.

Buckley said those who remain will likely have to meet higher expectations — Salesforce teams, for example, have been given higher sales targets.

"If you've made a bunch of people redundant, it can be very common to then raise targets," he said. "That gives you the opportunity to include others into that low-performance category because you've arbitrarily raised the bar in terms of what's expected."