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How to balance retirement and emergency savings in a shaky economy

January 6, 2023 Published by

US Top News and Analysis 

Jamie Grill | Getty Images

It’s not easy to prioritize financial goals, especially when choosing between two essentials in an unsteady economy: saving for retirement or building your emergency fund. 

While there are higher 401(k) contribution limits for 2023, you shouldn’t skip rainy day savings to max out your retirement plan, experts say. 

Indeed, more than half of savers are prioritizing short-term financial goals in 2023, including emergency savings, according to a recent study from Fidelity Investments. And a recent Personal Capital survey found building an emergency fund is a top priority for 2023.

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“It’s always a balance,” said certified financial planner Catherine Valega, founder of Green Bee Advisory in Boston. While maxing out your 401(k) should be the goal, your emergency savings is also important, she said.

Leslie Beck, a Rutherford, New Jersey-based CFP and owner of Compass Wealth Management, said she has a “rule of thumb” for how to decide between retirement and emergency savings.

She always recommends contributing enough money to your 401(k) to get the full company match. Then, if your emergency savings are short after that, you should “definitely” divert the funds, she said.

How to know if your emergency savings is enough

Comstock Images | Stockbyte | Getty Images

If you’re single, Beck suggests keeping “close to a year’s worth of essential expenses” to cover necessities such as your home, food and utilities. 

“You should have a year’s worth [of essential expenses] in case there’s a downturn in the employment market, which we may or may not be heading into,” she said, noting that it often takes longer than expected to find a job after a layoff, especially for higher-compensated employees.

However, her recommendation changes for dual-earning couples. “I cut that back to six months, maybe even three months, depending on what industry you’re employed in,” she said. 

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And there may be some flexibility if you have access to a home equity line of credit, which may be another source of cash for emergency expenses, Beck said. But you need to be “very judicious” when tapping equity because borrowing after a job loss can put your home at risk, she said.

Valega suggests an emergency fund of 12 to 18 months of expenses, admitting that she’s “more conservative than most,” but says the exact number depends on your career sector and personal preference. For example, she may encourage clients in tech to set aside more than heath-care workers.

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Police: Idaho slaying suspect's DNA found at crime scene

January 6, 2023 Published by

MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — Idaho police pieced together DNA evidence, cellphone data and surveillance video to charge a criminology graduate student with the November slaying of four University of Idaho undergraduates, according to an affidavit unsealed Thursday.

The affidavit says DNA matching that of 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene, just a short drive across the state border where he is a criminal justice doctoral student at Washington State University.

The affidavit also says that a cellphone belonging to Kohberger was near the victims’ home on a dozen occasions prior to the killings, and that while it was apparently turned off around the time of the early-morning attack, cell tower data place his phone in that region of Idaho shortly afterward.

Kohberger made his first appearance Thursday in an Idaho court, where he faces four charges of first-degree murder. He did not enter a plea, and was ordered held without bail.

The affidavit details a chilling encounter between one of the victims’ surviving roommates and a masked intruder the night of the stabbings in Moscow, Idaho. But many questions remain unanswered, including whether Kohberger and any of the victims knew each other, and why police weren’t alerted until nearly eight hours after the killings likely occurred.

Traces of DNA from a lone male later determined to be Kohberger were found on the button of a leather knife sheath found in the rental home where the victims were killed, according to the affidavit written by Brett Payne, a police corporal in Moscow. Investigators later closely matched the DNA on the sheath to DNA found in trash taken from Kohberger’s parents’ home in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested last week.

The sheath had a U.S. Marine Corps insignia on it, though there’s no record of Kohberger having served in the military.

The attack that occurred in the early morning hours of an off-campus home had spread fear throughout the university and surrounding area for weeks, as authorities seemed stumped by the brutal stabbings. Investigators made a breakthrough, however, after searching for a white sedan that was seen near the crime scene around the time of the killings.

Surveillance footage captured near the off-campus house showed that a white sedan — later identified as a Hyundai Elantra — drove by the home three times in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, returning a fourth time at about 4:04 a.m.

The car was next spotted on surveillance cameras leaving the victims home 16 minutes later “at a high rate of speed,” according to the affidavit. The same car was later spotted on a different camera headed toward Pullman, Washington, the town where Washington State University and Kohberger’s apartment are located.

The affidavit connects some of the dots between the surveillance footage and cellphone data. Kohberger’s phone pinged communications towers in the region at the same time and in the same areas that the white Elantra was seen driving in the hours after the killings, the affidavit says.

The cellphone data included another chilling detail, the affidavit said: It pinged a cell tower near the victims’ neighborhood hours after the attack, around 9 a.m.

Latah County prosecutors have said they believe Kohberger broke into the home with the intention of killing the victims: Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20. But investigators have made no public statements about a possible motive, or whether any weapons have been found.

Two other housemates were at home during the Nov. 13 killings, but were not physically harmed.

One of the uninjured housemates told investigators that she was awoken by noises at about 4 a.m., and thought she heard another housemate say something like, “there’s someone here.” She looked outside her bedroom and didn’t see anything. Later she thought she heard crying coming from Kernodle’s room and looked outside again. That’s when she said she heard a male voice say something to the effect of, “it’s OK, I’m going to help you,” according to the affidavit.

She later opened her door a third time and saw a masked man in black clothing whom she did not recognize walking toward her and stood in “frozen shock” as he walked past her toward a sliding glass door, the affidavit said. She went back in her room and locked the door.

Investigators believe the suspect then left the home. The document does not say what happened next at the home, or why police were not alerted for several more hours.

Mental health experts say common physiological responses to frightening or traumatic experiences include an urge to fight, an urge to flee, or an urge to freeze.

Location data from Kohberger’s cellphone showed he had traveled to the area of the victims’ residence at least a dozen times between late June and the night of the killings, authorities said.

Those apparent visits to the victims’ neighborhood all occurred late in the evening or in the early morning, the affidavit said. Investigators also obtained location data from the night of the killings, showing that Kohberger’s phone was near his home in Pullman until about 2:42 a.m.

Five minutes later, the phone started using cellular resources located southeast of the home — consistent with Kohberger traveling south, the affidavit said. There was no other location data available from the phone until 4:48 a.m. — from a cellphone tower south of Moscow — suggesting Kohberger may have turned his phone off during the attack, the affidavit said.

At that point, the phone began taking a roundabout route back to Pullman, traveling south to Genesee, Idaho, then west to Uniontown, Washington, and north to Pullman just before 5:30 a.m. — around the same time the white sedan showed up on surveillance cameras in town.

An FBI expert identified the vehicle as a 2011-2016 Hyundai Elantra; Kohberger was driving a 2015 white Elantra during traffic stops in August and in October, the affidavit said.

At the time, Kohberger’s vehicle had a Pennsylvania license plate and was registered in that state. That registration was set to expire on Nov. 30, however. On Nov. 18 — five days after the killings — Kohberger registered the car in the state of Washington, getting a new license plate.

Kohberger had applied to become an intern with the Pullman Police Department sometime in the fall of 2022, writing in his application essay that he wanted to help rural law enforcement agencies collect and analyze technical data in public safety operations, according to the affidavit. The document does not say if Kohberger was granted the internship.

The Pullman Police Department did not immediately respond to a message from The Associated Press asking if Kohberger ever became an intern with the department.

During Thursday’s court hearing, Kohberger appeared with his attorney in an orange jumpsuit and remained silent while the magistrate ordered him not to have contact with the victims’ families. His next hearing was set for Jan. 12.

Some of Goncalves’ family members attended the hearing.

“It’s obviously an emotional time for the family, seeing the defendant for the first time,” the Goncalves’ family attorney, Shanon Gray, said outside the courthouse. “This is the beginning of the criminal justice system and the family will be here for the long haul.”

Kohberger’s defense attorney, Anne Taylor, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. A magistrate judge has placed the attorneys and others involved in the case under a sweeping gag order barring them from talking publicly about the case.

___

This story was corrected to delete a reference to a knife being found at the crime scene and to clarify that the U.S. Marine Corps emblem was on the sheath that was found.

___

Boone reported from Boise, Idaho, and Johnson from Seattle. Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this story.

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Southwest Airlines Customers Have a New Reason to Be Mad

January 6, 2023 Published by

Southwest Airlines (LUV) – Get Free Report has always been the airline known for putting customers first. It offers easy-to-understand fares, free checked bags, and way fewer “gotchas” than most major airlines. You even get free snacks and a non-alcoholic beverage on your flight and the flight attendants have been known to go above and beyond for passengers.

That reputation took a big hit over the Christmas holiday when a major winter storm forced so many changes on the airline that its scheduling software could not keep up. This massive meltdown forced the airline to cancel thousands of flights (about two-thirds of its schedule for multiple days) and left tens of thousands of passengers stranded.


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South Carolina must redraw congressional maps after racial gerrymander, federal court rules

January 6, 2023 Published by

Just In | The Hill 

A panel of federal judges on Friday ruled that South Carolina lawmakers racially gerrymandered the state’s 1st Congressional District specifically to dilute the power of Black voters.

Three Democratic-appointed judges, who heard the case in South Carolina’s federal district court, found that state lawmakers’ shifting some 30,000 African Americans in Charleston County to a nearby district “was more than a coincidence” and violated the 14th Amendment based on Supreme Court precedent.

“After carefully weighing the totality of evidence in the record and credibility of witnesses, the Court finds that race was the predominant motivating factor in the General Assembly’s design of Congressional District No. 1 and that traditional districting principles were subordinated to race,” the judges ruled.

The court gave the lawmakers until March 31 to submit a new map and prevented further elections in the district until the new boundaries are approved.

The longtime Republican district, which runs along much of South Carolina’s coast, had in a major upset elected former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D) in 2018. Two years later, Rep. Nancy Mace (R) narrowly defeated Cunningham by 1.3 percentage points.

After the district lines were redrawn, she won on a more comfortable margin of nearly 14 percentage points this past November.

A resident of the district and the NAACP’s South Carolina wing challenged the new maps, also bringing claims of racial gerrymandering in two other congressional districts that were thrown out by the judges.

But the court ultimately sided with the resident and NAACP in some of its claims about the 1st District. They had also made allegations about the district’s boundaries in other counties, but the judges dismissed those claims.

“For decades, South Carolina has tried to push Black voters out of the electoral process and effectively silence us with maps that dilute our political power,” Taiwan Scott, the resident who filed the case, said in a statement. “Today’s decision finally recognizes this egregious, generations-long effort to box us out of representation. While there is still a lot of work to be done, we are one step closer to rectifying South Carolina’s long history of voter suppression, and one step closer to the representation we deserve.”

Brenda Murphy, the president of the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, called the decision a “crucial win.”

“With this order and its call for barring all future congressional elections in CD 1 and ordering the General Assembly to submit a remedial map, we are emboldened and encouraged that we will see fairer congressional maps for South Carolina,” she said.

​Court Battles, Campaign, Regulation, State Watch, Gerrymandering, racial gerrymandering, South Carolina Read More 

December’s jobs report fuels optimism that the economy could still pull off a soft landing

January 6, 2023 Published by

US Top News and Analysis 

A “Now hiring” sign is displayed on the window of an IN-N-OUT fast food restaurant in Encinitas, California, May 9, 2022.
Mike Blake | Reuters

December’s strong job growth combined with slowing wage inflation is fueling optimism that the economy might just see a soft landing.

But economists disagree on whether that will be the case, given that a strong jobs market could continue to ignite price increases in the service sector and keep the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. Those higher interest rates could slow the economy further and push it into a recession.

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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added 223,000 jobs in the final month of 2022, less than the 256,000 in November. Unemployment fell to 3.469%, which economists say is the lowest since 1969.

Meanwhile, average hourly wages increased 4.6% on an annual basis, less than the 5% economists expected. On a monthly basis, that was a gain of 0.3%, compared to Dow Jones expectations of 0.4%. The November wage gains were revised lower to a monthly gain of 0.4%, versus 0.6% previously reported.

“This may be the last hoorah. It’s about as close to a Goldilocks number the Fed could hope for at this point in time,” said Diane Swonk, KPMG chief economist. “You had a cooling in wage gains with an increase in participation and a fall in the unemployment rate. You hit it on all three notes.”

Stocks rallied after the report, and Treasury yields — which move opposite price — fell. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected 200,000 jobs were added in the month, and that the pace of job creation will continue to slow sharply.

S&P 500 rallies after December jobs report

Consumer inflation has been coming down. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expect the consumer price index rose by 6.5% in December on an annual basis, down from 7.1% in November. The December CPI is slated for release Jan. 12.

“What the Fed is looking at is it is now getting into the stickiest part of inflation and that’s wages, and the market is looking at as the trend is in the right direction,” said Swonk.

Swonk said she expects job growth to slow more and the economy to fall into a shallow recession. Yet, the picture of the labor market is one of the strongest ever.

“We’ve got 4.5 million new payrolls for the year. That’s the second strongest year on record,” said Swonk. She said 2022 was second to 2021, when there were 6.7 million jobs created. “The only thing close was 1946 when soldiers returned to civilian work after World War II.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said the report is encouraging and confirms his expectation that there will be a soft landing for the economy. “It was about as perfect a report as one could ask for,” he said. “I don’t think there were any blemishes at all in the report. It shows a job market that is slowly but surely cooling off.”

While many economists expect a recession, Zandi points to strong growth even with a slowdown in the housing sector. According to the Atlanta Fed, gross domestic product was growing at a strong rate of 3.8% in the fourth quarter of 2022. Zandi notes wage growth is a full percentage point slower than when it peaked in the spring.

“This is consistent with the Fed threading the needle of slowing growth sufficiently to slow inflation but not pushing the economy into recession,” said Zandi. “We’re calling it a ‘slowcession.'”

The decline in unemployment came as the participation rate increased slightly to 62.3%. That is still a full percentage point below where it was in February 2020, the month before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

“It’s one thing to say momentum in the labor market is moderating, but it’s another thing to say imbalances are being removed,” said Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Bank of America.

‘Something in the report for everyone’

The Federal Reserve has been hoping to crush inflation by raising interest rates enough to cool the economy, and that would be through the labor market. But with its fed funds rate at 4.25%-4.50%, the Fed has targeted more rate hikes until it reaches its forecast of 5.1% for the end, or terminal rate.

Gapen and other economists expect the Fed to increase rates by a half percentage point on Feb. 1, while traders in the futures market see just a quarter point hike. Gapen said the strong jobs report reinforces his rate hike forecast.

“There’s something in this report for everyone, but to look at this and say ‘soft landing,’ I don’t agree,” said Gapen. “The unemployment rate is falling and payroll growth is at 223,000. The Fed wants it below 100,000, probably more like 80,000.”

He expects to see negative job growth this year, after the Fed’s rate hikes. There have been seven rate hikes so far since March. “Here we are nine months later, and you’re still adding jobs at what would be considered a blowout rate in a normal recovery,” he said.

Gapen notes that there was still a surprisingly high 10.5 million job openings in November, according to the Jobs Opening and Labor Turnover Survey, released Wednesday.

“From the point of view of an unemployed worker looking for jobs, it’s still a very good report and it’s still a very good labor market,” said Gapen. “If you’re a policy maker things are going to stay persistently strong in a way you can’t meet your inflation mandate.”

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Tesla Stock Hits 2-Year Low As China Price Cuts Highlight Margin, Demand Concerns

January 6, 2023 Published by

Updated at 12:45 pm EST

Tesla  (TSLA) – Get Free Report shares lagged markets again Friday following reports that the carmaker has extend price cuts in key Asia markets this week, suggesting further demand challenges into the start of the year.

Tesla reduced the starting price of its Model 3 sedan by around 13.5% in China, according to data from its website, and lowered the price of its Model Y by around 10% to 259,900 yuan, the equivalent of around $37,660. Price cuts were also seen in markets in South Korea and Japan as well as Australia.


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Gingrich and Pelosi Agree: The GOP Is Rudderless

January 6, 2023 Published by

Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories 

On Jan. 6 two years ago, Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a sober-minded military man, looked on his television screen with horror as he saw his then-colleague, former Rep. Mo Brooks, urge a group of soon-to-be rioters gathered at the Ellipse to “start taking down names and kicking ass.” Womack was so appalled at House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy’s refusal to punish Brooks for his conduct that the Arkansan resigned in disgust from the powerful Steering Committee, as Alex Burns and I reported last year in our book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.”

Now, on the two-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, Womack is scarcely less disturbed about the images from Washington again being broadcast to the world. Yet this time, he’s less angry than he is embarrassed about people seeing the first, rotten fruits of the House Republican majority in the party’s speakership battle.

“People are watching this with a certain amount of disbelief,” Womack told me about the week-long C-SPAN bacchanalia, which his wife, who he said hates politics, had told him was absorbing everybody. “This is the Congress of the United States of America, man, the greatest country in the world.”

It’s also the Republican Party of 2023, man, which is still suffering from what plagued it on that day of infamy two years ago: a lack of serious leadership.

But at least then the party had more of an identity, even if it was Donald Trump’s cult of personality. Now it’s both leaderless and lacking any widely shared anchorage, outside of hostility toward the left.

“To characterize the party today as messy, somewhat dysfunctional and lacking a true identity is an accurate depiction of where we are and it is a challenge we must fix and fix quickly because the ’24 election cycle is underway,” said Womack, likening House Republicans’ performance this week to a Kentucky Derby gone horribly wrong. “The gate opened and we threw our jockey,” he said.

If you’re not persuaded by Womack, or me, perhaps two former House speakers with very different politics will convince you that Republicans are confronting a more fundamental challenge beyond McCarthy agonistes.

Nancy Pelosi was never shy about her skillset — she often called herself “a master legislator” — yet when I caught up with her this week in the Capitol she downplayed her talents to make a point about the structural differences between the two parties.

“People always give me credit, ‘Oh you keep them together,’” she recalled of her days leading House Democrats, though still using the present-tense. “I said I really don’t, our values keep us together. We’re committed to America’s working families. If you don’t have that, what’s your why?

Republicans, Pelosi said, lack that why. “They don’t have any value system,” she said. (And if you’re wondering about her own plans, and the prospect of a scion in a San Francisco succession special, Pelosi insisted she had not talked to her daughter, Christine, about running and was “not leaving” at least “through the term.”)

Anyways, I would argue that, in recent years, Democrats have been just as unified by their antipathy to Trump than their shared commitment to working families. Negative partisanship is the most powerful current in this age of polarization, and you need not look any further than the former speaker herself. The Pelosi memes aren’t of her shepherding Covid legislation or delivering her caucus on Build Back Better — they’re of her ripping up Trump’s State of the Union speech, standing up to him at a White House meeting and putting on shades as she left his West Wing.

That said, her point remains about Democrats benefiting from shared values.

As one of her GOP predecessors explained to me, in characteristically longer fashion, Republicans at this moment lack any such unity of purpose.

Newt Gingrich said his party is contending with a band of “deranged disrupters” in the House, a cadre of “Biden Republicans” enabling the president in the Senate and “a grassroots base that wants anger.”

Stuck in the middle, Gingrich said, is the sunny son of 1970s Bakersfield.

“Kevin is a good California guy who isn’t angry because he grew up at a time when the surf was up, the Beach Boys were playing and California girls were worth singing about,” said the former speaker (before you ask, he teed up that line off the cuff in a telephone interview).

Yes, it’s Newt.

I can see some of you rolling your eyes about Gingrich. But he has his finger on the conservative pulse today just as he did when, speaking of C-SPAN, he was a younger rebel with a cause, chastising Tip O’Neill by way of the new cameras in the House chamber.

More significantly, Gingrich remains in touch with many of the party’s key players, most notably McCarthy, whom he joined on a barnstorming tour ahead of last year’s midterms. The two have been in touch this week. Gingrich’s advice to him, as related to me: “Smile, feel inevitable, be enormously patient, have other people do the negotiating.” (McCarthy’s mood, Gingrich said, could be described as “be nice if it was over” but he was “not despondent”).

Of late, Gingrich, ever the historian, has been likening this moment in the GOP to the lead-up to the cataclysmic 1964 primary between Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller, which split the party and led to the Democratic landslide that year. Yet as I reminded the former speaker, two years later a new tide of Republicans swept into office, including a Californian by the name of Reagan, and two years after that Republicans reclaimed the White House.

Which is to say that the pendulum swings in American politics. As another grand old man of the GOP, Haley Barbour, likes to say: “In politics, things are never as good or bad as they seem.”

And to be fair to today’s Republicans, it’s hardly unique for the party out of the White House to find itself in the wilderness, lacking leadership and identity.

Yet what makes this moment different is the long shadow of Trump.

Until the party determines whether it’s going to embrace Trump for a third consecutive nomination or move on, it won’t fully resolve its identity crisis.

Gingrich said the proposition was very simple: “If Trump focuses his anger and gets serious he will be the nominee or he doesn’t focus and doesn’t get serious, in which case you’ll get probably DeSantis.”

This week was illustrative of the difficulties of a party in transition, no longer fully embracing of Trump but also not yet totally past him two years after he incited the insurrection.

He doesn’t want to relinquish control, so he got pulled into the speaker’s race just enough to make some calls and weigh in with a good-if-not-great public endorsement of McCarthy. But Trump isn’t interested enough in the contest, or seizing power generally, to pull himself away from the fairways long enough to understand the key issues and figures shaping the race.

And because of that, and due to his overall waning since the midterms, he’s not been able to steer the race toward McCarthy or an even Trumpier alternative.

Trump moved no votes after reiterating his support for the man he called “My Kevin” and Rep. Matt Gaetz’s gambit to put Trump’s name in nomination for the speakership resulted in one vote (Mr. Gaetz of Florida).

“If they’re giving him the back of the hand, it says a lot,” Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) argued about the hardliners dismissing Trump’s appeal. “Trump has a strong following in this party but he’s now one of many, I don’t believe he’s the only voice taking the oxygen out of the room.” (As for her own 2024 preferences, Wagner cited her former House colleague from Kansas: “I’m a Pompeo kind of girl at this point.”)

What was striking from spending the week talking to House Republicans in the Capitol, though, was that in conversations about the party the name of a different former Republican president came up. It was the same one who DeSantis invoked in his inaugural address on Tuesday.

Even as the party struggles to find itself, Reagan remains their north star.

Republican lawmakers as different as Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin (a leadership loyalist who delivered one of McCarthy’s nominating speeches) and Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina (who nominated one of McCarthy’s challengers and is among the 20 renegades) both brought up Reagan as a model without prompting.

But when I reminded Bishop that Reagan was not available for nomination in 2024, the North Carolinian could only chuckle.

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), however, was not laughing when he considered this messy interregnum and the difficulties of keeping House Republicans together for the next two years.

“If we get through this,” Armstrong said of the speakership battle, “it’s just the beginning, not the end.”

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Video Proves Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta Still Performs Terribly In The Snow

January 6, 2023 Published by

Carscoops 

While automakers have made great progress in terms of safety and ADAS over the past decade, the dream of a fully autonomous production car has yet to be achieved. A new video from the snowy roads of the Detroit area proves that the latest update of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system can’t function properly in bad weather, with its performance deemed dangerous to say the least.

The video was uploaded on YouTube by the Detroit Tesla channel and is a real-life test of the FSD Beta 10.69.25 update. From the start it is clear that this is not going to be a smooth ride, as the driver says: “I don’t think this will be a very long drive, because I am just out here risking my life and the car’s life to make content”.

Watch: Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Struggles In Snow-Covered Edmonton

The Full Self-Driving mode is activated and the system does its best to keep track of the curb. It obviously takes input from the navigation map since the sensors can’t really see when the road is covered in snow. While the FSD does a pretty good job in detecting incoming traffic, it often steers to the right being unable to follow its lane and stay in course.

Even at very low speeds of 15-20 mph (24-32 km/h) the Tesla is unable to follow the selected route without input from the driver that steps in to save the day when the car changes direction with no apparent reason. The situation is so bad that the driver says “I don’t know how are they going to achieve full autonomy when half the world has these conditions of snow, rain, and ice”, adding that Tesla’s system “is definitely still not ready for horrible weather like this”. In areas where the roads are not entirely covered with snow, the Tesla performs a lot better, but still not good enough for the driver and passengers to feel safe.

It is not all bad though as the driver suggest there are some improvements compared to older versions of the Tesla FSD Beta. When the tail of the vehicle slips during a turn, the system now has the ability to stabilize it instead of automatically disengaging and asking the human to take over which was often the case in the past. Still, its performance can’t justify the “Full Self-Driving” part of the title, even with the Beta attached to it.

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JetBlue starts much-needed retrofit of legacy Mint business-class seats

January 6, 2023 Published by

The Points Guy 

JetBlue’s Mint business-class seat launched in 2014, and the product is definitely showing its age.

From heavy wear and tear to an outdated inflight entertainment system, the original Mint product isn’t nearly as competitive as it was when it first launched.

Thankfully, however, JetBlue is addressing perhaps the biggest issue with the original seat by installing new Tuft & Needle-branded seat cushions on its legacy Mint-equipped Airbus A321 jets.

These new seat covers offer a built-in mattress pad that first debuted on the airline’s Airbus A321neo, or new engine option, jets. These planes feature the next-generation Mint product, which offers direct access aisle from each seat in a 1-1 configuration.

In my experience, these new seat cushions are quite comfortable. Also, the built-in adaptive mattress foam is designed to offer a “consistent sleep experience, regardless of aircraft configuration,” according to a JetBlue spokesperson.

While JetBlue may be touting the benefits of the new seat cushion, the real improvement for frequent flyers will be the elimination of the inflatable airbag-style cushioning system, which has been prone to deflating as it ages.

ZACH GRIFF/THE POINTS GUY

When you sit in a deflated Mint seat, it feels like you’re sitting on an incredibly uncomfortable park bench. It’s significantly more unpleasant than the economy seats in the last row of the plane.

I’ve experienced the deflated-seat issue on multiple occasions on recent Mint flights, and each time, the crew tried resetting the system to no avail. Finally, they brought out a replacement seat cover to help make the seat more comfortable.

In fact, the issue got so bad that JetBlue began stocking replacement seat covers on most Mint flights — a costly move considering the additional weight and space that these large items occupy.

Fortunately, JetBlue is finally addressing this issue by eliminating the airbag system entirely. While the airline will no longer dole out $200 credits for deflated seats, frequent JetBlue flyers will undoubtedly appreciate that the seats will be consistently more comfortable.

To date, the airline has retrofitted five out of 35 Mint-equipped Airbus A321s, with plans to complete the project by the end of February, a spokesperson confirmed to TPG.

Although JetBlue is addressing perhaps the biggest issue with the classic Mint seat, the product could still use some TLC.

ZACH GRIFF/THE POINTS GUY

To start, the aging inflight entertainment system is one of the buggiest and most outdated systems in the domestic skies. There are limited on-demand options, and the interface feels straight out of the early 2000s.

Additionally, as airlines go all-in on direct aisle access in business class, the alternating 2-2 and 1-1 configuration in the legacy Mint product isn’t as competitive as it once was.

ZACH GRIFF/THE POINTS GUY

Other issues include significant wear and tear on the seats and loose power ports.

It’d be great if JetBlue decided to simply retrofit its existing aircraft with the impressive new Mint product, but that’s a costly endeavor that the airline likely isn’t ready to undergo, especially considering the Spirit takeover that’s due to close in the coming months.

While JetBlue may not yet be ready to share the long-term strategy for its legacy Mint product, at least it’s taking a big step in the right direction with the replacement of the seat covers.

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Is it time to consider an interim House Speaker?

January 6, 2023 Published by

Just In | The Hill 

No matter when Republicans in the House of Representatives finally agree upon a Speaker, this is the second constitutional crisis in two years. Two years ago today, rioters stormed and temporarily occupied part of the U.S. Capitol in wrongful protest of their belief that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. 

The good news is that this crisis is resolvable with the application of some political common sense. Consider a deeper analysis into what is not fully apparent: An interim Speaker of the House may be a viable option to alleviate this crisis.

Article I, Section II of the Constitution specifies that “the House of Representatives shall chuse their speaker.” But the Constitution is silent on the details. No mention is made of how the “chusing” will be done. Will it be by majority or plurality vote? Will it be by some form of appointment or anointment? As political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution, what is their role, if any?

Perhaps surprising to many, the Speaker does not have to be a member of the House. Nor does the Speaker have to be an American. And no age or other requirement is set for qualification.

This is a crisis because, according to House rules and not the Constitution, the House is not formally in session until a Speaker is chosen and committees and subcommittees are assigned. In 1856, it took two months for that to occur. But suppose an extended delay occurred in 2023.

Congress (and many will think this is a good thing) cannot pass any laws. Yes, the Senate can be in session and confirm appointments and conduct its work. But what happens in crises in which a full Congress is needed?

The debt ceiling broaches in early 2023. A national emergency caused by storms or floods could demand federal funding. An adversary could exploit this current state of purgatory to take military action, as Congress cannot declare war with only one House. The list of possible consequences is endless and potentially more damaging than a government shutdown.

The $1.7 trillion omnibus bill passed by the 117th Congress took steps to prevent recurrence of the Jan. 6 riots by updating the 1887 Electoral Count Act. The vice president was given only a “ministerial,” or ceremonial, role, and one-fifth of members were required to challenge electoral votes. Obviously, the House must move to fix this potentially catastrophic constitutional crisis over the Speakership.

The House should consider appointing an interim Speaker, selected by a plurality of votes. In today’s Congress, that could mean a Democrat, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), would be in the chair presiding over a Republican-controlled House. Or the majority party could agree on an interim Speaker through any number of means. 

Of course, an interim Speaker is an imperfect solution if a long-term Speaker cannot be selected. The advantage is that Congress would not be impotent to act. 

But with today’s politics so divided and divisive, a further and greater crisis has been overlooked.

Is the Constitution, based on divided government and checks and balances, fit for purpose in America today? One of the reasons for voting against Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for Speaker is to return the House to 2016 when regular order and floor debate on offering amendments occurred. Dissidents do not want the Rules Committee to force legislation through without any consideration, which is often what happens.  

Further, members of Congress are dominated by and so dependent on their party for election and reelection that constituents who are independents or members of the opposing party have virtually no priority in representation. And no agreement exists on constitutional questions regarding the First and Second Amendments or abortion, among other questions.

Amending the Constitution is politically implausible. Thus, corrective action by law or rule change is the only course. An interim Speaker is a temporary solution if the House is unable to act within a certain time frame, say, 10 working days. Or, should a crisis arise, an interim Speaker could be selected on an emergency basis so that the House will be in session. Failure to do so could lead to a crisis far worse than Jan. 6.  

Harlan Ullman is senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of “shock and awe.” His latest  book is “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.” Follow him on Twitter @harlankullman.

​National Security, Opinion, Speaker of the House, speaker race, Speakership vote Read More 

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