Difficult right-sizing continues
THE ongoing moves to right-size Chesapeake Energy Corp. continued this week, and they were painful. Roughly 400 employees — 13 percent of the workforce — were laid off in the third largescale reduction in force in recent years.
In 2013, about 900 employees were let go in a move aimed at ensuring the company’s long-term viability. Another 740 were laid off in September 2015 during a prolonged downturn in energy prices.
The majority of those let go this week worked with wells in the Barnett Shale in north Texas. Chesapeake sold those assets in August 2016 but continued its involvement until the buyer had its team in place.
CEO Doug Lawler noted that, “As those transition arrangements have now come to an end, and we continue to see increased efficiencies across the country, we needed to respond accordingly.”
Those impacted are “dedicated, valuedriven, hardworking people,” Lawler said, which made the cuts all the more difficult. Chesapeake now has about 2,900 employees, with roughly 1,800 in Oklahoma City.
Our thoughts are with those affected by this week’s news, and their families, and hope that most will be able to find comparable work as the energy industry continues its recovery. Likewise we cross our fingers that Chesapeake, such an outstanding corporate citizen throughout its history, enjoys several less-turbulent years going forward.
Grammy ratings
The Grammys are supposedly focused on music and entertainment. Yet this year’s version gained most attention for a bit featuring Hillary Clinton reading aloud from Michael Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” Clinton, of course, was the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate. She had some of the lowest favorability ratings of any presidential candidate in history — and her approval rating has actually gotten worse since then. Wolff’s book has been roundly criticized for being riddled with factual errors and filled with unsubstantiated innuendo. Deadline.com reports that the ratings for the Grammys were down 20 percent from last year’s show and may have hit “an all-time low for the ceremony.” Gosh, who would have guessed a program giving a platform to one of the nation’s most unlikable public figures (a person with no entertainment ties), reading a book many think is slanderous, would lack mass appeal?
Advance reviews
Most adults who remember being young will cut college students some slack for the occasional illinformed comment. But some students are not making it easy. As a prank, Campus Reform visited New York University seven days before President Trump gave his 2018 State of the Union speech and asked students what they thought of it. Naturally, there were plenty of students oblivious to the fact that the speech had not been delivered but somehow fully confident in their reactions to the (then non-existent) speech. “Quite racist, at the very least, if not up there with the most racism,” said one student. “I didn’t watch it ’cause I couldn’t bring myself to watch it,” said another. “It’s offensive. It is crazy, but I’m not shocked by it by what he’s done in the past,” said a third. And to think, some people question the value of a college education.
Oklahomans like Trump
Oklahoma is known as a conservative state, and one that has been generally supportive of President Trump. That proved true in the latest polling from Gallup, which showed 53 percent of Oklahomans approve of Trump. Yet Oklahoma wasn’t the most Trump-friendly state in the country. Idaho and Alabama also gave Trump a 53 percent approval rating, while a larger share of residents in four other states did the same. West Virginia was the most pro-Trump state with 61 percent of adults approving of Trump’s job. Yet even the Gallup numbers may understate Trump’s Oklahoma support. A recent poll commissioned by the Oklahoma Education Association found 57 percent of Oklahomans feel positively about Trump. The OEA-commissioned poll, it should be noted, was of likely Oklahoma voters, while Gallup polled adults, a group that can includes nonvoters and those who seldom vote.
Another flawed messenger
Rep. Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts gave the Democratic Party’s response to President Trump’s State of the Union speech this week. What resulted was an exercise in tone-deafness. Kennedy decried “a system forcefully rigged for those at the top.” The International Business Times reports that Kennedy has an estimated net worth of $43 million, which includes a $19 million trust fund. The 37-year-old lawmaker is the 16th richest out of 435 members of the U.S. House, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. If Democrats want to show they're in touch with the realities facing working families, they need a better spokesman than a trust fund baby from a political dynasty whose family history is littered with instances where it benefited from the system. If Kennedy was the best Democrats had to offer, then one wonders how flawed the alternative choices must have been.
Moore's musings
Michael Moore, the far-left “documentary” filmmaker, was up to his usual theatrics again recently when he gave a speech deriding President Trump. The president, according to Moore, is a result of “us never correcting the three original sins of America — a nation founded on genocide, built on the backs of slaves and maintained through the subjugation of women to second class citizenship and economic disempowerment. As we seek to rid ourselves of Trump, we must also cleanse our American soul of its white male privilege, its voracious greed …” A quick reminder: During divorce proceedings in 2014, it became public that Moore had made an estimated $50 million and owned nine properties in Michigan and New York, including a Manhattan condo that once was three apartments, and a lakefront mansion. In other words, Moore is opposed to “white male privilege” and “greed” much more in theory than in personal practice.
Hawaii update
Remember the Hawaii state government employee who accidentally sent out a false alarm warning of an incoming missile attack on Jan. 13? The Washington Post reports the still unnamed employee has resigned, but that should be of little comfort. The employee “misunderstood that a drill was underway and believed that a ballistic missile had actually been fired at the state,” the Post reports. The newspaper also says this wasn't the worker's first such mistake. “At least twice before the false alarm, he ‘has confused real life events and drills,’ a state investigation concluded, part of a troubled work history that had ‘been a source of concern ... for over 10 years’ to his coworkers,” the Post revealed. If that degree of incompetence was tolerated for a decade, it’s reasonable to suspect there may be many more people of the same “caliber” still working in government.