Which Coworkers are the Most Annoying? (Salary.com)

Coworkers. Good ones can be the reason you stay at a job, while horrible colleagues can make every day in the office a living hell from which you’d like nothing more than to escape.

 

If you’ve spent a few years in the ranks of the working class, you’ve no doubt experienced a cornucopia of annoying coworkers. But have you ever wondered which ones are the worst of the bunch? We did, and so I drew on my own experiences and polled other Salary.com workers to come up with the nine most annoying types of coworkers on the planet.

See if you recognize anyone from your office (or yourself) on this list.

9. The Bully

 

Bullying has been a hot issue among teenagers and on school playgrounds across America as of late. But even though it doesn’t get the same play in the media, office bullies are alive and well.

You know the type. They walk around like they’re your boss even though technically they were hired after you and you have the same job title. But that doesn’t stop them from belittling you at every turn and publicly degrading your ideas during brainstorming sessions and team meetings.

Most bullies knock it off when you stand up to them, so take him/her aside and let them know you’re bothered by their behavior. If that doesn’t work, it might be time to get HR involved.

8. The Complainer

Nothing stops success and the free-flowing of good ideas like someone who constantly complains about everything.

The Complainer’s gripes know no bounds. 

They’ll complain about the boss, the company, the workload, the fact that there were only plain doughnuts left in the cafeteria this morning – you name it, they’ll complain about it. The negativity is constant, and the mood of the team (and potentially productivity) will be brought down.

7. The Underminer

This annoying coworker is especially frustrating because he/she will often feign friendship and then stab you in the back five minutes later.

Did you discuss a great idea with a coworker only to see that person steal it and use it as their own? Are you missing meetings because your coworker leading a project keeps “forgetting” to email you the invites? If so, you’re probably dealing with The Bully’s sneaky and conniving cousin – The Underminer.

The most important thing to remember here is that The Underminer sees you as a threat and is genuinely scared of you. Try to keep that in mind and use it to your advantage when dealing with him/her.

6. The Dead Weight

Every coworker should bring unique strengths and special skills to the table. If you’re working in a team environment, you’ll likely use each individual’s strong points for the benefit of the team to get optimal results.

Unless you’re dealing with Dead Weight.

Simply put, The Dead Weight is useless and shows no desire to do anything but the bare minimum. Unhappy in their jobs and checked out long ago, these people have no interest in succeeding at work because all they want to do is just enough not to get fired so they can keep collecting a paycheck. Unfortunately, you usually deal with these people by picking up their slack.

5. The Type A

The polar opposite of The Dead Weight, Type A coworkers are equally annoying at the other end of the spectrum.

Instead of not wanting to do anything, these perfectionists feel the need to do everything themselves. They are total control freaks who feel the only way to do something right is to do it their way. Type A people tend to ignore alternative points of view, and while their bossy ways might make them high-performers, no one else enjoys dealing with them.

4. The One-Upper

You think your accomplishment was a game-changer? I guarantee you The One-Upper did something better. And he’ll gladly tell you all about it in great detail.

You increased sales by 50%? Too bad The One Upper had a 60% spike last quarter? And while it’s very cute that you were Employee of the Month, The One-Upper was Salesman of the Year – for two years in a row. Whether 

these milestones were actually reached or (more likely) The One-Upper is bending the truth a bit, either way it’s obnoxious and can very easily squash morale in a team setting.

3. The Brown-Noser

Some people get ahead by working hard and accomplishing their goals. But The Brown-Noser advances by puckering up to the boss’ backside, or even by engaging in an office romance.

This person does perfectly mediocre work and doesn’t excel in any particular area, yet keeps moving up the ranks solely because they know exactly whose derriere to kiss and work hardest on sucking up to upper management. 

And nothing is more demoralizing to people actually working hard than others who get promoted based on things other than work ethic and results.

2. The Drama Queen

Don’t let the “Queen” part fool you, as this person can definitely be a man or a woman.

Somehow, even though everyone has the same assignment, the Drama Queen feels put upon or singled out – and has no qualms about telling you their alleged woes. Adding to the problem is you probably know all of the Drama Queen’s other issues – both personal and professional – because nothing is sacred and the Drama Queen wants you to know about all his/her problems. Upcoming wedding? Recent break-up? Blind date over the weekend? 

Buckle up, because you’re about to hear all about it.

1. The Black Hole

You know who I’m talking about. The coworker who wastes more of your time on a daily basis than Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest combined.

If you catch his/her eye in the hallway or at the water cooler, you cringe because you just know it’ll be a guaranteed 15-20 minutes of chit-chatting and small talk before you can rip yourself away. But while you can do your best to avoid them, sometimes they come to you. Then you’re stuck at your own desk as they try to show you their wedding pictures or the latest viral YouTube cat video while the clock ticks on your project deadline.

So how about it? Did we miss any? Leave your most annoying coworker descriptions in the comments section.

Researching Your Salary Is Never Annoying

Regardless of who you work with and how obnoxious they are, there's one thing more annoying than coworkers -- not getting paid what you're worth. Luckily, Salary.com can help.

The first thing you should do is research, so you're able to come to the table armed with the knowledge of what your job is worth. Use our free Salary Wizard below to find out what's a fair salary for your position. You can enter your location, education level, years of experience and more to find out an appropriate salary range before you negotiate.

Good luck.

Special Offer for CAMACOL Members!!!!

Stocks Are Up. Beef and Chicken Stocks, That Is (BusinessWeek)

By Sierra Tishgart November 26, 2014

Marco Canora has been drinking his mom’s broth since he was a kid in upstate New York. “When I was sick, I’d sip a bowl with Parmesan cheese,” the chef says. “The flavor, the saltiness, and the richness feel so calming.” Now he’s re-creating that experience at Brodo, a tiny takeout window next to Hearth, Canora’s acclaimed restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. Broth has also become a calling card for British cookbook authors such as Sally Morrell (Nourishing Broth, released in September) and the Helmsley sisters (who blog for British Vogue). The Los Angeles Lakers’ nutritionist has made it a key part of his team’s eating plan, and Paleo dieters are also obsessed.

Brodo’s broth is served like to-go coffee, so commuters can sip through the lid as they walk

Most days, Canora mans the counter himself, hawking 16-ounce paper cups of broth, which range from $6.75 to $9, in three varieties—with simmered beef bones, chicken bones, or a blend of both with turkey that tastes like curry. For an additional 75¢, customers can get add-ons such as turmeric and beets. Since opening on Nov. 3, Canora is averaging 250 orders a day, most from those interested in the broth’s restorative powers—the gelatin from the bones aids digestion, collagen creates healthy hair, and amino acids improve the immune system. He says drinking his own broth got him into the best shape of his life. “If I had more kiosks, no doubt every one would be booming,” Canora says, though he has no plans yet to expand or diversify into juice in the warmer months. “Juice is mostly sugar,” he complains. “Maybe I’ll just make broth ice cubes.”

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Canora’s DIY Recipe

Adapted from A Good Food Day, out in December

4 lbs. chicken bones (any combination of backs, necks, and feet)

2 lbs. beef bones (shin or neck)

2 small onions, peeled and quartered

4 small carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces

4 stalks celery, cut into 1-inch pieces

1/2 bunch flat-leaf parsley

1 bunch fresh thyme

12 oz. can tomatoes, drained

1 head garlic, halved crosswise

1 tsp. black peppercorns

2 bay leaves

Combine bones in a deep 8-quart pot. Rinse with cold water, scrubbing with your hands. Drain and pack bones in pot. Cover with 4 inches of cold water and cook over medium-high heat for about 45 minutes until liquid boils. Reduce heat to medium and move pot so burner is off to one side. (This helps broth to circulate.) Simmer until broth looks clear, about 1 hour, occasionally using a ladle to skim off surface fats and foamy impurities. When broth looks clear, add remaining ingredients and simmer for an additional 2  hours. Use a spider skimmer to remove and discard bits of meat. Put a fine-mesh strainer over another large pot and pour broth through it; discard solids. Drink immediately, or let cool before storing. Makes 2 1/2 quarts.

FBI: SCAM ALERTS, November 20, 2014

INTERNET CRIME COMPLAINT CENTER'S (IC3)

SCAM ALERTS

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

This report, which is based upon information from law enforcement and complaints submitted to the IC3, details recent cyber crime trends and new twists to previously-existing cyber scams.

DONATION OVERPAYMENT SCHEME

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has received numerous complaints from businesses, charitable organizations, schools, universities, health related organizations, and non-profit organizations, reporting an online donation scheme. The complaints reported subjects who had donated thousands of dollars, via stolen credit cards. Once donations were made, the subjects immediately requested the majority of the donation back, but credited to a different card. They claimed to have mistakenly donated too much by adding an extra digit to the dollar amount (i.e., $5000 was ‘accidently’ entered instead of $500). However, very few complainants actually returned the money to the second credit card. Many, through their own investigations, discovered the original card was stolen, or the credit card company notified them of such. Also, some of the organizations’ policies did not allow funds to be returned to a different credit card.

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For more information regarding online scams visit our Press Room page for the most current Public Service Announcements. http://www.ic3.gov/media/default.aspx

2015 Global Economic Outlook: Better Than 2014—but Not By Much (BusinessWeek)

OK, everybody, let’s get excited about 2015. Sure, there’s Ebola and Vladimir Putin and Islamic State terrorism. Western Europe is back in an economic rut, Japan’s recovery is faltering again, and China looks as if it’s headed for its slowest growth since 1990. But there are good things happening, too. Like, well, strong sales of recreational vehicles made in northern Indiana! “We’re in the recovery—we’re recovered,” says Derald Bontrager, chairman of the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association. “Obama visited this area three times. We were referred to as the ‘white-hot center of the economy.’ ” Bontrager, the chief executive officer of family-owned Jayco in Middlebury, Ind., predicts the industry will tie unit sales records in 2015 and break them in 2016, thanks to rising U.S. employment and continued low interest rates.

The good times aren’t confined to northern Indiana, the hub of RV manufacturing. The U.S. as a whole is emerging as the most likely candidate to power world growth in 2015. North Dakota is crazy busy with shale oil production. Seattle is swamped with Boeing (BA) orders. In Silicon Valley, Apple (AAPL) is selling tons of iPhones. New York City has more jobs than ever, as tech companies such as Google (GOOG)(with more than 4,000 employees in the city) lead the way.

It’s a welcome turnabout for the U.S., which until recently was the planet’s pariah. Japan called the 2008-09 financial crisis the “Lehman shokku,” and France dubbed it “la crise des subprimes.” After political brinkmanship brought the federal government within a whisker of default in 2011, China’s Xinhua news agency warned, “It is time for the naughty boys in Washington to stop chicken games before they cause more damages.”

Now it’s the rest of the world that’s botching things. The International Monetary Fund called global growth “mediocre” in October in its latest outlook. Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard wrote that “secular stagnation in advanced economies remains a concern,” and emerging markets can’t grow as fast as they used to without inflation.

Whether you’re the CEO of a multinational or a sole proprietor, it pays to have a sense of where the opportunities lie and the dangers lurk in 2015. That’s what this special issue is about. In the following pages, we offer a detailed look at key people, industries, and regions, along with the most important emerging trends. This introduction focuses on the macroeconomic picture—in other words, the conditions that will help or hinder all you strivers in 2015.

The map gives a snapshot of what’s ahead, based on the latest IMF forecast. South America is a mess, with Argentina and Venezuela leading the losers’ parade and Brazil not far behind. Russia and Western Europe are weak. All three economies of North America are looking pretty solid. The strongest growth is projected to be in South and East Asia as well as much of Africa, which is starting from a low base. Then there’s Greenland, which is  …  large. (The Mercator projection exaggerates the polar latitudes.)

The unifying theme is that the global economy is taking longer than expected to recuperate from the bursting of the debt bubble during the last decade. Three years ago, the IMF projected that the world economy would be back on track by 2015, growing at 4.8 percent. The U.S. has pretty much met the IMF’s (diminished) expectations. The disappointments, says the IMF, have been the BRIC nations—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—as well as parts of the Middle East, Europe, and Japan.

That’s led the IMF to reduce its forecast for 2015 global growth to 3.2 percent. It projects 3.1 percent growth for the U.S. next year, just 1.3 percent in the euro area, and 0.8 percent for Japan. China’s projected 7.1 percent growth, high compared with other nations’, would be the country’s lowest in 15 years. China isn’t geared for such a slowdown: Indebted investors such as property developers could default on a large scale if expansion comes in much below their expectations. The disparity in growth rates among the big four economies—the U.S., China, Japan, and the euro zone—was what Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew was referring to in October when he told Bloomberg, “You need all four wheels to be moving, or it isn’t going to be a good ride.”

Expect continued dissonance among economic policymakers in 2015. A taste of that came in late October, when the Federal Reserve announced it was ending its third round of bond buying—and two days later, the Bank of Japan said it was expanding its own bond purchases. Quantitative easing, as the bond purchases are called, is designed to drive up the market price of bonds. When prices rise, yields fall, lowering the rates for mortgages and other loans that matter to consumers and businesses. Next year, the European Central Bank may embark on its own quantitative easing over the objections of Germany’s conservative Bundesbank. That “remains our expectation for early next year,” economists at Barclays (BCS) wrote on Oct. 31.

Fights over taxing and spending will probably heat up next year, especially in the euro zone, where France and Italy are clashing with Germany over how big their budget deficits can be. The European Commission in Brussels allowed the French and Italians to run oversize deficits in October but warned that all euro countries will get an in-depth assessment in mid-November. Germany’s insistence on austerity makes it hard for euro nations to spark economic growth, says Dennis Gartman, author of a daily market commentary. “I tend to be a far right-winger,” says Gartman, “but there are times when you can’t run balanced budgets. When you have 15 percent unemployment, that’s one of the times.”

 

 

Some things about 2015 are known, such as the continued warming of the planet. Others are unimportant, like who wins the Super Bowl on Feb. 1 in Phoenix. (Sorry, football fans.) Keep an eye on things that are unknown and important: Will Russia’s and China’s clashes with their neighbors escalate into armed conflict? Will the Ebola epidemic break out of West Africa on a large scale? Will China snuff out Hong Kong’s democracy movement? Will British elections in May increase pressure on the United Kingdom to drop out of the European Union? Will one of the conflicts in the Middle East boil over? Any one of those could make 2015 a very ugly year.

Then again, there could be happy surprises. In the U.S., fracking and horizontal drilling continue to exceed expectations, raising domestic crude oil production more than 50 percent in just four years. Not only has the oil and gas boom shrunk the U.S. trade deficit and lifted the economies of Texas, North Dakota, and other oil patches, it’s also boosted consumers and the manufacturing sector. “The U.S. will someday have the lowest cost of energy in the world,” says Keith Nosbusch, CEO of Rockwell Automation (ROK). As a bonus, falling oil prices have diminished the power of countries such as Russia and Iran to finance troublemaking abroad. Iran’s government runs deficits when Brent crude drifts below $138 a barrel.

The oil boom is a victory for drilling technology, much of which was invented in the U.S. and is being deployed worldwide. That’s an example of an important theme for 2015: Business investment spurred by innovation may rescue the world from its protracted slump. Consumers are still having a hard time paying down debt because their inflation-adjusted incomes have fallen since the 2007-09 recession. Business is in a better position to lead the recovery. Companies are sitting on record amounts of cash because, with demand weak, they don’t feel any pressure to update their plants, equipment, and software. Great new technologies could set off a burst of capital spending by convincing CEOs they must have the next new thing to get ahead of the competition or avoid falling behind it.

Capital spending is the most volatile sector of the economy and often what turns slumps into booms. Michael Englund, chief economist of Action Economics in Boulder, Colo., says there’s rapidly rising demand for drilling and mining technology, medical gear, and efficient passenger jets. It so happens that U.S. companies such as Halliburton(HAL), Medtronic (MDT), and Boeing are leaders in those areas, but the benefits accrue to the buyers of the new technologies around the world, not only to the sellers.

New fuel-efficient jets from Boeing and its European rival, Airbus (AIR:FP), are an example. Airlines are shelling out billions for new fleets because their upfront cost is more than balanced by future savings, even at today’s lower prices for jet fuel. It helps that air travel growth has been strong—passenger-miles rose 6.7 percent in the 12 months through August. From a macroeconomic perspective, the important thing is that this investment boom doesn’t depend on strong overall economic growth, says Englund.

For the U.S. economy, the most critical unknown is whether 2015 will be the year the Federal Reserve finally begins to raise the federal funds rate, which it has locked at zero to 0.25 percent since the end of 2008. The lowest funds rate in history was perceived as an emergency measure during the financial crisis, but the economy still hasn’t shown that it can thrive without it. Critics say that cheap money is inflating asset bubbles and that the unemployment rate—5.9 percent in September—is as low as it can get without generating dangerous wage inflation.

The median forecast of the members of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee is for the funds rate to reach 1.25 percent to 1.5 percent by the end of 2015. Traders in the futures market are skeptical. They’re collectively betting that the funds rate will be only about 0.5 percent by then. That’s either a vote of no confidence in the U.S. economic recovery or a sign that traders think Fed Chair Janet Yellen is a dove who will keep rates low even after the economy gains strength, or maybe a little of both.

A Fed hike, whenever it comes, could affect growth, inflation, and exchange rates around the world. All else equal, higher interest rates in the U.S. would tend to attract more investment to the country, pushing up the value of the dollar vs. other currencies. That probably wouldn’t be enough to damage U.S. competitiveness significantly; even with its recent rebound, the dollar is still cheaper than it was a decade ago. If U.S. rates rise, countries such as India and Brazil that are fighting high inflation might be forced to raise their own rates to keep their currencies strong and avoid a spike in import prices. On the other hand, Europe and Japan, which have no fear of inflation, might welcome a drop in their currencies, which could spur exports and raise growth. “Devaluing is a mechanism to push deflation abroad,” says Stephen King, chief global economist atHSBC (HSBC) in London. “It’s a 21st century beggar-thy-neighbor policy.”

“America—still the world’s tallest midget,” read a headline on a report in late October by David Rosenberg, chief economist at asset manager Gluskin Sheff (GS:CN). The shorter midgets regard the U.S. with envy. In the euro zone, the straitjacket of a single currency works as the gold standard did before countries abandoned it during the Great Depression: It prevents weaker economies such as Greece and Portugal from depreciating their currencies, which can be a quick way for a nation with high labor costs to boost its exports and juice its economy. As for Japan, a sharp increase in consumption taxes walloped its economy this spring. A second increase is scheduled for 2015, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may seek to delay it if the economy remains weak. “The Japanese are throwing anything they can at the wall to make something stick to ward off deflation,” says David Morton, a partner at Rocaton Investment Advisors.

China is suffering its own brand of deflation. Wholesale prices have fallen every month since April 2012. Although President Xi Jinping has vowed to promote consumer-led growth, which would please the public by raising living standards, his efforts have fallen short. Business investment accounted for 49 percent of GDP last year, up from 35 percent in 2000, according to World Bank data. So much spending on plants and equipment leads to excess production capacity, which encourages price slashing that destroys profitability. China is a major importer of raw materials, so a slowdown in 2015 would continue to harm resource-rich nations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Chinese authorities are likely to try to help specific sectors like agriculture and small and midsize enterprises, but “their levers are becoming less effective,” says Andrew Polk, resident economist at the Conference Board China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing. “The downward pressure on the economy is too powerful to be offset by slight policy adjustments.”

  

One drizzly day this fall, Carnival (CCL) UK Chairman David Dingle sat in a lounge of the Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2, which was docked in Brooklyn, N.Y. He said demand for sea travel was good despite news reports about Ebola. “For a discretionary business such as ours,” Dingle said, “seeing what we hope is the final end of a recessionary period is very good. It’s really been a period where we had to tighten our belts considerably.” Pricing overall was still “bumpy,” he said, but it was beginning to recover at Cunard, a luxury brand.

Cunard saves money on fuel by propelling its hulls through the waves at a slower pace. Trans-Atlantic voyages that decades ago took five and a half days are now taking eight, Dingle said. It’s an apt metaphor for the world economy in 2015: slower than it once was but moving forward. Hours after Dingle provided his upbeat outlook, the QM2—the ocean liner, mind you, not some exotic form of quantitative easing—set sail for the Canadian Maritimes. Slowly.

Coy is Bloomberg Businessweek's economics editor. His Twitter handle is@petercoy.

Liberals Lose Their Cool in the Supreme Court Fight Over Obamacare (BusinessWeek)

By Paul M. Barrett November 18, 2014

On Nov. 7, the Supreme Court said it would entertain the latest legal assault on President Obama’s health-reform program. Leading liberal analysts worry—reasonably—that the justices will cripple Obamacare. Unfortunately, these defenders of the program are making their case by preemptively accusing right-leaning members of the high court of bad faith and rank partisanship.

Paul Krugman of Princeton and the New York Times has has called the argument that a syntactical glitch ought to doom the premium-subsidy provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act a “cruel absurdity.” Any justice adopting this argument won’t merely be wrong, Krugman continued, he will be “corrupt”—“willing to pervert the law to serve political masters.”

Linda Greenhouse of Yale Law School and the Times branded the high court’s agreement to hear the Obamacare challenge “a naked power grab by conservative justices who two years ago just missed killing [PDF] the Affordable Care Act in its cradle.” Greenhouse (disclosure: She’s an old friend) finds the arrival of the new case on the court’s docket “profoundly depressing” because it confirms that the justices are “just a collection of politicians in robes.”

STORY: The Baffling Math That Determines What People Actually Pay for Obamacare

In fact, the fight over Obamacare involves a real—if highly technical—flaw in the underlying 2010 law. Given our polarized, litigation-happy culture, it seems unsurprising, to say the least, that conservative activists would exploit every statutory weakness to seek to reverse the president’s signal legislative achievement. Rather than hysteria or depression, the better response is calm refutation.

The fight concerns the meaning of five words: “exchange established by the state.” To understand why that phrase is so important, let’s digress for a quick refresher on the Affordable Care Act. The law has three pillars: It bans insurers from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions.; it mandates that everyone buy insurance to assure that healthy people participate; and to make the mandate workable, it subsidizes less-well-off consumers.

Despite conservative warnings of incipient socialist dictatorship, among other dire side effects, the program seems successful. Millions of previously uninsured people now have coverage. Carriers are offering affordable premiums. Following initial software snafus, Americans are enrolling via state- and federal-sponsored exchanges at higher-than-expected levels.

VIDEO: Obamacare 2.0 Fares Better Than Last Year’s Debut

The Supreme Court challenge, however, isn’t about whether Obamacare works. The case addresses who can get those critical tax subsidies, without which the mandate would collapse, probably causing the program to unravel.

Read literally, the law provides subsidies for policies purchased on state-run insurance exchanges, not those run from Washington. The problem with that language is that only 14 states have set up their own exchanges. Republican politicians refused to go along with Obamacare, meaning that residents of 36 states have to seek insurance on federal exchanges.

Charged with interpreting Obamacare, the Internal Revenue Service concluded that Congress couldn’t have intended to gum up the statutory machinery with this state-versus-federal distinction. In the normal course of judicial business, courts defer to agency readings of ambiguous statutory verbiage. If I were justice-for-a-day, I’d uphold health reform on this basis: It’s pretty clear what Congress was trying to do, and the experts at the IRS deserve deference. Next case!

STORY: Why Red States Voted Blue on the Minimum Wage

The Obamacare challengers disagree. They contend that the state-exchange language isn’t ambiguous. The justices, they argue, lack authority to rewrite an important piece of legislation. If sloppy lawmakers wish to see their handiwork repaired, according to this view, they have to do it themselves. (With Republicans now in control of both chambers of Congress, of course, the notion that a revised version of Obamacare would find its way back to the president’s desk seems facetious.)

Contrary to Krugman’s slashing analysis, it’s not “corrupt” to read a clunky statutory provision according to its literal meaning, as opposed to inferring a more logical intention on the drafters’ part. It might be wrongheaded and mechanistic, but it doesn’t seem deceitful to oblige Congress to speak clearly when it is establishing a far-reaching economic and social policy.

Greenhouse maintains that it was dishonorable and disillusioning for the high court to take up the Obamacare challenge because there isn’t a lower-court split over the state-exchange language. The trouble with this position is that the justices are often quirky in deciding whether to accept a case. Lower-court confusion is one common basis for granting an appeal. On the other hand, the need to clarify national legal standards on vital issues—whether or not there is a lower-court split—sometimes suffices. Just one example: The absence of lower-court division hasn’t impeded liberals from urging the justices to intervene in defense of gay rights. What I’m alluding to here is the ancient Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence of goose and gander.

STORY: Getting Conservatives to March Against Global Warming

To sum up: Obamacare could be in trouble at the high court. The justices upheld the individual mandate by a razor-thin 5-4 vote. Conservative justices appointed by Republicans are less likely to be sympathetic to Obama’s agenda than are liberal justices appointed by Obama or other Democrats. Still, arguments on the merits are more likely than ad hominem invective to affect the outcome.

BLOG: Cheer Up, Liberals: City Dwellers Will Soon Rule the World

Barrett is an assistant managing editor and senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek. His new book, Law of the Jungle, tells the story of the Chevron oil pollution case in Ecuador.

Data Privacy: National auto dealer groups support the new protect consumer privacy

The National Automobile Dealers Association, National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers and the American International Automobile Dealers Association are trying to protect consumers privacy with a new commitment. Those groups, representing domestic and international automakers, announced that they support the Privacy Principles adopted by the Auto Alliance and Global Automakers ("Principles") and believe that they are a clear and strong demonstration of the automotive industry's firm commitment to transparency and leadership with respect to consumer privacy. 

Representatives said that automobiles are undergoing some of the most exciting and profound technological changes in the last 100 years, and “consumers must not only understand the ever-increasing complexity and functionality of their cars and trucks, they also must understand what information their vehicle now collects about them and how that information is treated”. 

They tried to defend themselves of and said that “they understand that while consumers enjoy and appreciate those exciting new features, they may also have concerns about vehicle data and want to know what choices they have about how it is used. The Principles address those very valid concerns and allow consumers worry-free enjoyment of their vehicles”.

In a press release, automobile dealers asspciations decalred they  will continue to fulfill the central role in educating consumers not only about the features on the vehicles they buy, but also about their choices with respect to their personal and vehicle information throughout the car buying and ownership experience.

Finally, they announced: "America's dealers applaud the Principles outlined today and will continue to work with their manufacturer partners to ensure that the entire automotive industry remains at the forefront of consumer privacy and that customer and vehicle data are treated with the highest levels of care, respect and security".