Some additional reading December 8th from 16:41 to 23:54:
- PostPartisan – Sam Zell – Worst CEO – Sam Zell " put up $315 million of his own money and paid the balance of the purchase price, $8.2 billion, with the employee stock ownership plan – a move in which Tribune employees had no say whatever. But that actually overstates the amount of Zell’s investment. Of the $315 million he sunk into the company, it turns out that $225 million was simply a promissory note. Due to the vagaries of bankruptcy law, writes business analyst Mark Lacter on laobserved.com, that means that Zell has better protection for his stake than all his employees. Trib’s ESOP holds 100 percent of the company common equity – and it’s the holders of common stock who usually take a bath, or get wiped out altogether, in the debt restructuring that goes on under Chapter 11."
asshole.
- Thoughts from Kansas : The Creationist Running the EPA? – "t: Illinois Governor Halts Business With Bank of America
Johnson's administration of the EPA has been marked by a willingness to set aside scientific evidence in favor of the received word of his superiors.
Johnson worked his way up through the EPA ranks. His background in the sciences got him a gig in a lab at a chemical and biological warfare company (a company alleged by conspiracy theorists to have helped create AIDS), where his boss suggested he should go to work for the EPA to get insights into the regulatory process. Johnson explains: "Regulations were really frustrating. … I wondered if they [the EPA] really understood what it was like to work in a laboratory." So, at his boss's urging, off he went.At the EPA he worked his way up the ranks, opening the door to atrazine (an herbicide associated with sex changes in frogs), and pesticide testing on children. As administrator, he was in charge of some of the most contentious decisions of the post-invasion Bush Presidency. "
- Bloomberg.com: Illinois Governor Halts Business With Bank of America – " Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich said the state will suspend business with Bank of America Corp. until the lender restores credit to the shuttered Republic Windows & Doors company in Chicago where workers are staging a sit-in.
Blagojevich, a Democrat, spoke at a news conference today after meeting with employees who remained at the factory since Dec. 5, when it closed following the bank’s cancellation of its credit line. Illinois does “hundreds of millions of dollars” in business with the bank, he said. The Illinois Department of Labor will sue the manufacturer if Republic doesn’t respond to employee requests for vacation and severance pay, the governor said in a press release."
- Bill-O and Me: Hendrik Hertzberg: Online Only: The New Yorker – "The following is only for those who have an obsessive interest in petty squabbles between Fox News hosts and New Yorker scribblers. Consider yourself warned."
Bill-O sounds a bit unhinged if you ask me. Jeez. Somebody send O'Lielly a loofa, stat!
- Chrysler's chutzpah – "It seems to me it is one thing to bail out GM and Ford, which I favor, and quite another to bail out Chrysler, which I don't.
GM and Ford are public companies. Chrysler? It's owned by Cerberus, a private firm, and 100 co-investors.
Why should the federal taxpayer bail out 100 rich investors?
A few years ago they bought Chrysler for $7 billion. And their deal went bad. Shouldn't they suffer? "
