– Congress manages to get a lot done. If by a lot, you mean naming post offices.
– The Damsel in Distress part 2.
– I can’t be the only one who thinks the people of Spokane are having a sigh of relief about what’s going on in Toronto knowing that Jim West could have been worse.
– Despite the fact that I don’t like Sarah Palin’s politics, I think it’s pretty cool for Republic that she’s coming to town.
– I love this discussion of enclaves of Olympia.
It appears, according to advocacy group All Aboard Washington, the third emergency schedule for Amtrak Cascades to Bellingham, starts tomorrow, with Sound Transit equipment. They put it on their facebook, but no announcement from Amtrak, WSDOT, on any media. AAW said it is also in Amtrak’s reservation system.
You Don’t Say Dep’t
A study shows most banks try to hide their fees from customers and prevent comparison shopping.
http://lifeinc.today.com/_news.....-fees?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: We all know bankers are honest, hardworking, upstanding, reputable members of their communities, right? Uh … right? Uh … anybody there?
@2 It’s not just gigantic commercial banks doing this anymore either. Credit unions are starting to impose all sorts of fees and policies that you’re not likely to find out about unless you ask–and getting pretty clever at obfuscating them in their “online banking” Web pages.
America’s Most Obscenely Overpaid Employees
“According to a 2012 study by the Economic Policy Institute, American CEOs saw their pay increase … more than 127 times faster than worker pay [since 1978]. What accounts for this divergence? One compelling theory points to the rise of executives’ control over their own compensation ….”
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on.....-chairmen/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Yeah, well, no shit Sherlock. When you let employees write their own payroll checks they’re gonna pay themselves well. You can count on it.
Ray Irani, former chairman/CEO of Occidental Petroleum, is the poster boy for executive excess. He paid himself more than $1.2 billion during his 20-year career at Oxy including $476 million in one year. I bought OXY stock a week before he was ousted and it has gone up $14 a share since then. Getting him off the payroll, by itself, will fund dividend increases for years to come.
Irani didn’t only cheat his shareholders. He also stiffed Uncle Sam, hiding millions in illegal foreign tax shelters, according to the IRS (source: Wikipedia). And he looked the other way while serving as a director of a large homebuilder while its CEO backdated his own stock options, for which the CEO he was supposed to supervise went to prison. Irani chaired that company’s executive compensation committee while that was going on. That’s not been a very good outside director.
Corporations are creatures of the state. They are created by public laws and given special legal and tax privileges. Obviously we have some corporate governance problems under our existing laws. We have every right to demand that our elected representatives clean up those laws.
Meanwhile, private investors (even big ones) may have no effective say in corporate governance, but they have the right to vote with their feet. That’s exactly what I did; for over 25 years I refused to own OXY stock, and finally bought it only when I was certain Irani was on his way out. It was a large public pension fund — the California teachers — that used its clout to force him out. Otherwise he’d still be looting Occidental and enriching himself with money that properly belonged to California’s educator retirees and other shareholders. For decades, our existing corporation laws failed to stop him (and other CEOs just like him), and nobody else could stop him either. That’s a national disgrace.
Drought and rising temperatures are causing many small harbors of the Great Lakes to shrink away.
Yes, Al Gore is fat, and the world you grew up in won’t exist for your grandchildren. We’re really fracking it up.
I was beginning to doubt it would happen. It’s the best they could do, and definitely not perfect. Only a half hour longer than with the usual Amtrak Cascades trains. Only took a week to hammer out the details.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2.....ingham.htm
Another Florida story.
His alleged crime: giving the officers “dehumanizing stares” and “clenching his fists.”
http://www.alternet.org/civil-.....humanizing
What is wrong with the cops?
So much for Owebammascare saving money. California rates are soaring 64% to 147% just due to that ridiculous tower of S$(:. Great job on all that affordable care BS.
You got links to facts for that rant or you just pulling the numbers out of your bus?
Megan Kelly at FoxNews went after Eric Erickson over the comments he made about women earning more than husbands.
http://thinkprogress.org/media.....?mobile=wp
As for the comments he made about it being against nature, I guess he has never seen a lion pride. It’s the lioness that brings home the gazelle.
@10. A comment: Portman only comes out for gay marriage when it effects him and his son. Kelly only slams Ericson because his opinion cover her.
Conservatives never push back when it doesn’t personally effect them.
11)Good point.
Wow! This guy is a good writer:
http://darwinbondgraham.wordpress.com/
Totally missed out on him since the dawn of the “great recession” and this website has some interesting video.
http://thoughtmaybe.com/
Varying quality but some really good stuff.. Outside of maybe youtube, I haven’t found another site that has just about all of Adam Curtis’ films.
You humans are hopeless. A kindergarten graduation turned into a riot with 8 adults going to jail. At least no guns were involved this time, a rarity in human interactions nowadays. What if they’d all had AR-15s? We’d have a school full of dead toddlers.
“[Police spokesman] Drummond said it was unfortunate that what should have been a joyous day for the little scholars moving onto first grade ended with their relatives getting hauled away in handcuffs. ‘It’s just sad that it was marred by some adults who should be setting an example for the kids of how to behave but who did quite the opposite,’ he said.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....ation?lite
Forbes discusses the CA ObamaCare rate increases
Recently some lazy unemployed nitwit blabbed this incorrect CA rates going down with Obummercare story… well it is an unemployed nitwit!
Meanwhile for the daily the libtardism run amok entry…
PuddyCommentary.. what is it with litards? Liberalism is a mental disorder of the first kind! What’s next Fruit Loops in their cereal bowl. Well, libtards are loopy too!
Why does Obummer hate the Military in Afghanistan?
PuddyCommentary… well Obummer must provide funding for those special golf outings.
And… libtards can’t get any funnier than this…
Puddy Commentary… The tolerance brigade of loony libtards provides a very enlightening experience about their societal views!
Dayum!
Holy IRS Scandal Batman… More great news on the Being Lernered front…
In NYC, another milestone in the Sandy Recovery, the temporary H-Train shuttle in the Rockaways was disconnected, as the repairs to the washed out track on the regular A-Train were completed. The first train in, was composed of vintage equipment.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....-1.1358778
One thing the MTA did better than New Jersey Transit, was protecting rolling stock from the floods. Only 11cars were damaged, and when you consider the rolling stock of every MTA division, they did a good job.
@20 When government does something right or well, few comment, but let it make a mistake and conservative want to shut it down.
21) That is true.
Monster Tornado Slams Into Oklahoma City
At this hour, a huge mile-wide tornado is ripping through downtown Oklahoma City, leaving a swath of destruction. No word yet on casualties but it’s expected there will be some.
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This was predictable. Obviously an Omnipotent Being is venting His wrath against Clay Bennett and OKC for stealing Seattle’s basketball team. That city’s basketball palace appears to be the intended target of this lightning bolt of fierce breath from divine nostrils. If it’s flattened maybe they’ll send the team back to us.
Monster Tornado Slams Into Oklahoma City
At this hour, a huge mile-wide tornado is ripping through downtown Oklahoma City, leaving a swath of destruction. No word yet on casualties but it’s expected there will be some.
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This was predictable. Obviously an Omnipotent Being is venting His wrath against Clay Bennett and OKC for stealing Seattle’s basketball team. That city’s basketball palace appears to be the intended target of this lightning bolt of fierce breath from divine nostrils. If it’s flattened maybe they’ll send the team back to us.
The suburb of Moore, where those schools were hit, is getting hit again.
Oh my! Sounds so bad!
But wait, if you actually READ the article you see:
And that is the highest rate quoted. And the article goes on to explain about help available for low income people.
Was BUTTPUTTY born an idiot?
Inquiring minds don’t really care.
I wonder how many people in this state would just love to pay only $261 a month for insurance. Especially if you have a preexisting condition.
And did you know that chicken pox is a preexisting condition? It is if your insurance company does not want to pay up after you have spent years paying their premiums.
@15 It’s too damned bad Repukes put a higher priority on destroying the presidency of the man elected by the American people (twice, no less!) than on cooperating to write a better piece of health care legislation. Maybe some of Obamacare’s flaws would have been avoided if the R’s were constructive and not just the “Party of NO! NO! NO!” No less than 37 repeal attempts that have zero chance of going anywhere. Really, GOP congressmen shouldn’t be paid their salaries, because they’re loafing on the job! Well, I guess business owners and citizens will just have to live with the way things are until voters get so completely fed up with the Rethugs’ childish behavior that they throw them completely out of Washington D.C. so the people’s work can get done.
@7 Gee, Florida cops are racists, who would’ve thought? But that’s okay, we don’t need the feds supervising their elections anymore because they’re no longer stringing up black teenagers on phone poles, so say the conservatives on the Extremist Court.
Deadbeat 1-Percenter Uses Bankruptcy To Avoid His Debts
This guy is a serial reneger. I guess raking in $200 million from selling the company he founded didn’t make him rich enough to pay his bills, his taxes, or much of anything else.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/20.....chapter-7/
http://upstart.bizjournals.com.....l?page=all
http://tinyurl.com/mva3t4t
http://tinyurl.com/lol9tf9
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This guy’s a deadbeat, tax dodger, and all-around lowbrow jerk. In other words, a typical one-percenter. If he was a $25,000-a-year teacher who missed a student loan payment they’d throw him in jail. But if you’re rich and broke, you get preferential treatment, because our warped society worships money and people who fling it around (even if it’s other people’s money they’re flinging around).