The Cutting Edge

$103 BILLION down the Afghan Drain.

2014-07-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

Speedboats for a landlocked nation, a soybean planting program in a country that eats wheat, airplanes rusting on the tarmac — there has been a litany of waste from the $103 billion spent by the US in Afghanistan.

http://news.msn.com/in-depth/shining-a-spotlight-on-multi-billion-dollar-waste-in-afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?pagewanted=all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco

$6 to $8 BILLION earmarked annually for Afghanistan? This while Detroit and 36 other US CITIES have filed for BANKRUPTCY. THIS IS MONEY TAKEN/EXTORTED BY THE IRS from US TAXPAYERS!! This is unconscionable, and in my opinion, fundamentally UNCONSTITUTIONAL. It is immoral, if not illegal, to intimidate, arrest, extort, and otherwise TORTURE the US TAXPAYERS, only to take their hard earned money and freely give it away to foreign countries, which provide absolutely no tangible or theoretical benefit to the AMERICAN Taxpayers. I have a better idea. Let Afghan expats residing in the US send money to Afghanistan. Take the $6-$8 Billion and give it to the local economies in the bankrupt US cities. Better yet, lets investigate congress and the governmental agencies for racketeering and corruption. This is all about giving government contract to their political and personal cronies who can profit immensely from building pointless and purposeless projects so they can profit. IN TOTAL…$103 BILLION…money that could have been appropriated for healthcare, education or civic governance in the USA. Ask the average taxpayer where Afghanistan is…unless they are ex-military, they probably will neither know nor care. Now for the punchline…why the hell were we in Afghanistan in the first place? You were told it was to protect the people from the Russian. You were told it was to protect the people from Islamic Fundamentalist and radical extremist. You were told it was to purge the opium trade. What you were not told was the truth. We were in Afghanistan to keep the Russsians from getting their hands on RARE EARTH MINERALS, the largest deposits of which have been identified in Afghanistan. Presently, China controls 90% of the global market in REMs, much of it sourced from dredging the ocean floors in Chinese Territorial waters. These REMs are critical to the tech industry and materials sciences. To understand the impact of this, consider the following analogy. Around 1932, US geologist identified massive subterranean Oil fields (the Ghawar or Gwar) in Saudi Arabia. Texaco and Standard Oil, among other interests, mobilized to develop the gulf oil fields, and created the desert oil economies that ballooned thereafter. Realizing the power and profit of the "Black Gold", the Saudis simply repatriated and nationalized the oil fields (1980's) under the megacorp Saudi ARAMCO, presently the largest company in the world with an estimated valuation around 3 TRILLION dollars. Having lost control of the worlds largest and most valuable oil field, consequently suffering under the heels of OPEC during the 80's and 90's, it is understandable why the US did not wish to suffer a similar fate on the tech front. Therefore, we went into Afghanistan with bats swinging and guns blazing, in the name of glory for the US economy. What actually happened in Afghanistan? The US CIA created, organized and funded Al Qaeda as a guerrilla group to hold off the Russians. The CIA placed Ahmed Wali Karzai on its payroll, ostensibly as a CIA informant. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0). He is the brother of of former Afghan President Hamid Karzai and one of the top gun runners and Opium traders in Afghanistan. So much for stopping the Opium trade (by the way, in America, the DEA arrests and prosecutes drug dealers…apparently the US Foreign Policy is to actually PAY them…and you wonder why we can't win the war on drugs…smh). Finally, as with all other military and paramilitary engagements, it became a feeding frenzy for Congressional capitalist cronies. Multi million dollar contracts were handed out like candy and party favors. Friends of the Bush families profited immensely over the past couple decades. All this, while the American taxpayers suffered in silence under the heels of an IRS which was becoming increasingly and eerily similar to the Nazi SS stormtroopers. Retirees terrorized into compliance. Single mothers losing half their paychecks to garnishes. Hell, the IRS have been known to demand audits from deceased individuals. Yup…Death and taxes are the only two things which are certain in life…but of this you can be sure…not even death can save you from taxes…just google probate court. It is time to end the oppression imposed upon the American people by the government elected to lead us. Power comes from the People.

TITANIUM Bitches!

2014-04-03T09:18:00.006-07:00

OK….Now, lets rack em up and compare.
GM & Mary Barra…31 crashes, at least 13 fatalities due to a faulty switch. DECADES after discovery, finally a recall.

Tesla & Elon Musk…3 fires, not caused by a defect in the vehicle. However, a vulnerability is identified, and less than a YEAR later, a TITANIUM underbody is designed to provide armor. Yes, you read that right. Not cheap plastic….TITANIUM. Way to man up to the moment Musk. Time for Elon to make his own cologne. I would buy that…and his car. THIS IS HOW YOU RUN SHIT…DETROIT…this is why your days are deservedly numbered. The Detroit auto industry has FAILED Americans for DECADES. Don't bother spitting shit if you are not old enough to remember the Pinto and the K-car debacles. Ignorance is not bliss, contrary to what you may have been told. It is time for the public to get behind and support a manufacturer who is both personally attentive to problems and prioritizes intervention and primary prevention. They say in life…shit happens. What matters most is how you choose to deal with it. Tell Mary Barra that no amount of crying will bring back the dead.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/elon-musk-turns-to-medium-and-gifs-to-reveal-new-model-s-fire-safety-feature/?source=gravity&cps=gravity

Goldman does it again.

2014-04-01T21:12:00.000-07:00

Seriously??? Our Government borrows $780 BILLION from China to bail out the big banks (including Goldman!). Instead of pumping this cash into the US economy to create economic liquidity to counter the credit crisis (look at Detriot, and the 36 US cities filing for bankruptcy). Instead, the banks are investing the money in developing markets. While I understand their profit motive, in truth this is the same greedy short sighted vision which sold us out to China and India. Now that these countries are developing into leading economies, the banks and the corporations are searching for new opportunities offshore. The point is that they have learned NOTHING from the previous 4 decades. Our government has once more failed to do what it is intended to do….protect and serve the public.

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-argentina-to-receive-1-billion-loan-from-goldman-sachs-newspaper-2014-30

GM…EPIC FAIL

2014-04-01T21:08:00.004-07:00

Now, I am not an attorney. However, I do know for a FACT that since GM knew about the defect and failed to disclose that while negotiating for its indemnity during its bankruptcy filing, then such actions should disqualify its indemnification. '
Additionally, I reiterate that despite the tears shed by Barra, she ran the GLOBAL ENGINEERING for GM and as such she must have known about this….apparently most of the engineers did.
In either case…the willful and deliberate failure of GM to replace the parts once determined to be defective, and then secondarily failing to recall the death traps only serves to underscore the point…the blatant disregard GM has for human life. GM was more concerned about the press and the bottom line than proactively doing the right thing to prevent such deadly tragedies.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/gm-recall/gm-takes-heat-families-nhtsa-congress-n69166

Whitewashed Hogwash.

2014-03-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

http://time.com/29621/gm-ceo-apologizes-recall/

Ok…this is just whitewashing at its best, puff piece journalism intended to elicit absolution for GM's CEO Mary Barra.
Barra claims to have found out about the ignition problems in December of 2013.

Hmmm…
FACT: GM engineers have admitted that GM knew about this issue since 2004.

Fact. Barra has worked at GM since she was 18. She is now 52. She was formerly the VP of GLOBAL MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING for GM. Meaning, she was in charge of ALL ENGINEERING. PERIOD. She is a very savvy, intelligent woman. There is absolutely no way conceivable that a problem of this magnitude, in her department, could have remained without her awareness…for 10 years. The amount of people involved, the extent to which the data would have to be fabricated both in company reports and published industry/trade press would be staggering. Hard to believe this many people, and entire division would know of the problem…and yet the single person in charge of that division would claim to be completely unaware of it.

NOW….if her statement really is true…is this really the type of ignorant incompetent individual that should be running a GLOBAL MULTINATIONAL COMPANY? If she could not manage a division…who could possibly believe she is capable of running the entire company?

I am calling bullshit on this one. Engineers by profession and personality live, eat and breathe data. This woman is an ENGINEER with an MBA from STANFORD.

What do you think?

http://time.com/29621/gm-ceo-apologizes-recall/

GM a SERIAL KILLER?

2014-03-19T14:33:00.003-07:00

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/13/gm-recall-death-nhtsa-airbag/6401257/

The next time the government wants to give away $50 BILLION dollars (which taxpayers will ultimately have to repay, it should give those funds to small and mid sized businesses that are currently struggling to find funding. GM has already been allowed to MOOCH off the taxpayers by virtue of the corporate welfare policies which permit GM and large influential companies like it to pay little or NO TAXES which receiving multi-billion dollar subsidies. All this while you, the working person, is slapped with 30-50% tax hits and are terrorized by the IRS at every turn if you miss a single penny. Its time for FORD, GM and Chrysler to survive on their own…just like small and mid sized corporations are required to do. There was no justification for borrowing almost $800 Billion to bail out 5 companies, while the public is left holding the bill without the benefits. That money did not introduce liquidity into the markets, we still have a credit crisis, and there is no evidence that recovery is imminent. The indexed valuation of the dollar is still in decline, and the consumer economic indices such as purchasing power parity indicate this is an economic depression. True recovery will be reflected in a reduction in the unemployment and jobless rates, reduction in the interest rate (without any number fudging by the LIBOR criminals), reduction in the artificially inflated cost of goods (especially consumer commodity staples such as wheat, rice, milk ext). On the housing side, recovery will be see in reduced short sale transactions and foreclosure rates and bankruptcy filings.

It makes no sense, economically, to persist in pandering to the whims of economically inefficient corporations that are incapable of surviving in the Darwinian environment of a Capitalist marketplace. This is painfully obvious when you consider that 75% of the GDP is generated by small and mid sized companies in their aggregate. This means that we can actually afford to let the big multinationals DIE.

Why? Well, lets explore the cons. Loss of JOBS! Hmmm…they are small potatoes in the grand scheme of the job market. What about pensions? If they can't stay afloat, that pension plans are probably raided or insolvent already. What about their products? WTF? REALLY? Are you kidding me? Its because of their substandard pathetic products and abysmally archaic corporate infrastructure that they are where they are. They need to go…period. The loss of of GM will actually BENEFIT America. Loosing GM frees up the nearly 4 billion in subsidies it gets every year. That $4 Billion can be used to start new, agile, innovative companies or bolster existing companies with promising technologies. For example….forget GM…back TESLA. Why hold on to the past when the future is knocking on the door? Tesla would then be able to reduce price point based on increasing sales volume. This would concurrently redue local fossil fuel consumption, while simultaneously reducing adverse environmental impact from emissions (I have a big family, so I am waiting for a TESLA with 3rd row seats .

We do not need GM, or any of the other large multinationals that claim to be American, yet do not contribute to the tax basis of the American Economy. The only people who need or benefit from these companies are the banks who own them and the congressmen who are paid by them to ensure their favorable tax treatments and government subsidies persist while they stockpile revenue in overseas accounts (yes…I am talking about APPLE). However, while Apple may be "hiding" money overseas, at least it is not taking money from the Government that Taxpayers have to repay.

This would somehow be worthwhile, or at least it could have been rationalized, if the cars GM built were not deliberately allowed to be defective, resulting in the deaths of many good American taxpayers. Talk about chopping off the hand that feeds you.

The only justice that can come from this debacle is to see the entire executive office of GM formally indicted, brought to trial and held accountable for the deaths of these people. But that will never happen…banks own corporations, corporations own politicians, and politicians decide how the law is made and interpreted. So, yeah…if you are a Bank, you get to steal billions. If you are a major corporation, you can get away with being a serial killer.

Its been more than 12 years....

2014-03-11T19:03:00.002-07:00

Saw the movie....a profound and sobering synopsis of the atrocities inflicted during the era of slavery. Still, more tragic is the persistence of the vestiges of slavery which remain prevalent in todays society...the psychological, emotional, economic and social sequelae of slavery. Today we live in a world of economic slavery, where socialized religion and political infrastructures perpetuate the predatory precepts practiced by the slave traders, handed down to the Robber Barons of the Industrial Revolution, and inherited by the Banking Oligarchs of the modern world. As Samuel Bass (Brad Pitt) so eloquently expressed it..."Some day, there will be a reckoning."

The Real Solomon Northup: Documents from the Slave Years |

BLOGS.ANCESTRY.COM

Solomon Northup was born a free person of color in New York in 1808. This was the year the 1807 Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves, which banned the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the United States, took effect. A somewhat ironic fact, considering what happened next. In 1841, Northup was lured…

CIA SPYING?? i am shocked.....yeah...right

2014-03-11T18:46:00.002-07:00

LMFAO....Now this is priceless. Apparently, when the CIA spies on Senators, it is illegal. When the NSA spies on EVERYONE ELSE (including the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff) its perfectly fine. Are these really the people we want making laws that govern us? It reminds me of ObamaCare, and other elite "congressional exemptions". Lets face it folks, this is Orwellian at its best..."All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others." Its time to clean house in Congress.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/cia-senate-snooping/cia-accused-spying-senate-intel-committee-breaking-law-n49816

Fix America

2014-03-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

Best solution....eliminate Govt. subsidies to major industries such as Oil, eliminate foreign government donations (did it REALLY make sense to GIVE $20 BILLION to PAKISTAN????) and eliminate the loopholes which allow big corporation to move manufacturing overseas while also stashing massive cash reserves overseas (Apple has over 80 BILLION USD overseas...and thats one of the more honest and transparent companies out there.)

America is going to find itself much as the French were just prior to the French Revolution. In fact, as George Santayana (NOT CHURCHILLL!) famously said "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Reflecting upon the end of Tsarist Russia, or Fascist Italy, or reaching back into the annals of history to the days of Roman Rule, we see the same ominous specter looming about. The confluence of job losses and the exponentially increasing wealth divide is creating as socia chasm into which this country will surely fall as others have. The unchecked avarice and blatant impunity with which the banking industry operates has resulted in economic destabilization due to 3 decades of short-sighted profit-driven corporate outsourcing overseas. This should be blatantly illegal. First, the shift of jobs overseas may enrich the bottom line in the short term, however in the long term we loose. Overseas industrial development enriches those regional economies at the expense of jobs, security, income and purchasing power here at home. Second, all future intellectual developments resulting from those investments become part of the intellectual wealth of that country. For example, when we introduced manufacturing to China, they literally took it and ran with it. First, they created grey and black market counterfeit products (CNN reports the ICC has estimated that market sector to reach 1.7 TRILLION USD by 2015.) Next, through a process of reverse engineering, deductive reasoning and deconstructive re-engineering, they systematically began to create products of equal or superior quality. Face it...the days of cheap Chinese knockoffs are long gone. Louis Vuitton reps are hard pressed to tell the difference between the real and the fake. Extrapolating from this we see an ever bigger problem emerging. When the engineer working at the factory has a brilliant insight and decides to leave and start another company based on the new idea / design / development he has in mind, I guarantee you that he will not be bringing that company to America...or the profits thereof.

Next is the issue of the global impact and over-reach of the multinational behemoths that are fed by corporate outsourcing. While these entities on one hand do bring economic enrichment and development to such countries, the environmental impact and social consequences can often be devastating. Look at the experience with Coca-Cola in India at the rural level. Or consider the consolidation of control of global fresh water reserves under the multinational players. In short, corporations are akin to the modern equivalent of the slave traders...they may fuel the growth of commerce, but the cost is human suffering.

My point here is that corporations should be held accountable (literally, from a tax perspective) to the country of their origin. In other words, ALL income earned, irrespective of country of origin, should be taxed at the SAME tax rate as the citizens...after all, this is a very simple logical extension of the legal doctrine that considers corporations to be "legal persons".

Sadly, with our Banks controlling our politicians, and our politicians creating and interpreting the law, we will find no end to our misery and suffering unless we seize our destiny within our hands and demand true democracy and freedom from economic tyranny. Slavery, you see, is alive and kicking. Not slavery in the sense of the "White man" and the "field nigger", but a more sinister and global threat...social and economic slavery. Social slavery, in that we are subjected to invasive limitations on our basic human rights and liberties...yes...here in America. When the government mandates what you can legally do in your bedroom, who you can legally do in your bedroom, and how you can legally do it...ok...you get the point. Economic freedom, as evidenced by the debtor nation we have become, and the irresponsibility of the Federal Government, in collusion with the Federal Reserve Banking System, to defraud the American people while enriching the Banking Industry. I challenge you to identify a single banking executive who has served time for their involvement in the Foreclosure crisis.

LAPD....what more can I say?

2013-02-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

I am amazed at how biased the media can be. Here is clearly a case of LAPD officers acting as vigilante mercenary militia and waging an ALL OUT, NO HOLDS BARRED assault on civilians.
As you read this article, remember that these are TRAINED OFFICERS with extensive field experience.

Now dear reader, I invite you to read on in fear. When you are done reading, please visit the link and read the comments.

8 LAPD officers involved in shooting after Dorner 'case of mistaken identity'

LAPD Capt. Phil Tingirides and LAPD Sgt. Emada Tingirides recalled fearful and anxious days under police protection, after their eight-member family was targeted by former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner.

By Hetty Chang and Samantha Tata, NBCLosAngeles.com

Bullet holes in front doors, trees and a kitchen serve as reminders of the chaos brought to their Torrance, Calif. neighborhood during a frantic manhunt for an ex-police officer bent on revenge killings.

Nine bullets pierced a tree on Redbeam Avenue where two newspaper delivery women were shot by police officers who had mistaken them for fugitive Christopher Dorner.

Follow @NBCNewsUS

Margie Carranza and her 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering the Los Angeles Times before dawn near the home of a police officer named in Dorner’s angry manifesto.

The shooting occurred Feb. 7 after officers were notified of a truck that matched the description of Dorner’s gray 2005 Nissan Titan. Hernandez suffered two bullet wounds to the back. She was released from the intensive care unit and was recovering. Carranza, 47, had minor injuries related to shattered glass and a wounded finger.

The women’s lawyer counted 102 bullet holes in their blue Toyota Tacoma and several more in Hernandez’s hoodie.

Weeks later, memories of the shooting were still evident, with five bullet holes piercing a home’s front door and more in walls and garages that lined the street.

"My guess is that they threw policy out the window and got in trouble," said resident Steve McDonald, whose solar panels sustained bullet damage. "They're lucky they didn't hit each other because there were bullets flying every which way."

More news from NBCLosAngeles.com

NBC4 has learned that eight LAPD officers were involved in the shootout. All of them have been assigned to non-field assignments until "the [police] chief decides otherwise."

So far, their names have not been released and there has been no comment from the Los Angeles District Attorney about pressing charges.

An attorney for the women, Glen Jonas said he’ll let the investigation run its course.

"If the city wants to do it the easy way and get it resolved; if they want to do it for hard way, then we’ll file a lawsuit," he said.

Police said they cannot comment on on-going internal investigations.

But some residents, despite being so close to the gunfire, said they understand the officers’ actions.

"I think they have to be supported through this," said Joanne Arnn. "Yes, it's unfortunate, thank goodness no one here was fatally injured, but it's not a very safe world."

Arnn said that Torrance Police Department contacted each household on the block to learn if anyone was injuries and offered to pay for any damage to their homes.

About two blocks away and thirty minutes after the women were shot, a Redondo Beach man was fired upon by officers who also mistook him for the wanted Dorner.

Related links:

Explore related topics: lapd, manhunt, christopher-dorner, nbclosangeles-com

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/22/17058326-8-lapd-officers-involved-in-shooting-after-dorner-case-of-mistaken-identity

The Best Government that MONEY CAN BUY

2012-12-03T17:56:00.001-08:00

Well, previously I had been steamed about Sheldon Adelson giving $50 Million to Mitt Romney. Now we find out, after the fact, that there were previously undisclosed donations totaling...wait for it...$150 Million. Seriously, if I were to pick up the phone and call Mitt, I probably couldn't even get his secretary on the phone even if I were lucky enough to get his number. On the other hand, if Big Bucks Sheldon bangs on the keypad, I guarantee Mitt will drop the dinner fork and pick up the phone.
Now, if the money was not obscene enough, there is the issue of the ongoing FEDERAL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS. Wait...isn't there some standard against consorting with individuals suspected of engaging in criminal activities? Fair enough, these are ALLEGATIONS...but this is also the Vegas "Casino Business" (anyone who is aware of the history of Las Vegas, feel free to substitute the appropriate descriptive term. The very fact that a PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE would accept any money from this individual is ominous, and speaks to the strings that control our political process.

Sheldon Adelson Spent Far More On Campaign Than Previously Known

Posted: 12/03/2012 12:00 am EST Updated: 12/03/2012 12:35 am EST

2,694

658

388

9560

GET POLITICS ALERTS:

REACT:

Important Funny Typical Scary Outrageous Amazing Innovative Finally

FOLLOW:

Elections 2012, John Boehner, Mitt Romney, Campaign Finance, Elections 2012, Newt Gingrich,Video, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Las Vegas Sands, Sheldon Adelson, Fcpa, Mitt Romney 2012, Sands Casino, Sheldon Adelson Campaign, Sheldon Adelson Las Vegas, Sheldon Adelson Mitt Romney, Sheldon Adelson Sands, Politics News

GOP donor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

WASHINGTON -- Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson vowed to spend as much as $100 million to defeat President Barack Obama and help the GOP take control of Congress. According to two GOP fundraisers with close ties to the Las Vegas billionaire, he made good on that promise -- and then some. Adelson ultimately upped the ante, spending closer to a previously unreported $150 million, the fundraisers said.

Adelson, a fierce critic of Obama’s foreign and domestic policies, has said that his humongous spending was spurred chiefly by his fear that a second Obama term would bring "vilification of people that were against him." As that second term begins, Adelson's international casino empire faces a rough road, with two federal criminal investigations into his business.

This coming week, Adelson plans to visit Washington, according to three separate GOP sources familiar with his travel schedule. While here, he’s arranged Hill meetings with at least one House GOP leader in which he is expected to discuss key issues, including possible changes to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the anti-bribery law that undergirds one federal probe into his casino network, according to a Republican attorney with knowledge of his plans.

During the election, Adelson told Politico that the Justice Department investigation, and the way he felt treated by prosecutors, was a primary motivation for his investment in Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other GOP candidates. He put his money where his mouth was. The two GOP fundraisers, both with strong ties to Adelson, said that the casino mogul dished out close to $150 million, including between $30 million and $40 million to the Karl Rove-founded Crossroads GPS and at least $15 million to grassroots efforts with financial links to Charles and David Koch. Among other major beneficiaries of Adelson’s largess were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received almost $5 million from Adelson, and the Republican Jewish Coalition, which got the bulk of its $6.5 million budget from him, the fundraisers said.

All of these are non-profit groups, which -- unlike the super PACs that raked in $54 million in funds from Adelson and his wife -- are not currently required to disclose their donors. Adelson’s public spending spree, larger than any other donor's in the last election, was made possible by two high court rulings in early 2010 that allowed corporations, unions and individuals to write unlimited checks to outside groups for political ads and other activities backing candidates

The two fundraisers who provided information to The Huffington Post represented separate groups that each received seven-figure checks this year from Adelson. The fundraisers learned details of Adelson’s spending plans about a month prior to the election: one heard of them in a talk with the casino owner himself, while the other didn’t indicate if his information came from Adelson or a top aide to the billionaire. Both requested anonymity to protect their ties to Adelson and because they were not authorized to speak publicly about his giving.

Adelson’s hefty support for Rove’s GPS made sense, said a third fundraiser who knows both men, because of their long-standing links. Adelson forged good ties with Rove after he served as deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush and this year they bonded further. Rove spent much of the last night of the Republican National Convention hanging out in a skybox suite with Adelson and other politicos and friends, and Rove also provided the casino mogul occasional advice on potential donations -- at least once undercutting another group seeking Adelson funding, said the two GOP fundraisers.

Rove, who also provided advice in 2008 to the Adelson-backed dark money group Freedom’s Watch, was just one of several GOP politicos with shadow party links that Adelson schmoozed and brainstormed with in Tampa. Long known as a hands-on donor who likes to immerse himself in details, Adelson had a crowded convention schedule. For instance, he spent time one afternoon meeting with leaders of several groups that he’d either already helped, or was considering writing more big checks to for their electoral drives.

Among the political heavies Adelson met with that afternoon were Sean Noble, a leading operative for the Koch brothers, and Carl Forti, a key political strategist for both Crossroads GPS and its affiliate American Crossroads. Forti is also a strategist for pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, which received $20 million from Adelson and his wife Miriam, an Israeli-born doctor.

Earlier in the year, Adelson indicated at different times that he planned to spend about $100 million or “as much as it takes” to defeat Obama and help Republicans in Congressional races. Adelson’s personal wealth has been pegged at $20.5 billion by Forbes, making him one of the world’s richest men and enabling him to open his checkbook wide without worrying much about his bottom line.

Adelson’s largess appeared to have an impact on Romney’s campaign strategy. After Adelson publicly suggested that Romney sometimes waffled in his stances and wasn’t as ideologically consistent as his original pick, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, he and Romney met in late May in Las Vegas. Shortly afterwards, the casino owner’s first $10 million donation to Romney’s allied super PAC arrived.

Not long after their meeting, Romney restated his support for one of Adelson’s top priorities -- his fervent backing of Israel’s conservative government and his opposition to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Romney’s first foreign trip after his meeting with Adelson included a late July visit to Israel, which included a Jerusalem fundraiser that Adelson famously attended.

Now after what was largely a disappointing election for Adelson, his Las Vegas Sands casino empire could be facing heightened legal and political headaches. His sprawling operations are still mired in two wide-ranging federal criminal probes. Neither probe is said to be focused on Adelson’s conduct.

The Sands did not return several phone calls seeking comment for this piece.

In one inquiry, federal officials are looking into potential money laundering by two shady high rollers at his Las Vegas casinos. Settlement talks with Justice officials were under way in late October, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The money laundering investigation, led by the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, is probing whether the casino broke the law by failing to report to the government millions of dollars of potentially laundered funds that two gamblers transferred to its casinos.

One of the two gamblers, Ausaf Umar Siddiqui, is being probed about over $100 million of his transactions through the casinos. Separately, he was arrested in 2009 and pleaded guilty to accepting illegal kickbacks in his job as an executive with Fry’s Electronics in California. He is now serving a six-year jail term.

The other big gambler in the probe is Zhenil Ye Gon, a Chinese-born Mexican-based businessman, who reportedly transferred $85 million to Sands casinos several years ago. Ye Gon was indicted in 2007 for dealing in illegal drugs, but the charges were dismissed in 2009.

Meanwhile, another inquiry by Justice and the SEC has been under way for about two years. It involves allegations that Adelson’s lucrative casinos on the Chinese island of Macau may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to Chinese officials to expand its operations there. The lion’s share of Sands' corporate revenues now come from Macau, the only place in China where casino gambling is legal, and a Singapore casino.

Among the payments that Justice has been probing are $700,000 that went to a local attorney, Leonel Alves, who was hired by the Sands Chinese subsidiary while he was a government legislator in Macau. The Justice probe apparently grew out of a wrongful termination lawsuit by Steven Jacobs, the former president of the Sands operation in Macau who has been cooperating with Justice.

Jacobs' suit alleged that he was fired after numerous clashes with Adelson over "Adelson’s illegal demands." Adelson has flatly rejected Jacobs’ allegations and has said that "none of what he says is true and he can't prove it."

A Sands spokesman has said repeatedly that the company has been cooperating with Justice and has done nothing wrong.

Ryan Grim contributed reporting

Deja VU

2012-11-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

Somehow, this storyline seems vaguely familiar. The elements echo an uncanny similarity to something still simmering on the outskirts of our collective consciousness. Hmmmm....let's see now... ARMED white guy confronts UNARMED black teen (s), initiates a confrontation, pulls his gun and begins blasting off shots...eight of them in this case. Then he claims he feared for his life. Funny thing is this--most people fearing for their lives do NOT randomly accost a group of black kids. That sounds more like the actions of a ballistically empowered individual suddenly catching a case of the "imma go killa nigga" mode. While the details are admittedly sketchy, the provocative facts presented point to "loud music" as the inciting cause of the incident. Interesting. Apparently, Mr. Dunn was so terrified that he unleashed a barrage of 8 bullets. Clearly, he was not firing a warning shot. The 7 additional shots can literally be interpreted as "m*f, imma make sure yo' ass is dead, and stay dead!" So, one for the kill, and 7 extra for good measure. With all these vampire movies floating around, you never know...anything is possible. After all, we are being asked to believe that Dunn was an innocent victim who was fearing for his life and fired in self defense.
Seriously folks, let us remain impartial until the facts are brought to light. Lets probe the real questions here.

Is Dunn connected to the Florida State Attorneys office?
Does he have any family members that are Supreme Court judges?
Does Dunn have anger management issues?
Does Dunn have prior restraining orders?
Was Dunn drinking or impaired under any chemical influence?
Does Dunn have any psychiatric issues? he may have actually thought the music was the devil talking to him.
What type of gun was he packing while he rolled strapped?
Did Dunn call an ambulance?
Did Dunn check on his victim?
What happened to the 3-step rule in Florida? (personally, if I had no gun and I saw a dude loading his, I would hit the gas pedal...they say you should not bring a knife to a gunfight...so if you don't even have a knife, then get the f*#k outta there!).
Was Jordan Davis packing skittles? if so, we can now commence a class action lawsuit alleging that eating skittles can be hazardous to your health.
Was Davis slogging Ice Tea?
What KIND of music were the kids listening to?
Who the f*#k was the artist? mad street cred there bro.

Finally, HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU CLAIM "STAND YOUR GROUND" if you start a fight, fire off 8 shots, then DRIVE OFF LEAVING THE SCENE?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-shoots-teen-loud-music-article-1.1209345

U.S

Florida man shoots and kills 17-year-old teen after argument over loud music at gas station

Michael Dunn, 45, shot and killed teen Jordan Davis in Jacksonville on Friday, cops said. His lawyer said he acted in self-defense, drawing comparisons to the Trayvon Martin case.

Comments (12)

BY PHILIP CAULFIELD / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012, 8:54 AM

FCN

Investigators say Michael Dunn, 45, of Brevard County, shot Jordan Davis, 17, of Jacksonville on Friday after an argument over loud music at a gas station.

A Florida man asked a group of teens at a gas station to turn down the loud music blaring from their car and, after an exchange of words, opened fire on the vehicle, killing a 17-year-old boy, authorities said.

Michael Dunn, 45, of Satellite Beach, has been charged with murder for the Friday slaying of Jordan Davis, 17, a black high school student from the Jacksonville area.

His lawyer said Dunn, who is white, thought he saw a gun and felt threatened during the incident, indicating that he may seek protection under the state’s controversial Stand Your Ground Law, according to local reports.

"Self defense applies because Mr. Dunn was threatened," attorney Robin Lemonidis told CNN.

"We can't say what the defense will be at this stage … but Stand Your Ground is a possibility."

The alleged murder occurred on Friday as Dunn and his girlfriend were traveling to Jacksonville for his son’s wedding, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

The pair pulled into a gas station parking lot and stopped next to an SUV, which Davis was sitting in with three other teens, authorities said.

While his girlfriend was inside the store, Dunn asked the teens to turn down the loud music they were playing, cops said.

Davis said something back and there was a heated exchange, authorities said.

Dunn then pulled a gun and fired at least eight shots, hitting Davis twice, cops told the Sentinel.

Dunn and his girlfriend then left the scene.

The Sentinel said the two were staying in a Jacksonville hotel on Saturday when they heard news reports about the teen’s death and drove back to his home in Satellite Beach.

He was arrested at his home on Saturday and charged with murder and attempted murder.

He remains in jail after being denied bond on Monday.

No guns were found inside the teens’ car, authorities said.

Davis’ family demanded justice, saying there was no way Dunn fired in self-defense.

"He did something that there was no defense for," Ron David, Jordan’s father, told CNN.

The shooting immediately drew comparisons to the murder of Trayvon Martin in February, which sparked protests over Florida’s self defense laws and accusations that George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot him, was a racist.

Lemonidis said his client was “no vigilante.”

“There are no comparisons to the Trayvon Martin situation," Lemonidis told CNN. "(Dunn) is devastated and horrified by the death of the teen."

Jordan, who was a student at a magnet school in Duval County, will be buried in his hometown of Marietta, Ga., where his mother lives, according to reports.

Fu*k Politicians, Fix Education.

2012-11-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

Billions of dollars are spent every four years on what are essentially smear campaigns. This is not only dishonorable, but the mere fact that we have come to expect this as the normal conduct of congressional and presidential candidates speaks to the standards we are willing to accept as a society. When we condone, and then elect candidates conducting themselves with such dishonesty, how can we then hold them accountable to higher standards of honorable conduct in public office? Furthermore, when we elect them, knowing their platforms of lies and deceit, do we not in essence become complicit in condoning their conduct, and therefore just as culpable for their future misdeeds?
If we are to entrust our trillions of tax dollars, our welfare, our lives, and our future to our elected officials, then we must hold them to the highest moral and ethical standards.

The press has appointed themselves as the fact checkers for congressional and presidential candidates. However, the identification of such slanderous actions, misdirection and outright lies should be immediate grounds for judicial sanctions and removal from the campaign process. The simple fact is this...if these individuals are willing to lie blatantly to the public in order to get the job, then why would we expect them to conduct themselves with honesty and integrity once elected? We the people should empower the Supreme Court of the United States to enforce this on our behalf. We should not condone the actions of these candidates. There should be no tolerance...a single factual error should be grounds for dismissal, and possible legal sentence or sanctions. This impose the fact checking responsibility on the campaign staff and remove the potential for plausible deniability from the candidate, as the candidate would ultimately be responsible for what is written, published or said...just as if they were the representative of a corporation. This is important, as it attests to the idea of accountability. If we are to expect them to be accountable in office, let them first prove themselves to be so during the campaign trail. If we do not hold them accountable for what they have said or done during the campaign, then how can we honestly expect them to act with accountability during their tenure in office? It is time for real campaign reform...end the lies, and expect a higher standard.

I wonder how much this money would have helped if contributed toward healthcare or education budgets?

October 31, 2012, 5:54 PM14 Comments

Total Cost of Election Could Be $6 Billion

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

The total cost of the 2012 election could reach $6 billion, according to estimates from a leading research organization, which would obliterate the previous record by more than $700 million.

The increase has largely been driven by rapidly increased spending among “super PACs” and outside groups that can raise unlimited amounts of money from donors. Spending by outside groups could reach to more than $970 million for the 2012 cycle, although precise estimates are difficult because the rate of spending by outside groups has been rising so quickly since Labor Day

But even that increase could substantially understate the total. While super PACs — political committees that sprang into being after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling — spent at least $539.4 million through Oct. 31, hundreds of millions of dollars more are being spent below the radar by groups that do not register with the Federal Election Commission and purport to focus on educational, not political, activities. Such groups spent at least $203 million in the last two months, a window during which federal law requires formal disclosure of any expenditures that mention a candidate, and they spent even more earlier in the campaign cycle, on “issue ads” that are not subject to disclosure. Measured merely by the spending that is disclosed, three of the top six outside groups in 2012 are issue groups that are not required to publicly reveal their donors.

“One thing we can say for certain is that the transparency the Supreme Court relied upon to justify this new framework has been sorely lacking,” said Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which released the estimates on Wednesday.

The center said that the presidential election would likely account for about $2.6 billion in total spending, including spending by the candidates, parties, and outside groups. That figure would represent a decrease from 2008, in part because of lower spending by candidates in the primaries: President Obama, the incumbent, had no significant opposition, and the Republican candidates on the whole raised much less than the field did in 2008. But total spending by the two parties and their nominees through Election Day is likely to easily outpace 2008, because neither Mr. Obama nor Mitt Romney is accepting public financing and spending caps for the general election.

Perhaps the biggest expansion of outside spending has been in the battle for the House and Senate this year. Between 2008 and 2012 — neither a midterm election — independent expenditures in the House and Senate races increased from $46 million to $445 million, a tenfold increase that does not include issue ads run early in the cycle to soften up incumbents of both parties.

9/11...no surprise.

2012-09-12T12:11:00.002-07:00

This is hardly surprising....and sadly, it is the cornerstone in the theory that our own government, specifically members of the Bush (Jr.) administration may have subverted and orchestrated an even greater event than Bin Laden had intended.
Should you doubt the veracity of this, review the advance notification of Pearl Harbor. Even more chilling, read the NORTHWOODS report...this is historical fact in black and white. Then ask yourself the million dollar question: how could NORAD air control fail FOUR times in one morning...involving the two most high value targets in the US (wall street-financial, pentagon-military)?

It is my personal opinion that, given the intensity of electronic surveillance in DC, the attack on the pentagon was not possible without a direct order for NORAD to stand down.

For those who still remain skeptical, I suggest that you read up on the origins of Al-Qaeda and their link with CIA.

What remains entirely baffling to me is this simple fact...the war on terror is financed via Opium trade and Saudi Oil income. The Bush clan made a colossal fortune off the oil markets. Historically, the US has enacted economic embargoes against nations in the past for simply disagreeing with our foreign policy. I invite explanations as to why the fuck we still buy oil from Saudi Arabia, which finances the terrorist camps, on which we then spend BILLIONS (the war on terror and the war on drugs). Then there is the fact that the Bush family associates are beneficiaries of those defense and military contracts. Why have we not blocked importation of saudi oil? Why do we still fund anti-terrorist campaigns against organizations trained and equipped by the US government and the CIA? Im just asking questions...you can connect the dots and answer them.

Bush Knew More About Bin Laden's Plans Than We Realized

Reuters

ADAM CLARK ESTES46,090 ViewsSEP 11, 2012

Now, 11 years later, new details of the attack on the World Trade Center continue to emerge from the government's vault of classified documents and the journalists who've gained access. This year, the reporter with the jaw-dropping scoop is Kurt Eichenwald, a former Timesman and present contributing editor at Vanity Fair. After reading more than one tweet with the simple instructions "Read this," we clicked on the link to Eichenwald's powerful op-ed, due to be published in The New York Times on September 11. In it, Eichenwald goes into teeth-grinding detail about how the Bush administration had even more advance notice about Osama Bin Laden's attack than we previously realized. You should read it, too.

With the infamous August 6 White House briefing as a focal point, Eichenwald walks through the months and years of warnings leading up to the September 11 attacks. Some of these are events and reports that remain classified, but Eichenwald says he's "read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration's reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed."

Again, we already knew that Bush had some advance warning. We just didn't realize how much. This passage from Eichenwalds piece reads like a nightmare:

An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

That was in June of 2001. Three months later, the White House didn't have the luxury of avoiding reports about Bin Laden any more.

Read Eichenwald's piece in full.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author ataestes@theatlantic.com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Adam Clark Estes

HOUDINI WHO DONE IT

2012-08-20T19:56:00.002-07:00

OK...Now I preface the following by posing a few questions of simple logic and elementary physics and anatomy.

1. The police searched the persons and vehicle, finding marijuana but not the GUN supposedly concealed on the person? The report specifically states that the trio were searched...
2. Frisking is a basic element of search and investigate.
3. The individual detained and handcuffed by the POLICE is now the responsibility of the POLICE and as such, they are accountable for his welfare...even if (albeit highly improbable in this case) it is self inflicted.
4. It is anatomically impossible to contort a gun to shoot yourself in the RIGHT TEMPLE if your wrists are handcuffed BEHIND your back while sitting in the back of a police squad car....unless your are Harry Houdini reincarnated or a professional contortionist...and still then, highly unlikely.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/20/13377849-shooting-death-of-handcuffed-man-in-patrol-car-ruled-a-suicide?lite

Shooting death of handcuffed man in patrol car ruled a suicide

By Louis Casiano, NBC News

A man's death from a gunshot wound to the head while his hands were handcuffed behind him in an Arkansas police patrol car has been ruled a suicide, The Associated Press reported on Monday.

Follow @NBCNewsUS

The AP said the state crime lab report said 21-year-old Chavis Carter shot himself in the right temple of his head with a gun he had hidden. The report was based on autopsy findings and an investigation by the Jonesboro, Ark., Police Department.

Carter's death has prompted skepticism about the police version of events. His father, Charles Douglas, told theGrio that he does not believe that his son's death was a suicide.

"I don’t believe he committed suicide. Until we get justice, we’re not going to get peace. He’s not resting in peace; this won’t be over until he is."

Forensic expert calls suicide 'possible,' 'very unlikely'

Dr. Michael Baden, a former chief medical examiner for the City of New York and expert witness during the O.J. Simpson trial, told theGrio that if the gun used to kill Carter was positioned as it was in the police re-enactment video, there's a slight possibility Carter could have gotten enough leverage to shoot himself.

"It would be possible, I think, but it’s still very unlikely that that would happen," he said.

According to the police video, Carter was hunched over and reached behind his back for the gun and fired, causing the bullet to hit the right side of his head.

Carter and two friends were riding in a truck in Jonesboro on the night of July 28 when they were pulled over. Police said they received reports a of truck matching the description of the vehicle driving up and the down the street with its lights turned off.

During a search of the trio and the vehicle, police found marijuana plastic baggies and a set of scales. After running a check on his name, police learned Carter had a warrant for his arrest in Mississippi for marijuana possession.

He was handcuffed after a second search and placed in the back of the squad car while the officers conducted another search of the truck. Shortly thereafter the officers involved said they heard a gunshot and discovered that Carter had shot himself in the head.

Officers found Carter in the back seat slumped over and covered in blood. The other two riders were allowed to go.

Suspicion over the official account has continued to grow in the city's African-American community.

Police video from the night of the incident provided few answers, as it did not show the shooting.

Prior to the video's release, police released a video reconstruction meant to show how Carter could have shot himself with his hands restrained behind his back.

"We just wanted to get a good perspective on how it could be done and the ease with which it could be done,” said Jonesboro Police Chief Michael Yates.

Yates originally called the shooting "bizarre" and said that the officers' version of events defied logic. But he later said the scenario was "very possible."

Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter

One of the officers reported discovering a small-caliber handgun in the spot where Carter died. The gun was not found during the two previous instances Carter was searched.

Baden, the former New York City medical examiner, said the officers bear some culpability in the incident no matter what.

"If he dies in their custody they’re responsible," he said. "At the least, we’re talking about very sloppy police work — not finding a gun that he could have used to shoot one of the officers. And it’s indicative of poor training of the officers."

Yates has come under scrutiny for his department's lack of diversity, with only three out of 145 officers being African-American.

Carter family attorney Benjamin Irwin told the AP he and the family are reviewing the report and will release a statement.

The PRESIDENCY is for sale.

2012-08-06T11:35:00.002-07:00

Well, by now we are all aware that POLITICIANS are bought and sold by corporations and set in place to serve their special interest through the actions of PACs. Personally, I have always suspected that this ran all the way to the top....the BIG KAHUNA, the HEAD HONCHO, THE BIG CHEESE, or as befittingly these days, the HNIC...for those who do not speak ebonics, that would be the HEAD NIGGA IN CHARGE. When Obama took 780 BILLION dollars and gave it to the big banks that created the financial crisis in the first place, this was a blatant display of GOVERNMENT SACHS at work. For those not getting the connection, check the heavy hitter list below.

Now, we have Mitt ROMNEY cozying up to Sheldon ADELSON. Mitt the Mormon. Sheldon the suspect under investigation by the SEC and the DOJ. Bosom buddies at dinner together. Wait...Adelson once funded Gingrich's defamation campaign against Romney. Old wounds run deep, but nothing that $12 Million won't fix. Whoever said money doesn't buy love obviously never met a politician. With them, money buys a whole lotta love baby. Especially when its Vegas money. Yes, Vegas....aka SIN CITY. VEGAS, where you can stay and play but to call the shots you gotta be connected...if you know what I mean. If you cant connect the dots on that one, then you are a hopeless moron who has been living under a rock for the last 5 decades. So now we have Vegas money in the Presidential race, backing the religious moral candidate. No, I have not been smoking crack. This is the present reality.

We (the common people) have all suffered with government in the grips of WALL STREET. Now the VEGAS crew want in on the action...the greatest bank robbery of all time...take the tax payers money, and let them pay off the debt. Think this is a joke? The BUSH clan Savings and Loan scandal of the '80's was a warm up. The 2008 crash engineered by BIG BANKS (do you honestly think LIBOR was an accident?) and the BAILOUT was a 780 BILLION bank robbery...committed by the banks themselves, approved by congress and billed to the taxpayers. Vegas said WTF!! and now they want in on the action.

If Romney wins, America is FUCKED six ways south of Sunday.

ALTMAN, ROGER.

BERKOWITZ, HOWARD P.

BIDEN, JOE.

BRAINARD, LAEL.

BUFFETT, WARREN.

CLINTON, HILLARY.

CRAIG, GREGORY. (revolving door)

DONILON, THOMAS.

DUDLEY, WILLIAM C.

EFFRON, BLAIR W.

ELMENDORF, DOUGLAS.

EMANUEL, RAHM.

FARRELL, DIANA.

FRIEDMAN, STEPHEN.

FROMAN, Michael.

FUDGE, ANNE.

FURMAN, JASON.

GALLOGLY, MARK.

GEITHNER, TIMOTHY.

GENSLER, GARY.

GEPHARDT, RICHARD (aka "DICK") A.

GREENSTONE, MICHAEL (revolving door to Hamilton Project)

HAMILTON PROJECT, THE

HORMATS, ROBERT.

KAGAN, ELENA.

KASHKARI, NEEL.

KORNBLUH, KAREN.

LEW, JACOB (AKA "JACK") J.

LIDDY, EDWARD MICHAEL.

LIPTON, DAVID A.

MINDICH, ERIC

MURPHY, PHILLIP.

NIEDERAUER, DUNCAN.

OBAMA, BARACK H.

ORSZAG, PETER.

PATTERSON, MARK.

PERRY, RICHARD.

RATTNER, STEVE.

REISCHAUER, ROBERT D.

RIVLIN, ALICE.

RUBIN, JAMES.

RUBIN, ROBERT.

SHAFRAN, STEVEN.

SPERLING, GENE.

STORCH, ADAM.

SUMMERS, LARRY.

THAIN, JOHN.

TYSON, LAURA D’ANDREA.

UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE

2012-07-19T16:01:00.002-07:00

CONgratulations. Congress has passed the bill enacting Obamacare. This will go down in history as the beginning of the end of healthcare as we know it and the beginning of an abysmal disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Universal healthcare is a utopian fantasy in its current presentation. The alarming feature of this bill is that it requires the public to purchase healthcare. Lets critically analyze this.

Mandatory healthcare coverage means that people will need to purchase a policy. For many, this will be an additional expenditure for the household. What benefit will they receive for this burden? Nothing. Yes. Really. Absolutely nothing. First, lets look at the current insurance crisis.

At present, policyholders faithfully pay their premiums. Miss a premium and that policy will be dropped like a hot potato. The policy is a contract, and the policyholders have performed as required and evidenced by the payment of said premiums. However, there is NO MANDATE for the insurance companies to deliver ANY services. The stipulation that places a "qualification" subject to the "decision" of the insurance company is essentially a loophole that allows them to say "No...you do not qualify or this does not fit the criteria." In fact, even when the patient, physician and procedure clearly meet published guidelines, there is a very high rate of denial of coverage. For example...cancer patients are commonly denied chemotherapy coverage...I have often wondered about the frame of mind of the person writing and signing those denial of care letters. In fairness to the insurance companies, we should at least understand the true nature of their enterprise. The have absolutely no interest in insuring your health. In actuality, they are investment companies that pool the client premiums and invest them for secondary gains on the financial markets. In these markets, the weighted force of the pooled premiums drive massive movements of the markets where the insurance companies are glibly termed "Institutional Investors". Their leverage allows them to derive great profits from the markets as they can influence it greatly. With an understanding of this profit-driven perspective, it then becomes easy to understand why insurance companies are averse to paying for procedures. Payouts means loss of investment capital. Less investment capital means less influence on the markets as well as lower profit returns from invested capital. In an effort to conserve payouts, the insurance companies have resorted to bargaining down and strong-arming physicians and healthcare institutions. This is just criminal...however, in the eyes of policymakers, financial crimes such as these are minor.

As a disclaimer, many insurance companies have adopted a policy of granting "permission" for the procedure to be done. Once the procedure is performed, and a request for reimbursement is submitted, the insurance companies then "review" the procedure and issue a denial of coverage letter. This is blatantly abusive and is a rampant practice in the healthcare industry. However, the patients do benefit from having the procedure performed. Unfortunately, that loss is covered by the charges to other clients in many hospitals. Think of it as robbing Peter to pay Paul's bill.

This has to end. Insurance companies are fundamentally incapable of independently and objectively ruling on procedures and payouts. I propose that a separate multidisciplinary committee comprised of physicians, attorneys, public interest representatives and economic interest should evaluate and rule on procedures. ALL procedures should be submitted with an estimated budget to this committee and all approved procedures should be paid in advance of the procedure. Any cost overruns should be absorbed by the physician, the anesthesia team and the center to promote efficiency in delivery of healthcare services. Such a practice of pre-payment would make healthcare institutions more fiscally solvent and current, therefore more viable and capable of providing service to the community.

In addition, ALL approved procedures, by virtue of being pre-paid, would eliminate the "review" process or the limbo in which so many appeal cases seem to get lost.

Why do we need a third party approval process? Simple...insurance companies have an inherent conflict of interest and are predisposed to denial of care and payment for such services.

The next issue that we need to address is Tort reform and restrictions on frivolous lawsuits. Patients suing because they have gained 30 pounds 3 years after liposuction is an abuse of process. Patients with keloid scars suing for scar deformity should sue their parents and God....because the issue is a genetic one, not a surgical one. An increasing trend that I have noticed are patients suing their doctors in an attempt to recover their surgical fees. In fact, some patients complain to their third party financing companies, such as Care Credit, in an attempt to have their financial obligations dismissed once they have gotten their procedure. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

Again, we need a multidisciplinary committee to review potential cases and decide on the merit of the case. This would reduce the burden on the legal system. However, many attorneys would not be in favor of this as this would cut into their meal ticket. Doctors are a great target because they must carry mandatory malpractice insurance, except in some states like Florida. In some states like California, the decision to settle a case is determined on the actuarial basis of the case. If it is going to take 3 years and $300,000.00 to fight the case, then the insurance company will push to settle for $100,000.00. In either case, the doctor loses. The insurance company will simply offset their losses by increasing the doctor's premium for coverage. It is irrational that a physician, such as an OB/GYN should pay $200,000.00 a year for malpractice coverage. That is about 7 times more than the average income. The only ones who benefit here in this equation are the insurance companies. Again. Laughing all the way to the bank. The same banks in which they own massive stock portfolios.

Finally, we need individual responsibility. Enough of pointing the finger everywhere else. Its time for people to accept responsibility for their health. Yes, surprisingly, gorging to 400 pounds can lead to severe life-threating issues. Should the cost of that health care be borne by other, more conscientious members of society. It is ironic that we extoll the virtues of this capitalist society, yet when healthcare is the topic many people suddenly become socialist. Personally, I believe that there should be mandatory body-fat limits. In addition, there should be restrictions placed on how much junk food people can eat. Of course, people will protest the loss of personal liberty. I agree that if someone wants to eat whatever they want and weigh whatever they want, they should feel free to pay for the cost of their healthcare--completely, without imposing that cost on other citizens who diligently attend to their health. In their defense, many obese individuals invoke the "its in my genes" defense. Well, unfortunately, that does not excuse the situation. Obese individuals have conditioned their body to adapt to greater fat storage and will therefore be more likely to have children predisposed to obesity. Therefore, instead of looking backward and playing the great All-American Blame-it-on-my-parents game, these individuals should face forward and consider the consequences for the next generation. That is completely within their control.

The evidence is all around us. The incidence of obesity, diabetes, cancer, hypertension and numerous other medical issues have reached epidemic levels despite our vaunted healthcare infrastructure. Diet, exercise, and healthier lifestyles practices are key components to securing the health of our nation. The answer is not in more pills and potions. The USDA has been complicit in the rise of the obesity epidemic by failing to educate and advise the nation appropriately on healthcare issues. In fact, their passive indulgence of the junk food industry has allowed this epidemic to reach critical mass. The true scale of the burden will manifest itself when the end-organ and secondary systemic diseases become clinically evident. In short, the healthcare is a runaway train and it is heading for a wreck.

Universal Healthcare is not a fix. However, if we want it them we must accept mandatory behavioral and dietary modifications, implement tort reform, and restructure the insurance industry. Then maybe this might work. Without these contingent clauses attached, all that will happen is that the public will be paying another bill for which they will likely get nothing in return.

Hollywood Zimmerman.

2012-06-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

Ok...so the Zimmerman Defense team has released some re-enactment videos. Now lets critically analyze this.

1) First and foremost, there is only ONE point of view presented. Remember, the other party is DEAD. Shot, as it so happens, by the only remaining witness to the event. As he is the shooter, common sense will tell you that he is going to tell the story in a way which presents him in the best light. Knowing this, lets delve into the details. Recalling that Zimmerman's father is a retired supreme court judge who was involved in discussions with the Sanford Police Department and the State Attorney General's office the NIGHT OF THE MURDER. Now, this gives the father and his police and state Attorney General connections an entire 24 hrs to organize a carefully scripted and choreographed "spin doctor" video.
Why do I think this is a publicity stunt? Recall the events of the night of the shooting. Zimmerman was seen and attended to by EMS personnel. On arrival to the Sanford PD 30 mins later, there is no evidence of injury or band-aids or gauze on the back of Zimmerman's head.
Interestingly, on this video taken a day later, there are multiple band aids visible on Zimmerman's head. I can hear the violins playing now.

2) Zimmerman states that he pulls his gun and shoots Martin. This means that the gun was already loaded. Whatever happened to Florida's 3 step rule? Am I missing something here? In my opinion, carrying a loaded gun, ready to fire, on a job which did not require possession of a firearm, then getting out of his vehicle against police instructions and stalking Martin is clear evidence of INTENT.

3) Zimmerman admits shooting Martin, but then he states that he gets on top of him and holds his hands down. Does this seem like the actions of an "innocent man" defending himself and "accidentally" shooting a young man? An innocent man without murder on his mind would have called 911.

4) Speaking of 911, a neighbor appeared and offered to call 911. Zimmerman commanded him NOT TO CALL 911. Now, according to Zimmerman, in his own words on the re-enactment video, after Martin was shot, Martin was still TALKING and MOVING. In other words, MARTIN WAS STILL ALIVE. In instructing the neighbor NOT TO CALL 911, it is my opinion, in my medical experience, that Zimmerman deliberately delayed the arrival of medical intervention that MAY HAVE SAVED MARTIN's life. Instead of calling 911, Zimmerman in his own words HELD DOWN MARTIN until he was certain that he was dead. This suggests to me that Zimmerman clearly wanted to make sure that Martin would not get away. Recall that on the police dispatch log he had complained that "They always get away".

This re-enactment video was intended to paint a pretty picture of poor George Zimmerman, helpless and traumatized. However, I believe that Zimmerman's own words paint the picture of a vigilante out on a mission to kill, comfortable in the fact that his daddy is a powerful retired supreme court judge who can protect him.

GREENMAIL…The Paradox of Medicine.

2012-06-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

Widow wins $3 million settlement over cop who died having 3-way sex

Rachel Dillin

Strange News Examiner

It is almost unbelievable, but the widow of a cop who died having 3-way sex (not with her by the way) won a $3 million settlement against her late husband's doctor because he did not adequately warn her husband to stay away from strenuous activity. Apparently, Dr. Sreenivasulu Gangasani was 60 percent responsible for this cop's death.

The 31-year-old Atlanta, Georgia police officer namedWilliam Martinez died in 2009 from a heart attack in an airport hotel while engaging in 3-way sex. The jury found that Dr. Gangasani failed to diagnose Martinez with atheroschlerotic coronary artery disease even though he had symptoms of high blood pressure, chest pains, shortness of breath, and irregular heartbeat. Ultimately, according to the jury, Martinez died while engaging in strenuous activity that his doctor should have warned him against.

Even so, the jury also said that Martinez was 40 percent responsible for his own death, which is why they reduced the widow's settlement from $5 million to $3 million.

This entire situation is honestly hard to believe. While it is easy to feel sympathy for the widow because her husband died cheating on her in this way, it is difficult to make the stretch that she deserves a $3 million settlement from her late husband's doctor.

Not surprisingly, the doctor will likely appeal this unusual verdict. What do you think? Does this cop's widow deserve a $3 million settlement after he husband's bad behavior led to his death? Do you think he would have done anything differently if he had known he had atheroschlerotic coronary artery disease?

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Only in America. This is why health care is loosing the best and brightest minds. Become a doctor, and everyone wants to sue you because they believe that 1) Doctors should not make money 2) Doctors are supposed to read minds, assume all responsibility for patients, and ultimately prevent them from dying. There is a very well entrenched uniquely American philosophy that when someone dies, it is because of something that a doctor or hospital either did, or failed to do. This is insanity. Where does the law account for common sense? First, as a former double board certified surgeon, let me state unequivocally that one of the main reasons that obesity is an EPIDEMIC is the fact that 66% of the population do not engage in any activity more strenuous than lifting a remote. Then, there is diet. Atherosclerotic coronary artery disease was certainly not caused by the doctor. In fact, the fast food companies are more at fault than the physicians. As for the precipitating cause, was it really the failure of the doctor to instruct the patient to avoid "strenuous" activity? Really? Since when was sex considered "strenuous" activity? Face it, if you are not healthy enough for active sex then you are decompensated and decondition. And what precisely is "strenuous" activity? This is variable based on an individual's physiologic state. In fact, I recall reading recently about an 86 year old female body builder. QUICK!! Please call her doctor and advise him to tell her to stop working out! OMG! She could get a heart attack!! The point is that exercise conditions the human body...we are adaptive. It is the LACK of exercise that reduces our tolerance and endurance capacity. Period. The fact that the patient has an underlying anatomic issue that predisposes him to a cardiac event is not the FAULT of the physician. The fact that the patient chose to have a threesome is not the FAULT of the physician. The fact that the patient could not handle the stress of the encounter is not the FAULT of the physician. The fact that the physician did not specifically instruct the patient to avoid "strenuous" activities, or threesomes specifically for that matter, is absolutely in no way negligence on the part of the physician. In fact, I would say the immediate inciting cause would be the two women. If anything, they should be held accountable, not the doctor. Wait, I forgot...they do not have a pot of gold called malpractice insurance, otherwise know as "the lottery". Have a dollar and a dream. Have a complaint and an attorney. See the similarity?

The issue with our society is not the physicians irresponsibility. It is that society is willing to reward mediocrity, endorse irresponsibility and reward incompetence. The patient is primarily responsible for his health. Period. As doctors, there is only so much that we can do. When we punish doctors for the irresponsible behavior of patients, all that we do is destroy the field. It is remarkable that in the entire fraudulent fiasco that is the foreclosure crisis, not a single banking executive has been prosecuted or punished. In the entire obesity epidemic, not a single fast food chain or manufacturer has been held accountable. Come to think of it, DOJ statistics indicate that annually, almost 500,000 incidences of gun associated violent crimes occur, with approximately 75,000 cases involving gun related human injury. I have hear of a successful suit against an arms or weapons manufacturer. In fact the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act essentially prohibits people from suing these manufacturers. Money apparently does buy love and bullets, Charlie...as well as politicians. In contrast, there is not a day when I do not see a commercial from a law firm encouraging citizens to sue doctors and pharmaceutical companies. If your loved ones died while taking this medication....call us at 1800letssueforfreemoney. First, understand the difference between correlation and causation. A person who dies while taking a medication does not immediately imply that the medication killed that person, although that is possible. More commonly, people sue for side effects. Consider this, that every single human being has a unique physiology determined by their genetic codes. Some of these variations are subtle indeed, but unique just the same...like fingerprints. When we test medications, the 7 thousand or so individuals in the test population are a fraction of the 7 BILLION people on the planet. Yes, someone is GUARANTEED to have a severe adverse response to ANY medication. I am severely allergic to Penicillin...it induces a life threatening anaphylactic response in me. Yet, the vast majority of people take this medication with no problem. Millions of people take aspirin, and yet it is hepato-toxic and nephrotoxic to some individuals. Should the pharmaceutical companies be held accountable for something they had no control over? Perhaps, the argument is one of disclosure. If ever I develop a medication, I will simply label it thus: This medication will potentially cause every complication and side effect know to mankind, including but not limited to those that are unknown and yet to be discovered. Take this at your own risk. Seriously, the issue is simply one of intention versus interpretation. Pharmaceutical companies develop medications to help humanity. A tiny percentage of the population will likely suffer or die from it. Does that mean that we punish the physicians and pharmaceutical companies for the patient's decision or agreement to take a medication? The counter argument is that they would not have taken the medication if they knew that it may harm them (wIth this logic, I fear for the fate of EVERY CHEMOTHERAPY medication). Unless we test every medication on every individual prior to dosing, there is NO WAY TO BE CERTAIN. In fact, this becomes even more unpredictable given the risk of the immune response to sensitization...you can develop a FUTURE allergic response to a medication that you had previously been exposed to and had NO PROBLEMS with. Again, the core concept here that governs our conclusions should be intention versus interpretation. The physicians and pharmaceutical companies did not intentionally inflict harm in their attempts to help the patient. On the other hand, guns are manufactured with a single purpose...to kill. Welcome to America.

FINALLY!!!

2012-05-31T09:58:00.000-07:00

Finally!! A step in the right direction. My vote: Bloomberg for PRESIDENT...but then, we would have to get rid of most of the other politicians.

NYC plans ban on big sizes of sugary drinks

Open in new window

Show transcript

updated 5/31/2012 8:34:03 AM ET

Print
Font:

New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity.

Don't miss these Health stories
1. Robin Pierre
  Nearly 1,000 dogs sick from jerky treats now
  Nearly 1,000 dogs reportedly have been sickened by chicken jerky pet treats from China, according to a new tally of complaints from worried owners submitted to federal veterinary health officials.
2. No routine PSA tests for men, panel rules
3. JPMorgan exec's Lyme infection shows need for quick care
4. Stress turns guys into social butterflies
5. Toxic mushrooms: Drug promises new cure

The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan, which could take effect as soon as next March.

The measure would not apply to diet sodas, fruit juices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, or alcoholic beverages; it would not extend to beverages sold in grocery or convenience stores.

“Obesity is a nationwide problem, and all over the United States, public health officials are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’ ” Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview on Wednesday in the Governor’s Room at City Hall.

“New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something,” he said. “I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do.”

A spokesman for the New York City Beverage Association, an arm of the soda industry’s national trade group, criticized the city’s proposal on Wednesday. The industry has clashed repeatedly with the city’s health department, saying it has unfairly singled out soda; industry groups have bought subway advertisements promoting their cause.

“The New York City health department’s unhealthy obsession with attacking soft drinks is again pushing them over the top,” the industry spokesman, Stefan Friedman, said. “It’s time for serious health professionals to move on and seek solutions that are going to actually curb obesity. These zealous proposals just distract from the hard work that needs to be done on this front.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal requires the approval of the Board of Health, a step that is considered likely because the members are all appointed by him, and the board’s chairman is the city’s health commissioner, who joined the mayor in supporting the measure on Wednesday.

Is healthy food really more expensive?

Mr. Bloomberg has made public health one of the top priorities of his lengthy tenure, and has championed a series of aggressive regulations, including bans on smoking in restaurants and parks, a prohibition against artificial trans fat in restaurant food and a requirement for health inspection grades to be posted in restaurant windows.

The measures have led to occasional derision of the mayor as Nanny Bloomberg, by those who view the restrictions as infringements on personal freedom. But many of the measures adopted in New York have become models for other cities, including restrictions on smoking and trans fats, as well as the use of graphic advertising to combat smoking and soda consumption, and the demand that chain restaurants post calorie contents next to prices.

In recent years, soda has emerged as a battleground in efforts to counter obesity. Across the nation, some school districts have banned the sale of soda in schools, and some cities have banned the sale of soda in public buildings.

In New York City, where more than half of adults are obese or overweight, Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner, blames sweetened drinks for up to half of the increase in city obesity rates over the last 30 years. About a third of New Yorkers drink one or more sugary drinks a day, according to the city. Dr. Farley said the city had seen higher obesity rates in neighborhoods where soda consumption was more common.

The ban would not apply to drinks with fewer than 25 calories per 8-ounce serving, like zero-calorie Vitamin Waters and unsweetened iced teas, as well as diet sodas.

Restaurants, delis, movie theater and ballpark concessions would be affected, because they are regulated by the health department. Carts on sidewalks and in Central Park would also be included, but not vending machines or newsstands that serve only a smattering of fresh food items.

At fast-food chains, where sodas are often dispersed at self-serve fountains, restaurants would be required to hand out cup sizes of 16 ounces or less, regardless of whether a customer opts for a diet drink. But free refills — and additional drink purchases — would be allowed.

Corner stores and bodegas would be affected if they are defined by the city as “food service establishments.” Those stores can most easily be identified by the health department letter grades they are required to display in their windows.

The mayor, who said he occasionally drank a diet soda “on a hot day,” contested the idea that the plan would limit consumers’ choices, saying the option to buy more soda would always be available.

“Your argument, I guess, could be that it’s a little less convenient to have to carry two 16-ounce drinks to your seat in the movie theater rather than one 32 ounce,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a sarcastic tone. “I don’t think you can make the case that we’re taking things away.”

He also said he foresaw no adverse effect on local businesses, and he suggested that restaurants could simply charge more for smaller drinks if their sales were to drop.

The Bloomberg administration had made previous, unsuccessful efforts to make soda consumption less appealing. The mayor supported a state tax on sodas, but the measure died in Albany, and he tried to restrict the use of food stamps to buy sodas, but the idea was rejected by federal regulators.

With the new proposal, City Hall is now trying to see how much it can accomplish without requiring outside approval. Mayoral aides say they are confident that they have the legal authority to restrict soda sales, based on the city’s jurisdiction over local eating establishments, the same oversight that allows for the health department’s letter-grade cleanliness rating system for restaurants.

In interviews at the AMC Loews Village, in the East Village in Manhattan, some filmgoers said restricting large soda sales made sense to them.

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Sara Gochenauer, 21, a personal assistant from the Upper West Side. Soda, she said, “rots your teeth.”

But others said consumers should be free to choose.

“If people want to drink 24 ounces, it’s their decision,” said Zara Atal, 20, a college student from the Upper East Side.

Lawrence Goins, 50, a postal worker who lives in Newark, took a more pragmatic approach.

“Some of those movies are three, three and a half hours long,” Mr. Goins said. “You got to quench your thirst.”

Big Bucks for Big Wigs.

2012-05-25T22:33:00.002-07:00

Now this is not surprising...

American CEOs hauled in record pay in 2011

Typical CEO made $9.6M last year, AP study finds

Charlie Nye / AP

David Simon, CEO of Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group, was the best-paid CEO last year with a package valued at $137 million.

By BERNARD CONDON, CHRISTINA REXRODE

updated 5/25/2012 7:07:36 PM ET

Print
Font:

NEW YORK — Profits at big U.S. companies broke records last year, and so did pay for CEOs.

The head of a typical public company made $9.6 million in 2011, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data from Equilar, an executive pay research firm.

That was up more than 6 percent from the previous year, and is the second year in a row of increases. The figure is also the highest since the AP began tracking executive compensation in 2006.

Companies trimmed cash bonuses but handed out more in stock awards. For shareholder activists who have long decried CEO pay as exorbitant, that was a victory of sorts.

That's because the stock awards are being tied more often to company performance. In those instances, CEOs can't cash in the shares right away: They have to meet goals first, like boosting profit to a certain level.

The idea is to motivate CEOs to make sure a company does well and to tie their fortunes to the company's for the long term. For too long, activists say, CEOs have been richly rewarded no matter how a company has fared — "pay for pulse," as some critics call it.

To be sure, the companies' motives are pragmatic. The corporate world is under a brighter, more uncomfortable spotlight than it was a few years ago, before the financial crisis struck in the fall of 2008.

Last year, a law gave shareholders the right to vote on whether they approve of the CEO's pay. The vote is nonbinding, but companies are keen to avoid an embarrassing "no."

"I think the boards were more easily shamed than we thought they were," says Stephen Davis, a shareholder expert at Yale University, referring to boards of directors, which set executive pay.

In the past year, he says, "Shareholders found their voice."

The typical CEO got stock awards worth $3.6 million in 2011, up 11 percent from the year before. Cash bonuses fell about 7 percent, to $2 million.

The value of stock options, as determined by the company, climbed 6 percent to a median $1.7 million. Options usually give the CEO the right to buy shares in the future at the price they're trading at when the options are granted, so they're worth something only if the shares go up.

Profit at companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index rose 16 percent last year, remarkable in an economy that grew more slowly than expected.

More sales, more profit CEOs managed to sell more, and squeeze more profit from each sale, despite problems ranging from a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating to an economic slowdown in China and Europe's neverending debt crisis.

Still, there wasn't much immediate benefit for the shareholders. The S&P 500 ended the year unchanged from where it started. Including dividends, the index returned a slender 2 percent.

Shareholder activists, while glad that companies are moving a bigger portion of CEO pay into stock awards, caution that the rearranging isn't a cure-all.

For one thing, companies don't have to tie stock awards to performance. Instead, they can make the awards automatically payable on a certain date — meaning all the CEO has to do is stick around.

Other companies do tie stock awards to performance but set easy goals. Sometimes, "they set the bar so low, it would be difficult for an executive not to trip over it," says Patrick McGurn, special counsel at Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises pension funds and other big investors on how to vote.

And for many shareholders, their main concern — that pay is just too much, no matter what the form — has yet to be addressed.

"It's just that total (compensation) is going up, and that's where the problem lies," says Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

The typical American worker would have to labor for 244 years to make what the typical boss of a big public company makes in one. The median pay for U.S. workers was about $39,300 last year. That was up 1 percent from the year before, not enough to keep pace with inflation.

Since the AP began tracking CEO pay five years ago, the numbers have seesawed. Pay climbed in 2007, fell during the recession in 2008 and 2009 and then jumped again in 2010.

To determine 2011 pay packages, the AP used Equilar data to look at the 322 companies in the S&P 500 that had filed statements with federal regulators through April 30. To make comparisons fair, the sample includes only CEOs in place for at least two years.

Simon is on top Among the AP's other findings:

David Simon, CEO of Simon Property, which operates malls around the country, is on track to be the highest-paid in the AP survey, at $137 million. That was almost entirely in stock awards that could eventually be worth $132 million. The company said it wanted to make sure Simon wasn't lured to another company. He has been CEO since 1995; his father and uncle are Simon Property's co-founders.

This month, Simon Property's shareholders rejected Simon's pay package by a large margin: 73 percent of the votes cast for or against were against.

But the company doesn't appear likely to change the 2011 package. After the shareholder vote, it released a statement saying that "we value our stockholders' input" and would "take their views into consideration as (the board) reviews compensation plans for our management team." But it also said that Simon's performance had been stellar and it needed to pay him enough to keep him in the job.

Simon's paycheck looks paltry compared with that of Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose pay package was valued at $378 million when he became CEO in August. That was almost entirely in stock awards, some of which won't be redeemable until 2021, so the value could change dramatically. Cook wasn't included in the AP study because he is new to the job.

Of the five highest-paid CEOs, three were also in the top five the year before. All three are in the TV business: Leslie Moonves of CBS ($68 million); David Zaslav of Discovery Communications, parent of Animal Planet, TLC and other channels ($52 million); and Philippe Dauman of Viacom, which owns MTV and other channels ($43 million).
About two in three CEOs got raises. For 16 CEOs in the sample, pay more than doubled from a year earlier, including Bank of America's Brian Moynihan (from $1.3 million to $7.5 million), Marathon Oil's Clarence Cazalot Jr. (from $8.8 million to $29.9 million) and Motorola Mobility's Sanjay Jha (from $13 million to $47.2 million).
CEOs running health-care companies made the most ($10.8 million). Those running utilities made the least ($7 million).
Perks and other personal benefits, such as hired drivers or personal use of company airplanes, rose only slightly, and some companies cut back, saying they wanted to align their pay structure with "best practices."

Military contractor General Dynamics stopped paying for country club memberships for top executives, though it gave them payments equivalent to three years of club fees to ease "transition issues" caused by the change.

The typical pay of $9.6 million that Equilar calculated is the median value, or the midpoint, of the companies used in the AP analysis. In other words, half the CEOs made more and half less.

To value stock awards and stock options, the AP used numbers supplied by the companies. Those figures are based on formulas the companies use to estimate what the stock and options will eventually be worth when a CEO receives the stock or cashes in the options.

Stock awards are generally valued based on the stock's current price. Stock options are valued using company estimates that take into account the stock's current price, how long until the CEO can cash the options in, how the stock price is expected to move before then, and expected dividends. Estimates don't generally take inflation into account.

The shift to stock awards is at least partly rooted in what is known as the Dodd-Frank law, passed in the wake of the financial crisis, which overhauled how banks and other public companies are regulated.

Beginning last year, Dodd-Frank required public companies to let shareholders vote on whether they approve of the top executives' pay packages. The votes are advisory, so companies don't have to take back even a penny if shareholders give them the thumbs-down. But shame has proved a powerful motivator.

It got Hewlett-Packard to change its ways. After an embarrassing "no" vote last year on the 2010 pay packages, including nearly $24 million for ousted CEO Mark Hurd, the company huddled with more than 200 investment firms and major shareholders, then threw out its old pay formula. New CEO Meg Whitman is getting $1 a year in salary and no guaranteed bonus for 2011. Nearly all her pay is in stock options that could be worth $16 million, but only if the share price goes up.

Other companies took notice, too. Last year, shareholders rejected the CEO pay packages at Janus Capital, homebuilder Beazer Homes and construction company Jacobs Engineering Group. All won approval this year after the companies made the packages more palatable to shareholders.

To be sure, shareholders aren't voting en masse against executive pay. Instead, they seem to be saving "no" votes for the executives they deem most egregious.

Of more than 3,000 U.S. companies that held votes in 2011, only 43 got rejections, according to ISS. But the mere presence of the "say on pay" vote is triggering change, shareholder activists say.

"Companies that have gone through that trial by fire don't want to go through it again," says McGurn, the ISS special counsel.

Even Chesapeake Energy, a company perennially in the cross-hairs of corporate-governance activists, is bowing to pressure. The company has drawn fire for showering CEO Aubrey McClendon with assorted goodies. In addition to handing him big pay packages — $17.9 million for 2011 — Chesapeake in recent years has spent millions sponsoring the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, which he partially owns, paying him for his collection of antique maps and letting him buy stakes in company wells.

Last year, shareholders of the natural gas producer passed the proposed 2010 pay package but by a low margin, 58 percent. This year, with shareholder pressure mounting, the board has ended some of McClendon's perks and stripped him of his title as chairman. A lawsuit settlement is forcing him to buy back his $12 million worth of maps.

After losing the chairman job, McClendon issued a statement saying the demotion "reflects our determination to uphold strong corporate governance standards." Chesapeake will seek shareholder approval for McClendon's 2011 pay at its annual meeting in June.

So far, Citigroup is the highest-profile company to have its pay package rejected this year. The bank planned to pay CEO Vikram Pandit about $15 million for his work last year, noting that he had returned the company to profitability in 2010 and worked for $1 that year. Shareholders, who watched the stock price plunge 44 percent in 2011 (after adjusting for a reverse stock split) weren't so forgiving.

It's usually around January that boards decide how much to pay a CEO for the previous year. Then they inform shareholders and ask for their vote in the spring — usually after the cash portion has already been handed out. For Pandit, that meant he had already received $7 million in salary and cash bonus by the time shareholders voted against his pay.

In a statement, Citi said it took the vote seriously and planned to "carefully consider" the input of major shareholders. It hasn't given more specifics. Richard Parsons, who retired as Citi's chairman after the April annual meeting, as previously planned, said after the vote that the board should have done a better job explaining to shareholders how it determined CEO pay.

Clawbacks Another big change is that more companies are giving themselves the right to take back a top executive's pay from previous years if they determine that the executive acted inappropriately to inflate the company's financial results.

The Dodd-Frank overhaul will eventually require public companies to include such broad "claw back" provisions, which will expand on narrowly written rules from a decade ago. But companies aren't waiting. In a separate study, Equilar found that 84 percent of Fortune 100 companies now include claw backs in their executive pay packages, up from 18 percent in 2006.

Last year, the former CEO of Beazer Homes agreed with regulators, who cited the older claw back rules, to turn over $6.5 million he had earned when profits were inflated. In February, UBS took back half of the previous year's bonuses awarded to many investment bankers because of subsequent losses in the unit.

Picking the right mix of incentives is partly just guesswork, and sometimes the results are simply a force of serendipity. Stocks can get swept up in rising or falling markets, so the fortunes of CEOs with well-designed pay packages can reflect luck — good or bad — not just managerial skills.

In February 2009, James Rohr, the head of PNC Financial Services, was granted options that allowed him to buy shares in the future at the then-current price, which had fallen 62 percent in five months on its way to a 17-year low the next month.

The stock has since doubled, and the options, mostly based on hitting certain profit and cost-cutting goals, are worth more than $20 million in paper profit, according to research by GMI Rating, a corporate governance watchdog. If investors had bought PNC stock just before the financial crisis in 2008, they would still be down more than a fifth.

Luck, of course, can cut both ways. Rohr is still waiting to cash in options granted in 2007, valued then at $2.5 million, when the stock was 18 percent higher than it is today.

Some shareholder groups doubt that ever-higher CEO pay, ingrained as it is in the corporate psyche, will ever be refashioned dramatically enough to satisfy shareholders and consumer groups who see the paychecks as too big, too disconnected from performance, and set by wealthy directors who are oblivious to the way that most of their shareholders live.

"I hope we have seen the last of this," says Rosanna Weaver of the CtW Investment Group, which works on shareholder issues with union-sponsored pension funds and has lobbied against CEO pay packages at a number of companies. "But I would be very surprised, just given what I know of human nature, let alone what I know of the financial markets."

Still, she's encouraged by the change that has already been stirred.

"It's a very big task," Weaver says. "I still believe it is worth trying."

13 TRILLION??? Follow The Money Honey!

2012-05-22T21:43:00.001-07:00

I don't even know where to begin with this. Essentially, Bloomberg has just pointed out that our Federal government takes our tax dollars and simply gives it away to politically connected corporate cronies, friends and families, foreign countries, and foreign banks in which US citizens have absolutely no stake.
This has to end.

We need to get rid of the Federal Reserve bank...its is simply a license to rob the American people. THis is so criminal it is unconscionable.

Bloomberg News Responds To Bernanke Criticism Of U.S. Bank-Rescue Coverage

By Bloomberg News - Dec 7, 2011 2:31 PM PT

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in a letter to four senior lawmakers yesterday that recent news articles about the central bank’s emergency lending programs contained “egregious errors.”

While Bernanke’s letter and an accompanying four-page staff memo posted on the Fed’swebsite didn’t mention any news organizations by name, Bloomberg News has published a series of articles this year examining the bailout. The latest, “Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress,” appeared Nov. 28.

Enlarge image

Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Play Video

Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, talks about Bloomberg News' response to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's letter to four senior lawmakers yesterday that said recent news articles about the central bank's emergency lending programs contained "egregious errors." Winkler speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday." (Source: Bloomberg)

Play Video

Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker reports on Bloomberg News' response to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's letter to four senior lawmakers that said recent news articles about the central bank’s emergency lending programs contained “egregious errors.” Schatzker reports on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness With Margaret Brennan." (Source: Bloomberg)

“Bloomberg stands by its reporting,” said Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, who responded to the criticisms today on “Surveillance Midday” with Tom Keene.

Here is a point-by-point response by Bloomberg News to the Fed staff memo.

From Fed memo: “These articles have made repeated claims that the Federal Reserve conducted ‘secret’ lending that was not disclosed either to the public or the Congress. No lending program was ever kept secret from the Congress or the public. All of the programs were publicly announced when they were initiated, and information about all lending under the programs was publicly released -- both on a weekly basis through the Federal Reserve’s public balance sheet release and through detailed monthly reports to Congress, both of which were also posted on the Federal Reserve’s website.”

Response: Bloomberg’s Nov. 28 story about Fed lending reported that the central bank published regular reports on the scope of borrowings from the discount window and other emergency or temporary programs. The loans were described as “secret” because the amounts, names of borrowers, dates and, often, interest rates weren’t disclosed. The stories reported that the Fed’s rationale for keeping the loans secret was to prevent bank runs.

From Fed memo: “The Federal Reserve took great care to ensure that Congress was well-informed of the magnitude and manner of its lending.”

Response: Bloomberg’s story said Congress wasn’t fully apprised of the details of the Fed’s efforts. “We were aware emergency efforts were going on,” U.S. Representative Barney Frank, who served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in the Nov. 28 story. “We didn’t know the specifics.” Other members of Congress on both sides of the aisle also said they weren’t aware of the details.

From Fed memo: “Congress was well informed of the volume of borrowing by large banks. For instance, the monthly reports showed the daily average borrowing during the month in the aggregate for the five largest discount window borrowers, the next five, and the rest. Similar information was also provided for lending at the emergency facilities.”

Response: Because the Fed didn’t provide the names of borrowers, it was impossible to add up how much each bank received across all the programs. Nor did the Fed release these figures in aggregate form for each institution when it released data under the Dodd-Frank Act or Bloomberg’s Freedom of Information Act requests.

In fact, the Fed released separate databases on each of the programs, and several of the databases identified borrowers by the name of the subsidiary that got the loan. None of the releases showed how much money each borrower was in debt to the Fed on specific dates.

Bloomberg built a database to combine subsidiaries with their parent companies and to add the total loans outstanding by each institution across all programs. Bloomberg undertook this project in the belief that a full accounting of the Fed’s lending efforts was possible only by tallying what each company borrowed across all programs.

From Fed memo: “One article asserted that the Federal Reserve lent or guaranteed more than $7.7 trillion during the financial crisis. Others have estimated the amounts to be $16 trillion or even $24 trillion. All of these numbers are wildly inaccurate.

“The inaccurate and misleading estimates could be based on several errors, including double-counting.”

Response: Bloomberg News reported that Fed lending peaked at $1.2 trillion, a figure that didn’t include any double- counting. Instead of adding all the outstanding Fed loans to get a large number, Bloomberg used peak loan amounts that were outstanding on a single day. On the day after the Nov. 28 story, the Fed published that $1.2 trillion figure, affirming Bloomberg’s calculation.

The $16 trillion number cited by the Fed may refer to a Government Accountability Office report of July 21, 2011, that used a different methodology. Bloomberg built its database to show amounts outstanding, while the GAO tallied cumulative loans. For example, if a bank borrowed $1 billion overnight for 100 nights, Bloomberg would say the bank had a $1 billion balance at the Fed for 100 days; the GAO would say the bank borrowed $100 billion. The former is a more useful economic measurement. While the GAO also assessed the scope of the lending on what it called a term-adjusted basis, yielding a total of $1.14 trillion, some websites and commentators cited the higher figure.

The programs included in Bloomberg’s examination of Fed lending were: the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, Commercial Paper Funding Facility, discount window, Primary Dealer Credit Facility, Term Auction Facility, Term Securities Lending Facility and single- tranche open market operations.

From Fed memo: “Other inaccuracies may occur if total potential lending is counted as actual lending.”

Response: In a March 31, 2009, story, Bloomberg News tallied the potential commitments of the Fed using as sources statements the central bank made and its weekly balance sheet. The amount, $7.77 trillion, was never characterized by Bloomberg as money lent by the Fed, though other commentators have mistakenly used it in that context. Rather, Bloomberg has said that that amount represents what the Fed “lent, spent or committed” or the total of all “guarantees and lending limits.” Bloomberg has been careful to characterize this number as total commitments, not loans that went out the door.

From Fed memo: “The articles make no mention that the emergency loans and other assistance have generated considerable income for the American taxpayers. As reported in the Annual Report of the Board of Governors, alongside the Board’s audited financial statements, the emergency lending programs have generated an estimated $20 billion in interest income for the Treasury. Moreover, in 2009 and 2010, the Federal Reserve returned to the taxpayers over $125 billion in excess earnings on its operations, including emergency lending. These amounts have been publicly announced and are reflected in the Office of Management and Budget’s financial statements for the government and have been verified by the Federal Reserve’s independent outside auditors.”

Response: In an Aug. 22 story, “Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed’s Secret Loans,” Bloomberg wrote: “The Fed has said it had ‘no credit losses’ on any of the emergency programs, and a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York staffers in February said the central bank netted $13 billion in interest and fee income from the programs from August 2007 through December 2009.”

The Nov. 28 story quoted Fed officials saying almost all of the loans were repaid and that there had been no credit losses.

From Fed memo: “The articles discuss lending made to large banks but never note that Federal Reserve lending programs went far beyond such institutions -- all in furtherance of supporting the provision of credit to U.S. households and businesses. Literally hundreds of institutions borrowed from the Federal Reserve -- not just large banks. The TAF had some 400 borrowers and the discount window some 2,100 borrowers. The TALF made more than 2,000 loans, while the commercial paper funding facility provided direct assistance to some 120 American businesses.”

Response: Bloomberg reported in Aug. 22 and Nov. 28 stories that the Fed programs extended beyond large banks. The Aug. 22 story mentioned borrowings by Plano, Texas-based Beal Financial Corp. and Jacksonville, Florida-based EverBank Financial Corp.

Bloomberg reported in the Nov. 28 story that the six largest U.S. banks accounted for 63 percent of the average borrowings by all U.S. financial institutions from the Fed, even though these firms only represented half of industry assets. Bloomberg also created an interactive website that allows users to chart Fed borrowings by more than 400 firms. The smallest detailed there is Wood & Huston Bancorporation Inc., which had $5 million outstanding on Feb. 12, 2009. The graphic can be found here.

From Fed memo: “The articles also fail to note that the lending directly helped support American businesses by providing emergency funding so that they could meet weekly payrolls and on-going expenses. The Commercial Paper Funding Facility, for example, provided support to businesses as diverse as Harley- Davidson and National Rural Utilities, when the usual market mechanism for their day-to-day funding completely dried up.”

Response: Bloomberg’s interactive graphic details Commercial Paper Funding Facility borrowings by non-bank borrowers, including Harley-Davidson Inc. and National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corp. A Dec. 2, 2010, story, “Fed May Be ‘Central Bank of the World’ After UBS, Barclays Aid,” mentioned Harley-Davidson and General Electric Co., the largest non-bank borrower from the commercial-paper program.

From Fed memo: “The articles fail to mention altogether that one facility, the TALF, supported nearly 3 million auto loans, more than 1 million student loans, nearly 900,000 loans to small businesses, 150,000 other business loans and millions of credit card loans.”

Response: Bloomberg didn’t include TALF in its examination of the Fed’s rescue of the banking system because that program didn’t cater primarily to banks.

From Fed memo: “The articles misleadingly depict financial institutions receiving liquidity assistance as insolvent and in ‘deep trouble.’”

Response: Bloomberg never described any of the financial institutions mentioned in its bailout stories as insolvent.

The New York Fed’s report on Jan. 14, 2009, called Citigroup Inc.’s financial strength “marginal” and dependent on $45 billion in TARP funding. Citigroup’s Fed borrowing peaked six days later at $99 billion. Other numbers tell a similar story. Morgan Stanley’s borrowing totaled $107 billion on a single day. Royal Bank of Scotland got $84.5 billion from the Fed at about the same time it was taken over by the U.K. government.

The largest banks later had to raise billions of dollars of capital to assuage investor concerns that they might not be solvent, and they took capital injections from the Treasury Department. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wrote in his book, “On the Brink,” that “our banking system was massively undercapitalized.”

Under the terms of the Fed’s lending programs, the determination of whether a bank is “solvent” is based on the opinions of bank supervisors. These examinations are confidential.

From Fed memo: “Finally, one article incorrectly asserted that banks ‘reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates.’ Most of the Federal Reserve’s lending facilities were priced at a penalty over normal market rates so that borrowers had economic incentive to exit the facilities as market conditions normalized, and the rates that the Federal Reserve charged on its lending facilities did not provide a subsidy to borrowers.”

Response: As noted in the Nov. 28 Bloomberg article, the $13 billion figure was based on a metric banks regularly report called the net interest margin -- the difference between what they earn on loans and investments and their borrowing expenses. Those expenses include interest paid to the Fed for their loans.

To calculate how much banks stood to make, Bloomberg multiplied their tax-adjusted net interest margins by their average Fed debt during reporting periods in which they took emergency loans. The 190 firms for which data were available would have produced income of $13 billion, assuming all of the bailout funds were invested at the margins reported, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The calculation by Bloomberg excluded loans from the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility because that cash was passed along to money-market funds.

The Fed says it charges a “penalty rate” that would be above rates typically seen in a normal market. That rate became cheaper when borrowing costs surged during the financial crisis.

Bloomberg’s Nov. 28 story contained the following paragraph: “The Fed says it typically makes emergency loans more expensive than those available in the marketplace to discourage banks from abusing the privilege. During the crisis, Fed loans were among the cheapest around, with funding available for as low as 0.01 percent in December 2008, according to data from the central bank and money-market rates tracked by Bloomberg.”

Editors: Robert Friedman, John Voskuhl

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amanda Bennett at Abennett6@bloomberg.net.

SUE ME...

2012-05-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

I love the last case....Freaking Hillarious...but soooo typical of our society.
Here is the problem...you can sue anyone for anything...In the US judicial system the allegations are considered protected speech...really.
There is NO PENALTY FOR FILING FALSE ALLEGATIONS OR A FRIVOLOUS LAWSUIT! If you loose, that is something else entirely. At least you can ride the wave while it lasts.
Expert witnesses are a joke...they are simply paid mouthpieces for their respective side.
Neither the plaintiff nor the defense attorneys have any interest in a quick resolution of the case...they both get to bill more the longer the fight drags on.

Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS

For some, 2011 was a great year. For others, not so good. The US Chamber of Commerce memorialized 2011 with its list of Top 10 Frivolous Lawsuits.

None of these lawsuits were in the medical malpractice category. And we are certain you can fill in those gaps.

Without further ado.

A kidnapped couple was sued by a convict who kidnapped them. Why? The couple failed to help him evade police. What was the couple thinking? Etiquette demands kidnappees assist the kidnapper. Haven’t they heard of the Stockholm Syndrome?
A bar is sued by a man who broke the law by carrying a gun into that bar. Why? The bar shirked its duty to search him for a weapon.
A mother is sued by her adult children – yes adult children. Why? She sent cards without gifts. Further to everyone’s horror, she allegedly played favorites.
A woman files a lawsuit against a store asking for $5 million – not a trifling sum. Why? A spat over an 80 cent refund she was supposed to receive. Now that would be quite a return on investment.
A mother files a lawsuit against an exclusive preschool. Why? Something the school did or didn’t do allegedly affected her child’s college prospects. We’ll try to report back in 15 years.
A man who filed a lawsuit claiming age discrimination. Fair enough. Then he argued the presiding judge was too old to hear the case.
An obese man filed a lawsuit against a burger joint. His beef? The booths were a tad tight to accommodate his large frame.

And so on….

Help us round out the list from the medical world. Share your thoughts.

3 responses so far

3 Responses to “Top Ten Frivolous Lawsuits for 2011”

# Barry Glogeron 21 Jan 2012 at 2:52 pm

ONLY 7 LAWSUITS LISTED – I’M GOING TO SUE FOR FALSE ADVERTISING
# jack francison 25 Jan 2012 at 12:59 pm

patient sues because wife pregnant 18 mos. after vasectomy. Never had post op semen analysis even though instructed to in writing. Defense bills mount. Advised to have semen check by defense expert. Pat. shows up during deposition for s/a- it is negative. lawsuit continues nonedtheless. Advised to have genetic assay- result- couple has 5 children. only the first is fathered by plaintiff. What a surprise ( sic). Cost to defense $100,000 plus lost productivity, increase ins. cost, etc etc. Solutions- plaintiff should be liable( only in Texas I think, not in Obamacare). Lawyer should be disbarred. Plaintiff’s expert, who was from a prominent Urology program should lose his license- would you want a physician with this kind of judgment making medical decisions for you? Old truism- most common cause by far of failed vasectomy is impregnation by someone else. Jack Francis

Why do we still subsidize OIL COMPANIES?

2012-05-21T08:33:00.004-07:00

Remember what your annual salary is? Now, realize that $40 BILLION dollars of US taxpayer revenue is given is subsidies to the oil industry. Here is where some of it goes.

1 of 22

Options bonanza for departing CEO

Featured: James Mulva, CEO, ConocoPhillips

Originally published: May 18, 2012

In the highflying world of CEO pay, it's tough to stay on top for long.

Last week, when we named Herbalife (HLF) CEO Michael Johnson our "One Percenter of the Week," his paycheck was by far the highest reported for a CEO in 2011, at a cool $89.4 million.

But new CEO pay numbers roll in fast this time of year, and there's a new leader.

That would be former ConocoPhillips (COP) CEO James Mulva, who got an astonishing $154.7 million last year. And yes, a lot of that came from 99 Percenters shelling out more at the pump last year.

Mulva earned most of his pay by exercising a ton of stock options in 2011. ConocoPhillips stock soared along with oil and gasoline prices that year, and all three have remained relatively high since. The result: big gains on Mulva's options.

So for reaping about 12 times the average pay for CEOs of companies on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index($INX), with help from customers whose paychecks barely budged and who got squeezed at the pump especially hard, I'm making Mulva my latest "One Percenter of the Week."

The options bonanza

Mulva's 2011 compensation of $154.7 million was "realized pay," as calculated by GMI, an independent corporate governance research company. Unlike companies, which report theoretical pay based on estimated options values, GMI calculates pay by looking at gains on exercised options, gains on pension plans, and salary and cash bonuses.

Mulva exercised a boatload of long-term options last year, triggering the big gains calculated by GMI. But two things are worth noting here. First, Mulva hasn't sold the stock yet, according to Thomson Reuters records, so he hasn't actually pocketed the gains. He's betting the stock goes higher.

Second, Mulva exercised 3.48 million options last year because they were set to expire. Most of those options, about 3 million, were a special grant awarded about a decade ago during the merger between Conoco and Phillips Petroleum, where Mulva was CEO.

Since then, ConocoPhillips stock has advanced nicely, benefiting Mulva and long-term shareholders alike. The stock has gone up 275% from the end of 2002 through this week, to trade recently at $52.50, compared with a 47% gain for the S&P 500 over the same time.

But a lot of those stock gains have happened since the summer of 2010 due to soaring energy prices -- meaning that Mulva has benefited from high-priced oil, something he might not want to take credit for.

Pain at the pump

ConocoPhillips revenue soared 26.7% last year to $251.2 billion, and earnings per share advanced 17.7% to $8.97 -- as oil and gasoline prices shot up. As you probably recall, prices for regular gasoline hit $4 or more a gallon in parts of the country in 2011. And average prices nationwide were above $3.40 per gallon for much of the year, compared with around $2.70 a gallon the summer before.

All of this helps explain why ConocoPhillips stock has gotten such a nice bump since the summer of 2010. Even with a recent slide to about $51 from $60, ConocoPhillips shares are up 31% since the summer of 2010. In contrast, the S&P 500 is up about 22% over the same period.

Of course, we all like to see CEOs help shareholders beat the market, and they should be rewarded for doing so. But you could argue that these stock gains came from high oil prices, not the work of Conoco's management.

Why did Mulva, who has since stepped down as CEO, chairman and director, get so much more than the typical CEO?

One reason might be that ConocoPhillips' executive compensation committee has historically had freedom to set pay however it wants. It has done a poor job of linking pay to the company's financial performance, and it certainly has not done so in any transparent way, according to Glass, Lewis & Co., which advises investors on how to vote at annual meetings.

A ConocoPhillips spokesman responds that pay is set by independent directors with help from an independent pay consultant, and that executive pay is set "competitively" with ConocoPhillips peers.

Plus, the company made some improvements in compensation policies last year, and the number of shareholders voting against ConocoPhillips pay plan dropped significantly at the company's May 11 annual meeting.

None of this will affect Mulva. He's gone. But he still has more than 3 million options. About a third of them are priced at around $24 a share, which means that on this slug of options alone, Mulva is looking at an additional $30 million in profits.

Each week, "One-Percenter of the Week" looks at how members of the nation's economic elite earn their pay. Click the arrows for previous One-Percenters.

At the time of publication, Michael Brush did not own or control shares of any company or fund mentioned in this slide show. Brush is the editor of Brush Up on Stocks, an investment newsletter.

SUPPORT?!

2012-05-19T10:55:00.004-07:00

Whenever I discuss the issue of the need to regulate reproduction, some people get offended and defend this as an "inalienable human right". I accept that argument with the proviso that the specific human in question possesses the right emotional, mental, physical and financial resources to support the results of recreational reproduction. The case below is the poster boy for what I fear. How can we reasonably expect that this absentee father will provide a good role model for his children? 30 kids at 30 years old...wow.

I have a suggestion...vasectomy for him and tubal ligation for the women.

Man with 30 kids wants state help to pay his child support

17 hrs ago

A 33-year-old man who has fathered 30 kids is asking the state of Tennessee to give him a hand with his child support payments. Desmond Hatchett is having a tough time making ends meet while working a minimum wage job and seeing half of his paycheck get split up between his 11 baby mamas. Incidentally, his score and 10 kids is a record for Knox County, and some of his kids receive as little as $1.49 a month once the money is divvied up. Hatchett last appeared in court in May 2009, when he had a paltry 21 kids to his name and said he had no intention of having more. Somehow, he found a way to add nine more to his legacy, so we're guessing he probably isn't done at 30.