Category: Corporate Statism

Woo hoo

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

unemployment benefits

This is some unexpected good news:

WASHINGTON—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke publicly with the White House Wednesday on trade policy, instantly imperiling two major international trade deals and punching a hole in one piece of the economic agenda the president outlined in his State of the Union address a day earlier.

Mr. Reid told reporters he opposed legislation aimed at smoothing the passage of free-trade agreements, a vital component to negotiating any deal, and pointedly said supporters should back down.

“I’m against fast track,” Mr. Reid (D., Nev.) said, using the shorthand term for legislation that prevents overseas trade agreements from being amended during the congressional approval process. “I think everyone would be well-advised just not to push this right now.”

The move spells trouble for two sets of complicated talks, one with the European Union and the other with countries in the Asian-Pacific region. Both deals likely would have required such a “fast track” approval to clear the Congress. The U.S.’s negotiating partners wouldn’t likely commit to a final agreement that could be unpopular back home without assurances that it couldn’t be modified by U.S. lawmakers.

BP Deepwater supervisors will be tried on manslaughter charges

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Deepwater_Horizon_fire_Coast Guard

It’s about fucking time. Of course, they should be going after the owners:

Law360, New York (January 28, 2014, 6:30 PM ET) — A Louisiana federal judge on Monday refused to toss manslaughter charges against two BP PLC supervisors for their roles in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, rejecting claims that the charges are unconstitutionally vague because they lack a clear standard of care that the supervisors allegedly violated.

The U.S. Department of Justice claims Robert Kaluza’s and Donald Vidrine’s negligence caused the 11 rig worker deaths in the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which sent nearly 5 million barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

More on Todd Christie

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

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You may not remember how Todd Christie was under investigation by the feds, and got off under unusual circumstances:

When Christopher Christie went on to Seton Hall Law School, Todd Christie followed their father’s path to the financial world, where his high energy and salesman’s bravado allowed him to flourish quickly at the Wall Street trade specialist firm Spear, Leeds & Kellogg. He rose to become chief executive, and when Goldman Sachs bought the company in 2000 for more than $6 billion, Todd Christie’s piece of the deal amounted to about $60 million.

By 2003, however, Spear, Leeds was under investigation on suspicion of cheating customers to benefit the firm. Todd Christie resigned in March 2003, although he says that his departure was not related to the inquiry and that he did not find out until months later that he was among the traders being investigated. When the United States attorney in Manhattan, David N. Kelley, secured criminal indictments against 15 traders at the firmin 2005, Todd Christie was spared, and faced only civil fraud charges along with four other traders.

The company ultimately settled the case, repaying more than $16 million to investors, without admitting or denying wrongdoing. During the campaign, Christopher Christie stated that his brother had done “absolutely nothing wrong,” and in an interview this week Todd Christie said he had been “completely exonerated.” Two of the indicted traders pleaded guilty; the 13 others were ultimately cleared of criminal charges.

The Securities and Exchange Administration settlement Todd Christie signed, dated Oct. 15, 2008, maintains that he carried out hundreds of trades that brought the firm thousands of dollars in profits at its customers’ expense, and had violated stock exchange rules.

While the investigation produced uncomfortable headlines, particularly when Christopher Christie was deliberating whether to run for governor in 2005, the windfall his brother earned on Wall Street certainly helped ingratiate him with party leaders.

Todd Christie began giving tens of thousands of dollars to New Jersey’s Republican county chairmen in 2001, at a time when they were deciding whom to recommend that the Bush administration nominate as the state’s United States attorney. Three months after his brother was sworn in at that job, Todd Christie wrote a $225,000 check to the Republican National Committee.

Democrats have characterized those contributions as a blunt attempt to help his brother become United States attorney, but Todd Christie insists there was no connection between the two.

“I’d always been involved in politics, but since I’d had the good fortune to become successful, I had more to give,” he said.

[…] In the general election, Democrats also tried to make an issue of Todd’s legal troubles with federal regulators and Chrisopher Christie’s decision in 2007 to give a no-bid legal contract, to monitor an orthopedics firm, to David N. Kelley, the former federal prosecutor who had handled the case against Todd Christie’s firm.

Christopher Christie says that the contract was awarded on merit, and that he and Mr. Kelley have never discussed his brother’s case. Mr. Kelley has concurred, saying his decisions in the Spear, Leeds investigation were influenced solely by the evidence.

What a fracking company did to one activist

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

You have to see this to believe it:

Vera Scroggins, an outspoken opponent of fracking, is legally barred from the new county hospital. Also off-limits, unless Scroggins wants to risk fines and arrest, are the Chinese restaurant where she takes her grandchildren, the supermarkets and drug stores where she shops, the animal shelter where she adopted her Yorkshire terrier, bowling alley, recycling centre, golf club, and lake shore.

In total, 312.5 sq miles are no-go areas for Scroggins under a sweeping court order granted by a local judge that bars her from any properties owned or leased by one of the biggest drillers in the Pennsylvania natural gas rush, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation.

“They might as well have put an ankle bracelet on me with a GPS on it and be able to track me wherever I go,” Scroggins said. “I feel like I am some kind of a prisoner, that my rights have been curtailed, have been restricted.”

The ban represents one of the most extreme measures taken by the oil and gas industry to date against protesters like Scroggins, who has operated peacefully and within the law including taking Yoko Ono to frack sites in her bid to elevate public concerns about fracking.

Ticking timebombs

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Fire Silhouettes

But what the hell, if it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go! Amirite?

A natural gas pipeline operated by TransCanada exploded and caught fire in a rural part of western Canadan early on Saturday, putting fresh focus on the firm’s safety record ahead of a crucial White House decision over a controversial cross-border project. The explosion happened near Otterburne, Manitoba, about 15 miles south of the provincial capital, Winnipeg. The area was evacuated as a precaution, said the National Energy Board (NEB), which oversees parts of Canada’s energy industry. No injuries were reported but the fire burned for more than 12 hours.

The explosion comes as some environmentalists are raising concern about the safety of TransCanada’s pipelines. The company is currently making a big lobbying push to convince the U.S. government to allow TransCanada to deliver oil from Canada’s oil sands through the United States in its controversial Keystone XL pipeline. After the explosion, pictures of balls of flames poured into Twitter and television stations. The line was shut down and depressurized to contain the fire, the NEB said, adding it would work with the federal Transportation Safety Board to determine the cause. A TransCanada spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment. About 4,000 residents and other customers may be without natural gas for at least a day, according to Manitoba Hydro, the provincial government-owned energy utility. Temperatures in the province are well below freezing.

Wage suppression

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

architecture jobs

I’ve been convinced for a few years now that the reason Obama and the powers that be keep talking about how we need more engineering, tech and math graduates is to flood the market and bring down wages to the point where it’s just as cheap to use Americans as it is to fill those positions with workers from the Third World countries. This is what they plan to do instead of paying better wages in other countries.

I haven’t seen anything yet to change my mind.

The light dawneth

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Dire Dawa Coca Cola 1

Of course, Coca-Cola had no problem sucking up local water supplies around the world and exacerbating the problem, but hey, bygones! I guess we should be grateful that they’re raising concerns now, in effect, asking the feds to stop them from hurting themselves (and incidentally, others):

WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.

Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.

“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”

Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change.

Comcastic!

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Soon we’ll get to have all our utilities go out at once!

Comcast may soon provide customers with retail electricity supply, along with its “Triple Play” bundle of cable, Internet, and phone service.

Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman Robert F. Powelson said Wednesday that the Philadelphia cable giant was working with a third-party supplier to include retail electricity in its bundle of services this year.