Catching up on a few things

First, I hope to have the last entry in my Psychedelic Furs tribute done soon. I'm still piecing together memories and data from the live shows. After that, I'll put together the "ultimate" set list for readers to consider before next Monday.

Here are some links that I have been meaning to post for a few weeks now. Enjoy!

The USA Today had this pretty powerful piece the other day about debt: ["Leap in U.S. debt hits taxpayers with 12% more red ink"]. This is probably the most shocking thing I have seen in a very long time. Not only are we on the hook for the federal government's largess, but look at the personal debt. Wow. Now, granted, a good chunk of that is housing. But the consumer debt is the next time bomb. I really think we, as a nation, have to spend some time thinking about all of this in order to come up with an equitable and fair solution to the problems because it is clear that the Republicans and the Democrats don't have the answers.

Many of us have been complaining about NAFTA [and GATT/WTO] and the effects free trade have had on America. But what about Mexico or even Canada? This story was sent to me by my friend Steve who has been following this stuff as closely as I have: ["Megaprojects and Militarization: A Perfect Storm in Mexico"].
Here is another article he sent a few weeks back: ["Pipeline-Istan: Everything You Need to Know About Oil, Gas, Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan and Obama"]. Isn't it amazing how this thing just never seems to go away?

This is silly but funny: ["Echo And The Bunnymen to blast 'Ocean Rain' album into space"]. Imagine, "The Killing Moon" is on that record ...

An interesting story here about trends in radio listening: ["42 Million Americans Listen to Radio Weekly on Digital Audio Platforms"].

I forgot to post this around tax time: ["Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go? - Tax Day 2009"]. As a resident of New Hampshire, 29.4 cents of my federal dollar went to military spending with another 7.9 cents on interest on military debt. Another 21.3 cents went to health spending. Another 11.9 cents went to non-military debt. 7.2 cents went to income security and labor. Less than 4 cents went to housing and community, veterans' benefits, and food, each. Only 3 cents went to government employees and education.

And the Republicans are starting to visit Iowa with eyes towards 2012: ["Early Presidential Campaigning In Iowa Begins"].

I'm looking forward to this book: ["The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America's Defense on 9/11"].
And I literally just found out a few minutes ago that Jerry Sorlucco has a new book: ["The Two Martini Diet: How I Lost 100+lbs While Eating Well and Having a Drink"].

Blundering into bankruptcy

Guest Perspective by Ralph Nader

Dear President Obama and GM Chairman Henderson,

The hour is late. You seem bent on an orchestrated bankruptcy for General Motors on June 1, 2009. Before any irreversible moves are made -- the GM/task force reorganization plan should be submitted to Congress for deliberative review and decision. There are several major concerns with a precipitous bankruptcy declaration that have emerged over the last several days.

First, the previously understood rationale for bankruptcy—namely obstinate bondholders--no longer applies. Recent developments indicate that GM and the auto task force have revised the proposed allocation of equity in a restructured GM, and reached agreement with at least the most prominent bondholders. Although a June 1 bond payment is due, it certainly seems that that payment could easily be wrapped into the new bondholder offer, as effectively will be the case if GM enters bankruptcy.

With the bondholder problem moving toward resolution, or at least now clearly resolvable, there is no evident rationale for bankruptcy other than an unstoppable momentum of some hidden agendas. Given the high stakes, including job losses, communities devastated, the effects on consumer confidence in the GM brand and the socio-economic impacts of potentially excessive downsizing, a last chance to avoid the tyranny against the weak that is a Chapter 11 bankruptcy court.

Second, the matter of how GM's holdings in China will be treated in bankruptcy continues to demand attention before any filing. Kevin Wale, President and Managing Director of GM China, told CNN that "Our business is run as separate joint-ventures here in China in partnership with SAIC … so we're profitable, we fund our own investment and we would be largely independent of any action that took place in the US." Yet the GM assets and profits in China must be included in any bankruptcy proceeding, and available to creditors, claimants and litigants who could, conceivably, petition to take the company into Chapter 7 liquidation.

Has GM clearly presented to the government its valuable holdings, large profits and contractual obligations in China as part of its assets in any bankruptcy? The task force has indicated some uncertainty about these questions.

Third, proceedings in the Chrysler bankruptcy have highlighted the manifold injustice being perpetrated on victims of defective Chrysler products -- and likely also to be perpetrated on victims of GM products. In the Chrysler proceeding, top Chrysler officials have acknowledged that they were ready and able to do a deal with Fiat that established successor liability for the emergent Fiat/"good Chrysler" company. In the course of bankruptcy or in preparing for bankruptcy, however, they reversed course, apparently just because they could. Now, hundreds of Chrysler victims are on track to have their claims extinguished, unless the bankruptcy judge or other court overrules this element of the bankruptcy plan.

There are many differences between the bankruptcy of the private company, Chrysler and the pending GM bankruptcy, but the GM restructuring plan is similar to Chrysler in the anticipated creation of a bad/old GM and a new/good GM that emerges without liabilities. Does the government as the major owner of GM plan to follow the Chrysler approach? Has President Obama and his Task Force given consideration to the suffering of real adults and children that will follow from such a move?

Not to mention the political backlash.

One such real person is Amanda Dinnigan, a 10-year-old girl from Long Island, New York. Amanda was injured by an allegedly faulty seatbelt in a GMC Envoy that snapped her neck in a crash. Her father, an ironworker, estimates her healthcare costs at $500,000 a year. Her lost quality of life will obviously be tragic. Will a discretionary decision not to establish successorship liability in a discretionary (voluntary) bankruptcy leave Amanda and her family -- and thousands of others like them with no access to justice?

If the Obama officials intend to proceed with maneuvers effectively to extinguish their claims, they should at least talk to some of them first, and confront the human consequences of such actions.

The GM/task force bankruptcy plans appear geared to saving the General Motors entity -- but at a harsh and often avoidable cost to workers, communities, suppliers, consumers, dealers, and the nation's auto manufacturing capacity which will move faster, post bankruptcy, to China.

At this late stage we again urge President Obama to reconsider the bankruptcy filing plans, and to enable deliberative and meaningful Congressional review -- as many Members of Congress are seeking -- of the restructuring plans before irreversible steps are taken.

After all, Congress is more than a potted plant. The “first branch” legislated, after public hearings, the 1979 Chrysler bailout and the complex Conrail restructuring a few years later.

Corporations are not people

Guest Perspective by Ralph Nader
Over the following two hundred years, these ever larger corporations and their attorneys have been driving relentlessly, dynamically to erect systems of privileges and immunities that give the corporations themselves limited liability.
Their first big move was to take the chartering authority from the state legislature and place it inside an executive agency where chartering became automatic, shorn of the conditions the lawmakers once imposed.
Once chartering became automatic, perpetual and open-ended, corporate lawyers moved to have the courts – not the legislatures – turn corporations into “persons” for purposes of constitutional rights.
Their big breakthrough came with the Santa Clara case in 1886 when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed its summary headnotes to declare that the railroad in the case was a “person” for purposes of the 14th amendment. Through elaborations in later Supreme Court decisions, that meant that companies like Aetna, General Electric, Exxon and Lockheed had most of the same constitutional rights as real people like you.
Soon it was off to the races and the promised land of no-fault corporate behavior. Early in the 20th century, companies erected “no-fault” workers compensation schemes limiting damages for the horrors of worker injuries and workplace diseases in those mines, factories, and foundries.
Then came the steady erosion of shareholder rights and power, notwithstanding the securities acts of 1933 and 1934 which emphasized disclosure and anti-fraud rules. As owners, the shareholders have had little control over the corporations they “own”. The split between ownership by the stockholders and control by the corporate bosses, and their rubber stamp boards of directors, is now wider than the Grand Canyon.
With the limitless “business judgment rule” and the permissive corporate chartering goliath ensconced in the state of Delaware, shareholders don’t even have a vote as to whether their hired bosses should dissolve their company into bankruptcy.
These investors cannot even determine the limits on the runaway pay packages by and for their supreme executives. Investors cannot even propose their names for election to the boards of directors in these Kremlin-style corporate board elections. Investors are told—if you don’t like what we your bosses are doing, you’re free to sell your shares. And, of course, that exit leaves the rascals more in charge.
Anytime the law is activated on behalf of the “little people”, corporate lobbyists move in to weaken or delete these instruments of accountability. For example, tort law giving wrongfully injured Americans their day in court against manufacturers of defective cars, hazardous chemicals or drugs and other products has been weakened by business-backed state and federal laws. More immunity for corporate wrongdoing.
When the early atomic power industry got underway in the nineteen fifties, insurance companies would not insure the potentially massive damages a breach of containment disaster might produce. No problem. The industry pushed Congress to pass the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, which greatly limited the utilities’ and manufacturers’ liability for the human devastation arising from a class nine meltdown.
How about the contracts you sign with credit card, auto dealer, insurance company, bank and other vendors? Over the years by using fine print contracts to avoid many obligations, sellers have disadvantaged consumers who have to sign on the dotted line. Corporate lawyers have turned contract law upside down. And if you don’t want to sign, you can’t go to a competitor company because the contracts are just as one-sided, taking away your rights page after page, including your right to go to court.
Well, suppose a corporation, like General Motors, is so mismanaged that it is losing sales, profits, creditworthiness and heading toward abject failure. No problem. There is always chapter 11 voluntary bankruptcy to terminate obligations to creditors, dealers, litigants, and other claimants with pennies on the dollar.
Here is how bankruptcy attorney Laurence H. Kallen described the process in his book, Corporate Welfare: “…in chapter 11 the megacorporations almost all succeed famously. They dominate the committees and bully the judges. They stay ten steps ahead of any feeble attempts at supervision. They use the bankruptcy laws to force plans of reorganization down creditors’ throats. And then the executives of those corporations laugh all the way to the bank.”
Speaking of banks, wouldn’t you like to have the power to mutate yourself like six large insurance companies did last November to get billions of your tax dollars under the TARP rescue program?
Mired in their risky, reckless investments, including derivatives, these insurance companies qualified for the money simply by a paper restructuring of themselves as bank holding companies. Voilá! The U.S. Treasury declared they qualify as financial firms and will soon be receiving your money. The New York Times reports that “hundreds” of other such companies “are still in the pipeline for review.”
Whether it is equal justice under the law, equal protection under the law, or equal access to the law, there is no contest between the corporate entity and the real human being.
What Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis feared in an opinion he wrote during the nineteen thirties is happening. These megacorporations have become Frankensteins—moving to own our genes, the plant seeds of life and taking control of computerized artificial intelligence. Their final conquest is far along—the control of government which is then turned against its own people.
As Paul Harvey used to say: “Good day.”

The grocery bill ...

Sure, we all have them and some are quite high. I'm surprised that the Labor Dept. reports that the average family of four spends nearly $9k a year on groceries! My bill is more than half that.
However, WMUR-TV offers some tips on keeping the food bill down: ["Save $1,000 On Groceries This Year"].

Powerball odds get, well, crazy ...

Not unlike a lot of folks, I don't play the lottery very much. Yeah, I know, the money goes to education. But, like a lot of people have said, it's a sucker's game. The odds are just impossible. And what's the point of buying the scratch tickets? I mean, $10 to win $5? That doesn't make a lot of sense unless you play all the time ... and that can be a lot of money.
I do, however, play Powerball whenever it gets up over $100 million or so. Again, I figure, it goes towards education. What's $5 or $10 here or there?
In addition, when the Powerball gets to be more than $100 million, there is a bit of freedom if you somehow manage to win. Think of it this way: If you take the lump sum option, you'll get a little more than half or so. The government will take 40 percent, leaving you a big chuck of change instantly in your pocket. Take the current Powerball figure of $222 million. The cash option is $113 million. The government will take its piece leaving you with about $68 million. That's a chunk of change that will change your life assuming you don't do something stupid like blow it all in Vegas or "invest" in your friend's business schemes.
So, what the hey.
The other week, the Powerball jumped up to more than $100 million. I took some of my cards into the local Irving to play $10 worth. The 10 numbers I have come from fortunes from cookies at the Chinese buffet place near my office. The clerk tried to scan the cards but the machine kicked the tickets out. Oh, the clerk said, these are old tickets. You need new ones.
Now, I rarely play, so I asked what she was talking about. Apparently, the lottery changed the numbers. OK, I thought, I'll just put the fortune cookie numbers on some new tickets.
I grabbed the new tickets and started filling them out. Oh, I looked, this has changed. Instead of picking 1 to 55, you now have to pick 1 to 59. In the Powerball pick, it's now 1 to 39 instead of 1 to 42. I filled out the numbers, played the tickets, and left.
As I was driving home I thought, Hmm, I wonder if the odds have changed that much. When I got home I compared the new and old tickets. Well, the odds had changed ... Instead of 1 in 146 million, it's now 1 in 195 million! Like 1 in 146 million wasn't bad enough. Overall, the odds of winning something have increased, from 1:37 to 1:35. But wow, those odds are now crazy. The $200,000 prize went from 1 in 3.5 million to 1 in 5.1 million. The $10,000 prize went from 1 in 584,432 to 1 in 723,145. The chances for the $3 and $4 wins increased slightly. Everything else is harder to win.
I went over to the lottery Web site and it seems the change happened in January of this year. Here is what the Web site posted:

NH Powerball® -- Now, more Powerful than ever!

We’ve packed New Hampshire’s favorite game with more fun, more excitement and a whole lot more money! We’ve raised Powerball’s® starting jackpot from $15 million to $20 million. Next, we raised the $200,000 prize to $1 million for players who Match 5 and have Power Played their winning ticket. We also lowered the overall odds of winning -- that means bigger jackpots, more often and more prizes won than ever before!

Players choose 5 numbers from a field of 1 through 59 and one Powerball® Number from a field of 1 through 39. With the change of the numbers to choose from, the overall odds of winning the jackpot prize will lengthen but the overall odds of winning will drop to 1 in 35!

Play the all new Powerball® today!

In very rare instances, the lottery may not be able to pay the stated set prize levels. In that case, the prize pools will go pari-mutuel (like the jackpot) and we will divide the prize pool among all of the winners.

Well, OK, there is some nice spin here. While the overall odds have improved, every prize that is more than $7 has gotten worse. But one has to ask the question: Why? They don't seem to tell you that at all.
The lottery remains a game for people who aren't good at math. But one has to wonder why the odds were increased so much. It wasn't like there were a lot of people winning a ton of money, right?

My cousin jammin' out

Here is my cousin Zander playing one of my favorite songs:

This might be the wave of the future

R.I.P. Jay Bennett

This is pretty sad news: ["Former Wilco member Jay Bennett dies"]. At only 45, wow. I really like Wilco a lot but I don't think the band is as creative since the Bennett was kicked out of the band.

June 2009 Top 30 Noise Chart

Reporting stations: WAAF, WBCN, WBRS, WFNX, WMBR, WMFO, WTCC, WUML, WZBC

1. The Everyday Visuals – The Everyday Visuals
2. New Collisions – New Collisions
3. Boy in Static – Candy Cigarette
4. Hands and Knees – Et tu, Fluffy?
5. Taxpayer – Don’t Steal My Night Vision
6. Passion Pit – Manners
7. Bang Camaro – Bang Camaro II
8. Muck & the Mires – Hypnotic
9. Apple Betty – Streakin’ ‘Cross the Sky
10. Chriss Sutherland – Worried Love
11. Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles – The Stars Are Out
12. The Steamy Bohemians – Technicolor Radio
13. Audrey Ryan – I Know, I Know EP
14. Growlers – What Heights?
15. Magic Magic – Magic Magic
16. The Bynars – Back From Outer Space
17. Me and Joan Collins – love trust faith lust
18. Mike Gent – Mike Gent
19. tUnE-YaRdS - BiRd-BrAiNs
20. Animal Hospital – Memory
21. Doomstar! – colors
22. Thick Shakes “Nobody’s Girl”
23. Whitetail – Whitetail EP
24. MV & EE – Drone Trailer
25. Sarah Rabdau & Self Employed Assassins – Sarah Rabdau & Self Employed Assassins
26. Many Mansions – Holy Mountain Life Adventure
27. Truman Peyote – Tour EP
28. Manners – “Fire”
29. Indian Style – “Dark In My Heart”
30. Muy Cansado – Stars and Garters

It's a nice sign when ...

The email is quiet, the Facebook is quiet, the Twitter is quiet ... it means most folks have shut off the machines and are doing something else ...

NEPA/NENA to merge in July

The New England Press Association and New England Newspaper Association will merge in July. The new organization will be called the New England Newspaper and Press Association. The organizations will be based out of the NEPA office in Dedham.

Morley L. Piper, the executive director of NENA, stated today in an email:

"I know you will look forward to working with the new organization. We all expect it will do well and be a critical help to the regional newspaper business. We at NENA appreciate all the support, confidence, assistance and most of all the friendships we have made over the years which will endure. We have come to the end of an era but it is the beginning of a new one. We hope very much our beleagured but beloved newspaper business will fare well as the economy improves."

In many ways, this is both good and bad news. It's good news because the two organizations will be stronger working together. It's not so good because there will probably be fewer awards and more competition for those fewer awards.
Here's hoping the new organization will continue to thrive in the future.

Green Day drop F-bomb on GMA!

OMW! Mancow waterboarded!

An interesting thought ...

The government has reportedly committed $12.8 trillion to fixing the economy. If you figure there are 300 million Americans, that's about $4,266 a piece. That's a TON of money if you think about it.
If each person were given $4,000, instead of giving it to the banks, stimulus, etc., the money would probably be better utilized. Let's pretend for a moment that each person was given $4,000 directly. Well, that money could be sent to pay for a credit card debt, which would help out the banks and the card holder. It could be put down on a mortgage, which would help the housing industry, the banks, and the homeowner. It could be used to pay more down on a mortgage, alleviating foreclosures, helping out all involved. You can pay for about a third of a decent car with $4k, which would help the auto industry and the car buyer. It could help the used car buyer since there would be more used cars available for people who couldn't afford a new one. You could put it all in a CD, which would help the banks lend out more money for small businesses and homeowners. Because of the way the local economy works, getting $4k in the mail would surely circulate a lot better than giving $12.8 trillion than to give it to the banks and stimulus.
Let's take this a step further: There are about 117 million households in America. If you parsed this out to households, it would be more than $10,900 per household. Imagine what nearly $11,000 could have done in the last year instead of blowing all those trillions on things that will show no real affect on the economy.
Last year, we had another child and used our stimulus check that we received to pay for the birth of our son. We received the check, it went into the bank, we had our baby and paid the hospital bill with the stimulus. The nurses and doctors who brought our child into the world were paid. So were the vendors the hospital uses. In other words, our stimulus money circulated within the local economy.
At the time that these checks were going out, I openly said it was a bad idea. Sure, give me some of my money back. But, I didn't think it was the best thing to "revive" the economy. I suggested during some discussions on the air and online that if the federal government wanted to truly stimulate the economy, it should give everyone $10,000, not $1,200. What's $1,200 going to do? Nothing really, as we've seen. But, give folks $10,000, and they could really do something with that money - buy a home, a car, save for college or retirement, which all gets circulated by the banks. Of course, this idea was a tad unrealistic at the time. Nobody was going to go into trillions of dollars worth of debt just so Janie and Jimmy can get a new Toyota ... However, as it turns out, the government DID go trillions into debt. But, instead of Jimmy and Janie getting a new car, bankers on Wall Street got $78,000 bathrooms and million dollar bonuses while driving their businesses into the ground. And now, they are talking about TARP money for the insurers and billions more for the endless wars. There really is something wrong with all of this.

Interesting press releases ...

At work, I get some interesting press releases. I can't use many of them because the newspaper I edit concentrates on local issues. However, sometimes, I blog about the things I get.
Here's an interesting one from NFI Research here in New Hampshire, about the use of social networking in the professional world:

When it comes to social networking for business purposes, Twitter has entered the office.

It also turns out that Twitter is being used by those with higher titles, based on a new worldwide survey.

Almost a third of senior executives admit they use Twitter for business purposes compared to nine percent of managers.

Overall, 18 percent of senior executives and managers use Twitter, according to the survey by NFI Research.

When it comes to personal “twittering,” a fourth of senior executives tweet compared to 15 percent of managers.

In addition to Twitter, two-thirds of senior executives and managers use LinkedIn for business while 26 percent use blogs and 22 percent use Facebook.

“It’s clear that many in business take social networking seriously and are engaging to figure out ways to make it work for them,” said Chuck Martin, bestselling author and CEO of NFI Research.

The survey also showed that more small companies than large use social networking services for business reasons.

Five times more small companies than large use Facebook for business purposes.

“We know that we need to develop more connections to our business through these web-medias, but we feel a little safe behind the leading edge on this one,” says one respondent. “I am concerned that too much investment too early in the manpower needed to monitor them all may cause the leading to become bleeding edge.”

The majority (58%) of business leaders also use Facebook for personal uses, based on the survey of 178 executives and managers. LinkedIn and blogs were the next most popular social networking services for personal purposes with 50 percent using LinkedIn and 22 percent using blogs.

No significant differences exist between company size and social networking services used for personal purposes.

NFI Research surveys 2,000 senior executives and managers globally every two weeks. It has chronicled the transformation of business and countless workplace issues for more than nine years. NFI's Chairman and CEO Chuck Martin is a best-selling author of seven business books and frequently presents NFI's findings to businesses. Martin also teaches at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire, where he teaches Consumer Buying Behavior and Marketing Research.

Chuck Martin is the author of the best-selling book SMARTS (Are We Hardwired for Success?) (AMACOM/American Management Association).

Chuck Martin is working on a new book dealing with high performing individuals. It is slated to be published by AMACOM/American Management Association.

To provide some equal balance, if you will, here's a article which reflects a bit of worry about journalists involved in social networking: ["Newspapers Tweeting Like Crazy -- But What Are the Rules?"].