Happy Freaking New Year:Bye 2011

Timely tune

Movin' towards that big 5-0
Headed towards that big 5-0
Now, who's that scarecrow I do see
In the mirror lookin' back at me
Some things you gotta take your shot
Half work out and half do not
The nickel laughs when it gets tossed
Yeah, we're bangin' on that drum now
And shake that rattlesnake
We're plowin' through 'til sunup,
Oh, just tryin' to stay awake––and we're
Headed towards that big 5-0
Headed towards that big 5-0

The NRC: A Snail Pacing

NRC Chairman Jaczko and four of his commissioners have been in an extended wrangle over among other things the speed with which the NRC should act on the post Fukushima disaster safety recommendations made by the Near Term Task Force. Obama appointee Jaczko favored an expedited (by NRC standards) implementation and four of his five commissioners balked favoring more “stakeholder input” and a different time frame (aka snail’s pace?). This disagreement and other ongoing spats, which Senator Bernie Sanders described as an attempted coup against the chairman went high profile this past week in Republican Darryl Issa’s congressional hearings when Jaczko and the NRC commissioners testified.

So when all the dust particles settle, at what speed will the recommendations be moving? According to the NRC's Blog the Near Term Task Force’s recommendations have been handed off to a new group.

[…]The group is called the Japan Lessons-Learned Project Directorate. The directorate will support a steering committee consisting of senior agency managers to coordinate and implement the task force recommendations per with our Commission’s direction, including its goal of striving to implement the recommendations within five years.

An important aspect of our path forward is stakeholder engagement with members of the public. We will seek input through public meetings to help us determine whether changes may be required to improve safety at U.S. nuclear power plants.

In 2008 candidate Obama called the NRC “a moribund agency…captive of the industry that it regulates.”
It still sounds plausible enough three years later.
The Huffington Post reports that vocal Jaczko critic NRC Commissioner Bill Magwood did consulting work for the Fukushima plant’s owner Tepco when he was in the private sector. Not that there is anything wrong with that as the information was provided for his NRC confirmation process.
According to Ryan Grim at Huffington:

Magwood, a Democratic appointee, would be the leading candidate to take Jaczko's gavel if the coup succeeds, according to people familiar with the internal workings of the commission (as well as through a simple process of elimination: the other Democratic panel member is not considered a serious candidate for the chairmanship).

CEO Profit'$ Shine on Brightly ,Quite Insane

Well hard times come no more! According to The Guardian CEO pay survey it just got a little shinier for some in that city on the hill. While austerity and stagnation is the order of the day for the majority of Americans some of the country’s top bosses got pay increases of between 27 and 40% last year.

America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m

The top of the top came from the health care industry. The head of the world’s largest healthcare firm McKesson’s John Hammergren made over $145million in 2010 the majority from stock options.
Just for laughs here is some local perspective on how much money Hammergren’s $145million is in a human scale. In Vermont, Federal spending cuts to LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding to low-income households) might ultimately result in funding to the state going from $27.5 million in 2011 to approximately $11.6Million for 2012.


One counter-intuitive gravity defying feature of high end pay packages is that stock prices may go down yet compensation continues to head up for some departing and retiring executives. Notice three out of these four highest paid departing or retiring CEOs were leaving companies where shareholder stock prices had declined during their tenure.

Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna's stock price declined by 70% from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement. At pharmacy chain CVS, Thomas Ryan made a $28m profit on his options. During Ryan's 13-year tenure as CEO, CVS Caremark's stock price decreased almost 54%.

Omnicare's Joel Gemunder retired last August and received cash severance of $16m, part of a final-year pay package worth $98.28m. Adam Metz, the former boss of General Growth Properties, a real estate company that specialises in shopping malls, walked away with a $46m cash bonus in 2010. GGP executives received nearly $115m in bonuses from the firm as it emerged from bankruptcy.

It may always to be good at the top. However for most Americans, maybe “all they can do is stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers” (to lift a line from part of a well known speech).

Kale or Chicken?

Kale OR Chicken?

Chicken OR Kale?Kale OR Chicken?Kale OR Chicken?Kale OR Chicken?Kale OR Chicken?

Kale OR Chicken?

It's kale...no it's chicken
KALE,KALE,KALE,KALE...chicken?

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Hollywood Pagan Penguin Ploy Exposed

Media-wise parents will want to keep their vulnerable children from seeing the politically correct propaganda of HAPPY FEET TWO.

Thought for minute I had fallen for an Onionesque prank on TPM until I followed their link and found that sadly it’s no joke. Happy Feet Two a squeal to last year’s hit animated family film Happy Feet has really raised the hidden liberal agenda warning bells at a christian movie review site.

They warn potential viewers:

Very strong mixed pagan, politically correct worldview promoting homosexual same-sex partnerships and homosexual adoption and promoting radical environmentalism and global warming hysteria throughout, including eating meat is seen as bad as are all humans,

...no sexual content but speaking of “making eggs with other penguins”; no nudity[penguins have tuxedos]; no alcohol; no smoking or drug use; and, children deliberately disobey father, children are rebellious, and comments on existentialism fitting in with humanist elements noted above.

They smoked out a subversive agenda most people could hardly imagine. Leaves one to ponder how the liberal Hollywood propaganda machine can survive this embarrassing setback. Guess this kills plans for Happy Feet Three.

And the workhouses,Newt - are they still in operation?

Newtie the Republican idea man:

“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, in child laws, which are truly stupid,” he said.

”I tried for years to have a very simple model,” he continued. “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they’d have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

Who but Newt Gingrich could blame child labor laws for entrapping children in poverty and pack so many old dog whistles in such a short remark? But perhaps he was just helpfully offering evidence in support of former Sec. of Labor Robert Reich’s description of the current scrum of Republican candidates.

Reich: They're not conservatives. They're regressives. And the America they seek is the one we had in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.

Or, I suppose the strategy minded Gingrich as he headed to South Carolina was just blunting accusations that his recent stance on immigration was humane. I understand that is a bad thing for him in the context of the battle for the Republican nomination.
Anyhow, up in various polls and with undiminished confidence Newt the Gilded Age regressive told ABC News the other night“I’m going to be the nominee,”