Re-maligned Rich

It seems dozens of wealthy Wall Streeters that donated to Obama in 2008 are now realigning and donating to Mitt Romney. Many may just be hedging their bets as Obama is still raising plenty from Wall Street. In June he reportedly gathered $2.4 million at one event in a New York restaurant.
However

-According to a review of fundraising data, 67 people who work in the financial sector and live in the New York City metro area gave to Obama in 2008 and the former Massachusetts governor in 2011. This select group from Credit Suisse, the Blackstone Group, the Stanwich Group and Goldman Sachs has since donated more than $147,000 to Romney.

Supposedly these reversals come as a result of Obama’s “tough” rhetoric while pushing to pass the Dodd-Frank banking laws.
One aspect of this that is little hard to stomach given the fast pace of recovery on Wall Street compared to main street is the executives expressed feelings of “betrayal” by Obama. "Everybody I speak to is on the same boat -- disappointment," said one Wall Street executive who requested anonymity
They seem more fragile and easily offended than one might expect of hardened business execs. And there is this heartrending remark "It's not healthy for rich people to feel maligned," Or is that a tearful threat?

It could be taken so if you take seriously a recent warning from Warren Buffett, one of the World’s richest men

“There’s class warfare, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

So enjoy the upcoming Labor Day holiday and please be gentle with the wealthy. After all we have been warned that it isn’t healthy for the rich to feel maligned! Be thoughtful and try to keep in mind the burden it must be for the top 400 wealthiest people in this country to own more than the bottom half combined.

Corporate crush ‘n’ gusher makeover

Mitt Romney blurted out recently that in his opinion, "Corporations are people, my friend." So what are some of these incorporated “people” up to these days?

Two familiar corporate giants, Chiquita and Disney, are hooking up. Agreement Links Companies with Long History of Quality Products & Services reads the press release headline. Chiquita will bring its “healthy fresh” products to Walt Disney World Resort and Disney Cruise Line and receive brand exclusivity within their respective categories.
Chiquita, which started its long corporate life in Central America as United Fruit (where its involvement in internal politics led to the term banana republic), may still need an image assist.

In 2007 Chiquita pled guilty to violating US law by making illegal payments to the Colombian rebel group FARC and paid a 25-million-dollar penalty. This past May lawsuits against Chiquita involving this case and allegations of rebel killings of Colombian citizens were consolidated and will be heard in a Florida court this year.

But this is Disney World so: as part of their collaboration, Chiquita will serve as the sponsor of both the "Crush 'n' Gusher" at Typhoon Lagoon (themed around a tropical fruit processing center), and the "Living with the Land" attraction, where Chiquita will join forces with Disney to help teach guests about nutrition.

Amazing it didn’t occur to them that Crush ‘n’ Gusher sounds like a description of United Fruit’s method of repressing peasants, crushing union activity and subverting local governments in their banana-republic glory days. And Chiquita/Disney’s “Living with the Land” attraction more than likely will not highlight the lack of genetic diversity in monoculture growing practices that have already made one type of banana plant extinct and placed a second one now under the same threat.

Guess Disney World couldn’t be a better partner for Chiquita to help remake its image to more closely match the fantasy it wants the rest of us to believe.

Will the Real Brian Dubie Please Sit Down

Word is everywhere that Vermont's former Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie may be stirring himself for a second run at governor. The results of a recent Public Policy Polling shows our Dubie losing 40-48 percent in a re-match race with Governor Shumlin. However the same poll shows his favorability rating at 48%- very close statistically but still greater than Shumlin’s 45%.


This despite the notably nasty (for Vermont) 2010 race he ran. Many months later Dubie and his former campaign manager Cory Bliss were forced to issue personal letters of apology to settle a defamation suit. Also his 2010 campaign’s alleged illicit coordination with the Republican Governor’s Association on a campaign commercial is currently under investigation by the Vermont AG, following a complaint filed by the Vermont Democratic Party accusing the Dubie campaign of having directly aided in the production of an advertisement sponsored by the RGA. The filing also charges that former Gov. Jim Douglas "acted as an agent of both the Republican Governors Association and 'Friends of Brian Dubie'.”

As a result, a group of Dubie’s influential Republican supporters (including Douglas) formed Friends of Brian Dubie Legal Defense Fund to pay Dubie’s legal costs from his last campaign.

Since Dubie’s hard-edged campaign and subsequent loss, it’s easy to wonder whether he might have governed like Jim Douglas or more like Wisconsin’s right-wing radical Scott Walker. Dubie certainly didn’t hesitate to jettison large chunks of his renowned nice guy image in search of victory. Many of the new crop of Republican governors are following agendas well to the right of the rhetoric used in their campaigns and the overall political attitude of their states. New York Times data analyst Nate Silver pointed out that the pipeline of moderate Republican governors has run dry. Further, Silver says,

unlike the Democrats, there is no correlation between the ideology of the governors and the ideology of the states. Whether you have a Republican governor in a fairly liberal state like Maine, a moderate state like Ohio, or a conservative one like Idaho, that governor’s agenda is likely to be aligned with the extreme right.

Also highly conservative are Dubie's ‘friends,’ the major funders of the RGA.

Two major players in the RGA are alleged phone hacker Rupert Murdoch and David Koch, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s ultra-conservative backer.

In July 2010 Politico reported the RGA was the recipient of a whooping $1 million donation from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The RGA’s other seven-figure donor was David Koch. News Corp.’s media outlets play politics more openly than most, but the huge contribution to a party committee is a new step toward an open identification between Rupert Murdoch's media empire and the GOP.


If failed gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie decides he needs to take another shot at the state’s top office, can we count on legacy media outlets to keep these less-than-flattering facts in front of the electorate next year?

also posted at greenmountaindaily.com

Vermont's Friday cat-blog and gargoyle !

This is believed to be Vermont's only Friday cat-blog with a gargoyle!

Slowly,slowly through the NRC labyrinth

NRC chairman Jaczko had requested the NRC commissioners fast track the Fukushima task forces safety recommendation in 90 days. However that isn’t likely as Thursday three of five commissioners announced their votes to go slowly.

It’s official: the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been outvoted on his proposal that the panel decide within 90 days on the recommendations it received from its Fukushima task force.
Rep.Ed Markey said the NRC had in essence directed the NRC staff “ to endlessly study the 90-day staff report before the commissioners consider the recommendations”

And the Nuclear Energy Institute wants to divide and conquer any new regulations

Marvin Fertel, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, told Wall Street analysts at a briefing Tuesday. In other areas, the recommendations of the task force call for "significant changes in the way NRC regulates," he said. Those issues should be considered separately, he said.

Full steam ahead and No Real Control

NEI does not expect the post-Fukushima recommendations to slow license renewals, power uprates or new plant approvals by NRC, Fertel said. Reactor design approvals, including for Westinghouse's AP1000 - the design being used at the two new US nuclear projects closest to completing NRC license reviews and beginning construction - are continuing to move forward, he said.

Obama,act like a staunch Democrat?

The only thing he hasn't done so far is act like a staunch Democrat, and take cuts to key Democratic programs off the table. That might not work either, but we don't know, because it hasn't been tried.

It could have been Obama's starting point,but as Joan Walsh at Salon.com points out it has proven to be the one thing that was never tried.

The president sincerely believes that the intense polarization of American politics isn't merely a symptom of our problems but a problem in itself – and thus compromise is not just a means to an end but an end in itself, to try to create a safe harbor for people to reach some new common ground. I actually have some sympathy with that point of view. But having now watched two smart Democratic presidents devote themselves to compromise with Republicans, only to be savaged with increasing intensity, I've lost faith that compromise itself holds some healing magic. Maybe it just emboldens bullies.

Rupert Murdoch's hacking spill-over

This feels a little like the cartoon that depicts a long ago diarist writing in 1337 “today the hundred years war began”. However everything has a starting point and speculation has begun and it seems that Rupert Murdoch’s News of The World's hacking scandal is spilling into the US.

There are several items that indicate at least some spill-over underway.
With a $7 billion drop in market value of News Corp shares over four trading days a business observer wonders:

Will the falling domino effect ripple to the U.S., throttling through News Corp.'s powerhouse properties, Fox TV network, and the respected Wall Street Journal?

Also an ongoing institutional shareholders lawsuit against News Corporation was amended to include the recent phone hacking scandal. The new charge claims that News Corp’s board failed to exercise proper oversight and take sufficient action since news of hacking first surfaced at its subsidiary, News International, nearly six years ago.
In addition, yet a little less tangible is that the ethically challenged operating methods now on display in the UK have been imported to Murdoch’s operations here in the US.

"The lack of ethics shown by Murdoch's powerful staffers in England is a transnational virus," said Jeff Cohen, journalism professor on csmonitor.com, "News Corp. has regularly imported these British staffers to his US outlets, from the New York Post to Fox News to the Wall Street Journal."

In addition one media expert says the lawsuit is just the beginning, while noting that: the intangible damage to American journalism should not be overlooked.

"Look no farther than the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal," he says. “On the Monday morning of this enormous scandal,” he notes, the paper had only a small notice about the closing of the News of the World.

And finally US Senator Jay Rockefeller Chairman of the Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee has taken notice and called for investigations saying in a statement:"This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken U.S. law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated," he added. "I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by the News Corp. may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans. If they did, the consequences will be severe."

Here are just some of News Corporation US holdings.It is a partial list:
FOX News Channel, FOX Business Network, Fox Television Stations, 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures
New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network
SmartMoney.com (with Hearst), HarperCollins Publishers, William Morrow Publishers
hulu.com (32%)

Republicans and shiny things

UPDATE:7/12/11 Upton and Barton's BULB Act fails. The vote on the bill was 233-193 with five Democrats voting for the bill and 10 Republicans against it.One Republican voted present.

Call it the freedom to choose the light bulb you want or even the right to bare bulbs.

This week House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton will introduce legislation watering down a 2007 law aimed at phasing out incandescent light bulbs and establishing efficiency standards for light bulbs. The bill Upton will bring to the floor is built around Texas Oil Rep. Joe Barton’s cleverly named retrograde effort called Barton’s Better Use of Light Bulbs (BULB) Act.

BULB Act repeals a provision in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that requires traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient beginning in 2012.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has a fact sheet (PDF) that shows what the present law if un-modified by the BULB Act would save rate payers in individual states. By their estimate Vermont households annually would save $105.00 in electric costs. These savings collectively, nationwide, would eliminate the need for 30 new power plants.

First he was for it, now he’s against it. For Congressman Upton this is an ongoing effort to live down the fit of reason he suffered back in 2007 when he actually co-sponsored this law and supported bills aimed at phasing out incandescent light bulbs and establishing efficiency standards. Upton – a 24 year house veteran and wealthy heir to the Whirlpool manufacturing fortune, and once considered a Republican moderate – is rapidly phasing out that personality feature.

“It was never my goal for Washington to decide what type of light bulbs Americans should use," Upton said in a statement to The Hill. " The public response on this issue is a clear signal that markets – not governments – should be driving technological advancements. I will join my colleagues to vote yes on a bill to protect consumer choice and guard against federal overreach.”

Perhaps Upton is afraid the burned-out incandescent bulb over his head will be replaced by a nice, efficient, lower-heat, more-light, longer-lasting, compact fluorescent. No new ideas.

Adequately under-compensated

“Vermont’s challenge is neither unemployment nor overcompensation; it’s under underemployment and under-compensation”

says Bill Schubart at the close of an opinion piece on VPR Wednesday. However the focus was not specifically on either the under-employed or even the under-compensated, but on departing Fletcher Allen CEO Dr. Estes. Schubart states that her pay package ($826,000 plus a potential performance bonus of $245,000), which he helped negotiate, was “right.”

No reason to doubt that Fletcher Allen CEO Dr. Estes faced challenges and from reports managed to successfully meet them as she was paid to do. With 6,800 employees Schubart tells us the Medical Center is more complex than some of Vermont’s private businesses where some CEOs earn even more.

By way of explaining, Schubart notes that private-sector executive compensation in America is an international embarrassment to democratic principles, and he seems aghast at the large and growing wage disparities nationally. He cites a recent Washington Post examination of these horrors.But apparently he feels Vermont is unique and any similar feeling regarding Vermont CEOs in uncalled for.

“Recent news reports indicate that Vermonters, too, feel their business and nonprofit executives are overcompensated. But are they? We all feel more secure singing in a chorus than singing solo, but let’s look at reality.”

By one measure executive pay, even in Vermont, is out of proportion to workers earnings: although Vermont’s Merchant Bank CEO Michael Tuttle is at the “modest” end of compensation at $396,069, his compensation is still 11 times the median worker’s pay (do the math: half of Merchants Bank employees earn less than $36,000 a year). In 2010 then-CVPS CEO Bob Young made $1,151,178, and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters head Larry Blanford made $2,406,207.

After a lifetime in Vermont’s public and private sectors, Schubart confidently says he has

“seen nonprofit leadership salaries ranging from $36,000 to $1M a year and have yet to see an overcompensated executive in that sector. Mostly, I have seen the opposite.”

Therefore, he feels Vermonters who raised eyebrows at Melinda Estes’ pay package are piling on our homie non-profit CEO.

In some circles $826,000 plus performance benefits may be considered under-compensating, but by the standards of the crowd I run with that’s pretty rich. It is his turf, so Schubart could have a point about the package he helped negotiate being “right.” However for a large number of Vermonters who have had little or no increase in their earnings for years – and in the case of Vermont state employees, who’ve seen decreases in pay – it may be hard to spare much sympathy for wealthy Vermonters who apparently quite rich enough.

Maybe it’s high time to start a concerted effort to hike-up wages at the bottom first. We can do that if we make sure the sacrifice is shared by raising tax rates on those well-compensated folks bringing home over $250k a year, as Senator Bernie Sanders has recommended nationally to President Obama.
Then perhaps we could help under-compensated Vermont private sector and non-profit executives catch-up to their national counterparts. Until then, they may do just fine, as Dr. Estes has.

Well it's the Fourth of July

Well it’s the Fourth of July and here is a link to a story of a Harvard study which analyzes childhood participation in celebratory patriotic event (4th of July) and future political belief patterns. In a nut shell, Republicans just love a parade.

…the results indicate that Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party.

The pair researched previous studies, finding that July Fourth participation divides along political lines with
a) Republicans viewing the historic anniversary as more important than Democrats do,

and b) Republicans attending July Fourth celebrations more consistently than Democrats do.

A real view of Vermont Yankee?

At the top is Entergy's Vermont Yankee nuclear plant on the banks of the Connecticut river and the Greenpeace blimp.

Below is the Nebraska's Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in what is officially referred to as an "unusual event" by the NRC.

As the NRC quote in the previous post said ,and Vermonters hope it's true:

"It’s all designed to stay one step ahead of the rising floodwaters."

"It’s all designed to stay one step ahead of the rising floodwaters"

"It’s all designed to stay one step ahead of the rising floodwaters."

That reassuring statement made June 22nd is from the NRC public-blog .

Fast forward to June 27th

The inflatable berm that had been providing extra flood protection for the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant was punctured and deflated "due to onsite activities" early Sunday morning,Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) said in a statement.

The collapse of the berm allowed floodwaters to surround the main electrical transformers. Operators transferred power from offsite sources to the emergency diesel generators as a precautionary measure due to water leakage around the concrete berm surrounding the main transformers.

The NRC says no danger to the public, the plant is still being cooled and “The nuclear reactor was not affected by the flood waters said company and government officials.”
To the un-trained eye it kind of looks as if it was affected.

TeeVee vampire power hogs

The U. S. has one set-top cable box for every two people with and average box using more electricity in a year than an energy efficient 21 cubic foot refrigerator. U.S. cable companies say their priorities when purchasing equipment is functionality and price and efficient systems which reboot would be slow and more expensive. However experts in energy efficiency say technical solutions are possible, some at little expense. In Europe low energy systems reboot from deep sleep faster than some people do, in one to two minutes. One scientist said this about attitudes in U.S. industry, "I don’t want to use the word ‘lazy,’ but they have had different priorities, and saving energy is not one of them."

There are 160 million so-called set-top boxes in the United States, one for every two people, and that number is rising. Many homes now have one or more basic cable boxes as well as add-on DVRs, or digital video recorders, which use 40 percent more power than the set-top box.

These set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are generally running full tilt, or nearly so, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use. The recent study, by the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC), concluded that the boxes consumed $3 billion in electricity per year in the United States — and that 66 percent of that power is wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. That is more power than the state of Maryland uses over 12 months

from the NRDC and New York Times

While riding from tee to tee in Vermont…

Golf is in the headlines and in the deep thoughts of one Vermont Tiger.

On what should have been a carefree charity golf tournament at the local country club one golf playing Vermont Tiger-blogger was suddenly seized by fear of a tax. It seems that “while riding from tee to tee,” he noticed that 16 of the 19 event sponsors were financial firms. Storm clouds of worry over burdensome regulations and related horrors rapidly formed.Troubling imaginary scenarios soon followed.

This begs the question: If these firms, and their owners, are the ones that continue to step forward to support their communities, even in a truly lousy economy, why would Vermont work so aggressively to penalize their success through onerous taxation, burdensome regulation, and constant muckraking?
More importantly, to what extent does every additional dollar of taxation, or page of regulation reduce their ability to make important community donations? How many actual cents of that taxation comes back directly to our communities after it has worked its way through the Vermont government bureaucracy?

Tournament of terrors! Poor man, a good ride from tee to tee spoiled. Can this type of whining perhaps reach a peak? Or maybe the thinning golf caddy is making some uneasy.

None other than Former Bush speechwriter David Frum went so far recently as to chide Wall Streeters whining and this week The Washington Post writes that mega level executive pay has reached unexpected places.
Frum said this:

By the numbers, you may wonder what the rich have to complain about. Corporate profits are up, and the S&P 500 has surpassed 2008 levels. President Obama has signed a renewal of the Bush tax cuts. …Millions of Americans have lost jobs, homes, and savings in a financial crisis and recession caused by the recklessness and incompetence of some of this country’s most eminent and best-compensated financiers.

Maybe awareness of the growing gap between the very wealthy and the unwealthy is at last drawing some needed attention. One indicator of economic inequality puts the US behind Cameroon and Ivory Coast and just ahead of Uganda and Jamaica. The Washington Post says that as the income gap widens it isn’t just executives in Wall Street firms that are getting rich but lesser ones from companies in even relatively mundane fields such as the milk business.

Over the period from the ’70s until today, while pay for Dean Foods chief executives was rising 10 times over, wages for the unionized workers actually declined slightly. The hourly wage rate for the people who process, pasteurize and package the milk at the company’s dairies declined by 9 percent in real terms, according to union contract records.

Quick Bring me Howard Dean’s brain

New DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) made remarks today at the Netroots Nation gathering praising Howard Dean’s tenure as DNC Chairman.

“Over the past few years, we’ve maintained a strong democratic organization staffed in all 50 states thanks to the 50-state strategy put in place by Howard Dean,” Wasserman Schultz said. “And I can tell you that I am looking forward to sitting down with Chairman Dean next week so I can pick his brains clean on what he thinks that we should be doing to continue the fight to make sure that we can elect progressives all across the country.”

I would bet Howard’s brain, if requested has been available for picking for the past two years or more. Wonder if this isn’t an effort at getting all the ducks in a row. I understand there is an election coming up.

Vermont's Rashomon Republicans

OR:
Parts of the same elephant?
The room Vermont’s top Republicans recently met in might not have been filled with smoke but it invites that image. A “handful” of Vermont Republicans gathered in a closed door meeting to chart strategy for the 2012 state elections. The handful of eight included chairwoman Pat McDonald ,executive director Tayt Brooks , State Sen. Randy Brock , Auditor Tom Salmon, Barre Mayor Thom Lauzon, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott , Mark Snelling and by phone former Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie.
There seemed according to different reports to be two tracks of interpretations coming from the meeting. One shared by Chairwoman McDonald who said afterward

“No one claimed a particular race. McDonald said the goal was to get these high-profile candidates to discuss their own plans, and use their star power to recruit additional candidates” and “A primary in some cases is a good thing,” and similarly Sen. Randy Brock felt “…it was essentially a meeting to talk about 2012, but no decisions were reached”

Do they realize Tom penciled in his dance card?
Auditor Tom Salmon has a unique view. According to Fair Game,Salmon felt the meeting was what he expected and this included what he called “Filling the dance card in light pencil.” This sounds suspiciously like he has claimed a particular dance eh, race, if only in “light pencil” or maybe it’s some kind of personal style instant runoff voting for all the offices in his mind.

Regarding a primary, Salmon wrote assuredly on his Facebook page recently

Prediction: There will not be 5 ambitious politicians tripping over each other to "be Governor." This state is way out of balance and restoring it is our first priority.

Recently on VPR retired professor Eric Davis offered the view that Salmon was the one to watch because. Once Salmon makes up his mind then other Republicans who have statewide ambitions they can decide if they're going to run for any statewide offices themselves. Waiting for Salmon; an interesting twist for the post Douglas / Dubie Vermont Republican party.

Sarah Palin and "He who warned,uh the British..."

Comic book versus Sarah Palin

"He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed." Sarah Palin

Godzilla, Gamera and everything in between

Another tasty Hyper Kitchen movie morsel served up with characteristic flare. I recommend a trip to the Hyper Kitchen blog’s latest entry which covers Japanese monsters movie Godzilla, Gamera and everything in between

On one side stands Godzilla, the Kaiju world's Coca-Cola. Ubiquitous and influential, Godzilla was the one that really got the ball rolling. On the other side stands Gamera, the Pepsi-esqe rival that quickly evolved from mere imitator into a enduring pop-culture presence in its own right. In the between the two are scores and scores of lesser known creatures, equally adept at smashing skyscrapers and crunching tanks beneath their giant feet, but unable to reach the fame that the aforementioned reptiles have achieved. These are the Shastas and the RC Colas and the Faygos; basically as fun but often overlooked.

Fukushima Friday

The Washington Post reports that nuclear fuel began melting at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi just five hours after the earthquake.

About 11 hours later, all of the uranium fuel in the facility’s unit 1 reactor had slumped to the bottom of its inner containment vessel, boring a hole through a thick steel lining, the University of Tokyo’s Naoto Sekimura told a committee of the National Academy of Sciences.

Here in the US the NRC concluded this fact early on and recommended American citizens evacuate to a 50 mile radius compared to the Japanese government recommended 12.5 mile zone.

The future of the site: Making nuclear lemonade?
One plan under consideration would be convert Fukushima Dai-Ichi into a nuclear waste storage site. This means permanently storing the nuclear waste at the site of the damaged reactors.

The Atomic Energy Society of Japan is studying the proposal, which would cost tens of billions of dollars, Muneo Morokuzu, a professor of energy and environmental public policy at the University of Tokyo, said in an interview yesterday. The society makes policy recommendations to the government.
“We are involved in intense talks on the cleanup of the Dai-Ichi plant and construction of nuclear waste storage facilities at the site is one option,” said Morokuzu.

Charting Bush’s deficit financed tax cuts

Here is an updated version of a CBPP(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) chart that was circulating a while back.

…simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule (or paying for any portions that policymakers decide to extend) would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade. While we’d have to do much more to keep the debt stable over the longer run, that would be a huge accomplishment.

But you know it’s just like a family budget. Yup, after a family member gives away a large portion of your income you tighten your belt, cut expenses but never reestablish the lost revenue source.