HIGHTOWER: Hog Report
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Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
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DrugReporter:
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Environment:
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Matthew McDermott
Food:
Quitting Meat Is a Process -- Almost Impossible to Do All at Once
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Health and Wellness:
Does the House Bill's Public Option Kill Off the Senate's?
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Immigration:
Immigrants and Health-Care: What Part of LEGAL Doesn't Washington Understand?
Marielena HincapiƩ
Media and Technology:
Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh Stoking GOP Civil War
Eric Boehlert
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
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Politics:
What Obama Is Up Against in His Own Branch of Government
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Reproductive Justice and Gender:
"Precious" Star Claims the Spotlight
Emily Wilson
Rights and Liberties:
Ugly Truth: Most U.S. Kids Sentenced to Die In Prison Are Black
Liliana Segura
Sex and Relationships:
9 Silly Things People Say When They Hear You Don't Want Kids (And Ways to Counter Them)
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Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Radioactive Wastewater in New York Raises More Concerns About Oil Drilling
Abrahm Lustgarten
World:
Why the Ft. Hood Massacre Is George Bush's Fault
Thom Hartmann
Time for Hightower's "Hog Report" [hogs snorting] . . . and today we've got a BIG ONE for you!He's Gerry Cameron, who's been the boss hog at U.S. Bancorp in Portland, Oregon. In June, though, Cameron helped engineer a takeover of this bank by a Minneapolis outfit called First Bank System Inc. As part of the deal, some 4,000 U.S. Bancorp employees are getting the axe, because the new owner wants to chop the payroll by some $255 million.While these 4,000 people (plus their families) are now facing some mighty lean times, Cameron did go out of his way to protect one of the bank's employees: Himself! Indeed, he's now one super-fat hog, thanks to the sweetheart deal that lets him keep his position as chairman of the new bank, along with the $1.6 million annual paycheck he's been getting, plus the millions in stock profits he will reap from the merger.But this is the least of it. On August 1st, the day the firings of the 4,000 workers are to begin, Cameron will get a special bonus payment of $12.4 million from the new owners. Now get this, Cameron will not even have to pay taxes on his windfall, since First Bank also agreed to cover the multimillion-dollar tax tab for him.But wait, there's even more in Cameron's gold-plated trough. He gets stock options on 100,000 shares of the Minneapolis-based bank, worth a good $8.6 million. The only thing they left out was a pension and a gold watch, but don't cry for Gerry -- another clause in his takeover deal guarantees that the bank will pay him a million bucks a year after his retirement!This is Jim Hightower saying . . . Gerry Cameron sold-out 4,000 fellow employees in the name of "economizing," then gorged himself on an estimated $50 million. He's a fat hog now . . . but remember: it's the fat hogs that are taken to slaughter.
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Why the Ft. Hood Massacre Is George Bush's Fault Rights and Liberties: If Al Gore (or even Ralph Nader) had been President in 2001, the Ft. Hood massacre almost certainly wouldn't have happened. Because George W. Bush was president, it did. By Thom Hartmann, The Smirking Chimp. November 11, 2009. |
Whistleblowers Say Oil Reserve Numbers Deliberately Inflated to Avoid Panic, Appease the US Environment: Apparently the IEA was concerned that reporting the true reserve numbers would trigger a buying panic. By Matthew McDermott, TreeHugger. November 11, 2009. |
Quitting Meat Is a Process -- Almost Impossible to Do All at Once Food: When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. It's a strange formulation, and it's distracting. By Jonathan Safran Foer, AlterNet. November 11, 2009. |
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