12.17.08
Try, Try Again
Drew Peterson is alleged to be engaged to be married to another 23 year old woman. She is a roommate to OJ Simpson’s girlfriend in a cave where there is no news from the outside world.
12.10.08
Private Jets
Politicians just can’t stop talking about the audacity of Rick Wagner, Bob Nardelli, Alan Mulally flying to Wasington on private jets to meet with law makers on November 19. There is actually talk of making the sale of those jets a condition of receiving bailout money from the feds. Because I don’t have anything better to do on my lunch hour, I googled Rick Wagner’s salary (of the big three, his company is alleged to be in the most trouble). According to mlive.com in 2007 he received a salary of $1.56M and incentive bonuses of another $1.8M; he also received stock options that, at least in April, were valued at about $11.7M — I’m going to count those as being worth zero now. That totals $3.36M for the year or about $1680/hr based on a 2000 hr work year.
I also looked up the distance from GM’s corporate office to Capital Hill — 526 miles according to Google, or about 9 hours drive one way. So for the round trip flying takes about 14 hours less than driving, or about $23520 if you use the conservative number that I estimated above; it could be even more if you count the stock options. That’s pretty comparable to the $30000 that it supposedly costs to fly the jet.
Plus, we are talking about a bunch of politicians who pissed away, what, 20 times as much money on TARP just a few months ago. That wasn’t acceptable either, but the outrage over the stupid jets is ridiculous and hypocritical.
As for the role of politicians in this whole deal, the line seems to be that bankruptcy is not an option, but it sure seems like the only real solution out there is chapter 11, at least for GM and probably Chrysler (maybe a merger). It would be bad for the many people who would undoubtedly lose their jobs, but you can’t stop that; GM’s own turnaround plan calls for releasing thousands of people anyway. Plus, if they could work out a way to loosen the UAW’s stranglehold on the entire industry (it is union campaign $ that make bankruptcy unfathomable for most politicos), that would be great for the country.
