Archive for March, 2008

Fred Phelps gets it right back in his face

Published by
elophan
March 31, 2008 in Freedom of Speech, Newz, Protest and Religion. 0 Comments

By Taylor Atkins, The Capital-Journal

The Million Fag March, started by Chris Love, of Leavenworth, drew more than 400 demonstrators with signs, shirts, even pants touting messages of compassion and tolerance.

Homosexual, heterosexual and transgender pickets lined the corner of Gage Park. They hugged, danced and cheered as passersby honked their support.

“It’s about time we did something like this again,” said Hope Prescott, of Topeka, who waved a rainbow banner. “We feel somewhat responsible for the Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church. It’s about time we show our support for gays rights and all rights.”

Love said the idea for the march came after Westboro members picketed actor Heath Ledger’s stateside memorial service, but the theme for Sunday’s event encompassed more than funeral picketing.

“It’s not just about the Heath Ledger thing,” Love said. “We’re against everything that church does. The theory has been to ignore them, and they’ll go away. It’s been 20 years, and they’re still here. Now we are too.”

“I invited Westboro to come out and join us, but they didn’t come,” he said. More…

Share This

HUD chief resigns amid ethics investigations

Published by
elophan
March 31, 2008 in Government, Housing and Newz. 0 Comments

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson resigned Monday, amid multiple ethics investigations and criticism from top lawmakers.

Jackson said he will step down on April 18. He did not mention the allegations in his brief statement Monday, saying only that he wanted to attend to personal and family matters.

The resignation came after criticism from members of Congress that Jackson has refused to respond adequately to allegations of impropriety.

No names have been floated as candidates to replace Jackson, a long-time friend of President Bush from their days in Texas.

Earlier this month, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, demanded Jackson’s resignation, saying the ethics allegations have distracted from the secretary’s ability to handle the nation’s housing crisis. The secretary has recently been accused in a lawsuit of retaliating against housing officials in Philadelphia for blocking a land deal with one of Jackson’s friends.

The FBI has been investigating allegations that Jackson steered a federal contract to a golfing buddy based in South Carolina. Jackson has denied wrongdoing and White House officials have said for months that the president still has confidence in Jackson. No charges have been filed against him.

Lawmakers said that at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Jackson refused to answer several committee members’ questions, and later did not respond adequately to a follow-up letter from Dodd asking for information “on the various allegations of impropriety he is facing.” More…

Share This

Bush overhaul plan would be largest since Great Depression

Published by
elophan
March 31, 2008 in Economy, Newz and The Executive Branch. 0 Comments

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury’s ornate Cash Room. He declared that a strong financial system was important not just for Wall Street but also for working Americans.

The administration’s plan was already drawing criticism from Democrats that it does not go far enough to deal with abuses in mortgage lending and securities trading that were exposed by the current credit crisis.

The plan, which would require congressional approval for its biggest changes, seeks to trim a hodge-podge collection of overlapping jurisdictions that date back to the Civil War.

It would give the Federal Reserve more power to protect the stability of the entire financial system while merging day-to-day bank supervision into one agency, down from five at present.

It also would create one super agency in charge of business conduct and consumer protection, performing many of the functions of the current Securities and Exchange Commission.

It would propose eliminating the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, merging their functions into other agencies.

It would ask Congress to establish a federal Mortgage Origination Commission to set recommended minimum licensing standards for mortgage brokers, many of whom now operate outside of federal regulation, and it would also take a first step toward federal regulation of the insurance industry by asking Congress to establish an Office of Insurance Oversight inside the Treasury Department.

Paulson acknowledged in his remarks that most of the changes will not occur until after a lengthy debate in Congress, leaving it to the next administration to deal with the biggest changes proposed by the report. He also said the Bush administration’s focus would remain on getting through the current severe credit crisis, which has roiled financial markets since last August. More…

Oh, imagine that! A republican “leaving it to the next administration”. Gawd forbid should they ever have to fix their own damn messes! -Sue

Share This

Supplier moves to hire as workers picket

Published by
Gene Shinai
March 31, 2008 in Business/Finance, In Defense of Democracy, Jobs, Labor and Newz. 0 Comments

From the Detroit Free Press (freep.com)

Nearly five weeks into the UAW strike at American Axle & Manufacturing Inc., the company is hiring workers at four plants in New York and Michigan that are subject to the work stoppage, to replace striking workers and for future positions at the auto supplier.

In an ad found on The Oakland Press’ Web site, the company said it seeks candidates for production and skilled trade positions.

After noting the strike, the ad reads: “Employment offered to applicants responding to this advertisement will be to fill anticipated attrition replacement openings after negotiations or in place of employees involved in this strike.”

The ad does not list compensation rates for the positions or a start date, but notes that the company seeks to fill full-time positions for three shifts and that those hired would receive benefits after “a certain period of regular employment.”

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Share This

pResident Bush Loudly Booed During National’s Home Opener

Published by
Gene Shinai
March 31, 2008 in Human Interest/Society, In Defense of Democracy and Newz. 1 Comment

Courtesy Think Progreess:


President Bush delivered the first pitch tonight at the new Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. to a resounding chorus of boos. After being announced, Bush was showered by boos as he strode to the mound. Even after Bush delivered the pitch, the jeering did not let up until the President disappeared from the field.

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Share This

Vatican newspaper ‘Muslims have overtaken us’

Published by
elophan
March 30, 2008 in Newz and Religion. 0 Comments

By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY - Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world’s largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.

“For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us,” Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican’s yearbook.

He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population — a stable percentage — while Muslims were at 19.2 percent.

“It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer,” the monsignor said. More…

Gee, time for another crusade?? Oh that’s right, there already IS one. Muslims are gonna have to have a lot more kids to make up for all the ones we’re killing. Maybe it’s because of all of that murdering in the name of Jeebuz, that your Virgin Mary statues are always crying. Geez! -Sue

Share This

Countrywide Financial Corp. execs to get millions in stock

Published by
elophan
March 30, 2008 in Business/Finance, Housing, Insult and Injury and Newz. 0 Comments

NEW YORK (CNN) — The two top executives at struggling Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage lender, are slated to receive a combined $19 million in payouts, a regulatory filing shows.

The payments are part of the company’s pending takeover by Bank of America.

Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo is set to receive $10 million in stock, and President David Sambol will get about $9 million, according to documents Bank of America filed this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sambol will receive another $28 million in cash and stock to stay with the combined company, the document states.

Their compensation is tied directly to the performance of the company via stock and options that the executives have held over time, according to the filing.

Mozilo and Sambol, along with ex-Citigroup chief Charles Prince, came under fire this month by members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who chastised the executives for helping foster the current mortgage crisis.

Mozilo, Sambol and Prince made headlines in the past year for their lofty compensation after their companies suffered heavy losses in the U.S. housing market. More…

Yeah, boy! That’ll teach ya! (sarcasm off)-Sue

Share This

Katrina victims may have to repay money

Published by
Gene Shinai
March 30, 2008 in Environmental Disaster, Housing, Insult and Injury, Newz and Policies and Procedures. 0 Comments

Via YahooNews:

By JOHN MORENO GONZALES, Associated Press Writer
Sat Mar 29, 7:23 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS - Imagine that your home was reduced to mold-covered wood framing by Hurricane Katrina.

Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government-provided trailer that gives off formaldehyde fumes you finally win a federal grant.

Then a collector announces that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.

Thousands of Katrina victims may be in that situation.

A private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments.

The contractor, ICF International of Fairfax, Va., revealed the extent of the overpayments when it issued a March 11 request for bids from companies willing to handle “approximately 1,000 to 5,000 cases that will necessitate collection effort.”

The bid invitation said: “The average amount to be collected is estimated to be approximately $35,000, but in some cases may be as high as $100,000 to $150,000.”

The biggest grant amount allowed by the Road Home program is $150,000, so ICF believes it paid some recipients the maximum when they should not have received a penny. If ICF’s highest estimate of 5,000 collection cases — overpaid by an average of $35,000 — proves to be true, that means applicants will have to pay back a total of $175 million.

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Share This

Rich Men Behaving Badly

Published by
Gene Shinai
March 29, 2008 in Class and Economy. 0 Comments

From Slate:

By Daniel Gross
Posted Saturday, March 29, 2008, at 7:08 AM ET

For decades, social scientists, policy wonks, and politicians have studied and debated what’s come to be known as the “culture of poverty.” The consensus: A group of Americans is set apart from the mainstream by geography, class, and income. Its members adhere to norms that don’t apply to the rest of society and engage in self-destructive behavior that imposes significant costs on the nation at large. The culture of poverty has made for potent politics (remember Ronald Reagan’s fictitious welfare queen?) and spawned best-selling polemics from the right (Charles Murray) to the left (Jonathan Kozol).

We don’t hear as much about the culture of poverty these days. Perhaps it’s because the market turmoil is making us all feel a little poorer. Or perhaps it’s because a highly visible group is now exhibiting all the outward appearances of the underclass: the overclass. Forget welfare queens and the culture of poverty. Think Wall Street kings and the culture of affluence.

Wall Street types don’t live in ghettos, barrios, or the hollows of Appalachia, but they do inhabit environments that are sealed off socially from the rest of the world—the Hamptons on Long Island; Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue; Greenwich, Conn. Because they rarely interact with people of middle-class means (save the odd doctor, lawyer, or interior designer), they have become woefully out of touch with the solid bourgeois values that made America great.

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Share This

Tiger Attack Survivor Arrested For Shoplifting

Published by
elophan
March 29, 2008 in Crime and Newz. 1 Comment

SAN LEANDRO, Calif. — Shortly after he and his brother filed claims against the city of San Francisco for being attacked by a tiger on Christmas Day, Amritpal Dhaliwal was arrested for misdemeanor petty theft for allegedly shoplifting at a Target store in San Leandro, police said.

San Leandro police Lt. Tom Overton said a security guard at the Target store at the Bayfair Center observed Dhaliwal, a 19-year-old San Jose resident, stuffing items inside his pants about 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Overton said Dhaliwal walked past all the store registers, never attempted to pay for the concealed items and walked outside of the store, where Target security stopped him and put him under citizen’s arrest.

The concealed items were two Nintendo Wii controllers valued at a total of about $80, according to a police report on the incident.

At 10:51 a.m. on Thursday, about eight hours before the alleged shoplifting incident, Dhaliwal and his older brother Kulbir Dhaliwal, filed claims against the city of San Francisco for being attacked by a Siberian tiger named Tatiana at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas day.

Overton said that Target security officials told police that Amritpal Dhaliwal may also have shoplifted items from stores in Hayward and Fremont.

Overton added that detectives are following up on that information and the Alameda County District Attorney’s office has been notified.

He said that if authorities charge Amritpal Dhaliwal with additional thefts, the charges against him could be upgraded to felonies.

According to the report, when Dhaliwal was asked why he came to the Target store on Thursday, he said, “Just for a stupid ass reason.”

The report says that Dhaliwal claimed the reason he stole the items from Target is, “I just needed something to eat.”

According to the report, when Dhaliwal was asked how often he stole from Target, he said, “I swear to God I never stole from Target except a couple of weeks ago. I stole a bag of Skittles.” More…

I swear to God I didn’t provoke that tiger into attacking us. The animal was clearly unstable if it couldn’t tolerate a few taunts. I can just hear their defense now! Geez! -Sue

Share This

« Previous Entries

  • Support The H.O.R.N.

    Monthly Subscriptions
    Rock ($10 USD)
    Paper ($25 USD)
    Scissors ($50 USD)
    Hammer! ($100 USD)
  • To donate by mail

On Air!



Streaming and Archives made possible by
The White Rose Society

Chatroom


  • One Billion Bulbs The Head On Radio Network Bulbs Change Statistics


  • H.O.R.N. Widgets




    • Subscribe

    Subscribe to my RSS Feeds

    Archives

    Categories

    Close
    E-mail It