Game wardens have reputation for overstepping their authority. Here is one such story that is all too typical of what you will here in any rural area. Here is how the story ended. Sad to say, the ending is not all that typical.
Andrew Olmsted wrote an essay to be used in the event that he died. Being an officer on the front lines in Iraq he had reason to think that might die. And as a dedicated blogger, he wanted to have a say on his own death.
Many of you may have already read this essay, give that almost every big name political blog around has linked to it. But for those of our readers who do not regularly read political blogs, we thought that it would be worth highlighting on our own page. Given that so many people want to speak for the dead, it seems reasonable to give them a chance to speak for themselves.
Don’t know what Rock Fish are? Watch the clip below……
Hat Tip Sippican Cottage
From Ice Age 2…..
Hat Tip Vanderleun
Governments have a poor record when it comes to providing security. But if there is any area where the free market does a worse job then governments it is in the area of providing security. Any company with a profit motive is going to cut security to the lowest level possible. From The Washington Post….
Kerry Beal was taken aback when he discovered last March that many of his fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were taking regular naps in what they called “the ready room.”
When he spoke to supervisors at his company, Wackenhut Corp., they told Beal to be a team player. When he alerted the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, regulators let the matter drop after the plant’s owner, Exelon, said it found no evidence of guards asleep on the job.
So Beal videotaped the sleeping guards. The tape, eventually given to WCBS, a CBS television affiliate in New York City, showed the armed workers snoozing against walls, slumped on tabletops or with eyes closed and heads bobbing.
The fallout of the broadcast is still being felt. Last month, Exelon, the country’s largest provider of nuclear power, fired Wackenhut, which had guarded each of its 10 nuclear plants. The NRC is reviewing its own oversight procedures, having failed to heed Beal’s warning. And Wackenhut says that the entire nuclear industry needs to rethink security if it hopes to meet the tougher standards the NRC has tried to impose since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
From Calculated Risk and Business Week…..
Hat tip to Disempowered Paper Pusher (the backbone of our industry!) for this excellent BusinessWeek piece on homes abandoned by both borrower and lender, “Dirty Deeds.”
An anecdote with all the right motifs:
In 1998, Elizabeth M. Manuel obtained a $34,500 mortgage on the property from IMC Mortgage (since acquired by Citibank). By 2002, the loan had been sold into a securitization trust administered by Chase Manhattan (now JPMorgan Chase) as trustee. It also went into default, and Chase began foreclosure proceedings. In a court filing, Manuel (who could not be located for comment) said she left the home while the foreclosure action was pending. More than five years later, though, the title remains in her name. The house, although still standing, has become a fire-gutted wreck.
In May 2007, Nowak issued a default judgment against Chase for $9,000. But these cases can be notoriously difficult to untangle. Thomas A. Kelly, a spokesman for the bank, notes that Chase sold its trustee business to the Bank of New York Mellon (BK) in October, 2006, and couldn’t locate anyone at Chase able to comment. But he reiterates the industry view that Chase can’t be held responsible for maintaining a property it never owned. He acknowledges that if a home didn’t seem worth taking as collateral, the bank may have made a decision to “just walk away.”
Besides amusing myself by trying to figure out just what documents I’d have to give Judge Boyko to prove standing to foreclose in this case, I am of course deeply impressed by the social acceptability of “just walking away.”
Meanwhile, the Navy has recently taken out of service the last of its relatively new Osprey (MHC 51)-class coastal minehunters. These 12 ships-ideal for littoral operations-were commissioned between 1993 and 1999. The Navy began decommissioning them in June 2006. Some have been transferred to Greece and Egypt, with the remainder being kept in storage at Beaumont, Texas, until they can be disposed of.
Lee Hunt, vice president for academic affairs for the Mine Warfare Association, said that the departure of the last coastal minehunters robs the service of the ability to survey domestic harbors for mines. The threat of mines or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in U.S. harbors is of growing concern of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
Still another sign of the confusion and lack of interest with respect to mine countermeasures is the current Navy move to replace the large MH-53E Sea Dragon mine countermeasures helicopters with the smaller MH-60S Sea Hawk. The latter has considerably less endurance and equipment lift capacity than the MH-53E, and also lacks the big bird’s night-flying capability.
The Vancouver-based company that makes much of the world’s methanol — the main ingredient in windshield washer fluid — has had to curtail production in Chile.
The company is having trouble getting natural gas, another key ingredient, from neighbouring Argentina because the country has imposed a hefty export tax.
Methanex is now posting a price of $832 US per metric tonne, up from a low of $309 earlier this year.
In October, the company reported a severe shortage of methanol because of closed plants throughout the industry — including its own in Chile — combined with strong demand. It’s since restored some natural gas supply.
Consumers haven’t noticed the impact yet.
But retailers will soon be running out of inventory and buying — and selling — the product at new, sky-high prices, Paquette said.
Somebody should start a comedy routine with the punch line being “and the share price went up.” Sometimes the news that can cause share prices to rise can seem pretty absurd. Take Sallie Mae latest troubles for example…
Student lender Sallie Mae said Monday it raised $2.9 billion through a stock sale, the majority of which will be used to settle contracts that require the company to buy back shares at above-market prices.
and at the end of the article…..
Shares rose 36 cents, or 1.8 percent, Monday afternoon $20.01 The company’s shares had plunged last week to their lowest price since early 2001.
I know the markets were probably just relived that Sallie Mae manged to get out of those contracts as easily as it did. Still, its kind of funny when stocks rise on news like that.