Shell’s ill-fated attempt to tow an offshore oil rig from Alaska to Seattle in the final days of December was motivated by a desire to avoid $7m (£4.3m) of Alaskan state taxes, it emerged today.
But the oil giant will instead suffer a multi-million dollar loss on the exercise after the rig ran aground off the Alaskan coast on Monday night.
Some 100 of the Swiss lender’s [UBS] fixed income traders discovered that their passes were no longer working when they tried to get to work at its Finsbury Avenue offices on Tuesday morning, bank insiders said.
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration, state attorneys general, and, perhaps, the nation's largest banks are close to a final settlement on the years-long struggle over allegations of massive foreclosure fraud, according to several sources familiar with the talks. And the final details of the arrangement, according to the source who revealed them, will apparently not preclude prosecutors and regulators from taking legal action against many of the common abuses during the house bubble. It remains to be seen whether all parties will ultimately sign off on the language.
Whenever I hear our thugs in higher office say "infrastructure program," I think complicated privatization schemes, outrageous no-bid contracts, and other creative ways to sodomize the American purse.
One such example is the sewer project that has completely ruined Jefferson County, Alabama.
And now, The Exiled has uncovered the latest attempt to steal the most precious resource to all of us: water.
WATER WARS: GOV. JERRY BROWN’S PET PUBLIC-TO-PRIVATE WEALTH TRANSFER PROJECT IS A GO
By Yasha Levine
In April 2010, Kenneth I. Starr was charged in a multi-count indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York with various wire fraud and money laundering charges, among others. On September 10, 2010, Starr pleaded guilty to three counts of the indictment, including wire fraud and money laundering. (Starr also pleaded guilty to fraud as an investment advisor.) Starr subsequently was sentenced to a prison term of 90 months, three years of supervised release, restitution of an amount to be determined in a future order but not more than $50 million and no less than $29,112,782, and a forfeiture of $29,112,782.
What kind of drooling sadist would make an ad like this and then turn around and stick us with an insurance company bailout once he took office?
I guess it's the same kind who made up a debt crisis and is using it to gut what's left of the New Deal, and just to rub it in, told us it's time to eat our peas. Read below the fold...
WASHINGTON: The FBI has opened an investigation into claims that News International's now-closed London Sunday tabloid News of the World hacked phones of September 11 victims and their families.
The public library is 3 blocks north of the magnificent spire created (in days past) by the Florida legislature to serve as its chamber. Its previous chamber, the rotunda (also known as the twin domes), was slated for demolition until the legislature was overcome by nostalgia. An astute tourist, more impressed by Florida architecture than its government, once remarked:
I often refer to the conservative takeover of the Republican Party as activism we lefty types would do well to emulate. However, there may be a limit to just how far the conservatives can go within that Party. A genuine backlash is coming: a giant grunge match "to the pain" between the corporatists at the top of the Party and the anti-government/fundiegelical base at the bottom. Read below the fold...
