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Gilad Shalit was taken prisoner on June 25, 2006. He has yet to have a single ICRC visit even though the Geneva Conventions require them. This is one of the many human rights violations that the Hamas regime has perpetrated and they deserve universal condemnation.
WTF is the flotilla of concerned lefties for Gilad Shalit?
It's behind a pay wall, but it is worth considering the gist of this WSJ article. "Ralph Nader, the scourge of American business and onetime presidential candidate, has found his next corporate demon: Cisco Systems Inc. Mr. Nader isn't calling for a router recall or claiming the company's networks are unsafe at any speed. Instead, he wants the tech company to pay a bigger dividend to boost its shares."
As a small investor, Mr. Nader is upset that corporate profits are accumulated in cash rather than paid in dividends for retirees like himself. With cronies on the board, he feels the purported democracy of corporations has been replaced by a self-serving oligarcy. He would be wrong if he were simply shortsighted, preferring money now to investment in the future. But that cash just sitting there might also be used for excess executive pay. So where are the institutional investors, handling other people's money, on this one?
Donald Trump was invited to address a major gathering of American Indian Nations a few weeks ago in upstate New York. He spoke for almost an hour about his plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living. He told them that he had supported every Native American issue that came up in the news media. He also stated that he hated western movies since they are politically incorrect. As you can inmagine, he told them near everything he thought they wanted to hear.
In 1993, when New York City voters faced their first referendum on term-limits for local elected-officials, sixty per cent decided on the imposition. In 2010, voters upheld this decision for a third time in seventeen years. The margin was even wider: three to one. The only offices left exempt from term-limits are those of the five district attorneys -one for each NYC County.
Charles Hynes has been the District Attorney for Kings County (Brooklyn) since 1989. His tenure has had its share of controversial moments. Critics have often suggested that he is too closely aligned with the political machinery of the King’s County Democrats. They believe it is not healthy for a DA to be so close to party-bosses, elected-democrats, their minions and their operatives. There may be a point to this critique.
As I’ve said before, even in the NYS legislature, the idea that a bill only comes to the floor of a chamber of the legislature when a majority of the majority party’s membership would support it if it came to the floor, is nonsense.
Sometimes, a majority would support a bill if it came to the floor, and doesn’t want to let it on the floor for that very reason. Other times, the majority does not have the votes within its conference to pass a bill, but agrees to let it pass with the minority providing some of the votes.
GATE (6/15/11): Kalman Yeger says it would be outrageous to eliminate Weiner's district.
Really. Has he seen a map of it?
What's outrageous is that it exists at all. In actuality, it’s elimination could actually lead to less political fragmentation of Brooklyn and Queens’ Orthodox communities, rather than more.
If this is true, I'll give Liu etc. their due. But it won't matter unless dividends rise as well.
"New York’s public pension funds, with $118 billion under management, have found a measure of success in pressing companies to end what most experts agree is an egregious practice — CEOs getting paid from company coffers to cover millions of dollars of their golden parachute tax liability. This year the pension fund, which includes the New York City Employees Retirement System, has negotiated behind the scenes with board members of at least four companies — Motorola Solutions Inc., Anadarko Petroleum Corp, WellPoint Inc., and R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. After those talks, all of the companies revised their change-of-control pay plans."
After months of prick-teasing, Rock finally comes out in favor of same sex marriage.
NYC Comptroller John Liu recently released a report and started an initiative to assure everyone that New York City’s public employee pension funds are fine. “Retirement Security NYC is a major initiative launched by Comptroller John C. Liu to protect the retirement security of public employees while ensuring the City's financial health,” with the retirement security portion intended to gain the support of public employee unions in a campaign for Mayor and the financial health portion intended to assure the city’s bondholders and wealthy and business taxpayers there is a limit to the extent to which their ox will be gored. The latest report is called Sustainable or Not: Pension Cost Projections Through 2060.
I have read the report, and have several problems with it. First, Liu piles up one rosy assumption after another. Next, his claims in big print in the front of the report, and in press releases, are much rosier than the detailed tables in the back of the report, even given the rosy assumptions. Third, those detailed tables lack the details required to figure out how the numbers were calculated. Finally, Liu endorses the Generation Greed position that it is perfectly wonderful if retroactive pension increases for those cashing in and moving out are offset by lower pay and benefits for future public employees. I get the feeling that the only way these reports can achieve their political objective is if no one actually bothers to read them, and write a post like this one. Or nobody bothers to read this post. My objections are detailed after the break.