In no particular order, the little stories of 2008 that said a lot.

Billion-dollar bailout-seeking automakers ditch the private jets, return in ‘marketable’ autos.

There are a pile of ‘real’ stories here, but the one to me that trumps them all is this one: congressmen with the authority to hand out hundreds of billions of dollars were sending these people away just to watch them return with a little more humility. But–why were politicians talking to the top executives of any of these catastrophic business failures at all?

The Detroit fools that showed up to beg for taxpayer money in lavish private jets are only the most obvious media donkeys. Virtually every large financial investment institution and bank has failed spectacularly in this ‘crisis.’ As of two months ago, here were the top bailout recipients:

AIG $40 billion, JP Morgan $25 billion, Citigroup $25 billion, Wells Fargo $25 billion, Bank of America $15 billion, Merrill Lynch $10 billion Goldman Sachs $10 billion, Morgan Stanley $10 billion…

…and lord knows what they’ve received by now is impossible to figure out. But have we really come to understand the nature of this ‘crisis’? This isn’t the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001, nor that of Pearl Harbor and the entry into WWII. This isn’t what Indonesia had to deal with after the tsunami of 2004. And we aren’t some boom-or-bust third world country desperately dependent upon the market price of tin. This is the largest economy in the world, a fully diversified, complicated, bustling thing for sure. But it tanked? Somehow the whole monstrous thing crapped out? Because…why?

Universal mismanagement. How infuriating is that? That’s what greed and stupidity are, reckless mismanagement. But for the life of me, I can’t find a single bailout-benefiting CEO that’s been sacked (not that it hasn’t happened, but I just can’t find one). Who in the world, with the ability or responsibility to save these economy making-or-breaking entities wouldn’t demand that the reckless fools who destroyed the megaliths be fired? And fired before they’d even be considered for a bailout with amounts of taxpayer money nearly unimaginable?

That’s political recklessness on the same scale as the economic recklessness that wrought this mess. Don’t kid yourself, or buy into the idea that these arrogant business ‘legends’ are any wiser or chastened, they won’t be. Real change at the top never spontaneously shows up, it’s just not the way of the world.

Doubt me? Try to rate this for stupidity: this is General Motors’ donkey Bob Lutz talking to Fox while his bailout was being considered and then rejected…

The President bailed out GM. Bob Lutz still has his job. How about you?

 In no particular order, the little stories of 2008 that said a lot.

I posted elsewhere about this about a year ago: Indiana National Guardsmen got chronically exposed to carcinogenic hexavalent chromium dust while providing security for KBR contractors in Iraq.

KBR works in other facilities like the one in Iraq, and I find it hard to believe they never at least wondered about the bright orange dust that was blowing everywhere. This is the same chromium metal that was responsible for all the misery in ‘Erin Brockovich.’

Yep, turns out they were having internal dialogues about the carcinogen and dragged their feet to say the very least. As hideous as the stuff is, they should have pulled everybody off the site the very second they ‘knew.’

If I’m to believe any of the many, many interviews and bios I’ve seen and read about the guys who enlisted in the armed forces and who served in war zones over the last five years, it was that many of them grew up in small towns and decided to serve to achieve something bigger for their lives. They wanted more than they could do by staying at home–they wanted to give their lives a deep meaning by serving their country. What they got was toiling through blistering temperatures for pittances in an OSHA-free industrial zone. Pretty much the thing they’d chosen to avoid. 

They wanted to serve the nation of their forefathers, they got re-routed into serving the nation of the President’s business cronies. There just isn’t enough shame in the world.

In no particular order, the little stories of 2008 that said a lot.

Well, it’s no longer a ‘little’ story, but it sure seemed to start out as ‘yawn’ news:

Toxic Ash Pond Collapses in Tennessee
By David Biello

COAL WASTE: The coal ash left over after burning in the nine boilers of the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee pictured here is stored in three ponds, one of which collapsed.

The residue of millions of tons of coal burning at Kingston Fossil power plant in the Watts Bar Reservoir in Tennessee burst the bounds of the pond in which it was contained, burying as many as 400 acres of land in up to six feet of sludge. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which owns the coal-fired power plant—first operated in 1955—announced that 15 homes were buried and no injuries were reported.
A combination of rains and accumulating sludge likely contributed to the disaster—one of two major ash pond collapses in the past decade. All told, about 2.6 million cubic yards of so-called coal ash slurry escaped, the TVA says. The collapsed pond is one of three on the site.

“We deeply regret that a retention wall for ash containment at our Kingston Fossil Plant failed, resulting in an ash slide,” said Tom Kilgore, TVA president and CEO in an official statement today.

Such slurry worries environmentalists and public health activists because it is the residue of coal burning. The burning concentrates the impurities in the coal, including arsenic, lead and mercury, among many other potentially toxic contaminants. Coal ash is also radioactive.

There is no ‘clean’ coal. This is an ancient energy-producing process with current problems that are only barely different than they were 20 or 50 years ago. I had no idea that these pits were still around, and still this big. ‘Clean coal’ people have just been lying all year, this ain’t the future.

Also: there are all sorts of heavy metals in the stuff, which almost surely means that the company will eventually admit that it’s also carcinogenic, which means that those families who lived in houses now in the muck can also probably say ‘goodbye’ to their former homes.

But the company flacks are not telling you that yet, are they? They’re just saying they’ll clean it up as fast as they can. If you had kids, would you return? Exactly.

UPDATE: Heavy metals.

In no particular order, the little stories of 2008 that said a lot.

Hillary and sniper fire:

Of course, we can forgive her for a faulty memory. But she never did stop sticking her foot in her mouth–the gaffes kept coming without any stop.

Hillary fans were furious that people, especially Democrats, were so hard on her. But they missed an important point: once the Democratic candidate was chosen, the spotlight and the pressure were going to get much, much worse.  Hillary would have continued to make mistakes which would have worked against Democratic hopes.

It was no mistake that Obama turned out to be a great candidate. He looked good, remained unflappable, managed a better campaign, and he beat the Republican by seven points. The story: pressure is a good test.

In no particular order, the little stories of 2008 that said a lot.

The guy’s not accomplished, not politically savvy, not educated–hell, this ‘plumber’ isn’t even a licensed plumber. He argued with Obama over paying taxes which he doesn’t even do. Yet McCain plucked him from obscurity and gave him fame and a pop culture career. What did he do in return?

That’s right, stabbed McCain in the back. The story? Even Republicans who owed McCain everything showed him no love.

On the opposite side, people who knew almost nothing about Obama really liked him…

In no particular order, the little stories of 2008 that said a lot.

Sarah Palin did not learn much, or get better with time. Or was it Republicans?

Stunned? Headless? Elected? Two out of three ain’t bad…

In no particular order, the little stories of 2008 that said a lot.

The Toussie Affair
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Staten Island Advance

Handing out presidential pardons at the end of the year has always been a tricky business.

After all, people who are in need of pardons are people who have broken the law; it’s fair to ask why a fortunate few should be exempted from the long-term consequences of that law-breaking.

George W. Bush, spending his last holidays as president, granted 18 pardons and one sentence commutation last week before leaving to spend the holidays at Camp David.

Within 24 hours, however, the White House was forced to rescind one of them.

That was the pardon that was somehow wangled by Isaac Toussie, a Brooklyn-based developer who pleaded guilty in 2001 to making false statements to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and mail fraud in connection to a townhouse development in Stapleton.

In that scam, he falsified the financial situations of prospective buyers so they could obtain HUD-insured mortgages. It was a portent of the subprime mortgage crisis that spread and has sent the global economy into a tailspin.

Some of the families caught in that scam are still reeling from it. Some 400 home-buyers, here and elsewhere, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Toussie.

The next year Mr. Toussie also admitted to defrauding Suffolk County in an estate sale.

In 2003, he was sentenced to five months in prison, five months house arrest and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and restitution.

He was a garden-variety scam artist, by his own admission. Yet somehow, he managed to make it to the list of finalists appealing for year-end pardons from the president.