Mock, Paper, Scissors

As part of a law suit here in Silicon Valley, via the emails of various CEOs, we have learned that titans of industry–those Galtian overlords–conspired to keep engineers from switching companies and presumably receiving higher wages. Instead of letting the invisible hand of the market determine the going rate for engineering talent, they had a Gentlemen’s Agreement to not steal employees from each other.

The inner workings of Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, and others are in the public spotlight.

Steve Jobs, who was a world-class asshole, which might be the secret to being such a gifted CEO, threatened a patent lawsuit against Palm if they did not stop poaching Apple engineers. Jobs wrote to then-Palm CEO Ed Colligan:

I’m sure you realize the asymmetry in the financial resources of our respective companies.”

Which is about as close to making him an offer he cannot refuse as you can get. Seriously, when the company with the highest value in the world tells you about its deep pockets while threatening litigation, you better believe that you’ve been warned. Next thing: a horse head on your pillow.

Eric Schmidt of Google (motto: Don’t Be Evil) of course was evil: Google’s former senior staffing strategist Amnon Geshuri informs Schmidt that a recruiter, having pursued an Apple employee, will be “terminated within the hour.”

Schmidt seems to have realized that all of these gentlemen’s agreements were probably unethical and potentially illegal. But being Eric Schmidt, instead of stopping the practice, he ordered everyone to quit leaving a paper trail, “less the company be sued later.” So, in short, a cover-up to a conspiracy. Nice work, Nixon. Can you recommend a plumber?

Likewise, Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini doesn’t want the handshake agreements to be “broadly known.” This pretty clearly indicates that these guys knew what they were doing was wrong, if not illegal and in a delicate knife-in-the-back twist of irony, declaring that there be no paper trail is now in the paper trail.

Yes, these CEOs are the same guys who squash any attempt to collectively bargain, who fight any regulations that might interfere with the alleged free-markets.

Now if only we had an Attorney General who was amongst the breathing, there might be charges and a highly entertaining frog-march of the elites to the pokey. But we don’t. We also don’t have a media that is covering this story. The business press isn’t covering this story, and if you want to consider how it could be that wages did not improve with the economy, here is one part of that puzzle. But the press is covering the vital issue of Beyoncé lip-syncing and the ever-present threat of celebrity side-boob.

The Verge has the entire collection of documents up in a gallery. It’s infuriating, but it is really worth reading.

Prarie Weather has a really good post up that deconstructs the mythology that the economy is ready to roar back if only there were some qualified people to fill the jobs.

While it might seem obvious, the issue is that the employer is not willing to pay for the skills that they want. So it is really that they would hire people if only they were willing to work for a pittance, or better yet for free.

JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, said Friday they won’t make home loans much cheaper for consumers, even as they reported booming profits from that business.

Those bottom lines have been padded by federal initiatives to stimulate the economy. The Federal Reserve is spending $40 billion a month to reduce mortgage rates to encourage Americans to buy homes. Instead, its policies may be generating more benefits for banks than borrowers.

“The government can’t force banks to give out loans at lower rates any more than they can force Macy’s to sell me sheets for a dollar,” said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner at consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics.

Then change the Federal Reserve Policy, Ben. If the banks are not doing what you wanted, and you have no mechanism to require that they do, then stop spending $40 Billion a month on it.

(WaPo)

(Image: Business Insider)

America’s best-loved CEO (which puts him slightly behind tapeworms) has left his job as a pundit at Fortune Magazine and joined (momentarily?) the unemployed. His departure comes following his BLS-Truther moment where he claimed that The Kenyan Usurper Hawaiian Devil Baby cooked the books to show that the economy was improving.

Welch, who takes a backseat to no one (not even Carly Fire’em All Fiorina when it comes to firing people (see 1000,000 jobs lost during his reign)), could not believe that somehow the serfs had found jobs in this bad economy. The Coup De Grâs came when his employer Fortune Magazine actually called him out on his BS.

And the fearless former CEO Welch (which in past tense, Welcher means a person who does not keep his obligations), “sent an e-mail to Reuters’ Steve Adler and Serwer saying that he and his wife Suzy, who have jointly written for Reuters and Fortune in the past, were “terminating our contract” and will no longer be sending our “material to Fortune.” How’s that for professionalism?

Here’s the best part:

Fortune tried to contact Welch to find out if the resignation was related to our reporting of his tweet, but Welch didn’t return our phone call.

Courageous Jack Welch: Always the professional.

(CNN Money, and CNN Money)

So now the Stench scoop of the day from David Corn at Mother Jones magazine is this little gem:

Willard explains the Bain Capital business plan: not creating jobs but “harvesting” companies they take over.

Which of course can only remind me of this movie:

Seriously, who (other than a farmer) ever says harvest and not mean something ghoulish?

(Mother Jones)

OK, I lied:

Comment Cat is not amused.

…Willard wants to export our vulture capitalism to the rest of the world:

“The aim of a much larger share of our aid must be the promotion of work and the fostering of free enterprise,” said Romney. “Nothing we can do as a nation will change lives more effectively and permanently than sharing the insight that lies at the foundation of America’s own economy – and that is, that free people perusing happiness in their own ways build a strong and prosperous nation.”

Romney said that freedom and free markets is not perfect, but it is more reliable and more successful. He said he wants to negotiate new partnerships and create what he will call the Reagan Economic Zone – a new free trade zone. “We’re going to couple aid with trade and private investments,” said Romney.

–His Willardness, talking at something humorously known as CGI, the Clinton Global Initiative. And it is only fair to note that Clinton signed every Free Trade Agreement that came to him and exported our jobs in the process.

Shorter Willard: “Screw Democracy, show me the cheddar!”

In a nutshell, Willard’s Reagan Economic Zone is the World Trade Organization without what few pesky regulations inhibit it from complete Corporate Rule of the entire planet. He’s been selling this snake oil since at least September of 2011, which means he’s held it as a policy position for an amazingly long time. For Willard.

But on a bright note, Willard can now join the club that names something after Saint Ronnie, so he’s completed a checklist item to win the preznincy.

(Mediaite)

This is an example of what can happen when local governments privatize public services:

Tomas Lopez, the 21-year-old lifeguard, was fired on Monday after he left his station to help a man who had been pulled out of the water in an unprotected area of Hallandale Beach. According to the Orlando Sun Sentinel, Lopez and an off-duty nurse tended to the man, a 21-year-old from Estonia, until paramedics arrived. The man—who is recovering at a local hospital—was in a “swim at your own risk” area of the beach about 1,500 feet south of the boundary lifeguards are expected to patrol.
…snip…
“We are not a fire-rescue operation,” Jeff Ellis, head of company that manages the lifeguards, told the paper. “We are strictly a lifeguard organization—we limit what we do to the protected swimming zones that we’ve agreed to service.” The company has provided lifeguards for the area’s public beaches and pools since 2003.

And so the issue is?

“We have liability issues and can’t go out of the protected area,” Lopez’s supervisor, Susan Ellis, told WPTV. “What he did was his own decision. He knew the company rules and did what he thought he needed to do.”

Sweet baby Jeebus with a life preserver. Rescuing someone outside of your imaginary border could open you up to a lawsuit, while letting him drown is OK? I’d like to know what the city manager has to say about this.

“We take the safety of all visitors to our beaches very seriously,” Hallandale Beach City Manager Renee Crichton said in a statement. “Whether they are in a protected area or unprotected area, we believe aid must be rendered.”

One of the common complaints I hear from Wingnuts about Public Employees is that they say that something “is not my job.” And so here is a private sector company in charge of lifeguards saying that rescuing someone is not their job. But we probably won’t hear a single peep about that.

(The Lookout)

“People now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things.”

–Congressional Candidate NY-27 Chris Collins (R – of course)

Tell that to the 30,000 or so men who die from prostate cancer, and the 40,000 or so women who die from breast cancer each year. Assrocket.

There is a club. You are not in it.

Silicon Valley has been on the edge of our collective seats this week waiting for the Fates to determine, well, the fate of Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson, he of the mysteriously awarded CS Masters Degree from a college that doesn’t offer one, at least not at that time that his resume claims that he earned it.

Anyway, in the land of credentials (it is common here for people to state at the beginning of meetings their colleges, degrees, and honor society memberships, and I wish I was kidding about that) to have someone rise in the ranks without a degree is not unusual (see Faceberg, Mark or Jobs, Steve or even Ellison, Larry), and is somewhat an expected archetype. However, having someone rise in the ranks with a wholly fictitious resume is somewhat unusual.

Now, if Yahoo! was a small and stable tech company, I suppose this story of false credentials would probably fly under the radar, but Yahoo! is anything but small and stable. It is still (amazingly) the most visited web portal on the internet, and even while it is understood by many to be in serious trouble, it is still a billion dollar company. One would think that when hiring a new CEO that someone, somewhere, might have the job of vetting the candidates.

Maybe the thinking is that Thompson who came to Yahoo! from PayPal (a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay) was already vetted by his previous employer, and I suppose that he was, so why bother vet him again? After all, if (then eBay and now HP CEO) Meg Whitman hired him, well, he’s gotta be as good as Skype. (Meg bought Skype but did not buy the intellectual property rights, or apparently the source code… eBay sold Skype–or whatever it was that Meg bought–back to Skype’s founders and overall lost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal after she left eBay.)

Anyway, since it was revealed about a week ago that Thompson’s credentials are anything but real, he’s apologized multiple times to the remaining Yahoo! employees (he’d already laid of 2,000 of ‘em), his apologists have issued numerous explanations (including that an executive recruitment company inserted the degree and he never noticed), and the media has had numerous, thoughtful “conversations” about resumé padding. No one has used the ugly words, lied or liar. Mistake, scandal, I swear I even saw boo-boo; the language has been gentle.

Scott Thompson is a liar. He lied about an easily fact-checked degree on his resume, which makes him an idiot as well as a liar. The people who vetted his candidacy are idiots. They should be walked out the door, too. For cause.

And before we get into the padding a resume vs. lying ethical discussion, I think that there is a world of difference between including the unpaid internship working for your father and declaring you have a degree from an accredited university. Let’s not go there. There is no way to spin it to his advantage.

So there is a strange and terrible object-lesson to this story. Someone who managed to lie his way into the boardrooms and upper echelons of corporate America, literally climbed into the 1% got caught in what I can only think would be a career-killing lie, and he was not walked out the door immediately as you or I would be. (True story: I saw know someone who was fired for claiming to know Power Point. This person is just as credentialed as Scott Thompson and clearly more honest, so in theory s/he could be running Yahoo!)

I don’t wish ill will on any working stiff. Scott Thompson will fail upwards. His departure press release doesn’t mention it, but I’m sure he got a handsome golden parachute for his less than 6 months tenure (January 4, 2012 to today). Thompson’s family will never know hunger or insecurity. He will find himself at another company or more likely at a hedge fund or venture capital fund; maybe Meg will hire him to work at HP.

UPDATE 1: Yahoo! has named an interim CEO, Ross Levinsohn, who helped steer (Fox) News Corp’s acquisition of MySpace. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*Carol Bartz was the previous CEO of Yahoo! who was fired over the phone in 2011.

Notorious eaves-dropping soulless homunculus James Murdoch, son of billionaire media mogul and ethics-challenged wing-ding Rupert Murdoch, has resigned his post as the top executive in charge of News International. However, before you pass around a collection plate to give him a nice going-away lunch, News Corporation said that Murdoch would be moved over to the company’s international television business, and that he remains News Corporation’s deputy chief operating officer.

Best Gubmint Money Can Buy

The long and short of it is that last night in Iowa, Willard and Frothy did not win; the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling won. Oh, sure, votes were cast and counted, and a victory by eight votes was eked out by Willard, and for all intents and purposes our representative form of democracy carried on as always on the surface. The fact that elections are now commodities to be bought and sold by corporate America remains unspoken.

Regards,

Tengrain

Politico

…why don’t you use your 7th largest army in the world and do something about the tax-dodging owners of Zuccotti Park?

It turns out that the owners of Zuccotti Park — the historic site of Occupy Wall Street — have been engaged in some of the very same tax-dodging that many of the protesters were enraged about. The “city Finance Department says park owner Brookfield Properties and its parent company, Brookfield US Corp., currently owe the city more than $139,000 in unpaid business taxes from 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.”

–Tengrain

(TPM)

Ubiquitous boring mall store, The Gap has announced a significant closing of US stores. OK, so what? I mean, how much sweat-shop khaki can you wear?

But the big news is that Gap is expanding big-time in China:

The struggling retailer, which runs the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains, detailed plans on Thursday to close 189 locations, or 21 percent of its namesake Gap stores in the U.S., by the end of 2013. At the same time, the largest U.S. clothing chain said it plans to triple the number of Gap stores in China from about 15 by the end of the year to roughly 45 by the end of next year.

OK, this is a common theme we’ve railed on before: the Great Recession has proved that US Multinationals do not need US consumers any more, they have moved on. The Gap expanding to Asia is yet another datapoint that the rising middle class in Asia is the new, big market.

Some things to consider:

• US Multinationals are sitting on literally trillions of dollars in profits. These profits did not come from their US markets, as we all know.
• US Multinationals are buying politicians left and right to give them a tax holiday so they can repatriate their overseas money not at the nominal 35% corporate tax rate, but at a much lower 5% rate. They did this in 2004, and the money was used to buy back stocks, close factories, and merge and fire workers.
• We have about 300 million people in the US and a declining standard of living. Asia has over three billion and an emerging middle class. Where do you think US companies are going to expand?

Eat the Rich

What do you want to bet that the fat cats on the balcony will write-off the champagne and cigars as a business expense?

Good news: students, you can stop studying now, the colleges want rich kids who can pay full tuition without financial aid.

Bad news: students, you can stop studying now, the colleges want rich kids who can pay full tuition without financial aid.

Welcome to class-based America.

(Inside Higher Ed)

I claim dibs on the roast.

What an assrocket.

It says it all.

(Reuters) – Bank of America Corp officials have discussed slashing roughly 40,000 jobs during the first wave of a restructuring, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the plans.

Wanna bet that none of ‘em are currently in corner offices? Yeah, me neither.

(Reuters via Raw Story)

Hey guys, remember that time when strangely orange-hued speaker of the house John Boehner held the country hostage so he could shake the last few pennies out of the social safety net? Me Neither!

But anyway, it seems with the so-called SuperCommittee he has pitted his constituents (Lobbyists? Yes.) against one another and against themselves.

Major defense contractors such as Boeing Co. (BA) and Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) have a dozen or more lobbying firms working for them, many of whom also represent the health-care industry, another likely target of budget cuts… Trying to protect clients by stalling action — a classic lobbying tactic — isn’t an option for most because the committee’s failure to meet a Nov. 23 deadline would trigger $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts in both defense and non-defense spending beginning in 2013.

Oh, well, maybe the lobbyists can go buy lottery tickets and eat hobo beans down by the river like the rest of us, once their work is done.

(Bloomberg)

David Welch, former assistant secretary of state under Chimpy McStagger advised Gaddafi on how to lie to NATO and the US, you know, and maybe stay in power.

Of course Welch did it as an employee of Bechtel Corporation who are building massive projects throughout the middleast, so it’s cool. Invisible Hand and all that.

(Al Jezeera)

Telemarketers are actually paid based on productivity, so many calls per hour. So what I really did used to do is answer the call, tell them I’m fascinated by their news, and then put down the phone and watch television or start making dinner and just leave the phone off the hook and let them listen to me ignore them.

But this seems like a lot more fun.

(Via BuzzFeed)

Rupert Murdoch has thrown James under the bus:

In the clearest indication yet that the phone hacking scandal enveloping News Corp’s U.K. operations has damaged the succession ambitions of James Murdoch, his father endorsed top lieutenant Chase Carey as a future CEO.

(Reuters)

Shhh, you guys! Don’t let Scott Walker hear about this!

Some little city in Texas fired the entire Police Department a couple of weeks ago. It seems that they did not bring in the bucks, but actually were a loss leader in what is becoming retail democracy.

Anyway, here’s what some yahoo on the Alto city council said:

“The police department being a non-money-making entity, was the easiest to get rid of while we catch our breath and build up some cash.”

So… how are things working out in Alto?

“In the last 24 hours, we’ve answered 18 calls in the county; seven of them were in Alto,” Cherokee County Sheriff James Campbell remarked. “When you’re sitting there needing help, it’s a lifetime.”

Last week, residents called law enforcement on four people allegedly attempting a bank robbery in the small town.

Regards,

Tengrain

(Raw Story)

In this less-than-sparkling economy, Americans have at least been able to look to the rising stock market and corporate America’s robust profits as two bright spots, but even these may now be dimming.

Yes, because nothing warms the heart of the unemployed, abandoned, and forgotten American like watching the stock market soar knowing that tonight you will be eating hobo beans out of a can down by the river and snuggling in your refrigerator box. “Well,” you say to yourself as you dumpster dive for some less moldy bread, “at least J. Worthington Fatcat can buy a fresh yacht this year. There’s that.”

Instead of cheering on the nearly $2 TRILLION in profits (much of which is from overseas) that American Corporations are sitting on (and not hiring, oh, well, YOU), maybe we should be asking why we are about to put Granny on an ice floe and pull the plug on an entire generation’s education?

Naw.

(NYTimes via Mercury News)

California just passed a law that makes on-line retailers responsible for collecting sales tax and remitting it to the state, if they have a physical presence in the state.

So guess what? Amazon cut loose all of their in-state affiliates:

But those taxes may come with a price. Amazon and online retailer Overstock.com Inc. told thousands of California Internet marketing affiliates that they will stop paying commissions for referrals of so-called click-through customers.

That’s because the new requirement applies only to online sellers based out of state that have some connection to California, such as workers, warehouses or offices here.

Both Amazon in Seattle and Overstock in Salt Lake City have told affiliates that they would have to move to another state if they wanted to continue earning commissions for referring customers.

…Amazon has thousands of such affiliates in California. It also has related business operations that include Lab126 Inc. in Cupertino, which develops Kindle electronic book readers, and a Studio City office for its Internet Movie Database unit.

I’m not a fan of Amazon (they give more $ to the GOP than to the Dims, and in particular they donated to Chimpy McStagger’s re-election campaign). I have not given them a dime in years.

(LATimes)

Ho, ho, ho! Our favorite corporate welfare cheat ($10 Billion in TARP) Goldman Sachs is firing some of their Masters of the Universe so that they can hire workers in Singapore for less. Big deal, it happens all the time, right?

Well, here’s the thing: Sachs was so worried about shipping 1,000 jobs overseas that they secretly alerted lawmakers in DC to help prevent a back-lash. What they are worried about, of course, is that new capital requirment regulations will pile on (not that they won’t be allowed to do offshore jobs).

The jobs in Singapore are likely to be “high-paying, skilled positions in sales and investment banking,” the same types that are likely to be cut in the firm’s domestic operations, according to one person with knowledge of the matter. This person added that the firm has recently briefed people in Washington about the new overseas jobs because it “is afraid of the fallout” as it plans to slash $1 billion in costs over the next year — a move that will mean a significant, though still undetermined number of layoffs across its operations, though people close to the firm expect the biggest hit to come from the US.

I got news for you, Sachs: 1,000 workers is small time. IBM does 5,000 engineers at a time, usually at the end of each quarter when they do the profit announcement so that no one pays attention to the firings. That’s how the big boys play.

(Business Insider)

You read that right.

He wanted to go to prison for the healthcare.

That’s right James Verone says he has no medical insurance. He has a growth of some sort on his chest, two ruptured disks and a problem with his left foot. He is 59 years old and with no job and a depleted bank account. He thought jail was the best place he could go for medical care and a roof over his head.

I could probably go on a rant about this, but I’m too depressed that it has come to this. There’s your American Dream, right there.

–Tengrain

(NBC)

Word.

Hey, remember when Florida’s billionaire psychopath Governor Rick Scott decided that all the poors in Florida had to have a $35 drug test before they could get any benefits? Me Neither!

Anyway, he signed a Medicaid overhaul bill that will put hundreds of thousands of poor and elderly Floridians into managed-care plans. The bill gives managed care companies more control over the program that’s paid for with federal and state money, which he claims will hold down spiraling medical costs in the $20 billion program.

Oh, by the way, one of the private managed-care companies that stand to gain from the new law is Solantic, a chain of urgent-care clinics aimed at providing emergency services to walk-in customers. Solantic was founded in 2001 — by none other than Rick Scott.

Coincidentally, Solantic is also the company administering that $35 mandatory drug test. Florida must be so proud that they elected Rick Scott.

(Think Progress)