The very first Pontiac Aztek is currently up for auction on Ebay.
Introduced in 2001, the uniquely-styled vehicle was the first crossover offered by an American automaker, offering an optional strap-on tent and air mattress to appeal to the kind of adventurous customers Pontiac expected to flock into showrooms to buy one.
Unfortunately for GM, they didn’t show up.
Widely considered one of, if not the ugliest car of all time, the Aztek was a certified flop and out of production by 2005.
There are not enough words for how ugly that car is.
Study finds fracking chemicals didn’t pollute water: AP
PITTSBURGH A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press.
After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said.
Although the results are preliminary — the study is still ongoing — they are a boost to a natural gas industry that has fought complaints from environmental groups and property owners who call fracking dangerous.
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) – The owners of The Star-Ledger plan to close New Jersey’s largest newspaper by year’s end if its production unions don’t make concessions in contract negotiations, the publisher said Wednesday.
In a letter to staff, publisher Richard Vezza said the company felt “pushed into a corner” by the unions, whose contracts expire in July. Vezza said the unions have until Sept. 27 to make compromises or else the paper will shut down.
“This is not a threat. This is reality,” Vezza said in an interview with The Associated Press.
But no worries, soon-to-be-funemployed Union types! The President (and NJ Senators) YOU worked so hard to give us has declared this to be Recovery Summer VII!
And there are loads of those good, well-paying Green Jobs that they have created or saved just all around us.
And, really, you needn’t worry about those millions of new citizens that the Magic Wand in DC is creating as being competition for you for those jobs.
Biz, Media | Mr. Bingley | June 27, 2013 6:32 am | Comments Off on Twinkie Twinkie Star Ledger…
U.S. economic growth was more tepid than previously estimated in the first quarter, held back by a moderate pace of consumer spending, weak business investment and declining exports.
Gross domestic product expanded at a 1.8 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said in its final estimate on Wednesday. Output was previously reported to have risen at a 2.4 percent pace after a 0.4 percent stall speed in the fourth quarter.
…which was only to news to somebody IN Washington anyway, so thank GOD that loopy, worthless President of ours is busy elsewhere as usual.
Will Obamacare Hurt Jobs? It’s Already Happening, Poll Finds
Small business owners’ fear of the effect of the new health-care reform law on their bottom line is prompting many to hold off on hiring and even to shed jobs in some cases, a recent poll found.
“We were startled because we know that employers were concerned about the Affordable Care Act and the effects it would have on their business, but we didn’t realize the extent they were concerned, or that the businesses were being proactive to make sure the effects of the ACA actually were minimized,” said attorney Steven Friedman of Littler Mendelson. His firm, which specializes in employment law, commissioned the Gallup poll.
“If the small businesses’ fears are reasonable, then it could mean that the small business sector grows slower than what economic conditions otherwise would indicate. And small businesses have been a growth engine in the economy,” Friedman told CNBC.
Nobody ever realizes the effect of NUTHIN’ ’round here, even though small business has been talking themselves blue in the face since Obama, the Democratic Senatorial cadaver and his frozen-faced Congressional harpy sorceress first conjured this abomination up.
Apparently, Men’s Wearhouse Inc. doesn’t like the way its founder looks anymore.
In terse release issued Wednesday, Men’s Wearhouse said it has fired the face of the company and its executive chairman, George Zimmer, who appeared in many of its TV commercials with the slogan “You’re going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.”
The timing was even odd —the announcement happened the morning the company’s annual shareholder meeting had been set to take place. The company delayed the meeting but didn’t give a new date.
Men’s Wearhouse gave no reason for the abrupt firing of Zimmer, who built Men’s Wearhouse from one small Texas store using a cigar box as a cash register to one of the North America’s largest specialty men’s clothiers with 1,143 locations. The company generated revenue of $2.48 billion in its latest fiscal year ended Feb. 2.
The company said the purpose of postponing the annual meeting is to re-nominate the existing board of directors without Zimmer. It said the board expects to discuss with Zimmer the extent, if any, and terms of “his ongoing relationship” with the company.
The news shocked analysts and corporate governance experts, who tried to speculate what happened.
“This is very rare to fire a founder. Founders are generally entrenched in the company,” said Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance, a board advisory firm.
The difference between “founder” and “flounder” is just “l”, you know. Like Flo says in the commercial, “These are troubling times in the kingdom”.
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — An engineer killed in a fiery train collision in the Oklahoma Panhandle last year suffered from serious vision problems for much of his life, underwent several corrective procedures in the years leading up to the crash and even complained that he couldn’t distinguish between red and green signals, a doctor told a federal oversight board Tuesday.
Despite his failing vision, the engineer continued driving freight trains and was guiding one of the ones that collided June 24, 2012, near town of Goodwell, killing him and two other railroad workers and causing about $15 million in damage.
…According to McKay, the engineer suffered from glaucoma and cataracts for much of his life, and in the three years leading up to the crash, he made about 50 visits to eye doctors and underwent about a dozen procedures. He had even complained about not being able to distinguish between the red and green stop and go signals that govern train traffic, she told the board.
50 eye doctor visits in three years…and he was still allowed to drive the train.
“We don’t think government can do everything,” he said. “We don’t think that top-down solutions are the right way to go. We believe in the free market. We believe in a light touch when it comes to regulations.”
“We don’t want to tax all businesses out of business,” Obama said.
“But we do think that there’s a role to play for government.”
The New York Times Quietly Softened Its Scathing Obama Editorial
When the Paper of Record published a blistering editorial on President Obama’s overbearing national security precautions today, one line stood out from the dozens of others as being the most vicious:
“The administration has now lost all credibility.“
…The sentence now reads, “The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue,” which is quite a different statement altogether.
No mention of the corrective action appending the editorial, either. Just magic wand action.
Momentary flash of honest brilliance squelched ~ snubbed and snuffed out like a smudgey candle.
Whacha wanna bet “Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.”?
(Reuters) – Unemployment has reached a new high in the euro zone and inflation remains well below the European Central Bank’s target, underscoring just how severe a challenge EU leaders face to revive the bloc’s sickly economy.
Joblessness in the 17-nation currency area rose to 12.2 percent in April, statistics agency Eurostat said on Friday, marking a new record since the data series began in 1995.
Ah, for those halcyon days of yore when a “jobless recovery” was seen as a bad thing.
Three big energy firms paid the most taxes in absolute terms: Exxon $146 billion; Chevron $85 billion; and ConocoPhillips $58 billion
Plus the gazillions they plough into research and development.
Gosh, you just never hear about that. EE-ville, EEEEE-VILLE, filthy, nasty, reprehensible oil pays (besides high wages) through the A.S.S. and touchy, feely, dooooo-goody, everybody’s cuddlebear Apple pays (besides slave wages at factories in Asia) what?
Chinese meat producer Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. agreed to acquire Smithfield Foods Inc. SFD +0.23% for about $4.7 billion, striking what would be the largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese buyer—should it get past what is likely to be heavy regulatory scrutiny.
Shuanghui agreed to pay $34 per share for Smithfield, the world’s largest hog farmer and pork processor, marking a 31% premium to Smithfield’s Tuesday closing price of $25.97. Including debt, the deal values Smithfield at $7.1 billion.
Smithfield owns an array of household names, including Armour, Farmland and Healthy Ones, and is sold in 12 countries, according to its website. The company’s shares soared 33% to $34.50 in pre-market trading after The Wall Street Journal reported the potential deal.
NJ: BARS PUT CHEAP BOOZE IN PREMIUM LIQUOR BOTTLES
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Twenty-nine bars and restaurants, nearly half of them TGI Fridays, filled premium brand liquor bottles with lower-quality booze and sold it to patrons who thought they were buying the good stuff, authorities said Wednesday.
A yearlong investigation by the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, dubbed Operation Swill, found that the establishments had swapped out the good liquor in an effort to fool customers and increase profits.
Thirteen of the restaurants cited are TGI Fridays located in central and northern New Jersey.
TGI Fridays Inc. said in a statement it was working with the franchisee and owner of the TGI Fridays restaurants to investigate the allegations, which it called serious. The statement said the company had just learned of the allegations.
I’d demand a refund!!
But then I wouldn’t be in those dumps anyway. The TGI chain went to shit YEARS ago. Went from our GO-TO, outstanding funky food place in the mid-80’s to a sold-their-souls-to-the-Jack-Daniels-Grill, corporate devils’ unrecognizable/inedible menu. The staff training slipped horribly as well.
Sorry, sorry, sorry excuses of miserable shells of their previous existences.
WASHINGTON, May 10, 2013 ? Adult basic education and GED programs, with about 800,000 students taking GED tests each year, serve a segment of society that escaped government schools, including many homeschoolers. But the national propaganda effort called the Common Core Curriculum is spreading its tentacles to them.
While many may not take the GED seriously, calling it the “Good Enough Diploma,” consider that quite a few homeschoolers take GED tests as a way to cancel out high school attendance requirements and lessen the record-keeping burden on home educators caused by compulsory attendance laws in every state.
Thus, aligning GED with Common Core has the potential of erasing all the efforts and sacrifices the homeschooling parents have put in to protect their children from the centralized indoctrination.
…Below is an excerpt from a larger Social Studies Extended Response, found on page 52 from Writing Across the Tests: Responding to Text on the Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science Test, entitled, “Does Foreign Aid Really Help?”
Those who support sending aid to poor countries do so because poor countries often have high levels of poverty, poor educational systems, an ineffective police and judicial force, and limited public services such as healthcare, transportation networks, and banking systems. They believe that when living conditions are this poor, crime levels tend to be higher. Poorer countries, because they have weak governments, often have areas that attract terrorist groups because no one is there to stop them from pursuing those types of activities. Thus, poor countries are often home to terrorist groups that are free to plan and carry out attacks on the rich, industrialized nations, without fear of being stopped. This is in fact [bold words are mine] what happened on 9/11 when terrorists from Afghanistan hijacked planes and carried out attacks on the United States. In this case, the terrorists originated in a country that had received large amounts of foreign aid from rich countries. Apparently, it didn’t work.
A little known rule change that allows companies to contribute fewer dollars to pension funds is signaling just how meaningless the retirement vehicle has become.
“This proves that pensions are pretty much dead,” said Greg McBride, chief economist at Bankrate.com. “The change is just another charade to mask the underfunding of pensions and increases the odds of having less money for retirement.”
“It’s not necessarily the immediate end of pensions but it’s not good for them and it’s certainly a bad sign,” McBride added.
The pension change was part of a transportation bill—called Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century or MAP-21—passed by Congress last June. The change became mandatory this year.
In essence, MAP-21 lets employers put less money in their pension plans by allowing them to value their liabilities— what they have to pay out to pensioners—using a 25-year average of interest rates instead of current rates.
Weak corporate top-line growth is likely to spell an equally troubled bottom line for the 11.7 million unemployed.
Quarterly earnings thus far have shown the typical strong level of profit beats, with just more than two of three companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 exceeding Wall Street expectations.
But when it comes to actual sales growth, the results have been just north of dismal.
And some moron on Twitter last night was telling me the GOP wanted us all to be a Third World country, jobs-wise.
Pffft.
Of course, that was right after he’d Tweeted that Islam was far older than Christianity, so what does a H8R like me know?
Original Twinkies are coming back—but under new management—and with a vow to use nonunion workers.
Some five months after Hostess shut down over a standoff with its unions, the restructured company is expecting to put its snacks back on store shelves in the coming months.
The Hostess closing left more than 18,000 people out of work across the country—with the vast majority belonging to the Teamsters and the Bakery Union.
With Hostess back in business, labor analysts say the union movement may have taken a major hit just when it seemed to be gaining lost energy with recent walkouts or job actions.
“The Hostess strike will be a lasting image and not for the good of unions,” said Marc Bloch, a labor and employment lawyer at Walter & Haverfield.
“I think any management team will hold up a photo to its workers of Hostess strikers and say, ‘What’s a union going to do for you?”’ Bloch said. “The case can be made that they did nothing.”
Durable Goods Report Delivers More Bad News for Economy
Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods recorded their biggest drop in seven months in March and a gauge of planned business spending rose modestly, adding to signs of a slowdown in factory activity.
Durable goods orders slumped 5.7 percent as demand fell almost across the board, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday.
Biz, Fun | tree hugging sister | 
August 4, 2013 5:16 pm | 
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