It must be superyachting season, with Russian billionaires fighting for column inches about their most expensive/lavish/largest/laser-equipped yachts. Roman Abramovich‘s $1.2billion 557-foot Eclipse has appeared on film, as it sets sail from Germany this week. More »
Less than 24 hours after Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell unveiled her proposal, the two leading Democratic candidates for governor ripped her plan for early retirement for state employees.
Both Greenwich cable TV entrepreneur Ned Lamont and former Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy said the idea is pennywise and pound foolish – saving some money in the short-term and costing even more in the long-term as state employees head out the door.
The state, they argued, will lose some of its best and brightest as thousands of experienced employees leave.
“The worst part is that the ‘savings’ this short-sighted proposal offers are a drop in the bucket – savings that are overshadowed by the loss of talent and the time, energy, and money it will take to train their replacements,” Lamont said. “It’s time to stop kicking the can down the road.”
Malloy said, “The problem with this type of program is clear: they sacrifice long-term economic stability and growth for a perceived short-term benefit. When employees take advantage of the plan they eventually have to be replaced, often at higher costs than if the current workers had stayed on the job. As just one example, in last year’s plan we lost approximately 500 corrections officers. Obviously, they’ll have to be replaced, and it costs approximately $30,000 to train each one.”
Malloy also complained that some state employees have traditionally become double-dippers by being rehired for 120 days – even while collecting their pensions.
“In fact, after the 2003 early-retirement program the total number of state employees only dropped temporarily for one year before rising the following year to a point even higher than before the program was tried,” Malloy said. “Where are the savings there?”
But House Republican leader Lawrence Cafero, who helped craft the initial Republican early retirement plan in April 2008, said that both Lamont and Malloy are wrong.
“Their response and reaction to the early retirement plan epitomizes their campaigns,” Cafero said in an interview. “Neither of them has specified one program they would cut to balance this budget. These two gentlemen, who hope to be governor, deserve to give an explanation to the people. They owe the public nothing less. What is their plan? What is their plan?”
Regarding Lamont’s comment that Rell’s proposal is “kicking the can down the road,” Cafero said that legislative Democrats – who hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly – have been kicking the can down the road since the budget crisis started in 2008.
The candidates, he said, have not delivered the level of specificity in the governor’s budget or the line-by-line plan by Republican legislators.
“Mr. Malloy has been running for governor for four years. Where is his plan?” Cafero asked. “He has not proposed one specific tax or cut. It’s all generalities.”
Both Lamont and Malloy, Cafero said, are hurling criticisms from the sidelines without playing the game.
“That’s like being in the stands, saying the pitcher is not throwing the right pitches,” Cafero said. “You’ve got to go down on the field and throw one.”
I ran into a group of more than 30 pilgrims from the United States who have been stuck in Rome since Saturday, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be getting out until next Tuesday.
Thanks to the volcanic ash covering much of Europe, they’ve had a 10-day extension to their trip. They had been to the Shroud of Turin, and were supposed to leave from Milan, but got on a bus to Rome, thinking it would be easier to get out of here. No such luck.
Many are from Wyoming and Montana, and Jackson Hole has never seemed so far away. They’re keeping spirits up, though, enjoying the good weather and the good ice cream.
“When you’re visiting things like the Shroud of Turin, and seeing the nails from the cross at the church of the Santa Croce, it’s like you’re getting to share a little bit of this,” said the group’s chaplain, Father Joseph Geders.
“It’s one of those occasions where life is just taken out of your hands,” Geders said.
It gets tiring when you want to be home, but it could be worse. At least they’re in a hotel, and not just camped out at the airport.
While they were making the best of a tough situation – one woman was trying to plan a two-day trip to Venice – a long delay can also be extremely serious. One woman has her 78-year-old mother who needs to get her pacemaker battery replaced, which involves a surgical operation.
Many of the pilgrims had purchased trip insurance before leaving. While most were happy about that, a couple complained that their insurance company was hardly coughing up enough for an extra 10 days.
Emeco chairs are traditionally made from 100 recyclable aluminum (80% recycled conte
nt). Their expected life of 150 years makes adds to the sustainability.
Now they are making a chair from recycled Coke bottles … 111 bottles per chair. " … 111 Navy Chair: When you recycle a plastic bottle, you’re doing something good. When you recycle 111 of them, you’re doing something great. Help your bottle become something extraordinary again."
Via: Emeco Chairs LINK
Materials: 2 expedit 2×2 , some piece of wood
Description: I ask myself how to create an original 2×4 Expedit shelving unit, less expensive that the original one. So i try to join 2 small Expedit. (In France, Expedit 2×2 is 20 €, Expedit 2×4 is 55€)
To do what you see in the photos, I have to
– Fix top parts with medium plank
– Fix bottom parts with long plank (be sure you will not see middle holes)
– Fix the central parts with medium plank
– Create 2 holes in each side to “encase” the central parts
– Paint the screw in white
This is really easy to do and you can change the position of the colors.
And it’s done. See more here.
~ Jeremy Guilbault, Nantes, France.
If BMW is trying to keep the M version of the 1-Series a secret, we have to say that they are doing a very bad job. This is the third time this month that spy photographers have caught what is known as the M1 hanging around the Nurburgring and hitting up the famous German track for hot laps.
According to BMWBlog, we’re about a month away from the car’s official revealing. We also hear that the M1 will be powered by the updated N55 engine from BMW M division making around 345-hp.
Click here for prices on the 2010 BMW 135i.
Here are the other two times that the BMW M1 was caught at the Nurburgring in April:
Click through for the video.
– By: Omar Rana
Source: BMWBlog
IBM and Columbia University are set to groom the next generation of workers in the emerging green economy through an initiative called the “Smarter Cities Skills Initiative.” The two innovation powerhouses have joined forces to engage students in becoming part of a global movement that is transforming aging urban infrastructure into a more energy efficient, sustainable mode of operation.
The initiative kicks off on Earth Day with a free public forum at Columbia called Smarter Students for a Smarter Planet, which brings 150 other schools around the globe to the table through a webcast. The focus will be on combining IBM’s technology resources and Columbia’s academic programs including business, law and engineering, to prepare students to enter a job market with growing opportunities in creating more sustainable buildings, electricity grids, and transportation.
Mourners held a vigil after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia. (EPA/ZUMApress.com)
Beckley, W.Va. — As lawmakers mull better ways to prevent mining accidents following this month’s deadly blast in Southern West Virginia, one long-time veteran of the Appalachian mines has a suggestion:
Image by: Matt Mahurin
“Break down these criminal enterprises like Massey Energy,” said Chuck Nelson, who worked for Massey in underground mines for most of the 1990s. “That is the best possible solution.”
When miners learned that government inspectors were headed into a mine, Nelson added, they would race to hang curtains, fling the rock dust and generally try to get the place in compliance with the safety rules. When the inspectors left, “we were back to doing the same old business as usual.”
Don Blankenship, Massey’s hard-nosed CEO, has defended the company’s safety record, arguing that the number of violations it’s racked up — particularly at the Upper Big Branch Mine, where this month’s tragedy occurred — were comparable to other operations of similar size. Safety violations, he said in the immediate wake of the blast, are “a normal part of the mining process.”
More recently, Blankenship that the company’s long record of safety violations is irrelevant to the recent disaster. “When somebody says, ‘Did the violations have anything to do with the accident?’ — they should not,” he told Charleston’s Daily Mail. “Because every violation is abated and agreed to by everyone before there is any further mining. So you would not think that any violation of the past had any relevance.”
The White House, however, disagrees, and last week President Obama announced new steps for mining reform, including the immediate re-inspection of all mines with a troubling safety record. Congress is jumping in as well, with both the Senate and the House scheduled to hold hearings on mining safety shortly.
Meanwhile, President Obama and Vice President Biden will attend a memorial service in Beckley Sunday for the 29 miners killed this month. Obama himself will deliver the eulogy. There are many in Raleigh County who are hoping that, to prevent the next disaster, he’ll offer more than words.
Yesterday I spent my morning at the Government Customer Support Conference with government contact center managers. They have some questions for you and helped me write my post today. Government contact centers are the places you call when you need to report a pothole on your street, or you need to replace your social security card. We talked about social media tools and we had some debate and discussion about how we can use them to serve you, and we want your thoughts.
We have groups of “internal” and “external” contact center managers. The internal centers are people who provide support to an organization, such as a computer help desk. The external centers directly support the public.
As a group of managers for internal contact centers, we’re uncertain of the value of an internal blog in improving customer support or reducing the number of customer contacts by helping customers help themselves. We wonder:
The group of managers for external contact centers agreed that there could be some value in a blog for their customers. While the blog would not replace the contact center and most likely not be administered by its employees. The contact center managers all agreed that contact center support for a blog would be valuable. The blog could pull posts from frequent topics in the center and feed information to the agents for answering public contacts.
The contact center managers did see value in using microblogging tools like Twitter to provide information to decrease the number of calls, emails and web chats. New York City has tweeted information to students about school snow closings to much success. One member of this group had parking availability tweeted so he would know the parking availability in the city of Pittsburgh.
Would any of these services be helpful to you? Share your ideas.
p.s. Many thanks to my blogging partners today!
Kooky crooner Katy Perry got a tough lesson in holding her tongue while holding her liquor after she drunkenly requested that Lindsay Lohan be the maid of honor at her upcoming wedding to comedian Russell Brand.
Katy spent last weekend partying at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California — sans Russell, who has been busy completing stand-up shows. Lindsay was also at the event, and the two women quickly became friends, bonding over beer and the sounds of Beyonce dueting with hubby Jay-Z. Disaster ensued when Katy joked that Lindsay should help her plan her wedding — a request the actress apparently took quite seriously.
A spywitnesses dished to Britain’s Daily Star Tuesday: “Both the girls were having a right laugh, talking about Katy’s wedding and their plans over summer. At one point Katy joked that Lindsay would be her perfect maid of honor. Katy was in high spirits and obviously just messing around. But before she knew it Lindsay was telling everyone she couldn’t wait to be part of the ceremony and as maid of honour it was her job to sort out the hen night. Katy didn’t know what to say or where to look. It started to get embarrassing for everyone. She obviously didn’t mean it as a serious invitation.”
Earlier this month, pop star Rihanna told media personality Ryan Seacrest that she would be in charge of planning Katy’s bachelorette party.
Katy and Russell will reportedly wed in India or Tokyo in December 2010.
Amazon.com company Audible this morning announced that its BlackBerry app is now available on BlackBerry App World (and on its own website).
If that’s not enough to make you rush over there, the company is also including, for a limited time, a free download of David Baldacci’s bestselling thriller Divine Justice.
With the Audible app, BlackBerry users in the U.S. and Canada can shop, download and listen to audio content from Audible.com, which boasts over 75,000 titles in its catalog.
Key features:
– Stream audio samples for all titles
– Download or stream purchases directly to your BlackBerry
– Toggle between Wi-Fi and cellular connections (when available)
Audible for BlackBerry v1.4.2 is available for the BlackBerry Tour, Curve, Pearl and Bold series of smartphones. It should be downloadable right about … now.
On a sidenote: Audible promises apps for iPhone / iPod touch and Android are on the way, too.
As the guys over at PickupTrucks.com point out, one of the reasons that sales of midsize and compact pickups are declining in the U.S. is that their starting price is only a few thousand dollars of entry-level full-size pickups, which offer buyers more utility.
Volkswagen has just announced pricing on its new midsize Amarok pickup that starts at 26,203 euros – or $35,280. That price tag is for the base crew cab model that is powered by a 122-hp 2.0L 4-cylinder diesel mated to a 6-speed manual transmission and two-wheel-drive. Going for all-wheel-drive will require Europeans to pay an additional $2,500.
There are three trim packages available for the Amarok including base, Trendline and Highline. Prices for the Volkswagen Amarok Highline start at 37,169 euros ($50,050 USD) with all-wheel drive and a 2.0L twin-turbo diesel making 163-hp.
For comparison purposes, the 2010 Toyota Tacoma Double Cab 4×2 V6 starts at $23,675.
– By: Kap Shah
Source: PickupTrucks.com
Whatever could Google want with an airline IT company? Well, considering that company, ITA, supplies travel information to websites such as Kayak.com, CheapTickets, Bing Travel and Orbitz, quite a lot, actually. More »
Back issues of many working papers and policy briefings published by the Humanitarian Policy Group are now available from the Forced Migration Online digital library.
Published between 2000 and 2009 by the Humanitarian Policy Group, part of the Overseas Development Institute, these documents focus on topics such as: aid coordination, cooperation with affected governments, security, terrorism, HIV/AIDS and land use .
The Humanitarian Policy Group is dedicated to improving humanitarian policy and practice through a combination of high-quality analysis, dialogue and debate.
Tiger Woods, Jesse James, John Edwards – seems like cheating has never been in the news more than it is now. But how do guys (let’s face it – it’s usually guys) get away with cheating over such a long period of time?
Dr. LeslieBeth Wish, a social worker based in Sarasota, Florida and a member of the National Association of Social Workers, offers some insight on how these men keep their affairs secret:
1. The cheating partner has a job that involves a great deal of travel – especially international travel. Pilots, actors, athletes and consultants, for example, work all over the world and in different time zones. It’s easy for the stay-at-home partner to speak to the cheater on the same day, evening or morning after that the cheater has spent time with another.
2. Cell phones make it very easy to build trust. Unless your partner is under criminal investigation, no one – including you – is going to search the partner’s whereabouts by cell towers.
3. Highly deceptive partners can be very romantic. They send notes, buy perfect gifts and are affectionate in public – and in the bedroom. These cheaters often love their partners very much, but for various reasons, they can’t put all their love needs in one basket. In fact, their needs for affirmation from others is so high that love from just one partner doesn’t feel like enough to them. They often have parents who expected too much from them, and they don’t feel that they measure up or are loved for just being them.
4. Very wealthy cheaters often don’t allow their partners access to all their accounts. Much of the money is tied up in stocks and trusts that someone else manages. As a result, the other partner never sees the bills from Tiffany’s or Victoria’s Secret.
5. Cheaters who are public figures – such as politicians – choose partners who seem the solid anchor partner. These Rocks of Gibraltor partners silently agree to look the other way in order to keep the family and public peace. Problems occur, however, when the cheater has crossed an invisible line. Like the saying about what constitutes pornography (where few can agree what it is–except they “know it when they see it”), the wronged partner “knows” when the line has been crossed.
6. Access to chat rooms, singles sites and pornography on the Internet is so available and commonplace that it can be easy for the non-cheating partner to label this behavior as normal. Boys will be boys, some women think. Or, let him (or her) have fantasies – it just makes my partner a better lover with me. Because seeking Internet pornography or chat room buddies is done in such secrecy, however, it can be very difficult for the other partner to gauge how much time that partner is spending on the Internet or the degree and nature of both the type of pornography (children? sadism?) and the level of emotional intimacy (just a chat room friend with shared interests? a potential lover? a too-close-for-comfort-confidant?). As a result, the non-cheating person is often surprised to learn the details about the Internet behavior.
photo credit: Keith Allison
Related posts:
Although outdated, “Talk To The Hand!” is still a pretty effective way of brushing off someone you’d rather have a root canal than converse with — and it’s the exact method Oprah Winfrey’s using to shake off the paternity fallout from Kitty Kelley’s buzzed-about tell-all, Oprah: A Biography. The chatshow queen wants nothing to do with an ailing Navy vet who now claims to be her biological father.
Last week, The National Enquirer published 85-year-old North Robinson’s claims that he is the talk show host’s long lost father. He is from Kosciusko, Mississippi, the sleepy rural town that Winfrey ditched at age six. Robinson, who lives in a Veterans Affairs Hospital Down South, claims he has no interest the billionaire’s vast fortune and wants only to meet his alleged daughter before he dies.
But Oprah — who was raised by her mother Vernita and her presumed father Vernon, has no interest in meeting Robinson or finding out if his claims are true.
“I will not be taking a paternity test, ever!” she furiously told journalists outside her New York City hotel Tuesday. “I’ve never heard of him. I know who is claiming to be my real father.”
When asked what Robinson could possibly gain by lying about her lineage, O barked, “Get out of my face!” before pushing a New York Post reporter aside to jump into an SUV and jet out to lunch.
It was beginning to look like vaporware of the meanest kind, but finally ASUS’ EeeKeyboard has been given a pre-order price on Amazon with shipping expected by end of next week. More »
Article Tags: Met Office, Statement
Click source to read FULL Statement from the Met Office
Source: metoffice.gov.uk
Everyone loves a deal and loves getting something at a rock bottom price. Dividend investors are no different. However, as long-term buy-and-hold investors, we aren’t known for our ability (or desire) to time the market and call the bottom. That’s not to say we can’t enjoy the benefits of buying at the bottom. So, how does a long-term buy-and-hold investor accomplish this?
It is really quite simple if you employ a sound asset allocation model and systematically invest during the good times and the bad. Easy to say, and do, when things are going well, but many people have a hard time buying into a market that has been declining for an extended period of time. To the contrary, many investors sell their positions and move to cash when things look bad. Then move back into equities once they rise for a period of time. Sell at the bottom and buy at the top is not how to make money in the market.
Many observers point to March 2009, when the S&P hit its low, as the bottom of the most recent market downturn. If you were following a disciplined approach and bought that month, you most likely are sitting on some incredible gains. Consider the stocks I purchased in March 2009:
The Coca-Cola Company (KO) | Analysis
– March 2009 Price: $39.69
– Recent Price: $54.97 up 38.5%
– Current Yield: 3.2%
– Yield-on-cost: 4.4%
3M Co. (MMM)
– March 2009 Price: $47.88
– Recent Price: $83.76 up 74.9%
– Current Yield: 2.4%
– Yield-on-cost: 4.4%
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) | Analysis
– March 2009 Price: $48.42
– Recent Price: $54.11 up 11.8%
– Current Yield: 2.2%
– Yield-on-cost: 2.5%
Buying at the bottom is great, but buying near the bottom isn’t bad either. Consider these stocks that I picked up in April 2009:
Abbott Laboratories (ABT) | Analysis
– April 2009 Price: $44.36
– Recent Price: $52.26 up 17.8%
– Current Yield: 3.3%
– Yield-on-cost: 4.0%
Chevron Corp. (CVX) | Analysis
– April 2009 Price: $68.97
– Recent Price: $80.75 up 17.1%
– Current Yield: 3.4%
– Yield-on-cost: 3.9%
McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) | Analysis
– April 2009 Price: $55.09
– Recent Price: $69.03 up 25.3%
– Current Yield: 3.2%
– Yield-on-cost: 4.0%
United Technologies Corp. (UTX) | Analysis
– April 2009 Price: $45.16
– Recent Price: $73.69 up 63.2%
– Current Yield: 2.1%
– Yield-on-cost: 3.8%
Granted, the technique works the other way also, in that systematically investing each month will guarantee you will buy at market highs (note I didn’t say at the top). Comfort can be taken in that every protracted downturn will eventually produce an absolute bottom (i.e. a point that will never be touched again). However, throughout history highs have constantly been exceeded. Thus, there are no true tops, only recent highs. Any long-term dividend investor will tell you that the yields are better at the bottom, so forgive me for smiling the next time the market crashes.
Full Disclosure: Long ABT, CVX, KO, MCD, MMM, UTX, WMT. See a list of all my income holdings here.
Have future posts delivered to you for free! If you enjoyed this post, please bookmark or share it here:
.jpg)
