By Jeff Simpson
Let's catch up on some interesting news that has flown under the radar from the recent election.
* In New Hampshire, a 19 year old former Girl Scout is now a state lawmaker.
When Cassandra Levesque was 17, she led a campaign to end child marriage in New Hampshire that was dismissed by a state legislator who said that it would be absurd to raise the age of marriage from 13 just because “of a request from a minor doing a Girl Scout project.” Levesque, 19, was elected to the state House of Representatives as a Democrat last Tuesday after an election that saw the number of state representatives under age 40 double in a legislature that was once the oldest in the country. As recently as 2015, the average age of a New Hampshire state legislator was 66 years old.
“They have had some trouble trying to get into the mindset of generations after them — it’s a totally different time than when they were my age,” said Levesque, whose “Girl Scout Project” successfully helped push the state’s marriage age to 16 this summer. “Having someone new to help them see different perspective will definitely help.”
Wow. I sit in my small home town, promising to do the best I can, and then I am mentioned by @HillaryClinton , mind blowing! pic.twitter.com/YhLjhIoLeY— Cassandra Levesque (@Cassandra4NH) November 14, 2018
* The Tea Party Libertarian Eddie Lampert Does Not Disappoint.
When Sears, once America’s largest retailer, made its bankruptcy filing Monday in a White Plains courthouse, the proximate cause was the decision by Eddie Lampert, by far its biggest individual creditor and shareholder, not to make a $134 million loan payment that was due. “This is not so much a melting ice cube, but a puddle,” a lawyer for a large creditor told the federal Bankruptcy Court.While it is sad that hundreds of thousands of people will be losing their jobs and their pensions, and a piece of Americana will be no longer, we see that Libertarianism is working exactly like most of us knew it would. The rats have decided if they are going down with the ship they crashed into the iceberg, they would prefer to do so with a GOLDEN parachute!
But in the end, this wasn’t simply about a struggling retailer unable to pay its bills. Sears succumbed to Mr. Lampert’s hubris. The problems at Sears Holdings, as it is known on Wall Street, are more than a decade in the making, all because one of the smartest guys who has ever been in any room — Mr. Lampert — stayed convinced of his own deeply flawed thinking. As a result, billions of dollars of shareholder and creditor money has been immolated, probably forever; at least 175,000 jobs have been lost; and one of the greatest American business success stories may well be extinguished.
Sears is seeking court approval to pay executives as much as $19 million in quarterly bonuses while the company struggles to restructure in bankruptcy.Libertarianism Capitalism at it's best.
Three top executives could get nearly $1 million each if the company goes out of business. If Sears remains in business, they could get nearly $500,000 each for hitting the top performance targets.
Sears filed two different types of bonus plans in bankruptcy court Thursday. The first is for the top 18 "key" executives, who would collectively get as much as $2.1 million per quarter. The bonuses would only be paid in full if Sears reaches its cash-flow targets. Sears Holdings, which includes both Sears and Kmart, has been burning through cash at a rate of about $125 million a month.
* Speaking of Capitalism at its purest form, who better to show us what it means than Kim Kardashian?
The California wildfires are causing massive devastation with current death count at 77 dead, over 1000 people missing, along with Paradise, CA virtually burned down. We know it is bad because Kim Kardashian took a picture of it from her private jet.
* The True Nazi Salute:
As multiple devastating wildfires raged across California, a private firefighting crew reportedly helped save Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s home in Calabasas, TMZ reported this week. The successful defense of the $50 million mansion is the most prominent example of a trend that’s begun to receive national attention: for-hire firefighters protecting homes, usually on the payroll of an insurance company with a lot at risk.
The insurance companies AIG and Chubb have publicly talked about their private wildfire teams. AIG has its own “Wildfire Protection Unit,” while Chubb—and up to a dozen other insurers—contract with Wildfire Defense Systems, a Montana company that claims to have made 550 “wildfire responses on behalf of insurers,” including 255 in just the past two years. Right now in California, the company has 53 engines working to protect close to 1,000 homes.
The TMZ story feels uniquely 2018—financial capitalism, inequality, KimYe, the fires of Armageddon—and it is, for Americans at least.
I wrote recently about the incident in Baraboo, where a bunch of kids were pictured giving the Nazi salute. I pointed out that in our current society, we continue to reward White Nationalism, Supremacy and outright racism. The world will be watching Mississippi this Tuesday, where there is a run off election between D- Mike Espy and R - Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Our children will be watching to see how much support Ms. Hyde-Smith receives since she made her national mark with her "sense of humor" -
The public hanging, is of course the go to for pure comedy, especially when your opponent is an African American, no hidden meanings in that comment at all.
Besides would this poor lady be racist?
We will see on Tuesday, taking a deep look in the mirror, we see everyone who votes for Ms. Hyde-Smith is doing their own Nazi salute.
* We as a country get incredibly offended, when someone fires upon, gases and kills children - Unless we do it.
After Central American migrants approached the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday to call attention to awful shelter conditions and request asylum, U.S. Border Patrol agents reportedly fired tear gas into Mexico, forcing parents with toddlers to flee.
"Children were screaming and coughing in the mayhem," the Associated Press reported. "On the U.S. side of the fence, shoppers streamed in and out of an outlet mall."
Extra Credit:
Wisconsin will have a celebrity Republican in the state for the next couple weeks.
Despite his last-minute requests and hopes, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos will still have to start his 14-day prison sentence on Monday for lying to federal investigators in the Russia probe.Welcome Papadopoulos to our Beautiful State ....hopefully they can get you out cleaning trash on the highways for your stay here.
Papadopoulos had asked a federal judge twice in the last 10 days to pause his sentence. The federal Bureau of Prisons has him set to surrender at a correctional camp in Wisconsin tomorrow.
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