Autumn and politics

It's the season of changing colors and politico posturing.  Does the fall bring out the true colors?  or just the residue?

Slow and steady loses the turtle - SignOnSanDiego.com

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/jul/10/slow-and-steady-loses-the-turtle/

 

. Twenty-something Michael Leaf, who created his first artwork fewer than three ago in a corner of his parents’ Chula Vista scrap-metal yard, has gone way uptown. His stunning, zero-waste designs, created from sheet-metal scraps, are on view through Labor Day in the lobby/gallery of La Jolla’s chi-chi Hotel Parisi.

The People vs. Goldman Sachs

By Matt Taibbi

May 11, 2011 9:30 AM ET

They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511

We're in worse shape than I thought.

Question. 9)

Wrong

 

In 2010, the average compensation for a CEO of a large U.S. corporation is how many times the compensation for an average worker
	A.	57 times
	B.	155 times (your answer)
	C.	287 times
	D.	364 times (correct answer)
	E.	433 times

Blackwater's Prince grows ever stronger as a force for evil

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15prince.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater’s Founder

By MARK MAZZETTI and EMILY B. HAGER

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand.

The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million from the oil-soaked sheikdom.

Mr. Prince, who resettled here last year after his security business faced mounting legal problems in the United States, was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the U.A.E., according to former employees on the project, American officials and corporate documents obtained by The New York Times.

The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts, the documents show. Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest in their crowded labor camps or were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year.