Taxpayers subsidize huge CEO salaries

 In 1999, the average CEO of a major corporation earned $12.4 million, including salary, bonus and other compensation such as exercised stock options, according to Business Week. That's $34,000 a day including Saturdays and Sundays.

  In 1980, CEOs made 42 times the pay of average factory workers. In 1990, they made 85 times as much. By 1999, CEOs made 475 times as much as workers.

 Computer Associates CEO Charles Wang led the gravy train with $655 million. Next were TycoInternational CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski with $170 million, Charles Schwab CEO David Pottruck with $128 million, Cisco CEO John Chambers with $122 million and America Online CEO Steve Case with $117 million.

Many CEOs have amassed future fortunes in stock options not yet exercised. Yahoo CEO Timothy Koogle leads with $2.3 billion in unexercised stock options, followed by American Online's Steve Case with $1.3 billion and Barry Diller of USA Networks with $1 billion.  

Average Americans subsidize outrageous CEO compensation through company deductions from taxes. Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., wants to change that by limiting the tax deduction for CEO pay to 25 times that of the company's lowest full-time salary.

Holly Sklar is co-author of "Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the Growing American Wealth Gap."

 Friendly Fire Likely Killed Tillman

By JAY COHEN
Associated Press Writer
FORT BRAGG, N.C.

An Afghan military official told The Associated Press on Saturday that Army Ranger and former pro football player Pat Tillman died because of a "misunderstanding" when two mixed groups of American and Afghan soldiers began firing wildly in the confusion following an explosion.

The Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also contradicted U.S. reports that the American soldiers had come under enemy fire.

He told the AP that two groups of soldiers had drifted some distance apart during the operation in the remote Spera district of Khost province.

"Suddenly the sound of a mine explosion was heard somewhere between the two groups and the Americans in one group started firing," the official said, citing an account given to him by an Afghan fighter who was part of that group, not Tillman's.

"As the result of this firing, that American was killed and three Afghan soldiers were injured. It was a misunderstanding and afterwards they realized there were no enemy forces."

Rocket Launcher Found on City Street

May 27, 2004 — Police want to know why neighborhood kids have been playing with an anti-tank grenade launcher in the 25-hundred block of North 18th Street in North Philadelphia.

 It's in police hands now, but no one is sure where the rocket launcher came from.

They are not amused by its presence on a public street in a densely populated neighborhood.

83 YEARS AGO TODAY

May 31 1921

After a white woman claims that a black man had grabbed her arm in an elevator, the largest race riot in U.S. history breaks out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Marauding whites set fire to the exclusively-negro Greenwood district. The official death toll is reported as 36, but later historians estimate it was more like 300.

The riot resulted in a reported four thousand African American men being detained for three days in internment camps. Thirty-five blocks of Greenwood were totally destroyed, starting with the business district and winding down though the poorer neighborhoods. The number of dead has always been difficult to place because of the dumping of bodies in the Arkansas River and the prohibition on funerals following the riot.

Eyewitness reports support a higher count of those dead. A magazine article reports that officials at the Salvation Army said they had fed thirty seven grave diggers on two days and twenty on two others.

During the first two days these men dug 120 graves in each of which a dead Negro was buried. No coffins were used....Added to the number accounted for were numbers of others--men, women and children-- who were incinerated in the burning houses in the Negro settlement.

Another eyewitness reported that someone positioned a machine gun atop of a building and set about firing into the African American community causing people to flee into the hills.

Private planes were reported flying over the community "dropping fire from the sky" . The Chicago Defender  "reported that black neighborhoods in Tulsa were bombed from the air by a private plane equipped with dynamite."

 

No European American was ever arrested for the devastation to life and property during the riot in Tulsa. The only individual ever indicted was J. B. Stadford, an influential African American businessman who went to the police station that day as a peacemaker. He was forced to flee and never returned to Tulsa

http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/tulsa19b.html

                  Jung Typology Test

ESFP type description by D.Keirsey
ESFP type description by J. Butt

 You are:

• moderately expressed extrovert
  
  
• slightly expressed sensing personality
  
  
• very expressed feeling personality
  
  
• distinctively expressed perceiving personality

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Dead child found chained to bed

16:47 AEST Sat May 29 2004

AP - An Arkansas woman has been convicted of manslaughter after her 10-year-old daughter - chained to a bed by her ankles - was killed in a house fire.

The body of Molly Holt was found by firefighters in her Clarkesville bedroom under debris where the roof had collapsed after the November 10 fire. Investigators also found a chain and padlock that they determined had secured the girl to her bed.

Teresa Dick, 31,  said she began chaining Molly to the bed after she discovered her daughter making threatening gestures with a knife to the other children.

A waiter in a restaurant in China ate a fly after a customer found the dead insect in her food.

The woman saw the fly in a bowl of noodles and demanded to see the manager to complain.

As Li Juan continued to insist on seeing the manager of the restaurant in Changsha, central China, the waiter took the fly and swallowed it.

The restaurant refused to acknowledge there had been an insect in Li's food, says the Xiaoxiang Morning Post newspaper.

The Paper Trail
Did Cheney Okay a Deal?
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER AND ADAM ZAGORIN

Sunday, May. 30, 2004
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."

 But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official that raises questions. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids.

62 YEARS AGO TODAY

May 30 1942

Returning home from a night of drinking and reminiscing about the recent death of John Barrymore, movie star Errol Flynn flips on the lights and is horrified to discover Barrymore's corpse propped up in a living room chair. Some of Flynn's friends had given a funeral director $200 to borrow the body for a couple of hours.

Director Raoul Walsh, actor Peter Lorre and a few other jokers dragged his corpse into Errol Flynn's living room while he was away.

When Flynn returned home, he took off his coat, nodded to Barrymore, took three steps toward the bar, and froze.

"Oh, my God!" he cried, before cautiously approaching Barrymore and poking him. Flynn and the others promptly burst out laughing and they all had a well-needed drink.

[Flynn forgave his friends but refused to help cart Barrymore back to the mortuary.]


http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=10579

Tillman killed by friendly fire

Pat Tillman

Billy House
Republic Washington Bureau
May. 29, 2004 12:00 AM