- Oh, let me count the ways I hate thee, New York Yankees. Nah, scratch that: we don’t have nearly enough time and space for that sort of rant. Aside from the ever-present arrogance and presumption of superiority, the gawdy spending and absurd budget they work with and the general Yankee-ness, there are things like this. In building their new stadium, the Yankees have leaned heavily on public funding even as they were busy doling out $423 million in new contracts to free agent stars. Clearly they can find money to buy players but not to pay for their own stadium. Thus, the Yankees are asking for another $259 million in tax-exempt bonds and $111 million in taxable bonds, on top of $940 million in tax-exempt bonds and $25 million in taxable bonds already granted for the $1.3 billion Bronx stadium. That request will have to wait while a New York Assembly committee investigates the use of millions of dollars in public funding to build the new Yankee Stadium. That committee subpoenaed team president Randy Levine as well as city Industrial Development Agency Chairman Seth Pinsky to appear at a hearing on Wednesday. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky is leading the charge for the committee and their subpoenas compel the officials to appear for questioning as well as provide documents the committee wants for its investigation into whether public money should be used for the new stadium in the Bronx. But at least one politician has the Yankees’ back: Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "I guess it makes for good political theater because it's the Yankees, but when it comes to valuable taxpayer dollars, decisions should be made on return, not rhetoric," Bloomberg spokesman Andrew Brent said. "The deal leverages a federal program and will result in New York City getting back more tax revenue than it will cost and the South Bronx getting thousands of new jobs and more than $1 billion in private investment." Gee, wonder why the mayor would support the Yankees getting more public funding that doesn’t come out of his pockets? Brodsky and his committee have already had multiple officials for the city and the Yankees have already appeared before them and provide documents, but Brodsky continues to investigate, so there must be something that has piqued his interest. That could be because Brodsky claims the Yankees and the city have denied him records related to additional public financing requested by the team. Or it could be that Brodsky believes that city and team officials have engaged secret negotiations that altered property assessments to make the deal legal and to provide a free luxury suite for city officials. Because of widespread criticism of its handling of the project, as well as its handling of the new stadium being built by the city’s other professional baseball team, the Mets, the Bloomberg administration said last month that it would forgo the luxury boxes. Good decision, Mr. Mayor. However, I’m going to have to agree with Rep. Brodsky in having serious doubts about whether the Yankees deserve more public funding, because from where I sit, they sure look like they can afford to foot the bill on their own……
- Bizarre saga involving missing Indiana financial manager and pilot Marcus Schrenker. Schrenker, 38, took off from Indiana for Destin, Florida, on Sunday night and mid-flight, he told air traffic controllers that his windshield had imploded. Schrenker has been found in Alabama by police with deep cuts on his wrists that appear to be a suicide attempt, but that discovery is merely the latest twist in a weird, weird story. According to two former commercial pilots named in an Indiana Department of Insurance complaint, Schrenker is a smooth talker who promised investors steady returns on their money and never delivered. Rather than face the deep financial hole he created, it is believed that Schrenker attempted to fake his death by bailing out of his plane over Alabama. Not exactly the sort of confident play you’d hope for from a guy whose scam was predicated on confidence, on flying into a city dressed up in a thousand-dollar suit and sitting down with prospective clients and getting them to turn their money over to his company, Heritage Wealth Management." Things began to unravel for Schrenker when a judge in Indiana froze his assets at the request of investigators looking into his business dealings. In fact, Heritage Wealth Management was just one of three businesses he operated, with the other two being Heritage Insurance Services and Icon Wealth management. All three companies are "the subjects of an active investigation by the Indiana Securities Division," said Jim Gavin, spokesman for the Indiana secretary of state. To escape the heat, authorities believe, Schrenker parachuted out of his plane, which eventually crashed in East Milton, Florida and landed in Childersburg, Alabama, where he approached a home and told residents he had been in a canoeing accident. Showing that he had an elaborate plan in place, Schrenker used a fictitious name to check in when police took him to a hotel in nearby Harpersville and was gone by the time they realized who he was. Where did he go? Well, police say they later found that he had stashed a motorcycle in a storage facility in Harpersville, again using a fake name. Of course, now that he’s been captured all of this doesn’t seem quite as clever, but rest assured, this was quite a scam. But I guess that when you are allegedly was defrauding investors of hundreds of thousands of dollars through annuities, you probably need a plan in place for when things hit the fan. Two fellow pilots who invested with Schrenker say he gave them vague explanations about where their money was invested, and now they and anyone else who invested with this scumbag are unlikely to ever see that money again……
- I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: hockey sucks and is a second-tier sport . I couldn’t care less about the game, but if two of its top players want to act like immature, bickering 10-year-olds on the playground, I can still get a laugh out of it. Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin may be two of the world's best hockey players, millionaires and Olympians, but that hasn’t stopped them from chippiness in the form of a feud that has included incident like the one last season when Malkin ducked just in time to avoid a hard drive into the boards from the Ovechkin. Their fighting has extended off the ice as well, with with Ovechkin reportedly taking a swing at Malkin's agent in Moscow. "Ovechkin is a great player, but every time he hits me -- I don't know why," Malkin said. Ovechkin's defense is that he hits hard against every opponent, not just Malkin, but he’s not known as a physical player around the league. Even the sport’s most tuned-in observers can’t figure out how these two went from wo good friends to enemies in so short a time. It was a mere three years ago that they roomed together in Torino at the Winter Olympics, where they were regularly spotted out and about together, taking in the sights. Neither one will say where things went wrong, so clearly up their drama is a tough task. Whatever the cause, it’s apparently enough to get Ovechkin to take a swing at Malkin's Russian agent, Gennady Ushakov, in a Moscow nightclub, two years ago. That incident has been widely reported, with Ovechkin denying the story and Malkin confirming it in a November interview, calling it a "bad situation." Their pissing match is causing anxiety for Russian hockey officials because both stars are expected to be a part of the Russian Olympic team at the Vancouver Olympics, which are only13 months away. The NHL has stayed out of the dispute, but you know that they can’t be thrilled that the league’s two leading scorers from last season are bickering like a couple of elementary schoolers. Good job hockey, way to keep up the high level of respect that so many people in this country clearly have for you…..
- How about this, America? You could be getting a new treasury secretary who doesn’t even bother to pay his own taxes and who breaks immigration laws when it comes to hiring his domestic help. Meet treasury secretary nominee Tim Geithner, who met with members of the Senate Finance Committee met Tuesday with over concerns involving his personal taxes and the immigration status of a former housekeeper. According to records obtainted by the committee, the Geithners employed a housekeeper whose work visa expired about three months before she stopped working for them in October 2005. She was later married to a U.S. citizen and granted a green card, but for those three months Geithner wasn’t exactly abiding by the law. But that seems to be a secondary concern when you consider that while working for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2001 to 2004, Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes while the IMF paid him. Quoting Carl Lewis during his legendary national anthem performance, “Uh-oh!” Can’t be trusted to handle the financial well-being of an entire nation if you can’t play by the very rules you’re supposed to be enforcing. The tax-dodging led the Internal Revenue Service to audit Geithner in 2006 for tax years 2003 and 2004, and he paid $16,732 for the taxes and interest for those years. However, at the time Obama nominated him for treasury secretary, Geithner realized that he was still in arrears for his taxes for 2001 and 2002, and subsequently paid $25,970 for those years in taxes and interest. Still. Obama’s presidential transition team felt obliged to tell the Finance Committee staff about Geithner's taxes early last month. The tax problem for Geithner arose because as an international organization, the IMF does not withhold money from employees' paychecks to pay Social Security and Medicare. Any of the organization’s U.S. employees have to pay them on their own, settle up their own tax debt. Nice try by Robert Gibbs, the incoming White House spokesman, calling Geithner's tax issue a "common mistake." Not that these errors are substantial enough to disqualify Geithner as a nominee, but you do have to wonder now what kind of person you’re appointing to such a high-level position in this administration. Coupled with Bill Richardson withdrawing his name as a nominee for secretary of commerce because of a financial scandal of his own, looks like our new president isn’t so great at picking nominees for Cabinet posts. Let’s just hope these guys are competent when they do get into office……
- Memo to Facebook users in southern New Zealand: if you receive a friend request from the Queenstown police, deny it. The local police in Queenstown are looking to use the world’s most popular social networking site as their newest crime-fighting tool. They’ve even had their first successful Facebook arrest, arresting a would-be burglar after they posted security camera images of him trying to break into a safe on Facebook. According to Constable Sean Drader, the police department created its Facebook account just two months ago. "It's pretty popular, isn't it, this site?" Drader said Wednesday in stating the obvious. The effort paid off after a masked man allegedly broke into a local pub through a roof early Monday morning and attempted to bust open a safe using an angle grinder. Initially, this guy was smart enough to cover his face so that he couldn’t be identified by security cameras or witnesses, but after an hour in a small room and a hot angle grinder, the heat began to get to him. Looking to beat the heat, the man took his gloves and balaclava off, exposing his face. A few minutes later, he realizes that he’s not going to be able to crack the safe and as he turns to leave, looks around to make sure he isn’t leaving anything behind. That’s when dude sunk himself, because as he scours the room for his things, he looks up right at the security camera. It took all of a few hours for pics from the =surveillance camera to show up on the police department’s Facebook page. It then took all of one day for the man to land in police custody, identified by Facebook users who recognized him from the images on the site. Now, this tool is charged with two counts of burglary and I’m left to wonder….who the frak is surfing Facebook, looking to help out the police by looking through surveillance pics? How big of a sellout are you? The pictures you need to be looking at are the ones from your hot female friends in their skanky Halloween costumes, of the spring break trip you took to Daytona Beach, of that party you went to last weekend, etc. With more than 90 million active users on Facebook, there should be more than 90 million active users who aren’t willing to take even a single second to scan pics to help the police do their job……..
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