- Money
well spent, Mark Lasry and Wesley Edens, money well spent. The extremely
wealthy and entitled owners of the Milwaukee Bucks just extorted their home
state for $250 million in taxpayer money for a new stadium for the team when
they could easily afford to fund the entire project themselves - and should -
and while plunking down $482,000 on lobbying efforts through June to win over
state legislators they needed to vote in favor of their charitable donation
from a state that clearly has more pressing financial needs is a big number,
the return on that investment clearly justifies it. The Bucks spent more money
lobbying the Wisconsin Legislature than any other organization during the first
half of the year, proving that when the dollar signs are dancing in the eyes of
billionaires who purchased an NBA team as a luxury item so they could be part
of the exclusive club of professional sports team owners, there is nothing they
won't do to make sure they cash that check. The disturbing details of the money
spent pushing for approval of a new basketball arena came with the release of a
report by the state elections board, which oversees lobbying. It credits the
Bucks for blowing right by the Wisconsin Hospital Association, which doled out
$379,000 to bribe, wine and dine lawmakers to vote in favor of bills favorable
to Big Health Care. Gov. Scott Walker took time off from his faltering
presidential campaign to approve the stadium bill and by the time the next
report on lobbying expenditures is released at the end of the year with figures
for July - when the bill passed both houses - should soar well past the
half-million-dollar mark. Hope you feel good about yourself, Wisconsin……….
- The
matadors are under attack and this time, their opponents haven't been
preemptively stabbed behind their muscular shoulder joint to wound them before
the battle begins. No, this isn't a story about Spain, where bullfighting
remains a massive part of the culture and where a few select parts of the
country have decided that the sport is too barbaric to continue. This one comes
from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where a third
Mexican state has banned bullfighting after a concerted campaign by animal
rights groups. The decision came down from the congress of the northern state
of Coahuila, which took a final vote on the matter late last week. It was great
news for the bill’s supporters in the Green Party, but the bill actually passed
with the support of the majority of the representatives from the governing
Institutional Revolutionary Party. Don’t look for any future resistance on the
issue from the government after Coahuila's governor said prior to the legislative
debate that bullfights are barbaric and most of the state's citizens oppose
them. Sonora set the pace on the issue back in 2013, when it became the first
Mexican state to ban bullfights. Guerrero followed in 2014, with critics all
following the same script, claiming that it is inhumane that the bull is first
weakened and partially incapacitated by horsemen and others before the
bullfighter enters to make the kill with a sword. Yes, but every now and then
some idiot in a funny hat and waving a red sheet gets what he has coming to him
from an angry bull and on those days, the world seems a slightly more just
place………
- Really,
they’re a perfect match. Paul Thomas Anderson is a screenwriter, director and
producer with a knack for long, sprawling and overly self-important projects
and Jonny Greenwood is the lead guitarist for one of the most high-minded,
self-important bands in the history of rock and roll. The two have worked
together before and it only makes sense that Anderson
is currently putting the finishing touches on a documentary about Greenwood. He
followed the Radiohead guitarist on a recording session in Rajasthan in
northwest India, where Greenwood attempted to completely rip off what the
Beatles did - a time that drastically impacted George Harrison’s music
specifically for the rest of his career - by channeling some Asian influences
into his tunes. The project will showcase Greenwood’s work on an album with the
Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur and this sure-to-be-hipster-targeted documentary
will premiere at the New York Film Festival, which takes place Sept. 25 to Oct.
11. Greenwood has been the one working in support of Anderson several times
before, working extensively on the scores for “Inherent Vice,” “There Will Be
Blood” and “The Master.” He’ll be providing the score for this film, simply in
a different sense, and assuming it doesn’t end up as a four-hour epic that
delves far too deep on the minutiae, it has the chance to be an interesting
watch and a window into the inner sanctum of someone who often takes a back
seat to Thom York when Radiohead are together……….
- Crash
and burn, James Henrikson, crash and burn. Henrikson,
a felon linked to fraud and terror in North Dakota who was sent to Washington
state to face federal charges of ordering the killings of a business associate
that owed him nearly $2 million and his former trucking company employee, is
not an especially nice guy. Based on his recent actions at a jail in eastern
Washington, he’s not a very smart one either. Staffers at the Spokane County
Jail spotted g a long trail of knotted bed sheets hanging from the window of Henrikson’s
cell and put the facility on lockdown. The rope of sheets nearly reached the
ground and was spotted around 4:30 a.m. Once the sheets were spotted, officials moved Henrikson and a cellmate to
another part of the jail. Getting out of the window was easy for the sheets,
but would have been tougher for Henrikson and his cellmate, as that window is
about 4 feet tall but less than 5 inches wide, according to Spokane County Jail
Commander John McGrath. How inconsiderate of the prison’s designers to not make
it easier for a human being to fit through that opening. That Henrikson tried
to escape is no shock, as six months ago authorities investigated after another
inmate reported that Henrikson planned to escape by having a team attack a U.S.
Marshals Service van with guns, grenades and gasoline. A suspicious person
might think that multiple escape attempts reflect negatively on the possible
guilty of a man who was indicted last September on murder-for-hire charges in
the deaths of Doug Carlile and Kristopher "K.C." Clarke in Washington.
But hey, Clarke's body has never been found and Henrikson only told
investigators that Carlile owed him nearly $1.9 million for their dealings in an oil development firm, so it’s not as if he
had reason to kill the man. A trip to solitary confinement can’t be too
far away………..
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