Friday's Odds and Ends

Getting a late start in my office this morning. The burn bans that have been in effect all summer and into fall here in East Texas have been lifted, and I had piles of dead brush and other things that needed to be burned, so I played with fire this morning. Felt good to get at least one big brush pile burned. Didn't roast marshmallows or hot dogs, though. Too early for that. Maybe next time I'll burn closer to evening and have supper, while I'm out there enjoying the beautiful fall weather.

According to a column I read about three weeks ago by Joe Nocera of the New York Times, Jon Corzine, CEO of MF Global Holdings, is primarily responsible for "running the firm into the ground." Yet Corzine stood to get  up to $12 million in severance if he managed to sell the firm before it went bankrupt. The sale never happened, and MF did go under on October 31, laying off nearly half its staff, including more than 1,000 employees of the company's broker-dealer unit.

For a while it looked like Corzine and J. Randy MacDonald, head of global retail for MF Global Holdings, might still get nice severance packages, but the latest report from Nick Brown and Jonathan Stempel states that the two have left the company without severance in hand. That is one bright spot in this mess that seems to be repeated endlessly in big business. 

In another bright spot, yesterday, the trustee overseeing the liquidation of assests for MF Global won court permission to distribute $520 million of cash to customers.  Customers won, top executives lost. Finally someone is getting it right. 

I'm all for safety, and I know we have had this discussion about airport screening before, but the process of protecting us from possible terrorist threats can get absurd at times. In a recent trip from New Orleans to Dallas, Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd set off alarms at the screening. She was wearing a skirt that had a series of snaps down the front and around the waistband that trigered the alarm. "The screener said, "I can't clear this. You'll need a full body search."

When Floyd tried to show the snaps, which could hardly be large enough to contain explosives, the lady  simply repeated her statement. That's when Floyd admittedly "lost it." Rather than go through the indignity of a body search, and in a moment of pique, she decided to drop her skirt and send it through the conveyor belt to be X-rayed. She figured standing there in her tights and long shirt was less humiliating than having a full body pat down that includes someone touching her breasts to check around her bra.

That was a good plan until something went wrong with the conveyer belt, and Floyd ended up having to stand in the screening area without her skirt for much too long until the problem got solved and her skirt came through.

This is a good example of why I have not been on a plane in almost ten years, and may never get on one again. That, and the absurd fees for everything that used to be part of the ticket price..

Friday's Odds and Ends

In Texas the speed limit is going to be raised to 75mph on interstate highways. That means that all the drivers who currently go 80 to 90 in the 70mph zone will now feel free to bump that up by another ten. And this is good for us, how?

Here are some facts from a Highway Research Center  to consider:  A 2002 study by researchers at the Land Transport Safety Authority of New Zealand evaluated the effects of increasing rural interstate speed limits from 65 mph to either 70 or 75 mph. Based on deaths in states that did not change their speed limits, states that increased speed limits to 75 mph experienced 38 percent more deaths per million vehicle miles traveled than expected — an estimated 780 more deaths. States that increased speed limits to 70 mph experienced a 35 percent increase, resulting in approximately 1,100 more deaths.

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 nears, there is much talk about what is wrong with planned memorial events. It appears that first responders will not be invited to ceremonies at Ground Zero that day because there is not enough room for them. According to the NY governor and NYC mayor this is about the families of those lives lost that day and the focus should be on them. I'm curious. Are the families of the fallen firefighters and other first responders invited?

This is a very short-sighted decision, as was the one that pledged billions of federal dollars to build a memorial at the site of Ground Zero that includes 1World Trade Center at a price tag of $3.3 billion.

As NY Times columnist, Joe Nocera pointed out in a recent column, yes, the dead need to be remembered, but at what cost to the rest of a nation that was also traumatized by the horrific events of that September day 10 years ago? This new skyscraper at Ground Zero is the most expensive building ever erected and "will have 2.6 million square feet of office space in a city that doesn't need it at a cost that is so high that it will be a cash drain for many years."

And if that isn't enough to make one stop and ask who is in charge of this nonsense, the new building will affect commuters who use the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the agency overseeing the building of the skyscraper, will raise tolls on the bridges and tunnels it controls, and by 2015 it could easily cost a commuter over $60 dollars a week to drive back and forth to work.

According to Nocera's column, the publishing giant, Conda Nast, is going to be the anchor tenant in the new building and will benefit from substantial government subsidies. "And who will be paying for that subsidy? The mail room attendants who use the Lincoln Tunnel to get to work."

On a slightly lighter note, there is talk of closing the tunnels in downtown Dallas.  Apparently this is someone's idea of a way to revitalize downtown by making people visit stores above ground. Has that person walked a downtown street on a summer afternoon or a blustery day in January when the wind could blow you to the next corner? If people want to revitalize downtown, why not revitalize the tunnels so people can stroll and shop in comfort?

What are your thoughts on these topics, or any other news item that raised your blood pressure this week?

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