Astrophotographo

Mo' Lottery Hijinx

You can't make this stuff up.  The State of NC finally does something (excellent editorial from the Star-News) about all these "sweepstakes internet cafes", while at the same time, keeps in place the State-run lottery.  Hypocrisy and monopolized government greed incorporated.  The Lottery is a fool's errand to start with, and to have it run as a monopoly by the state is just not right.   Here's yet another story of the lottery gone bad, from the Greensboro News-Record:

GREENSBORO — Two people were arrested Monday after they allegedly stole winning tickets from detectives in a North Carolina lottery sting.

A detective presented a winning ticket on Feb. 18 at Ken’s Quickie Mart, 305 W. Main St., according to warrants.

The clerk, Yogesh Jayantibhai Patel, 47, of 2405 Vanstory St., ran the Bonus Crossword Game ticket through the computer. Although the computer made a tone, indicating the ticket was a $1,000 winner, Patel told the detective it was a loser, the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office said.

Patel and Minaben Yogesh Patel, 50, of the same address, cashed in the ticket the next day, deputies said.

Bond for each was $10,000.

The article does not say why the detectives were doing a sting.  I suppose we can presume that the crooks scammers? had successfully completed this scheme before, perhaps many times over.  Can we not also assume that other lottery vendors are doing this as well? 

I should remind you of this story from earlier:
watts4u2 post from last July

 Ah, the sweet lottery is so good to us, what could go wrong?  Looks like this Kangaroo cashier gamed the system and had his wife win a cool $1 Million Dollars!  My favorite part,

"The lottery is seeking recovery of the prize money paid to Fields."

Nice work.  The lottery pays off again! 

I've never seen a follow-up to that story, though I've looked online.....please comment if you know more!  Edit: Just found it!

By F.T. Norton

Published: Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 12:01 p.m.

A Wilmington man charged with the theft of a winning lottery ticket that his wife claimed, pleaded guilty this month to stealing the ticket from the gas station where he worked.

Sean Mewherter, 21, pleaded guilty Feb. 13 in Brunswick County Superior Court to felony larceny by an employee. In lieu of five to 15 months in jail, Mewherter received 24 months of probation and a $316 fine.In July, Mewherter's wife Mikala Fields took a $1 million winning 20X The Money ticket to lottery officials, and received a cash payout of $408,003 after taxes were withheld from the $600,000 lump sum.
Following the announcement of the award, the N.C. Education Lottery was contacted by Mewherter's employer, Kangaroo Express, and an investigation began into how Fields obtained the winning ticket. The investigation revealed that Mewherter stole the ticket while he was working at the Kangaroo Express on Yaupon Drive in Oak Island, according to the NCEL.
Fields was ordered to return the winnings. She's not been charged in the incident.

Doesn't say how much of our hard earned lottery money we got back, but there you go, justice!

Flashback: Have I been consistent on the lottery?  Click that link, to see previous lottery posts, as well as my endorsements from the election 2004.... I endorsed 4 candidates..... 2 Republicans and Erskine Bowles.  And John Kerry.  They all lost.

Republicans Ass Kiss Them

Hey, income inequality is too in part caused by the tax code, and we can make it more fair!  So says this article in Business Insider:

"It conclusively found that the wealthy benefitted from low tax rates on investment income, which in turn caused their wealth to grow faster.
Essentially, taxing capital gains as ordinary income would make the playing field more fair, and reduce over time income inequality.
Even more, such a move would serve as a deficit reduction measure..."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/study-income-inequality-capital-gains-tax-rate-2013-2#ixzz2Lv8RG16l

 It's only money that keeps the Republicans from seeing that it is time to take on the big pockets, not ass kiss them.  

Will this gif work?

There should be motion....stirring.  Here's the test:

Might not work on tablets and phones, but works on my computer!

Not a Crime

StarNewsOnline.com

Allow your gun to go off at a gun show, injuring 3 people, is not a crime.  This man will see no punishment, though someome could have easily been killed.  Yeah, gun laws are just soooo strict.

MLK saved Star Trek

Nichelle Nichols Tells Neil deGrasse Tyson How Martin Luther King Convinced Her to Stay on Star Trek | Open Culture

I didn't think I could have a higher opinion of Martin Luther King, but this story just raised the bar. 

Joe and Poopy Hands

msnbc.com: NBC's Al Roker snags Biden handshake

I caught this live and almost fell out.  I also think Biden may be on ecstacy. 

No, they haven't learned anything

Virginia's Gov. McDonnell proposes elimination of gasoline tax

Perhaps he should add a rape assist kit requirement to each car and a $500 tax deduction if you carry an assault rifle in the rear window of your truck. 
This is another one if them moderate Republicans.

Duke Didn't Want to Apologize

And clearly, they didn't mean it when they did:

 "Duke had agreed to submit a public statement of penance for the way it mishandled its merger with Progress and fired CEO-to-be Bill Johnson on the day the merger was completed. Lawyers at Duke and at the Utilities Commission had agreed on a draft of the letter....

Rogers submitted his letter Tuesday. Several hours later, however, the company was forced to submit a corrected version, this time adding two key words: “we apologize.”

“This was a draft mix-up at our end – we basically submitted the wrong draft,”"

You just can't make this stuff up folks.  The North Carolina Utility Commission has  officially been walked all over, again.  And they know, and don't seem to care much:

"Public Staff Director Robert Gruber had been publicly demanding Rogers’ ouster as a moral equalizer.
Gruber said Tuesday that Rogers’ letter signals that Duke and the commission have reconciled.
“They owed the commission an apology in plain English,” said Gruber, whose agency represents the public in utility rate cases. “I’m satisfied it brings closure to the matter.”"

I'm sure the Duke authorities have learned their lesson and will never try to fool the commission, their shareholders, the legislature, and the general public again after such harsh treatment:

"As part of the settlement finalized this month, Duke will pay $30 million to benefit North Carolina customers and Rogers will retire by the end of next year. The settlement also reassigns two top Duke executives to other roles."

 Oooooooooh, $30 Million for all of us?  That's like being Duke CEO for like, 3/4 of a day or something, and we all get to share it.  Mmmmmm hmmmm, feelin' that satisfaction!

Dumbass in the Seventies, Dumbass Now

But Can They Eat 50 Eggs? - NYTimes.com
The column where Maureen Dowd admits she didn't know who Roger Staubach was when she went to a football game in the 70's.  That explains this column, where she overcriticizes freshly re-elected President Obama, while gushing over a rookie QB with a 5-6 record.  See, she didn't recognize greatness then, or now.  Dumbass.

Advice for the Republicans

Grand Old Planet - NYTimes.com
Krugman tellin' it like it is!  Repubs should listen, but they won't.  A shame.

Progress ing to Higher Rates with Duke

Who could have seen this coming?  Progress Energy and Duke Energy are merging, and this is supposed to bring savings to consumers, and keep jobs in North Carolina.  Well, here we have their first new request for a rate hike since the "merger", and we already know they plan layoffs as the merger progresses.  At least there is some modernization happening, switching from coal to natural gas, for instance, but that will ultimately save the company money too.  They might quit the coal, but they're saving the shaft for us citizens/consumers of literal monopolized power.  It's time to re-think how we deal with the electric grid and the monopolies that exist in the energy industry, as a first step in a long term solution for our energy challenges. 

Help Big Bird

Hilarious!

 

And speaking of Big Bird, here's a tune from Eddie Floyd with Steve Cropper on guitar.  Big Bird.

The Sealy Mattress Story

It all started one cool fall night, the moon was full when she brought her new lady-friend up to my room after the party....

oh, wait, not that kind of Sealy Mattress story, no, this one involves less enjoyable pursuits for the humans among us.  But there is a class of folk, some say human, who enjoy nothing more than a forced corporate takeover or a leveraged buyout... ah, the sheer power of it all, muhahaha!!  I'm getting ahead of the story.  First, a little Sealy history:

...The failed deal, known as "burning bed," led to a dramatic slow-down in leveraged buy-outs.
In 1990 Ohio Mattress assumed the Sealy name...  Bain Capital and a team of Sealy's senior executives acquired the company in 1997.   In 1998 Sealy announced that it was moving from Cleveland to the High Point, NC, area.

In 2004, the company was acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and a team of Sealy management. The deal was valued at $1.5 billion but included significant debt.  The company operated as a privately held corporation until 2005. "

Say these guys who flip these companies take significant risks to keep these companies going to benefit the shareholders and by happenstance, the workers, and America as a whole.  That's why they make the big bucks!  But, what if their investments weren't that large, and their personal profits guaranteed at the expense of the shareholders and workers?  Would that be capitalism working?   Because that's what they did, time and again.

Josh Kosman has an interesting new article at Salon about what happened with Bain & Sealy.  The whole article is worth reading, it's not too long and really lays it bare:

 Mitt Romney’s Bain led a $791 million buyout of Sealy in 1997, putting $140 million down and, in typical private-equity fashion, having Sealy borrow the remaining $651 million to finance the deal and assume responsibility for paying it back. ...

 (Despite the "one-sided mattress" and other mismanagement under Bain mentioned in the article) Bain and co-investors sold — “harvested,” if you like — Sealy in 2004 to fellow private equity firm KKR for $1.5 billion ($5.78 a share), pocketing $741 million for its $140 million investment. ...KKR then took Sealy public in 2006 at $16 a share.

 AND why is this news now?  

 Relative upstart Tempur-Pedic agreed to buy Sealy this week for $2.20 a share, paying less than $250 million for its stock and assuming its $750 million debt.

Thus Sealy joins Burger King and others on the list of Bain-acquired companies that collapsed soon after Bain cashed out — hardly surprising, since private equity is mostly about squeezing businesses as hard as possible, not creating long-term value...

 A longtime Sealy executive told me he was very sad about last week’s sale. “I don’t like being acquired by an upstart like Tempur. We should have figured out how to handle them in the marketplace.” Now, some of Sealy’s 4,500 workers will likely lose their jobs in the merger.

"Oh, that's chump change for a guy like me!"

That article at Salon is really worth a read.  Why should a company get tossed around by five investment groups in 10 years?  Let's hope Mitt doesn't do to America what Bain did to Sealy.  In fact, let's not give him the chance.