Tuesday - November 28, 2006

The Old Rugged Cross

This story probably needs no explanation. It involves a cross erected in the Mojave Desert over 70 years ago by private citizens, an atheist and the ACLU. The result is a cross covered in plywood, a satisfied godless madman and $63,000 in the pockets of the ACLU.

It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes. I need to go visit the firing range to clear my vision and take out a little anger. Be back later ....

In 1934, a gritty prospector named J. Riley Bembry gathered a couple of his fellow World War I veterans at Sunrise Rock. Together they erected the cross, in honor of their fallen comrades. The memorial has been privately maintained ever since.

A wrinkle developed in 1994, when the federal government declared the surrounding area a national preserve. With the cross now located on newly public land, ...the ACLU demanded that the National Park Service tear down the cross.

Mr. Buono insists that his seeing the monument ("two to four times a year") violates his civil rights. A federal district court found in his favor, and the decision was subsequently upheld by the Ninth Circuit.

The ACLU, however, has made out quite nicely. Not only has it prevailed in the courts to date, but it has managed to pocket $63,000. Owing to a quirk in civil-rights law, the taxpayer once again ended up paying the ACLU for pressing a highly controversial church-state lawsuit.

-- FreeRepublic.com (May 27, 2005)

I was in Las Vegas at the end of September and called into Jay at his e-radio show on WideAwakesRadio. I mentioned that I was going to go searching in the Mojave Desert to find a small cross that I’d read about that had been ordered removed by a federal judge after the ACLU sued. Jay mentioned that he’d like to see a picture of it, so here it is.

Seeing a cross covered in plywood is startling to me. It is celebrated by the ACLU as a victory. To me it…what word can I use to describe this anti-religious display? It offends.

-- StopTheACLU (November 28, 2006)

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/28/2006 at 03:31 PM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Religion •  
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   Sunday - August 27, 2006

Quote Of The Day

“The kingdom’s petroleum policy is moderation in prices. Despite the benefits that the increase in prices brings us, we advocate moderation in oil prices. Petroleum production is plentiful. That’s why I am surprised by ... the unjustified rise in prices.”
 
 
-- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, complaining about the high price of gas, August 26, 2006

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/27/2006 at 12:15 PM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • Middle-East •  
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   Thursday - July 27, 2006

Follow The Money

$99.3 billion in total revenue. $10.36 billion was profit. $4.9 billion spent on exploration. $7.9 billion sent to stockholders. In just the second quarter. That’s three months for the calendericly-challenged out there. That means Exxon will receive around $400 billion in revenue this year. That’s about what it costs to fund the entire US military.

I don’t object to a company making money and generating a profit. In fact, I do it myself as an individual who works for a living. I do it on a much smaller scale than Exxon. Regrettably.

These numbers above are almost too large to comprehend - unless you compare it to the federal budget which weighs in at a hefty $2.7 TRILLION. Now you’re talking real money. The way I figure it, between the Feds, Exxon, Bill Gates and the Walton family, all the money in the world is wrapped up.

And we’re paying $3 for a gallon of gas. In Britain, Exxon charges $6 per gallon. Excuse me but after looking at these numbers I have a bad case of gas that I need to pass ... to Exxon. I’m sure they deserve it.

Exxon Mobil 2Q Profit Jumps 36 Percent
_{DALLAS (AP) - Jul 27 9:29 AM US/Eastern}

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday it earned $10.36 billion in the second quarter, the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company. The earnings figure was 36 percent above the profit it reported a year ago.

High oil prices helped boost the company’s revenue by 12 percent to a level just short of a quarterly record.

Exxon Mobil’s report comes a day after another large U.S. oil company, ConocoPhillips, said it earned more than $5 billion in the quarter and at a time when many drivers in the U.S. are paying $3 for a gallon of gas _ increasing the likelihood of further political backlash in Washington.

Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company by market capitalization, said earnings amounted to $1.72 per share in the April-June quarter compared with a profit of $7.64 billion, or $1.20 per share, a year ago. The results topped Wall Street expectations but came in behind Exxon Mobil’s record profit of $10.71 billion set in the fourth quarter of 2005. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected the company to earn $1.64 per share.

Revenue rose to $99.03 billion from $88.57 billion in the prior-year quarter. That was short of Exxon Mobil’s record third-quarter revenue of $100.72 billion _ which also stands as record revenue generated by any U.S. public company ever in a single quarter. Its shares rose 85 cents to $67.45 in premarket trading. That would top its 52-week high of $67.18.

Exxon Mobil said it spent $4.9 billion on capital and exploration projects during the quarter, up 8 percent from a year ago, while distributing $7.9 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Congress has been urging the big oil companies to put more of their profits toward boosting the supply of energy for consumers.

Posted by The Skipper     on 07/27/2006 at 10:14 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Saturday - June 24, 2006

Marshall’s Millions: Final Chapter?

This sorry saga seems to be about to come to an end. Anna’s legal foe, the son of the old billionaire she was briefly married to, has suddenly expired of a mysterious “infection”. I’ll leave it up to the real conspiracy theorists among you to follow that trail. Keep me posted. In the meantime, Anna has been making a drunken fool of herelf around town and just recently announced she has a bun in the oven but won’t reveal who the father is. All that’s missing from this soap opera is the commercial break every ten minutes ...

Legal Foe Of Anna Nicole Smith Dies
_{Sat Jun 24, 2006 7:57am ET13}

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - E. Pierce Marshall, who battled Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith in the courts over his father’s vast oil fortune, died unexpectedly this week, his family said on Friday.

The 67-year-old died after a “brief and extremely aggressive infection,” the family said in a statement from Dallas.

The death in 1995 of his father, J. Howard Marshall, triggered a long-running legal battle with Smith, who married the oil tycoon a year earlier after meeting him while working as a topless dancer. She was 26 when they married; he was 89.

Marshall was one of the wealthiest men in Texas, worth more than an estimated $1.6 billion. Smith claimed that her husband promised her half of his estate. The son said that more than $6 million in gifts she received was all his father left her.

Earlier this year, Smith won from the U.S. Supreme Court a new chance to collect millions of dollars when the justices overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that the widow was entitled to nothing.

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/24/2006 at 10:35 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Wednesday - June 14, 2006

How To Steal Billions

Want to be rich? Have free season football tickets? Get a sex change? Stock up your library of porn videos? Get away to the Caribbean for a few weeks? Yes, my friends, you can have all that if you follow our simple two-step plan. All it requires is a Republican controlled Congress and a Republican President ....

1- Wait for the next natural disaster, like a hurricane on the Gulf Coast. Within hours after the disaster, the bleeding heart Liberals and prominent Democrats will start finger-pointing and accusing the Republicans of being stingy, racist and hateful. The Democrats will call for resignations and go into full attack mode against FEMA and the administration. The Republicans and the administration will be shocked at the accusations and thrown into further confusion by liberal media who will further blast the administration. Falling back on the defensive, the administration and FEMA will begin bending over backwards to throw money at the disaster without bothering to verify where any money is spent - all to satisfy the Leftist critics who are screeching loudly.

2- Pick up your money. It’s that simple. At this point FEMA won’t care if you live in Alaska or a thousand miles away from the disaster or if you send in a dozen claims with bogus social security numbers. FEMA will throw money at anyone, anywhere in order to keep from being hounded to death by the Liberals and the MSM for being racist or stingy. Anyone can succeed with our plan, referred to as the “Liberal Blackmail Of Conscience Plan”. You see, the Democrats and bleeding-heart Liberals will do all the work for you. All you have to do is pick up your checks and before you know it you can divorce your wife and you’re off to Sweden as John and returning to America as Jean - all paid for by American taxpayers. Bon voyage!

FEMA Funds Spent On
Divorce, Sex Change
_{Jun 14, 3:38 AM (ET)}

WASHINGTON (MYWAY NEWS - AP) - Houston divorce lawyer Mark Lipkin says he can’t recall anyone paying for his services with a FEMA debit card, but congressional investigators say one of his clients did just that.

The $1,000 payment was just one example cited in an audit that concluded that up to $1.4 billion - perhaps as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in assistance expended after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita - was spent for bogus reasons.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also was hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and a sex change operation, the audit found. Prison inmates, a supposed victim who used a New Orleans cemetery for a home address and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to get taxpayer help, according to evidence that gives a new black eye to the nation’s disaster relief agency.

FEMA said it has identified more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after Katrina and Rita and has referred those cases to the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. The agency said it has identified $16.8 million in improperly awarded disaster relief money and has started efforts to collect the money. The GAO said it was 95 percent confident that improper and potentially fraudulent payments were much higher - between $600 million and $1.4 billion.

The investigative agency said it found people lodged in hotels often were paid twice, since FEMA gave them individual rental assistance and paid hotels directly. FEMA paid California hotels $8,000 to house one individual - the same person who received three rental assistance payments for both disasters. In another instance, FEMA paid an individual $2,358 in rental assistance, while at the same time paying about $8,000 for the same person to stay 70 nights at more than $100 per night in a Hawaii hotel.

FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $1.5 million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors said. Among the items purchased with the cards:

- An all-inclusive, one-week Caribbean vacation in the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.

- Five season tickets to New Orleans Saints professional football games.

- Adult erotica products in Houston and “Girls Gone Wild” videos in Santa Monica, Calif.

- Dom Perignon champagne and other alcoholic beverages in San Antonio.

“Our forensic audit and investigative work showed that improper and potentially fraudulent payments occurred mainly because FEMA did not validate the identity of the registrant, the physical location of the damaged address, and ownership and occupancy of all registrants at the time of registration,” GAO officials said. FEMA paid millions of dollars to more than 1,000 registrants who used names and Social Security numbers belonging to state and federal prisoners for expedited housing assistance. The inmates were in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida.

FEMA made about $5.3 million in payments to registrants who provided a post office box as their damaged residence, including one who got $2,748 for listing an Alabama post office box as the damaged property. The GAO told of an individual who used 13 different Social Security numbers - including the person’s own - to receive $139,000 in payments on 13 separate registrations for aid. All the payments were sent to a single address.

- More on wasted taxpayer’s money here ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/14/2006 at 11:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Corruption and Greed • Politics •  
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   Friday - May 26, 2006

Tax Refund

It’s official! Americans will no longer have to pay for the Spanish-American War.

Summary (for the historically-challenged): The war began on February 15, 1898 when the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor. Congress declared war on April 19, 1898. The US jumped all over Spain and Teddy Roosevelt became famous for riding rough. Spain gave the US Cuba and the Phillipines to make us quit beatin’ up on them. The Treaty Of Paris was signed on December 10, 1898 and the war ended shortly thereafter.

Total length of war: ten months. It has taken taxpayers 105 years to pay for that war. That sure was an expensive war, wasn’t it?

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/26/2006 at 08:26 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Tuesday - May 02, 2006

Banana Republic Theft

Bolivian President Seizes Gas Industry
Troops Deployed In Move to Block Foreign Influence
_{Tuesday, May 2, 2006}

CARACAS, Venezuela (WASHINGTON POST)—Bolivian President Evo Morales seized control of the country’s natural gas industry Monday, sending soldiers to occupy fields that he contends private companies have plundered for years.

Morales said that unless foreign energy firms agreed to give Bolivia’s state oil company oversight of production and a majority of their revenue generated in Bolivia, the government would evict them from the fields.

“The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources,” Morales said during a televised speech from a gas field near the country’s southern border. “The looting by foreign companies has ended.”

Morales’s announcement was expected, but his deployment of troops to gas fields was a strong statement in a region where governments are moving to block outside influence, particularly from the United States, and exert more control over the energy industry. Venezuela recently voided drilling contracts with private companies at 32 oil fields, demanding new contracts that give the state oil company a 60 percent stake. Ecuador is finalizing a law that could limit excessive profits by foreign crude producers.

The developments in Bolivia were not expected to affect the U.S. energy market. Even in Bolivia, analysts played down the importance of the troop deployment, but they acknowledged the message Morales was trying to send.

Monday’s announcement coincided with May Day workers’ celebrations throughout the country. Morales had been under political pressure to announce the plan, which his backers consider a key to the success of his administration. He has said he plans to use increased state revenue from the takeover to fund social programs in South America’s poorest country.

Even though it recently reached oil independence, Brazil is the country that leans most heavily on Bolivia for natural gas. In the 1990s, the Brazilian government reinforced the country’s hydroelectric power grid with plants fueled by natural gas, and many of Brazil’s automobiles run on natural gas. About half of Brazil’s natural gas needs—520 million cubic feet daily—are supplied by Bolivia via a 2,000-mile pipeline financed mostly by Petrobras. In 2003, Petrobras discovered gas deposits within Brazil that some experts say could significantly ease demand, but tapping that gas could prove costly and difficult.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/02/2006 at 07:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • International •  
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   Thursday - April 27, 2006

Full Circle

How many of you remember the last time OPEC had us over a barrel? I remember it all too well. At the time, I was working as a field electronics technician for Altec and my territory covered Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and half of Kentucky. I was on 24/7 emergency call and had to do a lot of driving to respond to emergencies with electronic equipment in hospitals, theatres, schools and government offices. I remember all too well the long lines, service stations closed and even a good deal of price gouging (that was later punished). Life was hell if you had to drive anywhere. I had no choice.

What have we (and our politicians) learned in the 33 years since then? Not a damn thing, it seems. We’ve come full circle. Our vehicles get no better gas mileage even though engines are more efficient because of all the anti-pollution devices snaking their way under the hood. Have we opened up new drilling in the US? Not a chance. Have we built new refineries? Nope. Have we built more nuclear power plants to reduce dependence on oil? Not on your life. No, the environmental freaks have silently managed to keep us in the same position we were in back in those evil days - over a barrel.

Our politicians aren’t helping one danged bit either. The Democrats want to raise taxes on the oil companies and the Republicans want to send all of us a $100 rebate check. Who do they think they’re kidding? This is an election year and they want our vote. If we have the technology to send men to the moon and roving scientific gizmos to Mars, why can’t we come up with a viable alternative to gasoline? At least drill for more oil in Alaska or wherever so we can ride this out while we do develop the technology that will enable us to thumb our noses at the Arabs and the Hugo Chavez’ of the world.

If we don’t do something we’ll just keep going in circles, round and round, lurching from one oil crisis to another at the whim of madmen. Just remember - people who drive around in circles never get anywhere other than back where they started from. That’s not pro-gress. It’s con-gress ...

The 1973 Oil Crisis

The 1973 oil crisis began in earnest on October 17, 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, consisting of the Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) announced, as a result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War, that they would no longer ship petroleum to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt (i.e., to the United States and its allies in Western Europe).

About the same time, OPEC members agreed to use their leverage over the world price-setting mechanism for oil in order to quadruple world oil prices, after attempts at negotiation with the “Seven Sisters” earlier in the month failed miserably. Due to the dependence of the industrialized world on OPEC oil, these price increases were dramatically inflationary to the economies of the targeted countries, while at the same time suppressive of economic activity.

At the height of the crisis in the United States, drivers of vehicles with odd numbered license plates were allowed to purchase gasoline only on odd-numbered days of the month, while drivers with even-numbers were limited to even-numbered days.

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/27/2006 at 09:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Economics • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Wednesday - April 26, 2006

Levee Suit

I’m surprised it took nearly eight months before somebody got around to this. Our lawyers must be falling down on the job if it takes them this long to smell a lucrative lawsuit. My guess is the people were happy as long as FEMA money was flowing in but now that it’s drying up, it’s time to go to court. That’s the Amercian way, isn’t it?

Corps of Engineers Sued Over Katrina
_{April 25, 2006, 11:55 PM EDT}

NEW ORLEANS (AP)—Five people whose homes were flooded during Hurricane Katrina sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Tuesday, accusing the agency of ignoring repeated warnings that a navigation channel it built would turn into a “hurricane highway.”

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Orleans and several prominent trial lawyers from Louisiana, Florida and California are backing it.

“Today, my friends, the second battle of New Orleans has begun,” said Pierce O’Donnell, a Los Angeles lawyer, at a news conference outside federal court.

At issue is a 76-mile shipping channel built in the early 1960s as a short-cut to New Orleans. For years, environmentalists and others have blasted the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet because it has eroded enormous tracts of wetlands and increased the threat of flooding.

- More on this at NEWSDAY ...

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 04/26/2006 at 07:45 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • Judges-Courts-Lawyers •  
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   Sunday - April 23, 2006

Gas Pains

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 04/23/2006 at 10:13 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Sunday - March 26, 2006

Discount Dukes

Brian Adcock—The Scotland on Sunday

Blair Gave Honours For Loans

LONDON (TIMES)—A millionaire businessman has lifted the lid on how Labour is concealing money given by wealthy backers who are then nominated for peerages. Labour has raised up to £10m from donors but has hidden the payments because they were made as loans, which do not have to be declared. Three of the donors were put forward for peerages by Tony Blair last autumn.

The confidential loan arrangements have been revealed by Chai Patel, chief executive of the Priory healthcare group and a party supporter who has donated £100,000 to Labour. He discloses today that he was asked by a senior Labour fundraiser to provide an unsecured loan even though he was prepared to give a donation.

Within weeks of agreeing to the £1.5m loan, he was told he had been nominated by Blair for a peerage. He was advised by Labour officials that he did not have to disclose the loan. If he had given the money as a donation, it would have had to be declared to the Electoral Commission and published, so exposing Labour to a potential cash-for-honours controversy.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Patel said “there is clearly a history here and a reality of peerages for fundraising. The public has a right to be sceptical.” Patel, 51, said he might have been prepared to convert the loan into a donation at a later date, which means it would not be publicised until long after he had been awarded an honour. Labour introduced the loans scheme last year amid mounting criticism of party supporters being handed honours, including knighthoods and peerages, after giving donations.

- Read more about purchasing pereages at The Times ...

Here’s the full list of most of those who have stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom since President Bill Clinton took office, courtesy of The Associated Press. Some of the interesting names on the list are singer Barbra Streisand, catalogue retailer Lillian Vernon, playwright Neil Simon, film director and producer Steven Spielberg, former Chrysler chairman Lee Iaccoca, the Rev. Billy Graham, Apple Computer co-founder Steven Jobs, nutrition guru Dean Ornish, and, not least, actress Jane Fonda and her husband, CNN honcho Ted Turner.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/26/2006 at 12:28 PM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peons • Corruption and Greed • Politics •  
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   Friday - March 10, 2006

Quote Of The Day

How can anybody say, with a straight face, “a billion just isn’t what it used to be”? It looks like all that outsourcing has helped India, which now has more billionaires than Japan. The Walton family totalled $75 billion. Wal-Mart had a good year. The Russians must have finally figured out capitalism - they’re now richer than the Arabs. In related news, I finally saved enough to buy a full tank of gas.

Forbes Reports Billionaire Boom
_{March 10, 2006}
(BBC)

A worldwide economic boom has yielded a record number of dollar billionaires in the past year, according to Forbes. Their number rose by 15% to 793 with India taking the lead in Asia and new Russians lining up to fill the gap left by jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Microsoft’s Bill Gates tops the list for the 12th year running, with a net worth of $50bn (£29bn).

The combined net worth of the 793 is $2.6 trillion and US billionaires account for just under half the amount. “A billion just isn’t what it used to be,” said Luisa Kroll, Forbes magazine’s associate editor, revealing the 20th annual list in New York.

According to the 2006 list:

* the youngest billionaire is a Lebanese woman, 22-year-old Hind Hariri, who inherited $1.4bn from her assassinated father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri

* India’s 23 billionaires have a combined net worth of $99bn, surpassing former Asian leader Japan’s 27 billionaires with their total worth of $67bn

* Russia’s 33 billionaires now have a combined wealth of $172bn, based largely on oil and gas prices, compared to a total of $68bn for oil-rich Saudi Arabia’s 11 billionaires.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/10/2006 at 04:47 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Wednesday - March 01, 2006

CBS Is Sirius-ly Ticked At Stern

CBS is suing Howard Stern for fraud. In one corner we have a network that defrauded the entire American people with Rathergate and in the other corner we have a sleaze-mongering potato-head. Have you ever wished our courts could just lock up both parties in a lawsuit and throw away the key? This almost tops Anna Nicole Smith’s goldigging at the Supreme Court today.

Andy Warhol was wrong. Not everyone deserves fifteen minutes. Tick-tick-tick-tick ....

CBS Sues Stern For Fraud
Says radio personality used CBS airtime for his own financial benefit;
Stern counters that former boss has ‘vendetta.’
February 28, 2006: 5:33 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNN)

CBS Radio says that Howard Stern was acting behind its back in his final months with the company, and intends to demonstrate that in court. In a suit filed Tuesday, the broadcaster alleges that Stern signed a secret agreement with Sirius Satellite Radio (Research) that would give him a payment of Sirius stocks worth over $200 million in January 2006 if he met subscriber targets.

CBS says Stern promoted Sirius in his final months with the company, in violation of his contract with the company. The lawsuit also says that Stern is keeping audio recordings that belong to CBS, a breach of contract. Stern responded by saying that CBS chief Les Moonves is pursuing a personal vendetta against him because the network’s radio fortunes have plunged since he left to join satellite radio.

“I’m offended. I really do think this is a personal vendetta. Les has had it in for me for a long time. I don’t deserve it,” Stern told a news conference. The New York Post reported the lawsuit would seek $500 million from Stern. The complaint was filed with the New York Supreme Court. The hugely popular Stern shocked the broadcasting world in October 2004 when he signed a five-year deal with Sirius reportedly valued at $500 million. In January, he began broadcasting on Sirius, where his locker room humor fills two entire channels.

He broadcast for CBS Radio until days before his switch and relentlessly spoke of that move as it neared. Stern was replaced by former Van Halen rock group lead singer David Lee Roth, whose ratings have paled in comparison, according to media reports. “They’re floundering,” Stern said, adding that talk of a suit was meant as a distraction from CBS Radio’s problems.

Stern said he had a meeting with Moonves and CBS Radio chief executive Joel Hollander about three weeks ago to discuss their complaints. “I said, ‘Les, what’s going on?”’ said Stern. “He said it’s nothing personal, it’s just business. But ... it is personal.” Stern’s move to Sirius, touted more than a year in advance, was seen as a bold bid by the fledgling satellite radio business to attract some of his millions of fans as paying subscribers.

Stern said his move garnered much media attention and CBS added to it, booking him for appearances on its news magazine show “60 Minutes” and “Late Show with David Letterman.” “I made them millions of dollars. If I was hurting them why did they keep me on the air for 14 months?” Stern said. “How can you have it both ways?”

He said he asked Moonves why he did not pull him off the air. “Les said, ‘I knew I could sue you later,”’ Stern said. Shares of CBS fell 1.3 percent on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/01/2006 at 06:40 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • Insanity • Judges-Courts-Lawyers •  
• Comments (37) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Monday - February 27, 2006

End Of The Line

After ten years, more lawyers than you can count and one expensive trial after another, the Drama Of Greed comes to a close tomorrow. The rich ol’ sugar daddy kicked the bucket ten years ago and the battle between the Big Boobied Bimbo and the Old Boob’s Brat finally ends. Who will get the money and who will get the shaft? Place yer bets, ladies and gentlemen. The Supremes will wrap up this monetary quagmire tomorrow. Stay tuned ....

Anna Nicole Smith Drama Nears Its Supreme Finale
Feb. 27, 2006 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON (AZ CENTRAL)

The decade-long saga of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, her late tycoon husband, his adult son and a multimillion-dollar inheritance will be argued at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. What otherwise would be a dreary probate dispute testing federal and state court jurisdiction has drawn international tabloid interest because of Smith, an exotic dancer turned 1993 Playmate of the Year and reality-TV star.

“She is planning to attend,” says Smith’s lawyer, Kent Richland of Los Angeles. Despite the fodder for comedians, the case offers the justices a chance to resolve a difficult question of the scope of federal judges’ authority in certain probate cases.

Typically, state courts have jurisdiction over probate matters, but federal courts can have authority when a dispute involves large sums of money and parties from different states. Over the decades, federal judges have ceded some of that authority to local courts for matters involving wills and estates. The question for the Supreme Court is when federal judges can intervene in such disputes.

Smith married Texas oilman Howard Marshall in 1994 after meeting him at an adult club where she was a dancer. She was 26. He was 89. (She is referred to in the court filings by her real name, Vickie Lynn Marshall.) Howard Marshall died in August 1995, 14 months after their wedding. According to his widow’s legal papers, Marshall’s assets had been held in a trust that designated his son, Pierce, the primary beneficiary.

After Howard met Smith, he created a separate trust for her benefit, the filing said. Smith asserts that Pierce “suppressed or destroyed” the documents related to assets designated for her. In his appeal on behalf of Smith, Richland urges the high court to rule that any exemption from federal jurisdiction for probate matters is narrow and never covers bankruptcy-related cases.

Posted by The Skipper     on 02/27/2006 at 01:11 PM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed •  
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THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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