In December, as Nortel moved toward Bankruptcy, they asked employees if they would participate in a "voluntary layoff" - accept a severance package and voluntarily leave their jobs in order to cut company costs. Many thousands did. In January, Nortel declared Bankruptcy, and promptly stopped payment on all of those severance packages. Basically, when Nortel offered those severance packages they were lying.

This ranks as one of the most brazen examples of corporate malfeasence during this crisis. Of course, these executives continue to pay themselves multi-million dollar bonus packages, during bankruptcy, while maintaining that they cannot afford to pay the severance packages they offered to former employees. When the Canadian Parliament asked them to explain this, they refused.

OTTAWA - The chief executive officer of Nortel Networks Corp. will be ordered to appear before a House of Commons committee Thursday...

The House of Commons standing committee on finance had invited CEO Mike Zafirovski and others to appear before it, along with representatives of pensioners and employees, but Nortel declined that invitation earlier this week...

MPs, though, cited ``the supremacy of Parliament'' Tuesday morning in voting to summon Zafirovski to appear Thursday morning.

"It was a transparent attempt to avoid having to avoid explaining why they voted ... millions of dollars in bonuses for themselves when people were being denied their severance. That's exactly the type of thing we're going to get to discuss with (Zafirovski),'' said Mulcair.

Given the "we are unaware that there are health risks associated with smoking" nature of executive testimony to legislatures, "attempt to avoid having to avoid" might not have been a gaffe.

One thing to watch out for as budgets get tight is renewed aggressiveness from people who take money through coercion. This comes in the form of increased crime rates, but it also comes in the form of renewed efforts by governments to assess and collect fines and taxes.

Did you hear a jingling sound on the Akron Expressway a couple of weeks ago?

That wasn't a pebble stuck in your hubcap. That was the city of Akron and the state of Ohio hitting the jackpot.

From May 4 through May 8, eight motorcycle cops imported from the Columbus post of the State Highway Patrol wrote 733 speeding tickets.

The total take for that five-day Expressway binge: $103,902...

Although the patrol has claimed that ''about 98 percent'' of the tickets it wrote that week were handed to people committing ''aggressive violations,'' a Beacon Journal analysis of the tickets shows that only 51 percent could even remotely be said to fit that description.

I recently got caught in a speed trap near Denver. I haven't gotten a speeding ticket in over ten years. Apparently, I'm ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]