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 not alone. DENVER -- It's not your imagination; the number of speeding tickets being issued is definitely up so far in 2009, across several jurisdictions. Police said better enforcement is the reason -- not revenue enhancement. Longmont police said they're targeting traffic offenses more aggressively and writing more tickets.
So, a massive increase in ticket writing during a state budget crisis has absolutely nothing to do with revenue generation? I'm sure thats what the police department was told. As usual, the money somehow manages to find its way into the pockets of people who are in close proximity to power: Former state Senate President Peter Groff struck a sour note as he left the statehouse, recently handing out $30,000 in bonuses to his staff even as the state struggled with a deepening budget crisis. It's not an enormous amount of money in the grand scheme of things — the state's overall budget is more than $18 billion — and we don't mean to impugn the work of the seven staffers who were rewarded. But it's symbolically wrong to give bonuses when there's a statewide hiring freeze in place and revenue shortfalls that will translate into unpaid furloughs for thousands of other workers.
I'm sure Colorado could find seven hard working state employees who are being sent on furlough. The looting continues... | 
