As if the food wasn’t enough reason to avoid Burger King

As they would say at Shakesville, what an assvertisement.

TMV also chimes in.

Too big to exist?

It has to be asked.

CNBC still hasn’t learned

They should know better than to come unarmed to a battle of wits.

more about “CNBC still hasn’t learned“, posted with vodpod

When will they learn?

CNBC should learn to stop messing with TDS.

more about “When will they learn?“, posted with vodpod

Getting screwed for doing the right thing

Imagine having your workman’s comp claim denied for getting shot while stopping an assault on the employer’s premise.

Amazing.

I’m afraid the bad PR from this will cost McDonald’s far more than the medical bills.  And it should.

How GM killed Saab

From the trenches.

Because that’s what monopolies do

With the merger well underway, Sirius and XM Radio have announced price increases.

If you love your Sirius or XM satellite service, now is the time to re-up your subscription for another three years. The newly unified Sirius XM is charging $2 for additional subscriptions and adding another $2.99 fee for Internet radio.

It’s fair to note they have held the line on increased over the past few years and a nominal increase is fully reasonable.  But would it occur in a competetive market?  Probably not.

And is this really the time to be raising prices?  I’ve already let my Sirius subscription expire for a while as a cost savings measure.  I’m sure I’m not alone.  I love the service, but when belt tightening, it’s something that I can live without.

Earning his keep

NBC did a good job with its coverage of the US Air plane that crash landed in the Hudson River.  Very impressive flying for a true hero: Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III

The Miracle on the Hudson could have very well been The Tragedy on the Hudson had it not been for the hero pilot known as “Sully.”

It’s popular to bash unions and yes, many pilots are well paid.  But there’s a reason for that – they have the skills.  And at times like this it’s easy to understand why they deserve every penny and more.

It’s also worth remembering that pretty much everyone involved in the heroics in every way was a union member.

The devil in the details.

More news is coming to light about MAC negotiations with Delta Airlines which has taken over Northwest Airlines’ bond debt contractual obligations to the state of Minnesota as a result of the merger.

Seems to be a mixed bag, but leaning toward favorable.

After he appeared before a Minnesota House committee in November, Hirst said that Delta was willing to specify that it would locate certain business activities in the state.

MAC commissioners will receive a term sheet with those entities spelled out. Delta’s commitment to maintain a flight training center and a technology-data center in the Twin Cities will be among the activities listed.

The agreement will specify that Delta must keep those activities for at least three years regardless of business conditions. “That is an absolute guarantee,” Stanoch said. Others that fall under that provision are the Delta North headquarters, regional airline management, Compass and Mesaba Airlines headquarters, pilot and flight attendant bases, reservation centers in Chisholm and the Twin Cities and hub airport operations.

Note, even after three years, the only way they could be moved would be if the businesses were discontinued or completely outsourced.  That’s good.  They also increase the guaranteed daily flights from MSP to 400 – which frankly is already average for the airline, but it means they won’t be cutting service back.

What on earth does “north headquarters” mean, and is it in any way something meaningful to the “Minnesota brand” – the type of loss the original covenant was supposed to be protecting?

10,000 guaranteed jobs is good in this economy, until you realize that’s 40 percent below where we were sixteen years ago.  Couldn’t the new, significantly larger company match the old number?

Moving the management of regional carriers, increased local flight schedule, maintenance of data centers, contact centers, training operations, etc. all bode well.

All things considered, it’s probably better than we expected to see.

Kentucky – ignorant of law and reality

The governor of Kentucky has a bone to pick with that newfangled internet thing.  To bad it’s beyond his jurisdiction.

Lawyers representing online gambling interests told the Kentucky Court of Appeals on Friday that Gov. Steve Beshear’s effort to seize domain names is blatantly unconstitutional.

A three-judge panel is weighing Beshear’s unprecedented move to seize the domain names of 141 gambling Web sites.

Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate allowed the Cabinet for Justice and Public Safety to seize the domain names last month. The seizure, at this point, is meaningless because the state cannot control the content of the Web sites until a judge orders the domain names forfeited to the state.

Jon Stewart gets to the root of the Big 3 bailout

more about “Jon Stewart gets to the root of the B…“, posted with vodpod

On the matter of banking

From a friend:

To My Bank

  Dear Sirs,

In view of what seems to be happening internationally with banks at the
moment, I was wondering if you could advise me. If one of my checks is
returned marked “insufficient funds,” how do I know whether that refers
to me or to you?

Screwing over the Twin Cities

Well, it’s official.  The Department of Justice has blessed the Northwest/Delta merger and the Twin Cities has lost a fortune 500 headquarters.

I expect the MAC to hold Delta fully accountable for the hundreds of millions of dollars owed the state for breach of contract in moving the corporate headquarters away from Minnesota – that was a condition of a state funded bailout.  A good faith effort could have been made to have dual headquarters, especially given the complexity and lack of overlap in their new footprint, it’s an opportunity lost for Delta.

I am saddened by the inevitable increase in local airfares which is sure to result.  Northwest’s service had its problems but they would play ball in the fare wars.  With Delta, the prices will go upward sharply and that’s too bad.  The good news is next spring Southwest is finally coming into town, and will offer service connecting through Chicago.  One hopes that will offer some competition, especially with Sun Country how in jeopardy due to the Tom Petters case.

Company and regulators failed in the Utah mine disaster

The reports are out on the Crandall Canyon mine disaster.  Via CNN:

The Mine Safety and Health Administration said the mine was “destined to fail” because the mining company made critical miscalculations and didn’t report early warning signs. But MSHA itself also was faulted by its parent agency, both for lax oversight before the collapse and for its handling of a haphazard rescue effort that left three more people dead.

Regulators acknowledge the rescue tunneling should never have been attempted because it only made the mine more unstable.

Relatives say they now know both the mine company and federal regulators failed the miners.

A neutral victory

Good news on the Net Neutrality front.  Stoller reports:

I’m hearing from friends that the FCC just voted 3-2 to punish Comcast for illegally blocking internet traffic to some customers who used file-sharing software.  This was a bipartisan decision, with Republican Kevin Martin standing up to vicious party and media pressure to side with Democrats Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps.  Though Comcast will litigate the order and the order carries no fine, this is a precedent setting move.  A few years ago, no one thought that the FCC would move to enforce its ‘principles’ of an open internet, figuring they were simply fig-leafs to the public interest community.  With the tremendous public pressure on the issue and the egregious behavior by Comcast (and Verizon censoring NARAL’s text messages and AT&T censoring Pearl Jam), the logic became too compelling to ignore.

In a series of important moves, Barack Obama came out strongly for net neutrality, every Democratic Senate challenger came out for net neutrality, and once the Democrats solidified, a few others like Republican Chip Pickering and Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin chose to protect the internet from aggressive censorship-prone corporations like Comcast.  The McCain campaign, though it’s against net neutrality, has been reduced to saying that the issue is not a ‘President of the United States’ issue and that it’s ‘inside baseball’ not worth public discussion.  The backlash has been so aggressive that even McCain, who is owned by telecom and cable interests wholesale, doesn’t want to fight here.

There’s another lesson here, and that’s the real meaning of bipartisanship.  We started this fight in 2006 with a bipartisan consensus against us, and gradually we’ve been able to flip the Democratic Party on our issue.  And now we’re beginning to flip Republicans.  There was a lot of whining that net neutrality was becoming a ‘partisan issue’, but what we’re learning is that winning a fight involves first pushing an issue through one party, making it partisan, and then making it bipartisan though the other party.  The intellectual coherence of the argument, not whether you have a fig leaf Republican or a conservative Democrat on your side, is the politically powerful tool.