Sneaky Spending

In the blog “Posh redo of House Lounge ‘not our project,’ Craddick’s office says,” by Paulburka of Burkablog. The author provides an inquiry to why the Texas House of Representatives is decided in time of financial crunch to do “remodeling” of their lobby. Using the article Tax dollars used to fix Texas House lounge of MSN as his source, the author informs his tax-payer readers of the House expenditures. I found another article by the Dallas News that provides the same information as the blog and its source. The author seems to be more concerned with the time and presentation of the event rather than the actual event. As the author said,” Up to this point, the story is just routine, if delicious, “gotcha” journalism. There is nothing wrong with spiffing up the lounge before the session. It does not involve any new tax dollars; the money has already been appropriated. Craddick’s office should have just said, Yes, that’s what we’re doing, it hasn’t been done in [fill in the blank] years, the speaker thinks it’s important.”

I agree with the author, I try to sit back and have an open mind about the situation. I believe it is the wrong time to make substantial upgrades to a lobby, especially with Rick Perry asking businesses and agencies to conserve expenses. I found a video of Rick Perry having a meeting with “key trade associations” about how the economic situation is impacting Texas industries. I’m glad Rick Perry is having a pro-active attitude towards Texas economy but his administration needs to practice his lectures. The renovations probably aren’t necessary but it probably would not hurt. A presentable lounge is probably somewhere on the list of things to do but when you have media hunting for reasons to blast unnecessary spending it’s a bad time to upgrade the lounge. The other problem is presentation. Like the author said don’t pretend like you’re sneaking around to upgrade the lounge, or blame it on fellow team members. This act brings more suspensions and foul play into mind. The only way to roll with the blows from the media is to be upfront about the upgrades.

AIG Caught In Their Towels

In the article “As America stews, AIG’s big shots settle for a soak” by the Austin American Statesman, the author reveals the companies’ excessive spending on failure executives. The recent bailout for $700 billion of taxpayers’ dollars to bailout the failure lending companies to try to save the economy, has already come up misspent. The company AIG has spent $442,000 on its failing employee’s to “motivate and educate” them at a ritzy retreat known as the Ritz-Carlton. The previous month they spent $23,000 for spa services at St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach. The first loan that was released to AIG was for $85 Billion. After these events the Federal Reserve still released another $37.8 Billion to AIG. This is exactly how big businesses get away with whatever they want. The new CEO, Edward Liddy, claims that the meetings were planned months before AIG received the loans from Federal Reserve. The author states that AIG continued to pay “the head of that money-losing unit, Joseph Cassano, $1,000,000 a month in consulting fees after he left the firm.”

To me the idea of poor money management coming from a loan company sounds absurd. Are they saying that when they decided to make these expensive “educational meetings” they were unaware of their financial problems? If someone was claiming bankruptcy and they went on a cruise right before, would they not be questioned? This is exactly what happens when company executives aren’t held accountable for the actions. The government owns 79.9% of AIG according to the loan rules. It will be interesting to see if any punishments are enforced upon those who are accountable. When I read about the bailout I knew this would happen. I don’t know all the details on how the companies are reporting their expenditures to the government, but apparently they don’t have tight enough regulations. If all AIG receives is a scolding from congress, then similarly we should start scolding criminals instead of sending them to jail. The company should have to pay back the money spent on these retreats and those in AIG who orchestrated these events should serve jail time or at least be fired. It is depressing to think that our government is at such mercy to these corrupt companies that they can test their boundaries. The presidential candidates should take an aggressive stance towards matters such as this in order to restore Americans’ morale in their government.

Holding Your Ground

I read the article, "Perry's stand on bailout could be governor's race issue" by Jason Embry of American Statesman. The article talks about Perry's ideas on the Government bailout plan. Governor Rick Perry wants it to seem he has a neutral stance towards the bailout plan, I think only so he is not chastised by the ones who support the bill. Perry shows his views of the plan by saying, “leave partisanship at the door and pass an economic recovery package." Take what you will of this statement to me it does not support the plan, but supports a plan that betters the economy. Good statement because it does not directly lean toward a side and can be interpreted in multiple ways. I think Perry has a good point when he says, "In a free market economy, government should not be in the business of using taxpayer dollars to bail out corporate America." I’m not a finance expert but in my opinion they could have tried other options. I don’t remember which senator it was but one of them mentioned leaving it to the private enterprise to fix with support to them. One idea I thought of was creating incentives maybe tax breaks for people or business to buy these properties. Whatever the plan I’m glad Perry stood up for his opinion and didn’t go with the flow.

True Texas Exceptionalism

I found this very interesting while researching for my blog and thought I would post it. Yes this could be seen as just UT fans gone dumb, but you gotta ask is it the same people that show exceptional Texas pride. The story is there are two students one that goes to UT and the other goes to OU. They allow for a $1 donation you to cast 1 vote and ideally the side that donates the most shows more school spirit. Now of course this money goes straight to their tution. Ironically the UT side is winning. Austin American Statesman gives an article on this Battle of the Fans.