23 August 2010
SeaWorld gets slap on wrist by OSHA
Will a $75,000 fine put The Blackstone Group under?
Categories:   Capitalism

SeaWorld slapped with fines in orca tragedy; vows fight

By Dona Leinwand

Aug. 23, 2010

SeaWorld intentionally disregarded dangers to an animal trainer by allowing her to lie at the edge of a pool to interact with a particularly aggressive killer whale, federal investigators said Monday.

Tilikum, a 6-ton orca, or killer whale, grabbed trainer Dawn Brancheau from a pool deck and fatally dragged her underwater after the Dine With Shamu show at the Orlando amusement park Feb. 24. Tilikum repeatedly thrashed Brancheau as she tried to escape, police reports say...

‎OSHA said SeaWorld acted 'with plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee health and safety.' That citation carries a maximum penalty of $70,000. OSHA also fined SeaWorld $5,000 for failing to install handrails on two stairways... ."  (From USA Today)

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Bad SeaWorld!

SeaWorld is owned by The Blackstone Group.

"The Blackstone Group, L.P. (NYSE: BX) is an alternative asset management and financial services company that specializes in private equity, real estate, and marketable alternative investment strategies, as well as mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, and fund-placement advisory services.

Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyout transactions over the last decade while its real estate business has been an active acquirer of commercial real estate.

Since inception, Blackstone has completed investments in such notable companies as Hilton Worldwide, Equity Office Properties, Apria Healthcare, Republic Services, AlliedBarton, United Biscuits, Freescale Semiconductor and Travelport.

The firm was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions boutique by Peter G. Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman, who had previously worked together at Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc.

Over the course of two decades, Blackstone has evolved into one of the world's largest private equity investment firms. In 2007, Blackstone completed a $4 billion initial public offering to become one of the first major private equity firms to list shares in its management company on a public exchange.

Blackstone is headquartered at 345 Park Avenue in New York City, with more than a dozen additional offices in the United States, Europe and Asia." -- Wikipedia
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Blackstone's net income in 2009 was $723 million (US).

Do y'all reckon they can survive a $75,000 slap on the wrist by OSHA?

This all causes me to want to puke. Capitalism is a stinking, rotten system that exploits the helpless (like Dawn Brancheau) and the ignorant to make millions for members of the international investor class.

I would sacrifice myself tomorrow in a revolution to bring The Blackstone Group down.

D. Grant Haynes
Posted by DGrantHaynes at 7:36 PM | Link | 0 comments
17 August 2010
MSNBC's Chris Hayes on NYC mosque issue
GOP will play this one until November
Categories:   Islamophobia in America

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Posted by DGrantHaynes at 12:46 AM | Link | 0 comments
19 June 2010
Hayward symbol of all that is wrong with capitalism
With almost $4 million in annual earnings, who wouldn't sail a yacht?
Categories:   Rah-rah America!

Gulf residents and others that defend capitalism with its excesses of wealth and privilege should not be surprised that BP CEO Tony Hayward is participating in a "glitzy" yacht race in Great Britain this weekend.

Hayward reeks of insufferable British snobbery and a lifetime of privilege. His accent and delivery--his delicately sculpted profile--his snotty British reserve--all speak to who he is and what might be expected of him.

BP paid Hayward a salary of $1,478,940 and a bonus of $2,216,928 last year. I should imagine one could afford a yacht or two on those earnings.

That's what capitalism is about--excesses and inequities. Hayward has a yacht, while Louisiana fishermen have no reason now to pilot their hard-banging old shrimp trawlers out of port.

But, sadly, the ignorant Cajun fishermen now venting about Hayward would be the first to punch one in the nose if he mentioned "socialism" as an alternative to the present inequitable system of excesses. They send their sons to "I-rak" to fight for alleged "freedom and the American way" when that American way, as now formulated, is, in reality, their greatest enemy.

They have been indoctrinated for multiple generations by capitalism's propaganda machine to defend with their blood a system that is dumping millions of barrels of crude oil onto them even as BP CEO Tony Hayward sails his yacht during a lark back home. This speaks to the unworkable and futile nature of the American economic experiment.

Our nation has been hijacked by jackals and the common man defends those jackals as they rend him asunder.

D. Grant Haynes

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 5:25 PM | Link | 0 comments
15 June 2010
Joran van der Sloot product of capitalistic excess
Untouchable in Aruba because of family money, influence
Categories:   Socialist revolution

From Wikipedia:

"...Joran van der Sloot is the eldest of three sons born to Paulus and Anita van der Sloot, a prominent lawyer and art teacher, respectively. The family traveled frequently to exotic locations as a result of Paulus' work and settled in Aruba when Joran was 16 because Paulus had an opportunity to become a judge there. Joran was considered a star soccer and tennis athlete in high school at Aruba. He hoped to play for a college in Tampa, Florida. He led a privileged life with a $5,000 credit line set up for him by his father and frequently gambled and partied with friends..."

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And that explains why the world had to fool with this psychopathic punk until he killed again. His parents are persons of means and influence in The Netherlands and Aruba. He would not have been able to walk away from Natalie Holloway's murder five years ago were he a poor boy or a minority group member.

Money and influence peddling always trump justice in this world.

We need a thoroughgoing socialist revolution in which wealth is leveled and perceived worthiness is based on service to the cause of the proletariat. People like the van der Sloots would then no longer be able to get away with murder because of their holdings and positions in society.

D. Grant Haynes

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 12:27 PM | Link | 0 comments
12 June 2010
BP now burning vast pools of oil on Gulf surface
This unstoppable spill may be beginning of Armageddon
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2wH-3i1FZA

Oh, that's just great, BP.  Mother Earth can always assimilate some more smoke. No wonder the Gulf States have such poor air quality this summer.

Folks, it just isn't getting any better in the Gulf of Mexico. And blind and greedy men are not seeing the light--even now.

This oil spill may be the beginning of 2012's anticipated Armageddon. Seriously. Many have been looking for signs of the end.  This may be a precursor.

That oil is going to go around the Florida Keys and then get into the Gulf Stream that will carry it into North Atlantic fisheries--the Newfoundland Banks and everywhere. The Gulf Stream flows all the way to the coast of Scotland.

BP and greedy Americans may have mucked up the entire Western Hemisphere.

And still, even now, they want the drilling ban lifted so they can drill more wells in coastal waters, refine more oil, and make more money. Money to do what with? Their world will be dying or dead and they will not be able to take the money with them when they transition out of here. It is sheer madness.

I am no longer a member of this species. I renounce membership in the human race. They are insane and I am ready to part company with them all.

D. Grant Haynes

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 6:07 PM | Link | 0 comments
11 June 2010
Maddow on GOP hypocrisy re: BP oil spill
Every American should be required to view this clip
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

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Posted by DGrantHaynes at 12:28 AM | Link | 0 comments
09 June 2010
Maddow on BP negligence
June 9, 2010 video clip
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

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Posted by DGrantHaynes at 11:31 PM | Link | 0 comments
20 May 2010
GOP hypocrites on parade
Too good to miss!
Categories:   Puritans and hypocrites

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Posted by DGrantHaynes at 12:29 AM | Link | 0 comments
17 May 2010
Oil spill disaster should serve as sobering way marker
Categories:   Rah-rah America!

The major and exponentially expanding disaster that is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill could not have happened to a more deserving nation and culture, to be brutally honest.

Never in the history of mankind has one cultural or national grouping been as collectively greedy, self-serving, manipulative, hedonistic, heedless of warnings, and destructive of the Earth and of all other races getting in their ways as have Americans since the end of World War II.

Americans must learn the hard way that they cannot always have their ways and control outcomes--that they cannot consistently have the best and most of everything desirable, while running roughshod over all the world.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster will, hopefully, become a sobering episode and way marker in the national history of the United States of America.

D. Grant Haynes
Posted by DGrantHaynes at 1:45 AM | Link | 0 comments
12 May 2010
And the crude oil continues to gush on day 22 of unprecedented BP Deepwater Horizon disaster
Gulf of Mexico will be dead, putrefying cesspool before well runs dry
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

(For reference, the pipe is 21 inches in diameter.)

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 10:54 PM | Link | 0 comments
08 May 2010
Alien world?
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

Alien world? Alien, indeed, for creatures of the Gulf of Mexico that are floundering and dying in choking crude oil now coming ashore in Louisiana. Pea soup smog presided over an oil slicked and dying Gulf of Mexico Friday afternoon--an altogether fitting commentary on man's blindness, self-centeredness, and greed. Men, nations and worlds are all subject to the universal cosmic law of karma. Modern industrial man will, both individually and collectively, get his--reap what he has sewn.

D. Grant Haynes

 

How many gallons of BP crude oil went into the Gulf of Mexico while we slept?  Counter was on 4,089,564 gallons May 8 at 11:50 PDT.

 

 

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 4:06 AM | Link | 0 comments
06 May 2010
Maddow on long-term effects of an oil spill
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

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Posted by DGrantHaynes at 12:08 AM | Link | 0 comments
05 May 2010
Olbermann on BP safety record
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

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Posted by DGrantHaynes at 1:01 AM | Link | 0 comments
23 April 2010
Burning Transocean rig sinks, releasing 336,000 gallons crude oil daily into already-polluted Gulf of Mexico
A reminder on Earth Day 2010 of what is at stake
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

Transocean's burning Deepwater Horizon rig before it sank

As if to place an exclamation point onto what I had written about Earth Day 2010, a burning oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has sunk and 336,000 gallons of crude oil are pouring out of the well daily into the beleaguered waters off Louisiana--already one of the most polluted coastal areas in North America.

Thanks, greed hounds and environmental rapists, for again reminding a complacent Americans of the dangers of oil rigs off our coastlines as Obama's proposal for greatly expanding such activity is being accepted without so much as a peep from most so-called environmentalists.

D. Grant Haynes

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/23/oil.rig.explosion/

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 1:24 AM | Link | 0 comments
22 April 2010
Earth's day will come only when men and their defiling machines are relics of the past
40 years of Earth Days have seen no lessening of environmental degradation
Categories:   The environment--fiddling while Rome burns

 

The first meaningful Earth Day will come when men and their destructive technology are rusting, deteriorating relics from another time.

Until such time, all the rest is so much falderal about nothing--a feeble attempt by a few to tap into the collective guilt of the many and sell posters, tee shirts, and trinkets on the side.

Earth Days mean nothing to the politicians, industrialists, and assorted greed hounds that dominate every industrialized society on the planet.

These evil men continue to destroy ecosystems and life forms at an accelerating pace, even as their public relations arms churn out an Earth Day press release or two each April.

D. Grant Haynes

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 11:03 AM | Link | 0 comments