Different Day, Same Shit.

Remember Freedom Industries, the fine folks who brought licorice-flavored water and all of its attendant side effects to West Virginians (and possibly folks along the Ohio River) everywhere?

Those guys are filing for bankruptcy. Turns out befouling an entire region's drinking water for the foreseeable future comes with a huge price tag and the folks behind Freedom Industries just aren't prepared to stomach the entire cost:

Freedom Industries, the company that fouled thousands of West Virginians' water with a chemical leak into the Elk River last week, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Friday.

Freedom owes $3.6 million to its top 20 unsecured creditors, according to bankruptcy documents. The company also owes more than $2.4 million in unpaid taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, and the IRS has placed at least three liens on Freedom's property, demanding payment.

The unpaid taxes date back to at least 2000, according to a lien filed in 2010.

Under the bankruptcy code, Chapter 11 permits a company to reorganize and continue operating.

The filing also puts a hold on all of the lawsuits filed against Freedom Industries. Since the leak last week, about a mile and a half upriver from West Virginia Water American's plant in Charleston, about 25 lawsuits have been filed against Freedom in Kanawha Circuit Court. The company also faces a federal lawsuit.

But that's not all:

About an hour after its bankruptcy filing, Freedom filed an emergency motion for what's called "debtor-in-possession," or DIP, financing, which would allow it to secure up to a $5 million loan to continue to function in some capacity. The loan would, according to the filing, "provide additional liquidity to [Freedom] in order to allow it to continue as a going concern."

The lender in a debtor-in-possession case generally gets first priority when it comes time for the debtor, in this case Freedom, to pay money back.

"Under the bankruptcy code, when there is DIP financing from a DIP lender, 99 percent of the time, they get priority over all the other creditors," said Bob Simon, a prominent bankruptcy lawyer with the Pittsburgh firm Reed Smith. "You're putting your money in at risk, and the debtor is not going to have a lot of options, so the bankruptcy clerk permits the DIP lender to get priority over all the other lenders."

Freedom's proposed lender is a company called WV Funding LLC. That company does not exist in West Virginia, according to business records on file with the West Virginia secretary of state. Pennsylvania's secretary of state also has no records online for it.

The DIP agreement has places to sign for Freedom Industries and for WV Funding "by Mountaineer Funding LLC."

Mountaineer Funding was incorporated with the West Virginia secretary of state on Friday. Its one listed member is J. Clifford Forrest, Freedom Industries' owner.

So the owner of Freedom Industries goes and starts a new company the same day of filing the old company's bankruptcy and files an emergency motion that effectively places the new company at the front of the line for the old company's assets in the event of a discharge. It's a slick way to have your cake, eat it and avoid any liability for cleaning up the crumbs afterwards.

And conservatives everywhere not only think this is good business, but want Americans everywhere to hoist the EPA's head on a stick and willingly accept corporate lordship. As serfs, of course. Because every company needs a bunch of serfs who are willing to die for their betters out of sense of misplaced pride and fidelity:

Though some state legislators have called for reforming the state's famously lax regulations, the general response has been to yell at the media and outsiders. The battle cry: Others don't appreciate the personal sacrifices West Virginians make to provide the nation with chemicals and coal.

It is true. Outsiders don't appreciate them and, furthermore, don't respect them. They can't understand why anyone would let absentee landowners level their mountains and bury their streams in waste. Birds don't dirty their own nests.

The hard-luck people of Appalachia deserve their reputation for physical courage and a strong work ethic. But they suffer more from servility than from bad luck. Outsiders wince when the natives angrily declare their independent spirit and then cringe before corporate polluters, however tawdry.(...)

(...)But Waggoner's most powerful "to hell with" was reserved for fellow West Virginians. These were people who bought into the idea of "constant sacrifice as an honorable condition" and who "turned that condition into a culture of perverted, twisted pride and self-righteousness, to be celebrated and defended against outsiders."

Outsiders. Creating an aura of specialness that must be protected from outside influences is how cult leaders keep their members in check. It takes a good deal of mind control to turn mass sucker-dom into a bragging point.

West Virginia is a pretty dire place, even by Appalachian standards. With Big Coal as practically the only opportunity to make a decent living and with those opportunities themselves scarce, the only thing that's often left is pride. And when all a person has is their pride...

Many people want to praise Mitt Romney for being a "job creator," although he hasn't done much of that during his time at Bain Capital. After all, his job was really generating profits, not jobs. Keep in mind this same guy once expressed how he loved "being able to fire people":

"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me," Romney said at a Monday breakfast in New Hampshire, when talking about health care. "You know, if someone doesn't give me a good service that I need, I want to say, 'I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.'"

Now that we've established that Mittens prefers changing out his cogs with better...cogs, here's Mittens expressing his love for a fellow "job creator":

“I wish Californians had elected Meg Whitman. She would have been more successful and explained to Californians the need to cut back on spending and eliminate unnecessary programs.”

You have to wonder if he heard about Whitman's plans to cut 30,000 workers from Hewlett-Packard's workforce:

Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, plans to cut 30,000 or more jobs next week, according to officials familiar with the plan. Her goal, they said Thursday, is to spend the money she saves on increasing the efficiency of the company’s sales force and on creating new products.

The executives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the company, said that H.P. would seek layoffs and voluntary retirements from across the company. The total could be as much as 10 percent of H.P.’s 324,000-person work force. China, which is one of H.P.’s highest growth areas, will probably be spared, as will its research and development efforts.

I thought Whitman was no longer with HP. Apparently, previous CEO Léo Apotheker's plan to take the company completely out of the personal computer business didn't sit well with shareholders. Don't feel bad for the guy -- he walked away with nearly $10 million in severance pay and bonuses.

Whatever Apotheker's plans for HP were must have been so bad they were willing to try out someone who already brought the company to damn-near ruin for a second go around. Funny how those things work in the corporate world.

I wonder what the sudden show of love for Whitman's coming from. You don't think he's finally found that special someone to play running mate with, did he? At least Meg doesn't exude the batshit crazy of Michele Bachmann or the "aww shucks" dingy hucksterism of Sarah Palin. Nope, just the cold-blooded reptilian mind for disposing companies and personnel who've outlived their usefulness to them. Birds of a feather, indeed.

I've already covered one instance of fallout from Alabama's immigration law, also known as "HB 56" or "Scott Beason's Royal Cock-Up" in most circles. From what was reported, it seemed BBVA Compass was quietly making moves to pare down its investment and presence in Alabama to a minimum, thanks to this law.

And now there's this story.

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama -- A German manager with Mercedes-Benz is free after being arrested for not having a driver's license with him under Alabama's new law targeting illegal immigrants, police said Friday.

Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven Anderson told The Associated Press an officer stopped a rental vehicle for not having a tag Wednesday night and asked the driver for his license. The man only had a German identification card, so he was arrested and taken to police headquarters, Anderson said.

The 46-year-old executive was charged with violating the immigration law for not having proper identification, but he was released after an associate retrieved his passport, visa and German driver's license from the hotel where he was staying, Anderson said.

It wasn't immediately known how long the man was in custody or the status of his court case.
The law -- parts of which were put on hold amid legal challenges -- requires that police check citizenship status during traffic stops and take anyone who doesn't have proper identification to a magistrate. Anderson said that's what was done, but someone in the same situation wouldn't have been arrested before the law took effect.

"If it were not for the immigration law, a person without a license in their possession wouldn't be arrested like this," he said. Previously, drivers who lacked licenses received a ticket and a court summons, according to Anderson.

Mercedes-Benz spokeswoman Felyicia Jerald said the man is from Germany and was visiting Alabama on business. The company's first U.S. assembly plant is located just east of Tuscaloosa.

"This was an unfortunate situation, but the incident was resolved when our colleague ... was able to provide his driver's license and other documents to Tuscaloosa police," Jerald said.

Even if this executive shrugs off this "Papiere, Bitte" moment, it's bound to leave a bad impression on the rest of the Daimler AG group. You can now expect them to have a heart-to-heart with the governor and key Alabama legislators over this little incident. Money talks, and when it does, politicians listen carefully.

Given how the good doctor is busy wooing automobile manufacturers to open shop in the Heart of Dixie, he might want to be careful in making sure HB 56 doesn't step on the wrong set of toes, if you catch my drift.

The national economy is still suffering from a failure of balance. Attempts are on-going to make banks and other major players within the financial sector "whole" with billions upon billions of dollars in financial aid. Meanwhile, most Americans find themselves unable to cover a $1000 emergency if need be. Profits are going up while wages and benefits are going down. This is becoming less of a failure of balance and more of one end of the balance scale being cut off with a pair of bolt cutters.

The blame could be laid directly at the feet of the bankers and the government, but more than enough's been done on that end by so many others that it would just feel like an effort in duplication, if not outright plagiarism. Instead, focus will shift onto the average Dick and Janes of America, most of whom seen the economic damage done by a highly unregulated and insanely well-heeled force and perhaps felt it first hand, but can't quite or don't want to comprehend the need for outright revulsion against it.

"Outright revulsion?" No, it's not some commie/socialist/marxist tactic that exhorts equal redistribution of income according to one's need or such tripe. There are a vast number of Americans who can get pissed off at a multi-faceted corporate entity for taking their money, but go doe-eyed the moment they see the CEO driving the latest Reventon or living it up on the yacht with models in tow. This is very much the country of MTV's "Cribs" and "Real Housewives," where people live vicariously through the voyeuristic displays of other people's wealth. Americans may hate their banks, but they still love their money.

Most Americans are not only star-struck and doe-eyed by the wealthy and the trappings of their wealth, but they also see themselves as being wealthy one day. As such, they want all the advantages and breaks bestowed upon the current wealthy to remain in place for when they, the average Dicks and Janes, eventually arrive, if they ever. Of course, they never do, as the wealthy are wont to make sure no one else gets a chance to climb the ladders of extraordinary success.

Meanwhile, average Dick and Jane are too exhausted from working 50 to 80 hour work weeks for a declining salary/wage and little to no benefits to comprehend any of this. They're too busy wondering how to stretch their budgets to cover ever-increasing bills and ever-rising costs of ordinary food and household items to give this any thought. Spending hours on Facebook or plopping themselves down on the couch for 30 to 45 minute respites from their immediate reality saves them from dwelling on how well they're being fucked by groups of people who could care less about their overall well being.

In the end, you really can't get rid of the "soon, I too shall be among ye" mentality most Americans share when attempting to commiserate with the wealthy unless there is either an immediate pain or a long, drawn out process that slowly beats or breeds this attitude out of them. The former is a great depression that finally hits enough Americans in the wallet for them to illicit immediate correction of their current circumstances or else. The latter involves Americans spending three or more generations under an aristocratic oligarchy, where all of the avenues for the average Dick and Jane "striking it rich" are coldly and cruelly cut off, full stop. It's a world where the only wealth floating around will be generational wealth at the hands of the new gilded class and corporate wealth at the hands of multinational corporate concerns. Sadly, the small business owner, a.k.a. "merchant class" will still ignore reminders that he'll never be fit to be a part of the wealthy. At least he'll still be wealthier than his utterly impoverished contemporaries, which gives him a nice big punching bag to wail on out of arrogance and vanity.

In my personal opinion, the worst thing George W. Bush did during his attempts to sooth the national shock of 9/11 was to tell ordinary Americans to "go shopping." From that moment on, consumerism became the balm that soothed the nation's wounds, aside from always being a reason for being as far as many Americans were concerned -- it's been that way ever since the late 1940s. In a race to achieve that dream of "arriving," many Americans tried to "arrive" on credit -- it's how you get "$30k millionaires" living in mass-produced $700k houses bought with $0-down robo-signed mortgages, driving $50k Corvettes and taking vacations financed by adding another $200k worth of debt on top of the mortgage. Not enough people understood that many of the wealthy got where they are today either with ruthless business dealings, careful and calculated long-term investing or a flat-out inheritance. Trying to "arrive" on credit only results in your card being declined at the swanky restaurant, to your unending embarrassment.

I'm not here to place all of the blame on ordinary Americans for this current financial clusterfuck, but to highlight some of the attitudes that played a part in bringing us to where we are.

As an aside, a lot of the debt problems people are being faced with should be solved with debt forgiveness, if only to prevent the reappearance of generational debt and the looming possibility of debtor's prisons and bonded labor being implemented to recoup unpaid debts alongside garnishments. Corporations wouldn't mind seeing debt criminalized if it meant a swift and effective way of pressuring people into working themselves to death to pay back their debts, and a way to gain access to extremely low cost labor via prison labor without having to depend on today's criminal statues. Most people in this country aren't criminals right now, but with the criminalization of debt...

Student loans are a pet peeve of mine, if only the fact I'm paying mine off at this moment. Many will argue that changing the non-dischargeable nature of student loans will open the floodgates to intentional defaults and bankruptcies, but that problem pales in comparison to the inability of graduates to pay their loans back in a reasonable amount of time, the inflationary nature of student loan aid on university tuition and the havoc student loans play on peoples' credit scores. The ability to discharge a student loan based on a strict criteria of conditions and the willingness of the loan recipients to abide by probationary conditions set during the discharge period, with the understanding that future options may be somewhat limited for the next few years could go a long way towards getting people from under that debt. Either that or the U.S. finally wises up and makes secondary and continuing education completely state-funded and free for all Americans. I doubt that latter option will ever make it on any legislative agenda during this century.

- Dick Cheney writes a book. I can't say I could be bothered to give two fucks about this. It was hard enough gathering up the interest to bother posting this. Say, about that ticker...

...no wait, about his concerns that he may be put on trial some day for war crimes and other general fuckery during his time in the Bush Administration. No wonder he wanted to pave things over with his new book.

- The Justice Department cockblocks AT&T's planned merger with T-Mobile, citing many of the concerns that other people had about the merger's end result -- higher prices and fewer choices. T-Mobile was counting on being swept up by AT&T, as it's reportedly thrown in the towel on expanding and revamping their own cellular infrastructure. Cue conservatives claiming the Obama Administration is "interfering with the free market." There's a bit of fallout from merger not happening, too.

- The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals has held that recording police officers performing their duties in public is a "clearly established First Amendment right". The ruling has yet to be contested in the U.S. Supreme Court, where it will invariably end up being struck down in a 5-4 decision. Or maybe it won't. Who knows?

- U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn just put Alabama's immigration law on ice until September 29, or until a ruling is made on the controversial law.

- The HP TouchPad gets one last production run before it's consigned to the dust bin of history. It's still priced at $99, which means HP will lose money on every single one.

Anyone missing a foot? Because one just washed up on a Vancouver beach for the 11th time in four years. The police suspect foul play -- they'd be dense if they didn't.

- Philly mayor Michael Nutter is pissed. Some young punk barged into a basketball game at the Kingsessing Recreation Center and fired 11 shots into the bleachers, wounding 6 people. The mayor's so pissed that he's taking 20 "G" stacks ($20,000, for the folks in Colorado Springs) from the city's crime reward fund, putting it out there for anyone willing to turn the "little bastard" in.

The little bastard isn't a 15-year-old misguided "youth." He's around 22, according to the theories about his identity. Not a little bastard, but a bastard just the same.

- Apple CEO Steve Jobs calls it quits, stepping down from his CEO duties and into a presumably less strenuous board chair position. Given his long-running bout with pancreatic cancer, no one would be surprised if it was the leading factor in him stepping down.

COO Tim Cook will take over the CEO role, as he's done twice since Jobs' medical issues forced him to step down momentarily. Turns out the guy's a "local" -- Alabama native, Auburn grad.

- Hewlett-Packard takes a page from IBM's playbook and calls it quits, as far as its line of personal computers are concerned. As a result of shrinking profit margins, HP's spinning off the PC line before the thin black line turns into a sea of red ink. At the same time, the storied company's purchased U.K. software firm Autonomy for $10.25 billion. As it turns out, selling overpriced software is what brings home the bacon these days. (No, that wasn't a pot-shot at anyone, not Adobe or any other company that makes software for graphic designers. Nope, not at all...)

The only silver lining in this cloud is the story of the HP Touchpad. Ridiculed widely for its $499 price tag, the Web OS-based tablet literally flew off the shelves shortly after it was discontinued and subsequently given a $99 fire sale price tag. Oddly enough, there was another, albeit Android-based tablet making the rounds at the same price point. Unlike the Touchpad, it wasn't particularly well-received, and for good reason.

When the folks at Best Buy take the piss on your product, you know it's bad.

- Obama Derangement Syndrome hits its peak. Apparently the man is such a Magic Negro™ that he's supposed to do something about an earthquake.

How can a man possess such power when at the same time, people are calling him impotent?

- Teabaggers just being Teabaggers, again:

Darrel Clark of Farmington said he came for "a chance to see the elusive representative."
"He needs to get out of politics and make room for an American," Clark said.
Luján is a lifelong New Mexican. Clark later explained that he meant an "American patriot."

The above comes from former Massachusetts governor and current GOP nomination candidate Mitt Romney, as he was being heckled during one of his campaign stops in Iowa. Beautiful bean footage found below, for your viewing pleasure:

After negotiations between the telecommunications company, the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers fell through, more than 45,000 employees on the East Coast went on strike. It's only the second day and there are already reports of violence on both sides.

Verizon is looking to tie pay increases to performance review and require union workers to contribute to health-plan premiums. The company is also seeking to freeze pensions at the end of the year, eliminate the sickness and death benefit program, cut in half the sickness disability benefits from 52 weeks to 26 weeks and reduce sick time, according to a memo signed by William Huber, president of IBEW, Local 827.

The concessions equate to $1 billion if the loss of sick days and other benefits are factored in, Johnson said. That’s roughly $20,000 per worker.

Asking employees to throw in a bit on their health plan premiums may seem reasonable until you realize how shifting more and more contributions onto employees is a great way for companies to weasel out of funding their health plans. And these other cuts may seem reasonable until you remember that nearly every company that scaled back in this regard ended up making record profits.

The CWA said the concessions are unjustified and harsh, given that Verizon is highly profitable – the company's revenue rose 2.8 percent to $27.5 billion in the second quarter. Its growth was largely attributed to its wireless business.

Meanwhile, the Dow dropped 634 points, as a result of the fallout from the S&P credit downgrade. Gee, I thought those Teabaggers were trying to shrink government enough to drown in a bathtub, not the economy.