Comcast CEO made a cool $25 million last year

Must be nice to be able to deliver horrible service yet have no competition thanks to friends in Washington. CEOs like this would be lost if they ever had to face real competition. If only Washington would let that happen.

The CEO of cable operator Comcast received $25 million in compensation for 2009, up 1.3 percent from the prior year, according to as Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing.

Brian Roberts received a base salary of $2.9 million, up 5 percent from 2008, and a performance-based bonus of $8.2 million, up 11 percent. He has agreed to a freeze on his base salary for the next two years.

Roberts also received stock and options valued at $11 million when they were granted, up 7 percent from similar awards received in the previous year.

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Badgers ditch Nike contract

I always liked those Wisconsin Badgers.

The University of Wisconsin canceled its licensing agreement with Nike Inc. on Friday, becoming the first university to take that step over concerns about the company's treatment of workers in Honduras.

Chancellor Biddy Martin said Nike hasn't done enough to help workers collect severance payments they are owed at two factories that abruptly closed last year.

"Nike has not developed, and does not intend to develop, meaningful ways of addressing the plight of displaced workers and their families in Honduras," Martin said. "It has not presented clear long-range plans to prevent or respond to similar problems in the future. For this combination of reasons, we have decided to end our relationship for now."

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National Science Foundation delivers edited report

Obama seems to be equally dismayed at this as well, which is encouraging. The statistics on the flat-earth, Bible-beating wackos is truly depressing. These are definitely the dark ages which explains why the teabaggers are popular enough.

In an unusual last-minute edit that has drawn flak from the White House and science educators, a federal advisory committee omitted data on Americans' knowledge of evolution and the big bang from a key report. The data shows that Americans are far less likely than the rest of the world to accept that humans evolved from earlier species and that the universe began with a big bang.

They're not surprising findings, but the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), says it chose to leave the section out of the 2010 edition of the biennial Science and Engineering Indicators because the survey questions used to measure knowledge of the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs.

"Discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is intellectual malpractice" that "downplays the controversy" over teaching evolution in schools, says Joshua Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit that has fought to keep creationism out of the science classroom. The story appears in this week's issue of Science.

And here are the ugly stats that were edited.

The deleted text, obtained by ScienceInsider, does not differ radically from what has appeared in previous Indicators. The section, which was part of the unedited chapter on public attitudes toward science and technology, notes that 45% of Americans in 2008 answered true to the statement, "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." The figure is similar to previous years and much lower than in Japan (78%), Europe (70%), China (69%), and South Korea (64%). The same gap exists for the response to a second statement, "The universe began with a big explosion," with which only 33% of Americans agreed.

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Danish brewery truck drivers strike over their right to free beer on the job

WSJ:

Michael Christiansen, a truck driver turned union representative, is fighting hard to preserve one of the last, best perks of the beer industry: the right to drink on the job.

Mr. Christiansen's union brethren are wort boilers, bottlers, packers and drivers at Carlsberg A/S, Denmark's largest brewer. For a century, they've had the right to cool off during a hard day's work with a crisp lager.

But on April 1, the refrigerators were idled and daily beer spoils were capped at three pint-sized plastic cups from a dining hall during lunch hour.

Drunkenness isn't a problem, workers argued. "There is sometimes some whistling and maybe some singing, but that's not connected to the drinking," said Martin Juralowicz, a 31-year-old forklift operator.

Mr. Christiansen says the Alcolocks are fine, so long as the company doesn't take away the suds. "A driver usually has one beer on his lunch break, another after his shift and maybe he gives the third one away," says the 40-year-old, who quit driving a truck two years ago to be a union rep.

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The markets like Obamanomics

Not that the markets are always right or necessarily good for everyone outside of the board rooms, but it's an interesting story. Despite all of the griping by Republicans, the markets have improved dramatically since Obama took over. Perhaps most are waiting to see the economic movement directly impact them before they buy into the recovery. If the tables were turned though and the GOP was in the White House, all we would be hearing about is how great things are. The Democrats really need to work on messaging. BusinessWeek:

A Bloomberg national poll in March found that Americans, by an almost 2-to-1 margin, believe the economy has gotten worse rather than better during the past year. The Market begs to differ. While President Obama's overall job approval rating has fallen to a new low of 44 percent, according to a CBS News Poll, down five points from late March, the judgment of the financial indexes has turned resoundingly positive. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is up more than 74 percent from its recessionary low in March 2009. Corporate bonds have been rallying for a year. Commodity prices have surged. International currency markets have been bullish on the dollar for months, raising it by almost 10 percent since Nov. 25 against a basket of six major currencies. Housing prices have stabilized. Mortgage rates are low. "We've had a phenomenal run in asset classes across the board," says Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., an institutional trading firm in New York. "If Obama was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the President."

Little more than a year ago, financial markets were in turmoil, major auto companies were on the verge of collapse and economists such as Paul Krugman were worried about the U.S. slumbering through a Japan-like Lost Decade. While no one would claim that all the pain is past or the danger gone, the economy is growing again, jumping to a 5.6 percent annualized growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2009 as businesses finally restocked their inventories. The consensus view now calls for 3 percent growth this year, significantly higher than the 2.1 percent estimate for 2010 that economists surveyed by Bloomberg News saw coming when Obama first moved into the Oval Office.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Over the next few days, leaders from 46 nations are gathering in Washington for a nuclear summit. It's going to basically shut down downtown. Obama's starting one-on-one meetings with his fellow world leaders tomorrow.

April 15th is five days away. The teabaggers are in a frenzy over tax day. And, the President talked taxes -- and tax breaks -- in his weekly address.


I'm heading out for a run shortly. Perfect day and it rained Thursday night, which washed away the pollen. Read More......

Ladysmith Black Mambazo - I disagreed

After one of the most hectic weeks in a while I cut out at 5PM last night to head out of town on the bike. Perfect weather and lots of sun. It felt like everyone had the same idea as other cyclists and joggers were hitting the path. Today Jojo and I are meeting neighbors in Bois de Boulogne for a bit of cycling. Tomorrow is the Paris Marathon and Jojo's sister is running her first marathon so the family will be out cheering her on.

The daffodils are disappearing and the tulips are arriving. I really need to head over to the Luxembourg Gardens to see them. What are the gardens looking like where you are? Read More......

Breaking: Polish president's plane crashes during landing

The reports do not sound promising for any survivors. BBC:

A plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski has crashed near a Russian airport, officials say.

Russian media reported that 87 people were killed in the crash near Smolensk, and a regional governor was quoted as saying there were no survivors.

Polish officials said Mr Kaczynski was on board along with his wife Maria and several senior government figures.

They were in Russia to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when the Soviets killed thousands of Poles.

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Report: Kyrgyzstan state funds almost completely plundered

If only the story didn't so sound believable or typical. If true, the former president needs to be brought to justice. Disgusting.

The head of Kyrgyzstan's new interim government yesterday revealed that her country was broke and said that the former president who was overthrown in a street-led revolution this week had left only $80m in the budget.

In an interview with the Guardian, Roza Otunbayeva appealed for urgent international aid so that the impoverished Central Asian nation could meet its immediate bills. "Tomorrow we should pay pensions. This is a really serious problem," she said.

Otunbayeva said that the ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev had plundered the economy, installing his sons in key government positions and flogging off strategic state industries for a fraction of their true value.

She said the country's leading telecoms firm had been sold to an offshore company in the Canary Islands, belonging to a friend of the president's son Maxim. "We had an absolutely scandalous situation where Kyrgyzstan had become a family-run regime," she said.

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Gallup poll: it's the economy, stupid. Again

Not that it's much of a surprise though. Turning things around is not an easy process. Remember, it took decades of Republican policies to make such a mess and it won't change overnight. There are positive signs out there but this is not an economy that will improve quickly. At a minimum, people need to see progress. Gallup:

Fifty-seven percent of registered voters say the economy will be extremely important to their vote for Congress this year, making it the top issue in the 2010 elections. Healthcare, unemployment, and the federal budget deficit rank behind the economy in importance, with the environment the least important of the seven issues tested in the March 26-28 USA Today/Gallup poll.

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World Bank approves polluting coal power plant in South Africa

This is a terrible way to spend $3 billion though at least the US and a few other allies abstained from participating in the vote. More pollution is not the direction we need at this time. Nobody is arguing against creating more energy but coal?

The World Bank on Thursday approved a controversial $3 billion loan for the development of a coal-fired power plant by the South African state utility Eskom despite lack of support from major shareholder countries.

The United States, the Netherlands and Britain said they abstained from supporting the loan because of environmental and other concerns about the project.

Eskom has defended the development of the 4,800-megawatt Medupi plant in the northern Limpopo region, saying it is critical to ease the country's chronic power shortages as well as to ensure electricity flows to neighboring states.

The World Bank said the loan would help "South Africa achieve a reliable electricity supply." In addition to the $3 billion loan for the coal plant, the World Bank approved $750 million in financing for renewables and energy-efficiency projects.

"Without an increased energy supply, South Africans will face hardship for the poor and limited economic growth," Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank vice president for Africa, said in a statement.

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