This is incredible

What a contrast to what we see elsewhere. If only other businesses had such a mindset instead of seeing how much they can squeeze out of everyone for the pleasure of a few at the top.

Dave Tiderman wondered if the decimal point was in the wrong place when he opened his $35,000 company bonus. Jose Rojas saw his $10,000 check and thought, "That can't be right."

Valentin Dima watched co-workers breaking down in tears over their bonus checks and didn't trust his emotions. He drove home first, then opened his envelope: $33,000.

Year-end bonuses are rare these days. Rarer still is what the Spungen family, owners of a ball bearings company in Waukegan, Ill., about 40 miles north of Chicago, did as they sold the business.

They gave out whopping thank-you bonuses.

A total of $6.6 million is being shared by just 230 employees of Waukegan-based Peer Bearing Co., with facilities in England and the United States. Amounts varied and were based on years of service.

"They treated us like extended family," said Maria Dima, who works at Peer Bearing along with her husband, Valentin, and received a somewhat smaller check than he did. "We won the lottery."

With $100 million in sales last year, Peer recently was acquired by a Swedish company for an undisclosed amount. Danny Spungen, whose grandfather founded the company in 1941, said it was a unanimous family decision to thank employees with the bonuses.

Laurence and Florence Spungen and their four children decided on a bonus formula a year before the sale closed to SKF Group, "a gamble that we would come out OK as well," Danny Spungen said.

He and other family members signed, by hand, two thank-you cards to each employee, one in Spanish and one in English. Each card was printed with all the workers' names and the years they were hired. The text expressed gratitude for "the loyalty and hard work of our employees over the years."

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Thanksgiving in Paris

Another excellent Thanksgiving here in Paris, especially since I had the opportunity to enjoy the hard work and great cooking by another family. We used to host Thanksgiving parties here but I think I reached my limit when we crammed close to 35 people into 55m2 (half of that, really since no one ate in the bedroom, toilet or bathroom). Preparing in a small Parisian kitchen can easily take two days followed by another day or two of cleanup including dishes stacked up in the tub as we work through the stack. The last two years we had Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a Franco-American couple where the cook comes from Tennessee. That meant pecan pie and corn bread. I love both but growing up in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio, we never had either so it was a great change.

This year an American family visiting from Berkeley hosted an outstanding dinner for 13 including their parents who were visiting from Ohio. A great addition (that I intend to try the next time I make stuffing) was stuffing with bits of merguez sausage, which I adore. The French twist to the dinner included Champagne and a nice cheese plate after dinner. When you're used to cooking in big American spaces, it's always a challenge to get used to Parisian sized kitchens and Betty Crocker-sized ovens that seem full when a 5 pound chicken is inside, let along a 14 pound turkey. Even with those challenges, wow, what a meal.

The parents of the California family are Republicans, so we were all treading lightly on the subject of politics and doing our best to avoid the topic so we did not offend the hosts or visiting parents. (We need to save our energy for our own internal family debates with the last remaining Republicans. I can't wait for Christmas!) Somehow the subject of Sarah Palin came up and naturally the discussion moved to the now infamous turkey slaughterhouse video. We were all laughing about how clueless she was though I did notice the otherwise friendly grandparents were not laughing quite as much as others. In fact, they weren't laughing at all. Uh oh, warning sign to change subjects. The problem is, Palin is the gift that keeps on giving so one story led to another and everyone (well, almost everyone) was laughing and then groaning about the $7 million book deal. The Palin book deal then led to the Joe the Plumber book deal (or is it music? or TV commercials?) and then *it* happened. The gravy bowl was being passed to the previously jovial grandfather and then bam, there it went. The gravy bowl fell and spilled creating a lake of brown gravy the size of Lake Erie in the middle of the table. Hmmm, maybe it's time to talk about something else.

We did move on and talked about the GI Bill and what a success it was in terms of giving millions of Americans the opportunity to seek higher education. Before the GI Bill universities were limited to fewer Americans so that program radically changed the US system. (Question: does anyone know if the GI Bill was available to women in any significant numbers or was it primarily men?) Change of subject, accomplished.

The Ohio grandparents left shortly after dessert (which included Southern pecan pie and homemade pumpkin pie made by the grandmother - it was excellent) and the discussion shifted back towards "socialist" programs such as the GI Bill and Medicare. My father also went to college on the GI Bill and later in life enjoyed the benefits of Medicare, another "socialist" program. It remains a mystery to me how so many people can overlook the "socialist" nature of such programs and be so critical of "socialism" when they've benefited from these programs, a point made by our delightful hosts. This was a point of conflict in my family for years and obviously I'm not alone on this one. Our hosts did a much better job of smoothing over the situation compared to the tradition in my family of passive aggressiveness.

As we were all leaving (and wrapping up the "socialism" discussion) our host left us with a great line that is so spot on: if the difference between "conservatism" and "socialism" is only a 3% tax rate difference at the top end, maybe there's not as much of a difference as some would like us to believe. Absolutely. But then what would we argue about? Read the rest of this post...

Would you like some more poison in your baby formula? Thank George Bush

These people are pigs.

Two months ago, federal food regulators said they were unable to set a safety threshold for the industrial chemical melamine in baby formula. Now, however, they found a way to settle on a standard that allows for higher levels than those found in U.S.-made batches of the product.

Food and Drug Administration officials on Friday set a threshold of 1 part per million of melamine in formula, provided a related chemical is not present. They insisted the formulas are safe.

The development comes days after The Associated Press reported that FDA tests found traces of melamine in the infant formula of one major U.S. manufacturer and cyanuric acid, a chemical relative, in the formula of a second major maker. The contaminated samples, which both measured at levels below the new standard, were analyzed several weeks ago.

The FDA had said in early October it was unable to set a safety contamination level for melamine in infant formula.

So basically, the FDA has no idea what it's doing and made a decision affecting the lives of your children and grandchildren based on what was best for business. Absolutely sickening. This is why elections matter. This is what the Republicans would have been doing with the economic crisis, picking all sorts of "solutions" intended only to maximize the economic benefit to their corporate friends and not address the real problem. Read the rest of this post...

Christmas cards for geeks

See the rest here. Read the rest of this post...

Obama's picks

From Ben Smith at Poltico:

Barack Obama’s picks for cabinet and other senior posts are many things: centrists, veterans, rivals. Most of all, though, they’re big: Big names, big intellects, and big egos.

The president-elect’s national security and economic policy teams, inside the White House and out, will be led by power politics veterans, all but one of them older than the president-elect, and all accustomed to being the most important voice in the room.

While official announcements and Senate confirmations await, it appears that on national security decisions, Obama will have a team of heavyweights: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Vice President Joe Biden, retired four-star Marine general Jim Jones as his National Security Adviser, and four-star General David Petraeus as chief of U.S. Central Command.

His economic team is of similar stature: new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will find his rival for the job, Larry Summers, in the White House, while former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker will also be in the mix as head of a new economic recovery advisory board.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel seems unlikely to be shy about his views in either arena.

What's most important about that list is just how damn qualified everyone is. Not a political hack or pushover among them. (Well, other than Petraeus, who still leaves me wondering if he's anything more than a yes-man for whichever politician he's currently trying to curry favor with.) Our government is back in the hands of the adults. Of people who prefer to actually put country first, rather than simply bragging about it but never actually following through. Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

So, I went into my first public library in perhaps two decades, and they've got the funniest thing. Electronic card catalogues. I was amazed. Talk about feeling like an old man. Or George Bush, Sr. Read the rest of this post...

Here's our chance to extend our edge over China

Hire our Wall Street and City bankers! Let them work their magic on the Shanghai market, which is down over 60% from its 52 week high. Please, take them all before they strike again in our markets.

Officials from Shanghai, China's financial hub, will travel to the United States and Europe next month on a recruiting mission, potentially offering jobs to fund managers, policy analysts and others left jobless by the financial crisis.

Wu Jianrong, deputy director of the Shanghai Financial Service Office, told the official Xinhua news agency on Friday that the delegation would go to London, Chicago and New York in search of employees.

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"Tis the season

The American obsession refuses to ease up despite the economic crisis. From coast to coast the holiday atmosphere is hard to miss and priorities are in order. From New York:

A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday when "out-of-control" shoppers desperate for bargains broke down the doors at a 5 a.m. sale. Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

At least four other people, including a woman who was eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening.

Shoppers stepped over the man on the ground and streamed into the store. When told to leave, they complained that they had been in line since Thursday morning.

And in California the initial report suggests it may not have been over this years hottest toy, but instead, related to the other American obsession, guns.

Two men pulled guns and shot each other to death in a crowded toy store Friday after the women with them erupted into a bloody brawl, witnesses said. Scared shoppers fled but no one else was hurt.

The violence erupted on Black Friday, the traditional post-Thanksgiving start of the holiday shopping surge, but authorities indicated the shooting wasn't related to a shopping frenzy.

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Tweety may be running for Senate against Specter in 2010

That's what Nate hears:

Chris Matthews, it appears, is in.

FiveThirtyEight has been hearing for some time that Matthews is serious about running for the United States Senate, but it took a trip to Georgia among the Georgia-runoff-congregated and well-connected Obama organizer throng to confirm.

According to multiple sources, who confirmed the Tip O'Neill staffer-cum-MSNBC host has negotiated with veteran Obama staffers to enlist in his campaign, Chris Matthews is likely to run for United States Senate in Pennsylvania in 2010. Matthews, 62, would run as a Democrat. Arlen Specter, the aging Republican incumbent, will be 80 if he chooses to run for re-election.

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