Free Republic

Where is Cecilia Ibru? By Ruona Agbroko August 21, 2009 01:56PMT For someone whose intimidating frame, trademark pearls and penchant for A-list events on Nigeria’s social circuit is legendary, Cecilia Ibru, the recently sacked managing director and chief executive officer of Oceanic Bank Plc, is doing an excellent job of going underground. On Friday August 14, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria announced her dismissal, alongside that of the CEOs and executive directors of Afribank, Intercontinental Bank, Union Bank and Finbank. Declaring that the CEOs came under the axe for acting “in a manner detrimental to...

Governor Maintains Stance on Stimulus Funds, Favors Local Control on Building Codes May 21, 2009, Juneau, Alaska - Governor Sarah Palin announced today that, as previously stated, she will veto the $28.6 million in federal “stimulus” funds tied to adoption of building codes by municipalities. "Alaskans and our communities have a long history of independence and opposing many mandates from Washington, D.C.,” Governor Palin said. “This principle of maximum self-government for local communities is also set out in our constitution. There isn’t a lot of support for the federal government to coerce Alaska communities to adopt building codes, but lawmakers...

This is in response to questions and comments I have received pertaining to this announcement: Just like at the federal level, a state legislature can override a governor's veto. So, if Governor Palin had vetoed, yes it would have been overridden -- the legislature overwhelmingly wanted that money. Of course, since she is the one signing the bill, those who hate Governor Palin are accusing her of being a hypocrite -- this is why we need to be well-informed about this matter. It's complex, and quite frankly -- dry subject matter -- and easy to just "sloganeer". Had the legislature...

GM Daewoo 'Top-Heavy' with 210 Foreign Executives GM Daewoo had 210 foreign executives as of the end of February, data shows. A subsidiary of General Motors, GM Daewoo published the figures at the request of its labor union. That was 17 times more than the 12 foreign executives at Renault Samsung and almost the same as the entire 250 executives at the headquarters of Hyundai Motor, the world’s fifth largest automaker in terms of sales. There is a growing criticism that GM Daewoo has too many executives given that it is a production-centered subsidiary of GM. Hyundai has 250 executives...

"And where the government has acted, like in Fannie and Freddie or like in AIG, where we've had to do exceptional things to stabilize them, we have replaced the management and the board," Geithner said. Asked if chief executives of big banks such as Citibank and Bank of America should worry about their jobs if their companies don't improve their performance, Geithner said the government would not shy from such a restructuring. As part of the new administration's overhaul of the $700 billion bailout effort, banking regulators are requiring stress tests for the 19 largest banks to see whether they...

SHOULD executives get to keep lavish pay packages when the profits that generated their compensation go up in smoke? As the financial crisis deepens, what might have been a philosophical question is now the topic of the day. With losses mounting at the nation’s largest financial institutions, years of earnings have been erased, investors have lost billions, thousands of employees have been let go, and taxpayers have been tapped to rescue the financial system. But executives who helped set the problems in motion, or ignored them as they mounted, are still doing fine. Humbled, perhaps, but well paid for their...

President Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. — facing just 38 percent approval ratings in the poll for his stimulus spending package, according to this week’s Gallup poll — is taking further, dramatic action to destroy the U.S. economy. He is proposing a salary cap for executives who run companies in the U.S. which receive federal monies. Obama described executives as “living a life high on the hog.” Interesting metaphor, as communist activists derided capitalists in the past as “pigs.” See, http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/02/03/2009-02-03_obama_puts_salary_cap_on_bailout_busines.html Obama is acting as if this proposed “cap” on executive salaries will be limited only to Citicorp, AIG and the...

In between meaningful football games yesterday, I saw clips of Vice President Cheney with Chris Wallace and read some comments on the interview. Frequent readers of my blog understands that I am far from a Bush / Cheney apologist. In fact, I am pretty close to a non-entity in conservative Republican circles because of my early public support for Obama last January. However, in this case, I have to agree with the Vice President (almost) in his opinion that the Congress is equally culpable in both the breach of civil liberties but also the Constitutional idea of checks and balances....

Legal Battles, Technical Difficulties Delay Required Transfer to Archives The required transfer in four weeks of all of the Bush White House's electronic mail messages and documents to the National Archives has been imperiled by a combination of technical glitches, lawsuits and lagging computer forensic work, according to government officials, historians and lawyers. Federal law requires outgoing White House officials to provide the Archives copies of their records, a cache estimated at more than 300 million messages and 25,000 boxes of documents depicting some of the most sensitive policymaking of the past eight years. But archivists are uncertain whether the...

Vice President Dick Cheney blamed Congress for failing to bail out the auto industry, saying the White House was forced to step in to save U.S. car companies. In an interview broadcast Sunday, Mr. Cheney said the economy is in such bad shape that the car companies might not have survived without the $17.4 billion in emergency loans that President George W. Bush approved on Friday. "The president decided specifically that he wanted to try to deal with it and not preside over the collapse of the automobile industry just as he goes out of office," Mr. Cheney said in...

A Carnegie Mellon University study has concluded that women executives out-earn their male counterparts. The study, which examined 16,000 executives over 14 years, found that women at the top of the business world bring in a bit more than men and are promoted at the same rate, countering the popular notion that women earn less than men for the same work. "That common perception is not borne out by this study," said Robert A. Miller, professor of economics and strategy and one of the authors. "If you're looking for evidence of gender discrimination in executive promotion and compensation, it's not...

President-elect Barack Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder, a Washington lawyer who served as the No. 2 official in the Clinton Justice Department, as his next attorney general.

The incoming administration is reviewing President Bush's executive orders on stem cell research, oil and gas drilling, and other matters, President-elect Barack Obama's transition chief said on Sunday. John Podesta said the idea is that a president can use such orders to move quickly without waiting for Congress to act. "I'm not going to preview decisions that he has yet to make. But I would say that as a candidate, Senator Obama said that he wanted all the Bush executive orders reviewed, and decide which ones should be kept, and which ones should be repealed, and which ones should be...

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) today called on President Bush to exercise his authority to repeal the Executive Order banning energy production on America’s outer continental shelf (OCS) Since the Congress has made it clear - year after year - that it does not have the courage to take decisive action, President Bush should take the first step. He has the authority to tear up one of the two bans on offshore energy production that form a wall between American consumers and affordable energy. We’re asking the president to tear down that wall.”

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign is in a troubled stretch, hindered by resignations of staff members, a lagging effort to build a national campaign organization and questions over whether he has taken full advantage of Democratic turmoil to present a case for his candidacy, Republicans say... Some state party leaders said they were apprehensive about the unusual organization Mr. McCain had set up: the campaign has been broken into 10 semi-autonomous regions, with each having power over things like television advertising and the candidate’s schedule, decisions normally left to headquarters... "They finally assigned someone to West Virginia three...

BOSTON (WBZ) ― WHDH Channel 7 announced Thursday that general manager Randi Goldklank is now undergoing medical treatment after an allegedly drunken tirade Sunday night that ended with her arrest at Logan Airport. "The unfortunate events of last Sunday night were unanticipated and Ms. Goldklank is deeply regretful," said Ed Ansin, president of Sunbeam Television Corp. in a prepared statement. Mike Carson, the station's previous general manager will take over on a temporary basis while Goldklank remains on administrative leave. According to a State Police report, Goldklank, 40, of Boston, threatened to put a trooper on TV and ruin his...

Climate Change: Imagine a group of lawyers at work on guidelines for instituting an imperial presidency. There would be an uproar, and rightly so. But what if the goal is to blunt global warming? Well, then, in that case it’s OK to bypass the checks and balances between the branches of the federal government, right? We can’t think of a single proposal on the right side of the political spectrum in which academics could construct a manual to help the president unilaterally fast-track policy because the legislative and judicial gears of government move too slow. The media and law professors...

Calls restrictions unconstitutional WASHINGTON - President Bush this week declared that he has the power to bypass four laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, that Congress passed as part of a new defense bill. Bush made the assertion in a signing statement that he issued late Monday after signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008. In the signing statement, Bush asserted that four sections of the bill unconstitutionally infringe on his powers, and so the executive branch is not bound to obey them. "Provisions of the act . ....

" A Senate chairman acknowledged explicitly on Thursday that President Bush was not involved in the firings of U.S. attorneys last winter. . . . 'I hereby rule that those claims are not legally valid to excuse current and former White House employees from appearing, testifying and producing documents related to this investigation,'"

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam, Nov. 7, 2007 – Wearing a protective vest and Kevlar helmet and carrying an M-16 rifle, Fassil Gabremariam struggled to climb into the turret of an armored Humvee. Members of the 74th Joint Civilian Orientation Conference receive a safety briefing at the munitions storage area of Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, Nov. 6, 2007. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison, USAF  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. It was hot, and he was sweaty and tired. But as he poked his head through the gunner’s access hole in the top of the military vehicle,...

Congress' power to oversee the executive branch for lawlessness or maladministration stands at an abyss. If it neglects to enact a revised edition of the lapsed Independent Counsel Act of 1978, Congress will have been disarmed by President Bush from knowing what the executive branch is doing. Secret government will flourish. And darkness invites executive machinations to violate the law and to destroy political or personal rivals. Remember President Richard M. Nixon's ill-conceived Huston Plan recommending domestic burglaries, illegal electronic surveillances and mail openings of political radicals. President Bush has announced his intent to decline criminal contempt prosecutions of any...

NEW YORK - Advertising executive, author and columnist Lois Wyse, who coined the memorable catchphrase "With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good," died Friday after a long struggle with stomach cancer, her family said. She was 80. Wyse died in her Manhattan home shortly after midnight and 18 months after her cancer diagnosis, said her son-in-law, Henry Goldman. During her lengthy career in advertising, Wyse raised the glass ceiling for other working women while counseling clients from American Express to Revlon to one-time Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes. She created the advertising slogan that propelled Smucker's from a...

More than at any time in a decade, official Washington is focused on how to curb the gilded pay packages of corporate executives. The problem: It's not easy to legislate a pay cut for some of America's most powerful people. It's clear that the issue has gained traction this month, thanks to public concern about income inequality, investor outrage over pay at companies such as The Home Depot, and the politics of a new Democratic Congress ...The recent signs include: •As part of a minimum-wage hike under consideration in the US Senate, new taxes would be imposed on one important...

For Immediate ReleaseJanuary 6, 2007 President's Radio Address       Audio      THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Earlier this week, the newly elected members of the House and the Senate took their oaths of office and became part of the 110th Congress. I congratulate them all, and I look forward to working with them over the next two years. Since the November elections, I've had a number of productive meetings with the new leaders in Congress, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. I was encouraged...

Over the past decade and a half, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson has become the one of the most important figures in the state in setting prison policy, or at least trying to change it. Henderson's rulings have placed the judge firmly in control over issues ranging from use of force at Pelican Bay State Prison to internal discipline to improving medical care. They've also put him in position to direct billions in state spending into the correctional system -- with no legislative oversight. The 72-year-old judge's career has just been chronicled in Abby Ginzberg's documentary, "Soul of Justice:...

EUROPE - THY NAME IS COWARDICE (Commentary by Mathias Dapfner CEO, Axel Springer, AG) A few days ago Henry Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe - your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives, as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements. Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of...

Berkery, Noyes & Co. LLC is a leading independent investment bank that provides M & A services to the global information, publishing, and IT sectors. The group has been involved as an advisor for most major transactions, buying and/or selling, related to the education market in recent years. 1. National Geographic Society bought Hampton-Brown Co. 2. ProQuest bought Voyager Expanded Learning. 3. Touchstone Applied Science Associates just purchased Questar Educational Systems. I reckon Berkery, Noyes figures it better get someone on board who knows something about post-secondary schools and other forms of higher-ed, including the fopros. So, they have hired...

James Briggs McClatchy, former chairman of the board of McClatchy Newspapers and the patriarch of a prominent family of journalists, died Friday of complications from an infection following surgery, the company announced in a statement. He was 85. McClatchy was the great-grandson of a founding editor of The Sacramento Bee and the son of the founder and first editor of The Fresno Bee. They are part of a group of newspapers that has become the nation's second largest with McClatchy's recent $4.5 billion purchase of the Knight Ridder chain. "Jim was one of the great leaders of the McClatchy Company,"...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (May 25, 2006) -- Marines from 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division gathered in front of the regiment’s headquarters as four Bronze Stars were awarded May 19. Lt. Col. Richard O. Miles Jr., executive officer for Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, received his award for meritorious achievement in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from February 2005 to February 2006 in Fallujah, Iraq. The Bronze Star is given for valor and meritorious service and is the nation’s fourth highest distinction. “As the executive officer I see and hear almost everything that goes on....

NEW YORK – A.M. Rosenthal, a demanding editor who lifted The New York Times from economic doldrums in the 1970s and molded it into a journalistic juggernaut known for distinguished reporting of national and world affairs, died Wednesday at age 84. He died of complications from a stroke he suffered two weeks ago, the Times said. Rosenthal, known as Abe, spent virtually all of his working life at the Times, beginning as a lowly campus stringer in 1943. He rose to police reporter, foreign correspondent, managing editor and finally to the exalted office of executive editor, a post he held...

"Trust the president." That was the Bush administration's main defense of the president's bizarre choice of corporate lawyer Harriet Miers for a seat on the Supreme Court. But the administration also had a backup rationale: as D.C.'s Hill newspaper reported, in an October 3, 2005, conference call with conservative leaders, Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman stressed "the need to confirm a justice who will not interfere with the administration's management of the war on terrorism." It was a bit unsettling to hear that proposition stated so baldly, but no one who has followed the administration's drive to expand executive...

SEC to Propose Overhaul of Rules On Executive Pay Changes Would Increase Transparency in Reporting Perks, Retirement Benefits By KARA SCANNELL Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL January 10, 2006 WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission, responding to rising criticism of soaring -- and partially hidden -- executive pay, is poised to propose the most sweeping overhaul of pay disclosure rules in 14 years, seeking to push companies to divulge much more about their top executives' perquisites, retirement benefits and total compensation. The proposed changes, according to SEC officials, would for the first time require corporate proxy statements...

Message From United Management: Let Them Eat Cake Now That Your Pension's Gone... United Airlines senior management just announced another part of its grand Chapter-11 exit plan. It seems that when the company emerges, 400 select members of United Airlines' executive and senior management team will be awarded 15% ownership of the carrier, worth a tidy $285 million - or more. From The Marie Antoinette School of Management... Nice compensation. Royalty does have its privileges and perks, you know. And, why not? Now that United's employee rank-and-file saved their airline via double-digit pay and benefit cuts, not to mention having...

The word "reinvent" is a dumb term, having an overtone of redundancy. After all, when you have invented something, it exists. You can revise it or change it, but you can't "reinvent" it after you have already invented it. I never heard the term when I first entered the workforce. But somewhere in the 1970s or so, corporate executives-began using the word, and using it a lot. Then as now, the nation had its usual economic ups and downs, but suddenly after one downturn, our nation was heavily laden with companies that had reinvented themselves. What happened is that after...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - One of the nation's largest money management firms, with assets totaling more than $1 trillion, is attempting to limit access to a divorce case involving one of its executives because it doesn't want its financial records made public. Capital Group Cos. filed a motion Friday in Superior Court in the divorce trial of Timothy Armour, 45, and his wife, Nina Ritter. The company wants a judge to seal exhibits, transcripts and other materials so they won't become public during the trial, which is expected to begin Monday. The request is unusual in divorce cases because third...

WASHINGTON - John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Wednesday opposed a bill to withhold more than $130 million in funding to the world body unless it implements congressionally mandated reforms. In his first appearance before Congress since becoming U.N. ambassador, Bolton warned Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the powerful chairman of the House International Relations Committee who sponsored the bill, and other members of that panel that the legislation would undercut the president's authority to make foreign policy. "I've been an executive branch official my entire public career and, for both constitutional and historical reasons, the executive branch...

President Bush came to Washington with the goal of serving as a domestic reformer. In 2000, he became one of the few Republican candidates to focus less on defense and more on reforms to domestic social programs and public education. That was before 9/11, and the ensuing wars in the Middle East. Then, it appeared that the audacious Bush doctrine would set the pace for the ultimate legacy that will be George W. Bush. However, early into his second term, President Bush has another opportunity to leave behind a sturdy legacy in the form of the court system. In the...

If I became the President of the United States tomorrow, the first thing I'd do is hold a press conference and condemn the actions of the Republican "moderates" who sold out their constituents during the recent filibuster fight in the Senate. I'd call them cowards for not supporting those outstanding judicial nominees who've been constantly denigrated by liberals over the past two years, and leave no doubt in anyone's mind that I was NOT concerned with my party, but with the moral and ethical foundation upon which conservatism is built. The second thing I'd do is denounce the Supreme Court...

The intellectual force behind President Bush's plan to overhaul Social Security, the man the president calls his favorite "Democrat economist," is not an economist. He is Robert C. Pozen, a lawyer and mutual fund executive who serves as chairman of MFS Investment Management in Boston. A registered Democrat, Mr. Pozen donated money to the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry last year and voted for him on Nov. 2. He was a classmate of Hillary Rodham Clinton at Yale Law School. But all that has not stopped President Bush from embracing Mr. Pozen's main idea to bring the nation's public...

The best way to understand the brouhaha over the Republican plan to invoke the constitutional option to prohibit Senate filibusters to thwart judicial nominations is that Democrats are very poor losers, but Republicans are even poorer winners -- so far. The reason we're even talking about a so-called " nuclear option" is that Democrat leaders remain in denial about their consistent drubbing at the ballot box. They won't accept that the public has rejected their message. They are acting like the ornery little brother who hits his older brother, and when big brother merely threatens to hit back, he goes...

A government of the people, by the people, for the people ... of power The judicial branch of our government has come in for increasing criticism in recent years and it seemed to peak in the Terri Schiavo incident. Unfortunately, the concern of the people over the actions of the judicial have somewhat masked the concern of the people over the actions of the legislative branch, the Congress. Abe Lincoln's famous saying that Americans like to quote does not totally stand up as to how Congress actually performs. When it comes to Congress, or even to state legislatures, you have...

The Citizen's Manifesto Posted on January 19, 2005 at 11:11:09 AM by George Some of the most eloquent words ever written in jurisprudence were penned recently by one of the most august courts in the world. Unfortunately these words were not written to heap praise on a government, they were written to chastise it for breaking a sacred oath to defend freedom and democracy. It is generally understood that there are three levels of government commonly referred to as the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. Their purpose is to serve the less commonly understood fourth level of government -...

A Tale of Two Governors & Executive Powers: Gov. Blagojevich and Gov. Bush By Ruben Obregon On Friday Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojefich issued an excutive order which requires drug stores to dispense prescribed emergency contraceptives. "No hassles, no lecture, just fill the prescription," Blagojevich said. The emergency order, which remains in place, is an example of the discretionary authority which a Governor has. How come this minion of the culture of death had the courage and will to exercise his executive power and Gov. Bush didn’t? Why did Gov. Bush claim his hands were tied, when he had the power...

When Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore refused a federal court order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from that state’s Supreme Court building, he became the central figure in a firestorm of criticism from the left. But his liberal critics weren’t alone. Conservatives also chided Moore, contending that his defiance of the order undermined the “rule of law” in America. Throughout history, the law has served several functions. In a free and morally upright society, it provides a framework within which the people can safely live their lives and pursue their dreams. In a dictatorship, however, it devolves...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Thomas Jones, Constitution Party of Georgia, 404-518-6106, tfjones@gaconstitutionparty.org Governor Bush Holds “Supreme Executive Power” – Florida Constitution Holds The Key to Saving Terri Schiavo’s Life ATLANTA, March 29 -- Governor Jeb Bush and the Florida state legislature have lamented that there is nothing more they can do to stop the taking of Terri Schiavo’s life. However, the Florida constitution states that the governor holds supreme executive power. Furthermore, the Florida House of Representatives has the constitutional authority to impeach Judge George Greer who has been accused by many of judicial misconduct in the Terry Schiavo case....

--"I don't want to send the man to Hell, just to remove him from Earth," he said calmly. --"But it isn't your prerogative to decide whether the man should die," came the irritated reply. "God decides these things. Courts decide these things. Not individuals." --"Well, who then is the Court? The Court is a collection of individuals. God is an individual. You are contradicting yourself again." --"Don't play games with me - you know what I mean. You don't have the authority to put someone to death. The Court does." --"Oh, really? According to whom?" --"According to the law, you...

So far, it appears Judge Greer has been given the power to let Michael Shiavo starve Terri Shiavo to death. Here are some links about Greer: http://www.jud6.org/Addresses/JudgesPhoneNumbers/judgeaddressandphonelist.htm http://www.theempirejournal.com/0228051_petition_seeks_impeachme.htm http://www.hospicepatients.org/wwwboard/messages/330.htm http://www.earnedmedia.org/tf0311.htm http://www.terrisfight.net/ http://www.anncoulter.org/ This is a petition to remove Greer. http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ijg520/ As for what can be done for Terri, here is the Florida Constitution: http://www.flsenate.gov/Statutes/index.cfm?Mode=Constitution&Submenu=3&Tab=statutes#A04S01 Here's what Governor Jeb Bush can do under the Florida Constitution. ARTICLE IV EXECUTIVE (a) The supreme executive power shall be vested in a governor, who shall be commander-in-chief of all military forces of the state not in active service of the United States. The governor...

Many judges these days like to refer to the Constitution of the United States as a "living, breathing document", implying that its text is designed to be flexible. It is not. The Constitution is a set of rules, and like any other set of rules, it is meant to be strict and uncompromising. Of course, the Constitution can be modified through the amendment process, but once ratified, any amendment becomes like the rest of the Constitution; rigid. And while any amendment may be repealed, as was the case with the 18th Amendment (The Prohibition Act), until that happens, it is...

President Bush just stated that he waits for this to go through the judicial process, BUT that he looks at all options from AN EXECUTIVE BRANCH PERSPECTIVE!

Since 1994, the Democrat Party has managed to lose control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. In the face of their obviously diminishing power and influence, Democrats have become a party whose activities and pronouncements betray a growing desperation. As they founder, casting about broadly, seeking remedies to reverse their diminishing influence, it is no surprise that their attention has come to rest on the courts. It can be argued that Democrats see their only remaining hope for holding onto political power in mounting a strenuous resistance to President Bush's federal judicial nominees. The court system, overpopulated...