THIS AND THAT

THIS AND THAT,

Each Saturday, I will endeavor to highlight several different stories that hopefully will jog your thinking process and be an agent dialogue between husbands, wives, friends, family members and the general public, if just one conversation is instigated from my Saturday post, it will have been a success. As a people, we need to share differing opinions, discuss these opinions and sometimes come to a meeting of the minds.

FORD'S TOP 2 EXECS BANKED $26.5 MILLION EACH IN 2010, (Detroit Free Press)

Isn't that just great, wow, I wonder how many hours they worked for their money and what they did. I'm guessing they weren't cleaning the executive bathrooms, or sprucing up the conference room, or cutting grass in their spear time. Both men, Alan Mulally and Bill Ford will be living quite comfortably with their 2010 compensation for the jobs that they did.

Mulally, President and CEO of the Ford Motor Car company received a pay raise of 48% more then his 2009 pay package which was a little more then $12,000.000. Total compensation in 2010 includes a salary, bonus and the estimated value of stock awards and certain perks, like the use of an airplane. Al also received a partridge and a pear tree at Christmas, so that he could fully celebrate Christmas with his family.

Bill Ford, Executive Chairman had not been paid since 2005, boosting that he would not take a penny in compensation from the company until Ford achieved a full year of profits, which it did in 2010. Ford's directors decided, in 2010 to pay Ford a $4.8 million salary, $3.4 million which was retroactive for 2008 and 2009. With stock options granted and several other perks, Bill Ford walked away from the board room with a total payment package about $60,000 less then  Allen Mulally. The pay couldn't have come at a better time for Bill, as it was reported that he was having a tough time arranging a Christmas party for his house staff which numbered more then 60 people.

Other top auto executives and CEO's  weren't as lucky as Mulally and Ford, as General Motors CEO Dan Akerson, American International Groups CEO, Sergio Marchionne both had their pay scales frozen at 2010 levels. Don't worry, Akerson will get $9,000.000 and Marchionne will get $4.8 million plus a potential $600,000 package of Chrysler stock.

These salaries seem outlandish during these times of hardship here in America and have served as rallying points for the UAW and it's 40,000 members working for the Ford Motor Car company. On the surface there rhetoric would seem to strike a cord sympathy with other union members until you realize that those same 40,000 workers received  an average profit-sharing payment  of $5000 in February of 2011.

When executives put that much money in the rank and files pockets, it's going to be a hard sell to the general public and other union members that those, that those people don't deserve their money. There is no doubt that Ford's health has improved greatly under Mulally's leadership. Ford outsold General Motors in March for just the second month since 1998. And Ford also was the only domestic automaker to get through the tough recession without governmental aid.

PRIVILEGED HEIR'S SEX ASSAULT CASE, (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

A multi millionaire  heir is accused of the vial, disgusting charge of child sexual assault, makes his court appearance and is out within hours to smell the sweet air of freedom. Not surprisingly, some folks don't think justice is served when the accused is allowed to pay a $500,000 cash bond and walk.

First and foremost, lets get one thing straight, no matter the charge, no matter the person, or his ability to pay his way out of jail through his families financials, he is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law and judged by a jury of his peers. That is our system, it has been in place for a long time and it seems to work relatively well.

That said, lets examine for a moment the charge and the evidence against the millionaire heir. The charge is child sexual assault.....and the evidence, that I don't know, it's an ongoing investigation and the Milwaukee police department is dealing with it. Looking for evidence, interrogating the victim, witnesses and the perpetrator. The background of the accused has not been printed as yet, so this charge could be the first, or he might have a long list of minor infractions, he could be a real sick puppy dog, nobody knows yet.

The accused, S. Curtis Johnson, heir to the millions of the family business of  SC Johnson & Son Inc. of Racine, Wisconsin might also be a victim of  gold digging individuals that have seen an opportunity to pad their pockets with funds obtained by a frivolous law suit.

However the case has already sparked a small  racial outcry of double standard, one for whites of privilege and another for African-Americans, Latinos and orientals. If that is the case here, outrage is a necessary action, but not only by blacks, Latinos or orientals, (people of color).

In an article penned by Journal Sentential reporter, Eugene Kane, (who is black) he points out the fact, (and it is fact) that blacks, accused of the same crime would be held for several days and in some cases until his trail. As I have already stated, (what Kane is stating is true), but for different reasons then Mr. Kane states, "most blacks don't have half a million dollars laying around." I know I don't and neither does my family and I'm a white guy.

Milwaukee's police force has been stained for years for because of their shoddy dealings, as has the prosecuting attorneys office, remember Bambi and her trial back in the early 1980's. Authority should always be questioned.....to keep it straight, doing the job that they were hired to do.

But early on, throwing out the race card , seems to me to be way premature. Lets let the system work it's way through the process, no matter the color, or the size of the wallet. We owe that to ourselves in each and every instance. White, black, yellow, or orange, we all need the same things and in the end, these needs are what bind us eternally together.

MORAL BANKRUPTCY IN LIBYA, WHAT U.S. NEVER SAW COMING, (Aljazeera)

American might, power and strength through military intervention has now come full circle with the assault on Libya which posed no threat to the United States. Another preemptive strike that made absolutely no sense to me. Humanitarian rights being violated, death human carnage, people being slaughtered, all made it imperative that Gaddafi needed to be removed from power.

Weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds over New York and Washington,  ties to terrorists and the attacks on 9-11 demanded that Iraq needed to be bombed into rubble and the leader, Saddam Husein be removed from power, brought to court for justice.

Afghanistan, not a preemptive war, rather a strike for freedom everywhere and a retaliation for an attack on American soil that took more then 2800 lives. To bring Osama Bin Ladin to justice, to rid the world of a tyrant, it was a justified war, in the beginning. Now more then ten years,  the mission is lost, the focus of what we went there for is gone. What is left is a dirty, aimless befuddled military action that feeds  nobodies interests. The Afghan people want us to leave, as quickly as possible.

Our world reputation has been ruptured, almost beyond repair,  and we are being revealed for what we have become, the worlds bully boys. We sell more weapons and ammunition then any other country, we spend more on our military then any other country and we have more nuclear bombs then possibly the rest of the world combined.

We spend more on war then on domestic programs, as a nation, we hunger for wars, it's what makes our day, war is what seems to give us purpose, it's what keeps a huge part of our domestic economy running smoothly and it's what puts decent paychecks on the tables of many Americans. I know of a little trailer shop in a small town in northeaster Wisconsin who now makes trailers for the United States military, employees at least a hundred people and is booming with the government contracts it has received

My brother in law has a small contract with the Fed for trailers, and it keeps him going during the slow times
in northern lower Michigan. I do not have a problem with these people that actually make war machines, if they didn't build what the military needs, somebody else would, so, why not them.

As a people, we need to check our priorities, we need to examine our morals and we need to check our elected leaders and those people that are planning our next war party, because someday, these Americans will put our country into a situation that we can't win, that will spell the end of the way we live in this land that is so good to us. We have been blessed to be living in the United States and we need to safeguard what we have before it's gone.