Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer: ‘Most Overpaid CEO in History’

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Bombardment: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer likes banner ads a lot more than you do. (Image: http://www.comm181.pbworks.com)

These days, political correctness seems to dominate academia and university life to such a laughable extent that comedian Chris Rock won’t even perform on college campuses. As an aside (and then on to Yahoo), here’s a very recent example of PC run amok, although we at Bud Fox News desperately hope it’s a tall tale: At Pamona College in Claremont, CA, the student government association (“ASPC”) voted against funding Pamona’s participation in a party called “Mudd Goes Madd” that was being planned for all five schools in the Claremont consortium (Pomona College, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and Pitzer College) because the party’s name is offensive. According to the Claremont Independent, one of the student hosts for the event released a statement that she received from the ASPC; it included the following passage:

We are disappointed at your choice of the name for the event, as well as your rationale for allowing the name ‘Mudd Goes Madd.’ Your disregard of the concerns of the mental health community and their allies trivializes the issues that we deem extremely important to our community. Further, the exclusion of the mental health community in the discussion of allowing the event name is inappropriate.

Chris Rock won’t be playing Pamona any time soon.

If NYU is anywhere near as sensitive as Pamona, then on September 9, NYU Marketing Professor Scott Galloway, looking and sounding a bit like Bruce Willis, put a bull’s eye on his back (and guaranteed himself a first ballot entry into the Bud Fox News’ Plain Talkers Hall of Fame) when he said the following about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer:

I think Marissa Mayer is the most overpaid CEO in history right now…A CEO who has made some of the worst acquisitions in the history of tech…If she hadn’t announced she was pregnant with twins, she’d be out of a job within six months…She got a reprieve from death row because she’s pregnant with twins. I realize how awful that sounds, but she’s going to go down as the most overpaid CEO in history,..We should put a bullet in the head of the story called Yahoo. It’s time to euthanize this thing.

Continue reading →

VW North America Throws Itself a Chapter 11 Party and It’s a Gas

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Lenny Kravitz took VW ‘s money but wisely endorsed Jeep. (Photo: http://www.psfk.com)

Charles M. Elson, professor of finance and director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, had this to say about the current Volkswagen scandal in which the company rigged automotive software in at least half a million of its diesel-powered cars to cheat on U.S. pollution tests (and there’s a chance the same ruse was used in Europe where as many as 10 million cars might have the shady software):

The governance of Volkswagen was a breeding ground for scandal. It was an accident waiting to happen.

It takes a real intellectual to point out the obvious, to wit: VW’s “supervisory board,” dominated by Ferdinand Piëch from 2002 until his ouster this past April, was such a joke that shareholders elected Piëch’s fourth wife, a former kindergarten teacher and his former governess, to the board in 2012. Well, even an educator of five-year-olds should know that after getting caught misbehaving as deplorably as VW has, it’s probably best to keep a low profile. So what did the company, founded by the German Nazi government in 1937, do for an encore?

Like a mid-binge drunk figuring that there’s no point in wasting a bottle that’s half-finished, it threw itself a big party, with Lenny Kravitz providing the musical entertainment. As reported by the New York Post: Continue reading →

Rutgers Football to Recruit from State Pen after Loss to Penn State

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

New Jersey State Prison: The likely home to some recent, and future, Rutgers football recruits. (Photo: http://www.wikipedia.com)

Having sold its academic soul to pursue big-time television contract money when it decided to join the Big Ten conference, whose network eases the guilty conscience of each school’s president with as much as $25 million a year, Rutgers, who lost to Penn State on Saturday 28-3, now needs to hire a public relations firm to deal with the ugly aftermath of its decision. According to an article on Forbes.com:

In the last [month], seven players have been arrested. Four, including Barnwell [BFN: felicitous first name of Nadir], are charged with aggravated assault and two face armed robbery charges in connection with home invasions during April and May. The seventh player, wide receiver Leonte Carroo, is accused of slamming a woman’s head into concrete outside the Rutgers football facility. [BFN: In addition, head coach Kyle Flood has been suspended three games and fined $50,000 for improperly contacting a professor about a player’s grade.]

These arrests aren’t the result of scholar-athletes getting a bit carried away after the big game; there’s no drunk in public or public urination here, not even a DUI. On the plus side for damn-the-consequences Rutgers sports fans, the seriousness of the charges shows that the school is making a sincere effort to recruit the type of law breakers who play football and masquerade as students at the most successful college football programs (this list of “most arrested” school teams reads like a perennial top 25).

Recognizing that violent criminals often make great football players but also trying to give second chances to those who have paid their debts to society, Rutgers will fill the seven roster vacancies by creating a Football Apprenticeship Release Timetable program (“FART”) for violent but trusted felons at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. The program, similar to one at Florida State, will allow prisoners to leave confinement for practice and games but not to attend class (since class attendance is optional and actually discouraged at most top football schools). Continue reading →

United Air and the Port Authority: Bribe or Blackmail?

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Seating on the “Chairman’s Route” was no better than usual…(Picture: http://www.sausedo.net)

Reported last week, the recent contretemps that resulted in the resignation of United Continental CEO Jeff Smisek raises a question often debated in the sordid aftermath of shameless crony capitalism: Was it a bribe or blackmail?

Back in 2011, United Continental, the largest airline by passenger volume (70% of traffic) at Port Authority-controlled Newark International Airport, sought to renegotiate its lease agreement there (and get approval for a wide-body maintenance hangar) as well as obtain funding from the PA for a $600 million extension of the PATH commuter train from downtown Manhattan to the airport. At a fat-cat dinner in September of that year, PA Chairman David Samson, who was appointed PA potentate by Chris Christie but resigned in March 2014 as US Attorney Paul Fishman’s “Bridgegate” investigation widened (to include topics like United’s dealings with the PA), did what any self-respecting New Jersey autocrat would do:

Halfway through dinner at Novita, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, Port Authority Chairman David Samson surprised the group with a request of his own. He complained that he and his wife had grown weary of the trip to their weekend home in Aiken, South Carolina, because the best flight out of Newark was to Charlotte, North Carolina, 150 miles away. Until 2009, Continental had run direct service from Newark to Columbia, South Carolina, 100 miles closer. In a tone described by one observer as “playful, but not joking,” Samson asked: Could United revive that route? An awkward silence fell over the table.

Continue reading →

Warm Up the Time Machine, the Socialist Mural Returns

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

A mural on a Russian apartment building somewhere between Kostroma and Yaroslavi… (photo: http://io9.com/the-melancholy-crumbling-remains-of-great-socialist-mu-1570875662)

…a Bernie Sanders mural on a barn in Kirby, Vermont. (Photo: http://www.necn.com)

Those old socialist murals that were seen all over the Eastern Bloc sure looked eerie and cool, in the process suggesting that a juggernaut of governmental benevolence was going to make things better for everyone: You’d be protected and taken care of, you’d be part of something great, you’d get to do vodka shots and toss the glass into the fireplace, and your side would clean up at every Olympics and chess tournament. Well, those murals are still there, but the buildings they embellish are run down, the cars parked in the lots are old and unreliable, and the people living there have a lousy standard of living (although the Russian Olympic team still does well).

Well, the socialist mural is back, in Kirby, Vermont, of all places, where an image of presidential candidate and self-avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, painted on a barn, looks enough like Big Brother that George Orwell would be proud. Despite a track record that makes the New York Jets franchise look like a roaring success, socialism has supporters in the US, and Sanders, the junior Senator from Vermont, is currently outpolling the wobbly Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Of the mural, the barn’s owner said,

You can see the concern in his eyes.

That’s not actually what I see; I see worry, maybe because deep down Bernie knows that the seductive promises of socialism make running for office easy but governing a catastrophe, as Stanford University’s Thomas Sowell explains below: Continue reading →

NY Mets’ Matt Harvey: ‘Dark Knight’ or ‘Lord Jim’?

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

A better nickname for the Mets’ Matt Harvey might be… (Photo: http://www.mets360.com)

…’Lord Jim.’ (photo: http://www.loyalbooks.com

Bud Fox News has learned that there’s an additional reason why New York Mets’ pitcher Matt Harvey, one of super agent Scott Boras’s meal tickets, might miss a few starts: The right-hander, an aspiring renaissance man (or so he’ll tell you) and an avid reader, has informed the team that he refuses to miss any more meetings of his weekly book club.

If you haven’t been following the Mets’ latest imbroglio…last Friday, Boras, a man who makes Bernie Madoff seem less than greedy, went on a “media blitz” to let the world know that the Mets would be putting their star pitcher in “peril” if they did not adhere to the 180-inning limit suggested by Dr. James Andrews, the man who operated on Harvey’s pitching elbow in October 2013. The next day, Harvey, who, when not pitching, brays like a donkey while paying strident lip service to being the team’s ace, came across more like a lamb when he said the following:

I know from having 178 [BFN: he was at 166 1/3 when Boras spoke] the year before I took off, I think the whole idea was not to exceed too much more than that.

Harvey’s apparent circumspection is a far cry from the beginning of the season when he said this:

I am here to compete and do everything I can to help the team win. There is no easing into it for me. It’s a season, it’s a game, I am prepared for that. I prepared just like a normal season. My mind-set is just like it has been in the past. I am moving on from the surgery, it’s been over a year now. We’re good to go.

Then again, in a cringe-inducing August 2013 interview with Men’s Journal, Harvey, whose blowhard bona fides are unimpeachable, vomited up this rather revealing gem:

I could buy a place now, but I’ve gotta wait for that $200 million contract. If I’m going to buy an apartment, it has to be the best apartment in the city.

Having a “PhD in people,” those of us on the Bud Fox News sports desk figure the last quote probably indicates how Harvey really feels. And we don’t blame him for trying to maximize his career dollars, which means Harvey, as a Tommy John surgery survivor, needs to be careful about in-game pitch counts and seasonal innings pitched, especially since he’s not eligible for free agency until after the 2018 season. But henceforth, he’d be wise to spare his former adoring fans his laughable “I want the team on my back and the ball in my hand” act, which started as soon as he hit the majors and now rings as hollow as NY Jets’ Geno Smith’s assurances of a triumphant return.

And it is indeed ironic that Harvey and his fellow bookworms are currently working their way through Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad’s answer to insomnia, in which the narrator Marlowe regales the reader with the devastating story of the title character, a sea-faring young man who, like Harvey, daydreams of being a hero (and talks a big game) but abandons ship to save himself when the Patna appears in danger of sinking (leaving the sleeping Mecca-bound Muslim passengers to fend for themselves), much like Harvey looking to protect his golden arm with his pusillanimous innings-limit while his team valiantly tries to make the playoffs after an ignominious stretch of six consecutive losing seasons. Jim spends the rest of his life running from his act of cowardice; in somewhat similar fashion, upon realizing that Mets fans thought him a phony and a poltroon, Harvey has already attempted a 180-degree turn from his 180-frame limit, writing a half-assed volte-face on Derek Jeter’s ridiculous website, The Players’ Tribune (note Harvey’s byline, “New York City Bureau Chief”- does he think he’s J. Jonah Jameson?): Continue reading →

Overconfident or Obtuse? Obama Gets Duped by Derek Jeter

Posted on August 27, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

He couldn’t even negotiate a simple golf wager without giving away the store. (Photo: http://www.telegraph.co.uk)

At a fundraising event on Monday for people who have not yet tired of hearing our president engage in snide ad hominem attacks on those with whom he disagrees, Barack Obama, who has played golf 248 times since taking office, told the audience that Derek Jeter, with the help of Las Vegas Sun newspaper owner Brian Greenspun, swindled him on the golf course back in November. Here’s how the president described the con:

And it was clearly a setup, because as we got — I knew Derek, but I hadn’t played golf with him before, and as we got up to the practice range, he was shanking balls everywhere. And I said, well, do you play golf, Derek? He said, I just started two weeks ago. (Laughter.) And Brian said, yeah, I’ll be his partner — because Brian is a better golfer than me. And we gave Derek Jeter like 30 strokes. And then on the first tee suddenly the ball just went straight and down the middle of the fairway, and we had to take a picture of me handing Derek Jeter money at the end of it.

Neither side of this transaction (nor its outcome) surprises us at Bud Fox News. Let’s take Jeter first. Despite a carefully cultivated and protected image, the former overrated Yankee shortstop has about as much shame as Kim Kardashian, to wit: In cooperation with Steiner Sports, he will sell you a single game-used sock for $409.99 (game-used boxer shorts and discarded deodorant stick are probably up next). This is a man who was paid $269 million in salary by the Yankees over the course of his career (and earned at least another $100 million in endorsements). So Jeter clearly isn’t in the sock-selling business for the money, but he’s doing it anyway, maybe because he’s an egomaniac and so disdainful of his fans that he thinks he’s doing them a favor by offering them a single dirty sock (not even a lousy pair) for almost half a grand. My God, after Roger Maris hit HR #61, he told fan Sal Durante, who caught the ball, to keep it and try to make some money off it. It is believed that on that record-breaking day Maris threw his used game socks in the washer, where they (and Jeter’s) belonged. In similar fashion, because he’s an egomaniac and probably disdainful of the president, Jeter is perfectly capable of playing the golf grifter to Obama’s dupe. Continue reading →

Sci-Fi Short Story Published as Morgan Stanley Research

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Morgan Stanley’s equity research report on Tesla Motors is nothing more than a sci-fi short story. (Photo: http://www.360here.com)

Bud Fox News has learned that on Monday, August 17, Morgan Stanley accidentally published a laughably optimistic equity research report on Tesla Motors (price target $465 vs $218.87 today) that was written by analyst Adam Jonas. The 39-page tree-killer was actually a homework assignment for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing class that Jonas is taking at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. According to the course description:

Whether extrapolating science into futuristic technology or conjuring new forms of magic, these genres imagine what might have been or what might be, opening the door to any possibility.

Jonas’s report does indeed open the door to any possibility, to wit: the fantastic price target is based on how much a currently non-existent division (direct-to-consumer ride sharing), which the company in no way has suggested it’s creating, might be worth in the sci-fi worthy world of 2029, by which time one hopes that analytical robots will have replaced investment-banking-compromised human equity analysts for the benefit of investors everywhere. On the company’s 2Q earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wouldn’t even entertain a question about what has become Jonas’s entire investment thesis: Continue reading →

Gallows Humor: Textbook Example

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

From the video above: Asked yesterday whether she wiped her server, Hillary Clinton responded, “What? With a cloth or something?”

This is a nice example of gallows humor, a noun phrase that means “humor that relates to very serious or frightening things (such as death or illness or the misappropriation of an avalanche of classified information).” Continue reading →

John Edwards Hired by Clinton Campaign as Hair Style Advisor

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Canada Bill Jones

Who is the real Breck Girl? (Picture: http://nypost.com)

Gaffe-machine Hillary Clinton, with each passing day resembling more a poorly programmed robot and beginning to make Joe Biden look as elegant as Fred Astaire, has her newest campaign advisor to thank for her latest birdbrained move. John “Breck Girl” Edwards, a presidential candidate himself in 2004 and 2008 (and the Democrat Party’s VP nominee in 2004), has joined the Clinton campaign as a hair style advisor, and according to sources within Clinton’s camp, it was Edwards’s idea for Clinton “to put part of Bergdorf Goodman on lockdown on Friday to get a $600 haircut at the swanky John Barrett Salon.” When asked for comment, Marian Etz, Professor of Political Science at Champale University in Trenton, New Jersey, and Director of the Spiro Agnew Institute for Clean Politics, told Bud Fox News: Continue reading →