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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: altair19 who wrote (182051)	12/7/2009 3:32:11 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 361967

Maybe Nike, Gatorade, AT&T and Gillette decide to no longer be Tiger's big sponsors (although how can Nike, with it's motto of "Just do it!" seriously consider dropping him?)...Perhaps the makers of Cialis, Extenz, Trojan, and Red Bull will sign him up...;-)

To: altair19 who wrote (182051)	12/7/2009 3:53:37 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361967

"As an enthusiastic amateur golfer, I would rather watch Tiger than anyone else.." He may be listed under the endangered species act, but he hasn't announced his retirement. His best test yet..keeping his head in the game. Harder to do than winning with a blown out knee. Look; nobody ever said he was a world of smarts. My Dog, the guy is a Stanferd dropout. Come back and see me when the stories are "Arron Rogers does Green Bay and Milwaukee in 2 weeks" and maybe there will something to get excited about. In the meantime, let's play some golf. Eight!! He's no Wilt Chamberlin.

To: altair19 who wrote (182051)	12/7/2009 4:02:34 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361967

Midway Airport Only Asset Chicago ‘Actively’ Looking to Lease By John McCormick and Darrell Preston Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Chicago, the third-largest U.S. city by population, is open to leasing additional assets to private companies to bolster its budget, Chief Financial Officer Gene Saffold said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Chicago Bureau. “‘Nothing is off the table’ means that we would consider other alternatives that are out there,” he said. Besides leasing Midway Airport once market conditions improve, the city isn’t working on other transactions, Saffold said. “We’re not pursuing them as a means to address budgetary issues, but we look at privatizations as a means of being better able to provide critical services,” he said on Dec. 4. Saffold said the city hasn’t hired consultants to help it review additional leases, though Mayor Richard M. Daley is “open” to considering it. Other cities including Atlanta are reviewing asset leases. Kasim Reed, the former Georgia state senator who led the initial count in the city’s Dec. 1 mayoral election, said last week that he’s considering leasing roads and parking garages to private companies to raise revenue. The Chicago City Council, voting 38-12, passed Daley’s $6.1 billion spending plan for 2010 on Dec. 2. The opposition was larger than in past years and followed criticism that he tapped too deeply into reserves to close the budget gap. Daley anticipates using $370 million in such funds generated from a 75-year lease on parking meters. Saffold said the city plans to repay the reserves. Revenue has been hurt by declines in real estate tax collections, income taxes and the loss of convention business to warmer, less expensive cities such as Orlando, Florida, and Las Vegas. To save money, Daley has fired city workers and pressured unions to accept unpaid furlough days this year. JPMorgan Experience Saffold, 54, appointed to his job in March, previously was managing director for national accounts at New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. Daley, 67, leased thousands of parking meters, a toll highway and city-owned garages during the past five years, raising $3.45 billion. The meter deal angered residents who faced malfunctioning machines and quadrupled parking rates in many neighborhoods. Chicago Parking Meters LLC, majority-owned by Morgan Stanley infrastructure investment funds, paid $1.15 billion to run the 36,000 parking meters in a deal that closed in February. Daley later apologized for how the parking-meter changeover was handled. The mayor is serving his sixth term and next faces re-election in 2011. Debt Tripled Chicago’s debt burden tripled during Daley’s two-decade tenure. The city has an AA credit rating, the third-highest, from Fitch Ratings, which revised its outlook to negative from stable on Oct. 2. That same day, Chicago learned it lost to Rio de Janeiro in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The mayor was counting on the Olympics to help bolster Chicago’s development. He anticipated receiving federal money for infrastructure projects for an event that organizers estimated would draw as much as $22.5 billion in tourism, construction and related spending to Illinois. Chicago’s efforts at privatization hit another rough patch in April when a $2.5 billion deal to lease Midway Airport for 99 years fell through during the credit crisis. The mayor wanted to use the proceeds to repay $1.15 billion of the airport’s debt, finance future infrastructure projects, contribute to underfunded pensions and plug a budget hole. The Daley administration’s problems with the parking deal and Midway Airport followed a successful leasing of the Chicago Skyway, a 7.8-mile (13-kilometer) toll road that became the first in the U.S. to be privatized when Macquarie Infrastructure Group and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte SA paid $1.8 billion in 2005 for a 99-year lease. The city will look to a Midway deal when “the market improves,” Saffold said. To contact the reporters on this story: Darrell Preston in Chicago at dpreston@bloomberg.net; John McCormick in Chicago at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: December 7, 2009 00:01 EST

To: altair19 who wrote (182051)	12/7/2009 11:10:02 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361967

Study: Software leads tech growth in Mass. masshightech.com

To: altair19 who wrote (182051)	12/7/2009 11:24:10 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361967

Francona Talks About Chasing Yankees bats.blogs.nytimes.com INDIANAPOLIS — Sometimes, Red Sox Manager Terry Francona must feel as if he sees the Yankees in his sleep. As Francona was answering questions about the Red Sox, he was inevitably asked about how arduous it would be for the Red Sox to try to overtake the defending champion Yankees in 2010. “They got a couple of things that make life difficult for us,” Francona said Monday. “They have a lot of money and they have smart people running what they’re doing. So you have to kind of acknowledge that. They’re not going to go away. I hope they don’t get better.” The Yankees had a major-league-best $201 million payroll last season, while the Red Sox’ payroll was $122 million. The Yankees have spoken internally about decreasing their payroll for next year, something that Francona said he did not believe would happen. “But that’s not my business, either,” Francona said. Francona noted how the Red Sox won 95 games and “it wasn’t even close to being good enough to win the division,” because the Yankees won 103 games. Red Sox fans probably do not want to hear Francona discuss the wild card before the 2010 season has even started, but he mentioned how the other path into the postseason was important. “Our division is a killer,” Francona said. “We won 95 games. It’s not easy anywhere. But in our division, it’s harder than people realize.” After the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the first nine games of the season, the Yankees were forced to explain why they could not defeat Boston. By the end of the season, however, the Red Sox were answering questions about trying to stop the Yankees. Those questions have continued into the off-season. “Again, they have a lot of money and they have smart people running it,” Francona said. “That doesn’t bode well for everybody. We have really smart people, and I guess we have a lot of cash, probably not endless. But we have a good situation here. So rather than worry too much about the Yankees, we do our own stuff.”