Ontario auto magnate Frank Stronach has ruled his Magna International with an iron fist for years because he holds all the class A controlling shares in the company and has milked it pretty regularly for ego (and money losing) projects like a racetrack and gambling complex in Austria. Of course ordinary investors have been extremely upset at Stronach's shenanigans but have never been able to do anything about it. So Stronach is going to help them out. He'll sell his controlling shares back to the company for a mere $860 million in cash and shares, plus further future payments and joint ownership of an electric car venture. Huh? Talk about Chutzpah. And Stronach isn't even Jewish.
Ex-New York Citibank employee Debrahlee Lorenzana is suing her former employer claiming she was gassed for being too sexy. Lorenzana figures she shouldn't have to "gain 50 or 100 pounds because my job wants me to be the same size as everyone else." Huh? I think your swelled head would probably take care of that, Deb.
Volkswagen AG is requiring that all production workers hired for its new assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn, take part in a fitness program as well as the usual job training. Saying the automaker wants to create "industrial athletes," a Volkswagen spokesthing said the local worker pool has a "body mass index that is high." Huh? This is a surprise? It's the US South, where, typically, a 2000-calorie breakfast is followed by a few burgers and a gallon of pop at smoke break time.
B.C. comptroller-general Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland – the province's top accountant – says the Vancouver school board, like many other boards in the province, can cut millions from its budget overruns by applying more stringent money management methods. Huh? Whatever gave her the idea that school boards, although in charge of budgets worth many millions of dollars, could manage money? School boards aren't made up of accountants, they're made up of often cause-based amateur politicans, many of whom come from within the school system themselves and so have a stake in seeing that all their pet projects are backed to the hilt.
"We're going to make sure you never have to pay the HST," shouted an earnest young campaigner for the anti-HST recall petition movement on a shopping street on the weekend. "We're going to make them roll it back." Huh? Instead I should be content to pay the PST as I do now, and lose out on the millions that the HST saves the province? I hate taxes too, but there's no logic in this at all except that it inflicts damage on politicans (good) and deludes people into thinking that by merely signing a piece of paper they can change government (bad). The tax is not going to be axed. Give it up already.
