Monthly Archives: November 2007

Friday – iTunes Random 10 + 1

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I left my iPod on the charger at home, so here is a special Friday iTunes Random 10+1.

  1.  Dream Attack (New Order)
  2. Lucky Ball and Chain (They Might Be Giants)
  3. Particle Man (They Might Be Giants)
  4. Halo (Depeche Mode)
  5. When I Come Around (Green Day)
  6. Borderline (Camper Van Beethoven)
  7. New Sensation (INXS)
  8. Guns In The Sky (INXS)
  9. Call Me Blue (House Call)
  10. Capital Letters (Ned’s Atomic Dustbin)
  11. Sk8tr boi (Avril Lavigne)

Email to Cynthia Davis

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I just sent the following email to my Missouri Rep – Cynthia Davis

I thought you might find this report personally interesting since I believe you own or are connected to a Christian retail shop.

http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=479

Excerpts:

  • At the Junxingye factory in China, the mostly-young women—including several 15 and 16-year-olds—making crucifixes are forced to work 14 to 15 ½ hours a day, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 or 11:30 p.m., seven days a week. There are also frequent 18 and 19-hour shifts ending at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. Before shipments of crucifixes must leave for the U.S., there are even mandatory, all-night 22 ½ to 25-hour shifts from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 6:30 or 9:00 a.m. the following morning. Workers are routinely at the factory over 100 hours a week, including being forced to work 51 hours of overtime, which exceeds China’s legal limit by 514 percent. Young women go for months on end without a single day off.
  • After being forced to work a 19-hour shift, one worker cried out, “Jesus, take pity on me! I’m going to die of exhaustion.”
  • Workers paid just 26 ½ cents an hour, less than half China’s legal minimum wage of 55 cents, which is itself set at below subsistence levels. Workers earning just $2.12 a day and $10.61 a week. After mandatory deductions for primitive company dorms and food, the workers’ take-home wage drops to a shocking nine cents an hour, 74 cents a day and $3.70 a week. Workers toiling 91 hours a week are paid just $30.61, which is only 43 percent of the $70.71 they are legally owed.

I would hope that you would make sure you aren’t selling anything from the Association for Christian Retail while they continue to support Chinese sweatshops.

I’m not sure if they sell things from the Association for Christian Retail or not, but I figured she would want to know. I’ll let you know if she responds.

Hat tip: Dispatches

Update – Cynthia’s reply below the fold. Continue reading →

Former Oracle Employee Files Suit
Against Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network

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A former Oracle Employee Files $13.6 Million Suit Against Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network for the Mismanagement of Stock Options and Use of Portfolio Reserve Loan
Monday November 17, 7:14 am ET

Seatle, Nov. 17 /PRNewswire/ — The law firm of Klayman & Toskes, P.A. (“K&T”) (http://www.nasd-law.com), representing large groups of Employee Stock Option Plan (“ESOP”) participants, filed a lawsuit on Friday before the New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”) on behalf of a former Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL – News) employee who had accumulated the vast majority of his retirement monies through Oracle’s ESOP Plan. The suit (NYSE Case #2003-214743) seeks compensatory damages of $13,613,860 against Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network, (“Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network”) for alleged unlawful conduct at its Seattle and Bellevue, Washington branch offices.

The suit alleges that Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network failed to recommend hedging strategies to protect the Claimants’ highly concentrated position in Oracle after exercising their stock options. The suit contends that Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network owed its customers a continuous and ongoing fiduciary duty to manage and provide advice beyond the exercise and initial deposit of Oracle stock obtained through Oracle’s ESOP. Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network represents, through its advertisements and solicitations, that its psychics are capable of seeing the future and thus should have predicted the stock market crash and the devaluation of Oracle stock. Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network promotes that it helps customers develop a customized plan that reduces risk and taxes. However, Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network failed to implement these services. As such, the suit focuses on the firm’s mismanagement of its client’s portfolio given the fact that at the time of exercise, there existed option strategies that would have protected the value of the margined, concentrated portfolio, known as a “zero cost” collar.

The firm is pursuing arbitration suits before the NYSE and the National Association of Securities Dealers for securities violations including the misuse of margin, the misuse of stock option plans, failure to foresee the future, unsuitability claims, misrepresentation and material omissions of fact, unauthorized transactions and excessive trading/churning of customers’ accounts. We would greatly appreciate any information from Oracle ESOP participants concerning the method or process used by Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network with regard to clients’ stock options and the handling of their accounts.