the McPhee Blog

The CEO’s of the big three automakers (Ford, Chrysler, GM) flew to congress Tuesday in private jets to ask for 25 billion dollars of federal bailout money. Now whether you are in favor of bailouts or are strict free market capitalist, this just doesn’t make any sense. These three men are far from unintelligent. Wagner, GM CEO, received a bachelor’s from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard. Ford’s Alan Mulally holds a masters in Aerospace engineering as well as a masters in management from MIT. Robert Nardelli of Chrysler also holds a MBA.

So the question is with all their education and experience, how could they not see that it would be a PR nightmare to fly a private jet (GM’s aircraft cost $36 Million) to petition congress to give them Billions of taxpayer dollars. It’s like driving your Porsche to a soup kitchen. You can’t really expect anyone to help you.

I think this is a good example of why businesses are in this mess in the first place. People at the top of these corporations don’t seem to understand at all the idea of cutting out excess. A first class flight ($837 round trip) is a good substitute in bad economic times for flying your own plane at a cost of $20,000 for one round trip. One Representative even gave them an out, asking which of them would be willing to give up their jet. All three men declined. These and other leading CEOs have shown that they don’t deserve to be the ones managing this bailout money. They obviously can’t change the habits that ran their companies into the ground in the first place.

Kudos to Congress for not only noticing, but actually pointing out the conflicting values. Granted Congress has to be a little worried with how this bailout money is being spent after AIG spent nearly half a million dollars on a retreat less than two weeks after getting $85 billion of taxpayer money. After all these Congressmen do want us to reelect them. Hopefully they’ll use the massive amounts of taxpayer money allocated to fix the financial crisis more wisely than these CEO lobbyist would.

> Wall Street Journal Story

I really liked this video.   There’s a bio at the bottom if you want.

[Bio]

Kate Micucci is a New Jersey born American actress and singer-songwriter currently living in Los Angeles. Micucci spent most of her school years in Nazareth, Pennsylvania where she enjoyed playing outside in the woods and playing classical piano.

Micucci earned an A.A. degree in in Fine Arts from Keystone College. While at Keystone she spent her time painting and making puppets. After graduation Micucci did a small stint watering banana and pineapple plants in Hawaii. Upon returning from Hawaii she decided to go to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where she received a B.A. in Studio Art.

In addition to her music career Micucci has held several roles on US television sitcoms. Her credits include a recurring role as Toni the barista on NBC’s Four Kings and a guest star on Malcolm in the Middle, How I Met Your Mother, Cory in the House, and Campus Ladies.

’06 – Four Kings (7 episodes)
’06 – Malcolm in the Middle (1 episode)
’06 – How I Met Your Mother (1episode)
’07 – Cory in the House (2 episodes)
’08 – Husband for Hire (Bubble) -TV
’08 – Bart got a Room (Abby Marcus)
’08 – Finding Amanda (Thin Girl)
’08 – The Last Hurrah (Susan)
’09 – When in Rome (Stacy Harper)

Micucci recently acted in a sold out run of Skirts and Flirts by Gloria Calderon Kellett at the Hudson Theater Mainstage. She is set to star in the upcoming film Bart Got a Room. She has also appeared in numerous television commercials.

So, it’s been a long time since my last post and a big gap before that one.  I often see things and think, ‘I’ll write a blog post on that’, but I never have (or take) the time to do so.  I have some entertainment entries I wrote for the Elephant Feather‘s entertainment online section that I’ll start re-posting here.  It’s not much, but it’ll beef up the content until I start posting real things.

I’ve been wanting to take up skydiving for a while now. More specifically, I wanted to try sky surfing. I’ve recently changed my aspirations to learn to wingsuit dive. What childhood boy didn’t want to fly. Now we actually get that chance. The video at the bottom is what put me over the edge.

Now, you do have to have some 200 logged jumps before you can even think about jumping out of a plane in one of these suits, but it would totally be worth the time and expense of getting there.

The man in the video is barely above the tree line. In my opinion that’s more of a BASE jump. However gliding across the country, well above stationary objects, sounds exhilarating.

I am aware Yves Rossy’s jetpack invention. Admittedly, his jet suit is really cool, however, it is not as practical for a number of reasons. A major one being that he has already put £ 123,000 ($ 239,000 US) into his jetpack. This puts the jet suit out of the range of most consumer hobbyist. You can pick up a wing suit from birdman for around € 500 to 1000 ($ 767 – 1535 US) depending on the type of suit you want to buy.

Even if the cost were equal I would prefer the wing suit to the jet pack any day. The former is far closer to actually being given the gift of flight. Rossy admits that he has to concentrate so hard on the operation of his flight suit that he cannot really enjoy the scenery. I’d rather strap on some fabric wings and fly. His main advantage is that he can climb in altitude. With a wing suit this is not possible. Neither he nor anyone else to date can land without a parachute, but there are a lot of extreme people out there working on this right now. I think in the next decade there will be a way to slow your suit enough to land without the aide of a parachute. Then we will have truly mastered flying.