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It’s official: the energy meltdown has exceeded the abilities of the rather mediocre abilities of the governor and legislature.
Who called BS on the Pickens/Chesapeake con jobs? The Oklahoma Political News Service!
From the Wall Street Journal:
“I’ll get it back.”
About half of the investors in T. Boone Pickens’s energy-oriented equity hedge fund have asked to withdraw their money on the heels of losses of about 60% this year, according to people close to the matter. Mr. Pickens and his investment firm have lost $2 billion since peaking in late June, Mr. Pickens said Sunday on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”
His fund, BP Capital, will have about between $400 million and $500 million after expected withdrawals. It started the year with about $2 billion. A few weeks ago, Mr. Pickens moved the fund almost entirely into cash to help ride out the volatility in the energy patch, according to people close to the matter.
Mr. Pickens is expected to personally hold about 20% of the fund after the withdrawals, or about $100 million, after he does some selling along with his investors. He has lost an estimated $400 million or so in his funds this year.
The hedge fund has been hurt by the recent plunge in energy prices and tumbles in energy stocks. Mr. Pickens wouldn’t comment. Read more…
Related:
OKPNS: When Con Artists Go Bad (10/01/08)
OKPNS: “Sold Out Tour” Start This Week (9/2/08)
OKPNS: UPDATE: We Told You So, Again and Again (8/13/08)
OKPNS: If CNG is the Answer, It Must be a Really Stupid Question! (8/12/08)
The Corporation Commission races are heating up and the mudslinging has started. Is any of it true, and does anyone care? Hat tip: NEWS9YourVoteCounts
Just shows you that all the money in the world can’t defeat a man of the people!
Survey USA:
In an election for Oklahoma state House of Representatives in Oklahoma’s 53rd legislative District today, Republican incumbent Randy Terrill defeats Democrat Troy Green 56% to 39%, according to this latest exclusive KFOR-TV poll conducted by SurveyUSA. Read more…
Related:
“Flashpoint will be having Randy Terrill and Harry Coates on this Sunday. If anyone wants to give Mike some fodder, please send to me.” Susan Turpen
“In fact I think we should get together with Harry [Sen. Coates] if he has time and discuss not even really getting into a debate with Randy but merely pointing to the need to move more cautiously.“
“I suppose lastly I might ask him [Terrill] about his family tree”
Tom Price Jr. – Sr. VP Chesapeake Energy Corporation
“Am I crazy, it is 10:30 and I have had lots of wine but I really like this argument!” Otie Ann Fried – Fried Kilpatrick Guinn Consulting
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it,”
Adolf Hitler
OKPNS 10/13/08 Pucker Up Time for Chesapeake Twins
For politicians, especially those caught red-handed doing something wrong or immoral, lying has become the standard practice; that and releasing bad news on late Friday afternoon.The hottest races in Oklahoma are the two corporation commissioner races. Democrat Jim Roth, who was appointed to serve the remainder of Denise Bode’s term, faces Republican Dana Murphy. In the other race, incumbent Jeff Cloud, the RINO Republican whose inadequacies have been chronicled here numerous times, faces former state legislator Charles Gray for the 6-year seat.
What makes these races so fascinating? First, incumbents Roth and Cloud should be doing much better in the polls based upon their massive war chests. Up until the incumbents’ ads began airing, most polls showed the races very close. In the wake of his TV blitz, Cloud has opened up a 15 point lead over Gray according to TV Poll, and Roth has only pulled even with Murphy. Insiders believe Gray and Murphy will have mass media presence before election day, which means the current poll snapshots will see considerable movement in the next two weeks.
Two weeks is an eternity in an election, and as public interest in the race heats up, the regulatory philosophy of the two men could come in to sharp relief. Gray says he won’t take money from those he regulates, while Cloud appears to regard those he regulates as a sort of piggy bank. It’s a fascinating moral quandary for Cloud, whose slack work ethic is legendary, but if Gray doesn’t raise the cash to buy mass media, one wonders if we’re not headed toward another Gary Jones versus Jeff McMahan situation in which the public never knows of the transgressions of the incumbent because the press doesn’t care and the challenger can’t buy enough time to inform. Regardless, if Gray raises the cash, and the press shows even a slight interest in this race, it will be a very, very close race.
For his part, observers say Roth has raised more money than any candidate in corporation commission history, yet he cannot shake Murphy, who lost to Cloud in the Republican Primary for Cloud’s seat 6 years ago. With the collapse of his patron’s fortune, it just may be that Roth is so tainted that he can never get to 50%, and given the expected McCain blowout in Oklahoma, Roth appears primed for upset
Second, in a frightening development for the Roth-Cloud ticket, it appears the voters are at least partially linking the job performance of Roth and Cloud. Except for their sell-out votes, they couldn’t be more different. Roth is an energetic, openly gay liberal Democrat managed by a hapless assortment (the Chesapeake clowns; former Democrat party chair Pat Hall, the consultant to crooks Jeff McMahan and Steve Phipps; and of course, the the circus clown of Oklahoma politics, Mike Turpen), and Cloud is a Republican family man with ties to conservatives and a well-known lazy streak.
There’s one area where they resemble conjoined twins: they vote alike, especially when it comes to screwing the consumers and padding the pockets of the multi-millionaires, billionaires and former billionaires who own them. Roth is mounting a defense by going on the offense. Roth’s lack of private sector experience and his shady past has been well documented. His flair for melodrama is almost comical, but he pulls it off with a straight face. Is ability, and need, to fashion the big untruth far surpasses Cloud’s ability in that regard. But the Roth campaign can feel the heat: anybody watching Roth flee the interview at the University of Oklahoma recently saw a frightened man, and one only had to see a few moments of that phony and comical NewsOK propaganda piece to see a gifted and skilled thespian artfully pulling off a charade.
As for Cloud, his ads are predictably listless, bland drivel that lack the audacity of Roth’s but, unlike the dramatic Roth, Cloud’s ads do not attempt to spin the reality of how he’s voted or his own corporate sell-out reputation.
When former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerry was asked in the 1992 campaign if Bill Clinton was a good liar, he responded, “No, he’s an incredibly good liar.” The two incumbents, whether they like it or not, are joined at the hip in defending their foolish and anti-intellectual decisions and the misery they’ve visited on the people who put them there instead of guarding against those who bought them when they got there. If these races become high-profile, the incumbents will be doomed. If not, the incumbents’ war chests, or the lack of major funding for Murphy and Gray, will most likely spell the difference.
Related:
Video: “Your Vote Counts” Focus Points: “Problems in the oil patch”
Hat tip: soonerstudent
After refusing a (female) student’s question, Roth is seen talking to a student volunteer and pointing at the cameraman as he describes his blue shirt.
We decide to approach the student volunteer to find out what’s going on. He too has trouble explaining the candidate’s evasive behavior.
What did Roth not want the public to see?
The intrepid warrior, who battles corporations (yeah, sure!) and criminals on behalf of “The People,” got owned by a (female) college student.
After attacking Dana Murphy for her alleged ethical lapses, crimefighter and Superhero Jim Roth had trouble with yet another woman, especially one who wanted to question him about the massive war chest he’s assembled for being a good little boy and doing what his billionaire (and former billionaire) handlers tell him to do.
The sight of a full grown male Homo Sapien running like a scared little girl from a brave woman is priceless! Somewhere, Lex Luthor is laughing his tail off right now.
Jim Roth claims he’s motivated to put “Oklahoma First.” If that’s true, then why are out-of-state groups donating tens of thousands to this would-be Oklahoma corporate commissioner?
Is Jim really planning to serve your interests, or the interests of out-of-state activists?
More importantly, why won’t he answer?
Hat tip: soonerstudent
Related:
Domestic Partners: Aubrey McClendon & Jim Roth
The Lost Ogle: Aubrey McClendon: Translated
CBS Sports: In journey from lame duck to Dust Bowl, Thunder find home-court edge
From Examiner.com:
Viewed in retrospect, the content is hilariously outrageous, but this video from August shows an obviously uncomfortable Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon pimping a report by the so-called American Clean Skies Foundation (funded entirely by Chesapeake) that shows how making Chesapeake more money is good for America.
Enjoy the laugh as you think back on the good old days when people actually listened to energy con artists!
As our readers know, we’ve chronicled the ongoing energy con artistry that ran amuck over the past year, fueled by record high prices and the anti-intellectual global warming agenda set by the man-bear-pig himself, Al Gore.
There’s only one problem: the atmosphere that enabled the con artists to be taken seriously has evaporated. Funds for the smelly hippie global warming hoax are drying up, and the silly Pickens-McClendon agenda is slipping away as petroleum prices plummet. Read more…
Related:
Video: Chesapeake closes bank deal and the great land grab is over.
Hat tip: Newsok.tv
Penn Square Bank, Enron and Chesapeake
Oklahoma has seen its share of con artists and white collar criminals. In 1982, an obscure shopping mall bank, Penn Square Bank, failed and nearly collapsed the entire United States banking system. Corrupt bank officials had financed nearly $2 billion in oil and gas loans, and when the price of oil dropped in 1981, the house of cards collapsed, leading to the failure of several huge American banks, including Continental Illinois in Chicago, which was the largest bank failure in U.S. history.
That situation, caused by Oklahoma con artists almost three decades ago, is eerily similar to today’s situation: in order to avert a national banking meltdown, the federal government acquired Continental Federal, the first time the government had actually acquired and operated a national bank.
No doubt the national press (the pathetic Oklahoma press is in the tank for Chesapeake) will be drawing parallels between Chesapeake and Enron, but it’s the lessons of Penn Square Bank that are more telling today. Expect many, many more PSB analogies to Chesapeake in the days ahead as this crisis plays itself out on the nation’s financial pages.
The Chesapeake Board of Directors: The rubber stamp brigade
There’s nothing new under the sun, and the collapse of the McClendon regime is calling attention to the behavior of corporate boards of directors. In the Penn Square Bank and Enron debacles, rubber-stamp boards let corporate officers run amuck, with much suffering and pain the result.
Undoubtedly, Wall Street is going to be carefully examining the behavior of Chesapeake’s Board of Directors. The excesses of Chesapeake officials have brought much derision and contempt to the company, but the arrogant empire ignored the reality. While McClendon and his toadies were messing around with repeal of immigration laws and professional basketball teams, the stock collapsed. While they ravenously sought every nickel of corporate welfare they could suck down, the bottom fell out of their world. As Rickey Ricardo would say, Chesapeake got some ‘splainin’ to do to the stockholders. Meanwhile, a look back at the lessons of Penn Square Bank and Enron: déjà vu anyone?
Related:
From NDNATION.COM chat board:
“I had the opportunity to due some work for Chesapeake in the early 90’s and came to know Mclendon. He is only lying when his lips are moving.
Well today it turns out that he had to sell 33 million shares over the last 3 days due to an involuntary margin call. This stake was worth 1.5 billion a few months ago.
So he is broke despite a longtime pillaging of the company with stock options and overrides. He is the poster boy for overpaying for leases and drilling like crazy. He is the lead dog in the coming oversupply of natural gas.”