Public Pulse

November 26th, 2009

Pig At the Trough

Pigs as you know are greedy animals and the more they eat the more they poop. Pigs will even eat others’ food to placate their own greed. Pigs will eat even when full to prevent others from eating.

Palomar Pomerado Hospital (PPH) has a CEO, Michael Covert, who is paid a handsome salary of about $582,000 per year (excluding perks). The very generous board offered him a $154,000 raise of your tax money. Not too bad for a CEO who has guided PPH into a building deficit of several hundred MILLION dollars for the new eleven story hospital. Wow, run a company into a huge deficit then whine about being underpaid! The question to ask is can one person live on a half million dollars a year or is that person a greedy pig? I think that person has a clever silver tongue.

Does this sound like Wall Street and the banking institution all over again? Who gave all those people the raises? The board of directors, that’s who. Now here’s a change we can believe in in 2010 and 2012.

/s/Dr. Donald L. Brust, DVM
Valley Center, Ca.

More on North Dakota

I just read the lead article in the November 19 issue. I was surprised not to see any mention of the latest excitment in North Dakota: the Bakken oil formatiion has made North Dakota the 4th largest oil producing state in the U.S. and is rapidly growing.

My wife grew up in North Dakota. Her grandmother bought 120 acres near Williston in 1910, for its coal outcroppings. The heirs still own the property. I have been administering the 120 acres since 1977. While we sold some oil leases over the years, we did not expect to live long enough to collect any oil revenue, but we started doing so this year. It is not making anyone rich, but it is interesting.

Horizontal oil drilling technology has made drilling practical.

As a result of the oil boom in North Dakota, the state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and real estate prices have increased.

/s/Eric Wormser
Escondido, CA.

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