Monday, February 09, 2009

Detroit: Your GM taxpayer bailout dollars at work

On the occasion of General Motors executive Bob Lutz's announced retirement today, the following details in the April 2008 proxy report to shareholders are certainly noteworthy:

[Click on this screenshot for a much bigger view]

Plus, there's so much more inside, like: In early 2008, as part of its annual review of total compensation for named executive officers, the company decided that Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner's base salary would be restored to its 2003-2006 level. Frederick Henderson's base salary was increased to $1.8 million in recognition of his election as president and chief operating officer, effective March 3, 2008, and salary for Lutz (inset) was boosted to $1.75 million.

I find it particularly galling that GM makes it impossible to copy text from its proxy report in PDF format. Here's the message I got when I tried to copy and paste the passage above:

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9 comments:

  1. Don't you know how to use ctrl/alt/print screen and then use PowerPoint to copy from any internet page? Geez!

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  2. Well...hasa this blog changed to the GM or Autos blog? What does this story line have to do with Gannett?

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  3. Try password

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  4. copied fine into acrobat 7, maybe someone left the copy kill protection on by mistake.

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  5. Slow news day birthday boy? What the hell has this to do with the price of strawberries???

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  6. @10:05 Jim is demonstrating that he can do better than the reporter for the Freep.

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  7. Don't you know how to use ctrl/alt/print screen and then use PowerPoint to copy from any internet page? Geez!

    Do I hear a collective What the fuck? He wants to select text moron not an image of the page. I love it when people dont have a clue and then on top of that say obnoxious stuff like "Geez!". Do you have a clue? Geez! lol

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  8. Yeah, 7:23, that little trick won't work with a PDF file that is saved as a graphic and locked this way. The government loves to do this sort of thing, too. (BTW, you can save whole web pages with Firefox, but again, that won't cut it when it comes to a PDF file).

    What sort-of works is to print out the page and then scan it using OCR software, but that is time-consuming -- and of course, you must have a scanner.

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  9. 7:24 PM
    This has everything to do with Gannett, I think, and the ContentOne initiative.

    This leaves out the chunk of the story that's on readers' minds these days, namely executive pay and job losses among those who are not executives.

    Yes, I think this speaks volumns about what Gannett picks to include in "news" stories.

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Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

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