Talk About The Gas Pipe Up The Ass: $3.00 a gallon and climbing. 200 billion gallons of gas per year multiplied by $3 equals $600 billion going from your and my pockets into big oil, big government, and OPEC (mostly Middle East) pockets.

Corporate Boards, Like Depreciation, Should Be Sued For Non-Support: Disney’s directors were kicked in the ass for the hiring and $140 million firing of Michael Ovitz, but were not held liable; Krispy Kreme’s directors stood by with their fingers up their doughnuts as the company crashed and burned, but are not considered liable; NYSE directors likely won’t be held liable for cue ball Grasso’s giant compensation and severance package, etc., etc., etc.

Questions of the Week
1. Do we really need the drug companies to provide more details on risks, as Pfizer agreed to do this week? Already, each drug advertised seems to carry a range of risks from limp dick to vaginal frigidity to crotch rot to gut explosion to acne. What they need to do is lower prices, stop spending gazillions to get their favorite ‘bribees’ elected, and stop pouring gazillions into advertising—hey, if we like it and need it and can afford it, we will come.
2. Should we, the people, have a food reward/control chip implanted? That way, the thins could eat all the good stuff they want and the fats couldn’t, until they got thin. Voila! Food could still taste good and America would no longer be a nation of the obese.

Weekly Citizens’ Award: To our Discovery Astronauts Eileen, Steve, Andy Wendy Charlie, Soichi, and James, Welcome Home! Whew!

Calling Superman: Dana Reeve, Christopher’s widow, has lung cancer. It ain’t fair.

The World is Emptier: We mourn the passing of Peter Jennings, one of America’s great newsmen.

Four Step Plan To Untold Riches: 1. Join Government, 2. Deregulate Industry, 3. Quit Government, 4. Join Investment Bank Specializing In Deregulated Industry. Meet Michael K. Powell, former FCC chief, who is now senior adviser with Providence Equity Partners with $9 billion in media and telecommunications companies.

Corporate Crook Update
1. WorldCom’s #2, Scotty Sullivan, got beamed up for five, twenty less that Bernie and, in my opinion, ten less than he should have gotten. A rat’s reward or time off for coming clean? I know the column Bernie would check.
2. KPMG’s tax shelter scam bites its first co-conspirator. Domenick DeGiorgio, a former co-head of HVB’s (one of Germany’s largest banks) financial group could face 45 years in the slammer for false docs, hiding bucks from the IRS and stealing bucks from HVB. KPMG faces a raft of possible ass kickings and as much as $500 million in fines.

More Bits Than Alpha: General Mills screwed around with its AlphaBits formula, trying to put in more whole grains and less sugar so the parents, if not the kids, would be happier. It seems the end result is illegible letters that easily crumble. Tate & Lyle, a world sugar conglomerate, says it is working on a solution. Hmmmm. More sugar perhaps?

Fuggedaboutit! When your computer doesn’t work and you end up speaking to an outsourcer in India, you may get dissed in a familiar argot—it seems more and more college level Yanks spending their summers in India working for outsourcers. There can be nothing that is considered sacred any longer.

I'm Bankrupt, Fly Me: This isn’t difficult. According to the US Census Bureau, each year 612 million people fly an average of 1,046 miles. Hmmmm. 612 million multiplied by 1,046 = 640 billion (+) total miles flown. A one cent per mile surcharge, or $10.46 per trip on average, would produce additional annual revenue of $6.4 billion. If the airlines can’t make it stick, let the government make the charge and fund revenue shortfalls, but please, let’s not make the poor people on the bus pay by increasing their taxes.

That’s Not A Good Thing Martha went to the slammer and now has to wear a not stylish at all ankle bracelet for dumping or lying about dumping or something having to do with dumping ImClone stock after receiving inside clinical trial info from its CEO. Now it seems those ferocious guardians of feel good might be implicated for accepting money to talk to analysts and investors about confidential clinical trial results—will our friendly neighborhood GPs soon be sporting Martha anklets?

Figure Fun: Google Market Cap $79 billion or about $260 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. or $61 for every man, woman, and child in China; Baidu Market Cap $4 billion or about $3 for every man, woman and child in China or $13 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. What does this mean? Absolutely nothing except that both are extreeeeeeeeeeemely overpriced and Google Baidu will end up being a bad word in either language.

Google This: Google won’t talk to CNET for a year because CNET Googled Eric E. Schmidt and wrote about what it found. For shame Google—how soon the mighty forget from whence they came.