Posted by
Catmman on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9:03:10 AM
While creating a carbon footprint only an impacting asteroid could love, it seems the Goracle, mankinds resident eco-apocolyptic snake oiler, is raking in the tens of millions in dollars every year.
How? Apparently by winning an Emmy, an Oscar, oh, and culling in money from a TV network which lost over $31 MILLION dollars. What was the Goracles take? Over $1million a year in salary and bonuses and $48 MILLION in stock.
Where's Gore getting the dough? From a tiny, lightly watched cable TV channel called CurrentTV. The channel is available in roughly 41 million U.S. homes (about half the viewers of ESPN or CNN) and over the last three years has lost $31.5 million while increasing revenues to $53.5 million from $23.4 million three years ago.
Something about this deal just doesn't sit right with me. Gore isn't just taking piles of cash. According to the filing Gore, who is listed as executive chairman, and his CEO partner, lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Joel Hyatt, each loaned the company $1 million to get it started. They'll get that back in the IPO. But the two guys also collect hefty salaries for a company that hasn't shown a profit in three years—taking down $491,677 apiece last year in cash, plus bonuses of $550,000 each for, in Gore's case, helping get the company new affiliate agreements, broadening exiting agreements, and putting together a management team. The two currently receive $600,000 a year in salary and are eligible for additional bonuses, according to the IPO filing.
By comparison, at the time of the Google IPO in 2004, its two founders were each taking home a total of $356,556 in salary and bonuses, while sitting on top of a company that had earned nearly $106 million the year before.
What really sticks out to me, however, is that Gore and Hyatt, who started the company in 2002 (and jump-started it with a broken-down Newsworld International channel they bought for $70.9 million) will have the kind of hammer-lock control over the company decried by shareholder rights activists and many of the same unions that supported Gore for years. According to the filing, once the dust has settled Gore and Hyatt will control all of the company's Class B shares, which give them 10 votes for every vote a common shareholder gets with a Class A share.
So the Goracle rakes in money by the millions. He's making the money from a company which hasn't turned a profit in the last three years. To pay off creditors, er, investors, the guy is going public with the company. From that he stands to make tens of millions more (depending on how the offering is received). AND as he sells the company "to the public", he and his partner will maintain an iron fisted control over all aspects of the operation, all the while touting how their corporation is all about "the people."
What a crock of bullshinola. Let us just gloss over the obvious hypocrisy from the media. Can you imagine if a Republican or conservative were making a deal like this? It would be plastered all over the MSM as another "evil, greedy corporatist" bilking "the working man". But let's not gloss over this little nugget: Gore is COUNTING on the continued stupidity of the public. He has hypnotozed millions into believing his gorebull-oney warming crap right? How hard would it be to target those same morons into giving him MORE of their money?
And just give it a few years. When the company has to finally belly up, I wonder how hard the handwringing will be? Will anyone point out to the moronic investors how stupid they were to invest in a tv "network" which has almost no viewers and hasn't made any money since it started?
Probably not.