NitrateVille.com

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... aid-i.html

Fred

Frederica wrote:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... aid-i.html

Fred

Why should Hollywood be any different then the rest of the corporate weasels? This is horrible news. The Motion Picture Home was one of the few places The Industry could be proud of.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

Huffington Post: Hollywood Betrays its Own

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-gu ... 65294.html

I think I hear Mary Pickford rolling over in her grave...

This whole thing has made me pretty mad. Wait till THOSE jerks are old and desitute...but they'd like people kicking them out on the street huh?

I can just hear it now: "It will never happen to me. What do you mean the market's down 400 points? I've got my money invested with Bernie Madoff!"

Et cetera.

Bob

What a disgrace. For all of Hollywood's huffing and puffing about "human rights" and all the billions of dollars they spend each year on trivial garbage, to close down the Woodland Hills facility is the final nail in the coffin of Hollywood the Citizen.

Years ago, the Screen Guild program would do weekly radio plays and the actors would donate their salaries to the Motion Picture home. Can you imagine that happening today?!?!

Ray Faiola wrote:What a disgrace. For all of Hollywood's huffing and puffing about "human rights" and all the billions of dollars they spend each year on trivial garbage, to close down the Woodland Hills facility is the final nail in the coffin of Hollywood the Citizen.

Years ago, the Screen Guild program would do weekly radio plays and the actors would donate their salaries to the Motion Picture home. Can you imagine that happening today?!?!

Not that I'm taking a stand one way or another on the corporate villainy aspect, but the Huffpo article was long on outrage and short on actual accounting. Health care costs are skyrocketing and they will eat us all alive sooner or later...and the last time we had to catch that horse was probably in the mid-60s. I'd prefer to see the accounting first.

Fred

Not that I'm taking a stand one way or another on the corporate villainy aspect, but the Huffpo article was long on outrage and short on actual accounting. Health care costs are skyrocketing and they will eat us all alive sooner or later...and the last time we had to catch that horse was probably in the mid-60s. I'd prefer to see the accounting first.

Fred

[/quote]

If you accessed the article that was on THE WRAP's website from the Huffington website, you got the facts, and the facts are that the MPTF was and seems to be well funded as far as their tax returns for the last three years indicated. But when you have Jeffrey Katzenberg running the fundraising, and he's lost millions wirh Bernie Madoff, one can only wonder what he's done with the MPTF's money.

The Weasels are loose! Time to go weasel hunting!

RICHARD M ROBERTS

Richard M Roberts wrote:

Not that I'm taking a stand one way or another on the corporate villainy aspect, but the Huffpo article was long on outrage and short on actual accounting. Health care costs are skyrocketing and they will eat us all alive sooner or later...and the last time we had to catch that horse was probably in the mid-60s. I'd prefer to see the accounting first.

Fred

If you accessed the article that was on THE WRAP's website from the Huffington website, you got the facts, and the facts are that the MPTF was and seems to be well funded as far as their tax returns for the last three years indicated. But when you have Jeffrey Katzenberg running the fundraising, and he's lost millions wirh Bernie Madoff, one can only wonder what he's done with the MPTF's money.

The Weasels are loose! Time to go weasel hunting!

RICHARD M ROBERTS[/quote]

*gets her weasel gun*

While I agree health care is overpriced (I currently have a lovely $20,000 or so on my debt for surgery and hospital visits last year...God bless America!) as said the articles cite that indeed the books dont verify the losses...in other words something is fishy here.

I believe in karma. That is all.

I see that Jeffrey Katzenberg has losses "in the millions" in Madoff's fund. Although I don't subscribe to the Wall Street Journal online, there is a link that mentions him, Spielberg and Gerald Breslauer, who is a financial advisor to both those individuals.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1229387 ... outset-box


Any Nitratevillain who does subscribe and wishes to follow the link should do so.

Although it would seem ridiculous that someone would feel impoverished because his book worth had dropped from, say, half a billion dollars to three hundred million dollars, I can assure you that the super-rich do not think of money in the way that I presume the vast majority of the people who read and post here do. While the amount of money in the Motion Picture Home may have been flush through the end of fiscal 2007, if the investment portfolio included Madoff's Ponzi scheme for any length of time, the loss might well be several times the original investment.... an asset that had nominally risen by 10% annually over ten years might now abruptly show a loss of more than two and a half times the original amount.

I should note that I was offered the opportunity to invest trust money in Madoff's fund about fifteen years ago after my mother's death left me co-executor of a trust. I turned down the offer not because I suspected anything untoward in Mr. Madoff's character, but because it seemed to me he seemed to be exploiting a loophole in the market makers' information flow, and that an investment strategy that had worked spectacularly well would suddenly fail spectacularly -- nor, I hasten to add, are all of my investment ideas winners; this was simply a mistake I did not make.

The general failure does not stop, as some sources would have us believe, at Mr. Madoff or the SEC's failures to follow up on various warnings. I listened as a 'Fund of Fund' manager explain how his organization spent up to $100,000 to vet each investment idea. If I had $100,000 to spend, I could dig up enough dirt to have Mother Teresa lynched in Saint Patrick's Cathedral; and the feeder funds masquerading as 'funds of funds', blithely taking their 2% cuts off the top to just funnel money are a disgrace. Nonetheless, to the unsophsticated investor, Mr. Madoff's history (ex-head of NASD) and list of clients must have seemed like the best of recommendations.

None of which exculpates the people who made the decision to cut back on the efforts of the Motion Picture Home.

Bob

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con ... 4a17f6a0a2

MPTF brass defend hospital shutdowns
Say shift to community care is a 'difficult process'
By Carl DiOrio

Feb 11, 2009, 05:48 PM ET
Paid executives and volunteer Hollywood VIPs, who together run an organization providing a retirement safety net for industry professionals, found themselves Wednesday defending a proposed hospital closure against criticism by employees and others.

The nonprofit Motion Picture & Television Fund last month announced plans to phase out by year's end an acute-care hospital and long-term care facility on its Wasserman Campus in Woodland Hills, citing severe operating deficits. Four weeks later, officials said during a media conference call that they were standing by the decision, despite the criticism, and emphasized that the moves will be mitigated by an expansion of community-based services.

The MPTF has established a network of "community care teams" to coordinate home-based health care and social services.

David Tillman, the organization's CEO, said the "difficult and challenging process" was prompted by balance-sheet problems. Fiscal imbalances were expected to grow during the next few years, largely because of decreased state reimbursements and inadequate investment returns, he said.

"We were reaching the point where we were going to have to draw down on our investment portfolio and, in the not-too-distant future, deplete it," Tillman said.

Last year, the Camden Group consultancy reviewed the MPTF's finances and recommended steps including the planned closures. The closures ensure that the campus's core retirement community can continue and community health care and other services can be sustained and nurtured, officials said.

"We all deeply love this institution and what it does and what it means and what it stands for, (and) we are all dedicated to seeing that it survives and grows," said Jeffrey Katzenberg, who chairs the MPTF Foundation board.

The MPTF traces its history to 1921, when Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and others created the Motion Picture Relief Fund to support economically challenged industryites. With operations funded through industry philanthropy and labor-group contributions, the organization maintains a 44-acre retirement village on the Wasserman Campus -- named for the family of longtime MPTF benefactor Lew Wasserman -- and six off-site outpatient centers.

Nearly 300 employees will lose their jobs because of the facility closures, and members of United Healthcare Workers West have staged protests. But 215 residents of the Wasserman Campus' main retirement community will not be affected by the changes, which are expected to take about nine months to complete.

"These are complex decisions, and they involve many different variables," Katzenberg said. "This is not a decision you can just open up to several hundred people for their input, for their debate. You can't run an enterprise that way."

Katzenberg, who oversees charitable fundraising on behalf of the MPTF, noted that the Night Before event, conducted annually before the Academy Awards, will take place as usual Feb. 21.

"The support of this organization by our community has been outstanding," he said.

Responding to a reporter's question, the DreamWorks Animation chief said he has no intention of curtailing his annual donations to the organization.

"I've given many millions of dollars to the MPTF and continue to do so," Katzenberg said. "Both my wife and I continue to put the MPTF at the very, very top of our philanthropy."

MPTF corporate chairman Frank Mancuso said Hollywood studios have been highly supportive of the organization's fundraising efforts, which also include the annual charity event A Fine Romance.

"Quite frankly, without them, it would be difficult to put those events on," he said. "The studios have been very supportive, as have many of the guilds."

The general failure does not stop, as some sources would have us believe, at Mr. Madoff or the SEC's failures to follow up on various warnings. I listened as a 'Fund of Fund' manager explain how his organization spent up to $100,000 to vet each investment idea. If I had $100,000 to spend, I could dig up enough dirt to have Mother Teresa lynched in Saint Patrick's Cathedral; and the feeder funds masquerading as 'funds of funds', blithely taking their 2% cuts off the top to just funnel money are a disgrace. Nonetheless, to the unsophsticated investor, Mr. Madoff's history (ex-head of NASD) and list of clients must have seemed like the best of recommendations.

Although someone I know works for a large, conservative bank which was urged by its well-heeled clients various times to consider investing with Madoff. He failed their smell test almost immediately (and by the sound of it, before a tiny fraction of that $100,000 had been spent) by refusing open access to books, his in-house accountant, etc.-- classic "too good to be true" signs. Like every con man, he exploited the desire to believe of his clients as much as the greed.

I also read that John Robbins, heir to Baskin-Robbins turned vegan diet book author, lost a lot of money with Madoff. Now how could someone who preached veganism have fallen for Madoff's pyramid scheme:

[Robbins] said that he had a few words for those of us who might be concerned that what we were doing on the planet was not important. He held his hands in a V-form with just the tips of his fingers touching and told us that our job was simply to stand and smile, that each of us who could stand and smile would be holding the wedge open for 10 more vegans behind us and 10 more behind each of them and so on until the wedge could grow big enough and strong enough to move over the face of the earth and help heal the earth.

That's some bitter irony there.

Must be the endive and horseradish.

Bob