"Joe Manchin’s daughter Heather was looking for a job. The now-senator and one-time governor of West Virginia was only a state level rep when he ran into Milan Pushkar—the head of Mylan Inc., a Fortune 500 pharmaceuticals company—at a West Virginia University basketball game. Heather was hired for an entry-level position at the company soon after. Records show Mylan benefitted from millions of dollars worth of corporate tax breaks in the state during Manchin’s gubernatorial tenure. And these days, after stints as Mylan’s director of government relations and strategic development, Heather Bresch (née Manchin) is the company’s CEO, one of Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. All this without even an MBA—a 2008 investigation found that Bresch did not actually earn her degree from WVU as claimed. Officials had altered her official records and covered up for it, perhaps motivated by Mylan’s lucrative relationship with the University—co-founder Pushkar (Bresch’s business world fairy godfather) donated over $20 million and had the football field named after him. Connected children of political families catching a break is something we Americans are plenty used to—there would be no Kennedy or Bush dynasties without the public’s acceptance that some people just raise their kids up all square-jawed and rolled shirtsleeves, ready to run for office. But the nexus of private business and politics is always one that’s skated over lightly in high school civics classes. Perhaps that’s why there was so much consternation over the recent revelations that Wall Street banks had hired the children of prominent Chinese politicians with hopes of currying favor with those who wield power over business decisions in the rising economic superpower. The hiring of so-called 'Chinese Princelings' has been a widespread one in the banking community; JPMorgan Chase had a 'Sons and Daughters' program that separated applications of Chinese elites’ children from the wider pool and held them to less rigorous standards. (The Daily Beast) .
"You are a reasonable person, so you would never say that you 100 percentknow who is going to win all the major Oscars — but let’s be real, you pretty much know who is going to win all the major Oscars this year. This awards season, like many before it, has been mostly locked up since the Golden Globes back in January. Sure, there may be upsets, but let's face it: Cate Blanchett is smart to have been practicing her speech, and Jared Leto is not wasting his time by experimenting with his Winner’s Ponytail. The level of suspense is ... minimal. So if you are looking to inject a little excitement into your Oscar Night experience, here are five categories that are not totally foregone conclusions." (Vulture)
"Last week, we learned that former British prime minister Tony Blair emailed disgraced News Corp. executive Rebekah Brooks in 2011 to offer his "unofficial" consulting services as she faced arrest over the company's metastasizing phone hacking scandal. And last year, we learned that Blair had also been allegedly fucking Murdoch's then-wife Wendi Deng in a bizarre love triangle. Today, we learned that, according to tax documents Gawker has obtained, Murdoch's News Corp. was paying Blair's private foundation while all this incestuous, wheels-within-wheels melodrama was going on." (Gawker)
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