Raise your hands if you didn’t see this one coming?

Fisker Auto­mo­tive, the strug­gling government-backed hybrid sports-car maker, on Fri­day ter­mi­nated most of its rank-and-file employ­ees in what sources said was a last-ditch effort to con­serve cash and stave off a poten­tial bank­ruptcy filing.

Fisker, which raised $1.2 bil­lion from investors and tapped nearly $200 mil­lion in gov­ern­ment loans, has “at least” $30 mil­lion in cash on hand, accord­ing to a source famil­iar with the company’s finances.

About 160 work­ers were fired at a Fri­day meet­ing at Fisker’s Ana­heim, Calif., head­quar­ters, accord­ing to a source who attended the meet­ing. They were told that the com­pany could not afford to give them sev­er­ance payments.

Fisker con­firmed in a state­ment that it let go about 75 per­cent of its work­force but did not spec­ify the num­ber of work­ers. It called the move “a nec­es­sary strate­gic step in our efforts to max­i­mize the value of Fisker’s core assets.”

“Unfor­tu­nately we have reached a point where a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in our work­force has become nec­es­sary,” Fisker said, adding that it was search­ing for a strate­gic partner.

Most don’t believe that Fisker will find any form of strate­gic part­ner to help bail it out.  In fact, com­pany founder Hen­rik Fisker already left the com­pany in mid-March, resign­ing as Chair­man of the Board.

The only ones left on board are 53 exec­u­tives and other senior man­age­ment.  They’re tasked with try­ing to sell off parts of the com­pany and see­ing what they can man­age to make a profit off of.

This puppy is going down.  No won­der they waited until Fri­day night to break the news.

Take the same shot over and over again, miss­ing it completely.

Make 2 of 22 and con­sider it a suc­cess by leav­ing the play­ground on a made shot.

Key­ne­sian Eco­nom­ics never looked so horrible.

Was lit­tle shocked to see this ear­lier this week.  Was even more shocked to see it was the AP that reported in the first place.

Once the envy of Indian Coun­try for its billion-dollar casino empire, the tribe that owns the Fox­woods Resort Casino has been strug­gling through a finan­cial cri­sis and pur­su­ing more rev­enue from an unlikely source: U.S. gov­ern­ment grants.

The money pro­vided annu­ally to the Mashan­tucket Pequot Tribal Nation through the Inte­rior Depart­ment and the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices has risen over the last five years to more than $4.5 mil­lion, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by The Asso­ci­ated Press through the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. One for­mer tribal employee says depart­ment lead­ers were encour­aged to off­set dwin­dling resources by seek­ing more fed­eral grants.

The Pequots, who once dis­trib­uted stipends exceed­ing $100,000 annu­ally to adult mem­bers, are not alone among gam­ing tribes seek­ing more fed­eral aid. Sev­eral, includ­ing the owner of Fox­woods’ rival Con­necti­cut casino, the Mohe­gan Sun, say they have been pur­su­ing more grants _ a trend that crit­ics find galling because the law that gave rise to Indian casi­nos was intended to help tribes become finan­cially self-sufficient.

“The whole pur­pose of the 1988 law which autho­rized Indian casi­nos was to help federally-recognized tribes raise money to run their gov­ern­ments by build­ing casi­nos on their reser­va­tions,” said Robert Steele, a for­mer Con­gress­man from Con­necti­cut. “I would argue strongly that fed­eral money was meant for strug­gling tribes. Cer­tainly the Mashan­tucket Pequots and the Mohe­gans couldn’t under any cir­cum­stances be put in that category.”

As long as they have fed­eral recog­ni­tion, casino-owning tribes are eli­gi­ble for the same grant pro­grams as the larger tribes based on large, poverty-stricken reser­va­tions in the Amer­i­can West. The grants, which don’t need to be paid back, sup­port tribal gov­ern­ments by pay­ing for pro­grams such as health screen­ings, road main­te­nance and envi­ron­men­tal preservation.

No word if any tribe in Wis­con­sin is try­ing for these types of grants.

…See. It’s not just “Faux News” point­ing it out.

To quote my iPhone app: “This is CNN.”

All at the cost of $12 Bil­lion over the last four years.  Next stop, Boon­dog­gle City.

From Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) on the Sen­ate finally pass­ing a bud­get.   It’s short and to the point.

Wash­ing­ton D.C. – House Major­ity Whip Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) released the fol­low­ing state­ment on floor con­sid­er­a­tion of the first Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­tic bud­get in four years:

“It’s about time.”

(No kid­ding.)

No fur­ther com­men­tary necessary.