Sims and Ebers, Birds Sharing Feathers
Justice has been served.
Bernie Ebers, the former Chairman and CEO of Worldcom, has been found guilty of cooking the books. He claimed in court that he was ignorant about accounting generally and specifically said he was completely in the dark about what his side-kick, Scott Sullivan, was doing when he misclassified billions of dollars in expenses as capital expenditures. I have to say, even if Ebers where ignorant of Sullivan’s actions, negligence and incompetence on that scale should be enough to put a CEO in jail for a good long time.
The question is, have the screaming “progressives” from the 2004 election noted the fact that white collar crooks really do eventually get their due? More importantly for those of us that live in Washington State, do we believe that crook politicians should eventually also get their due?
Throughout the 2004 election cycle, we heard plenty about how Bush was somehow complicit in the big accounting scandals that fell out of the economic bubble that burst in 2000. It didn’t seem to matter that all of the fraudulent activities occurred during the anything-goes Clinton years. Whining Democrats attempted to link Bush to Ebers and Kenneth Lay of Enron because the crooks involved had not yet been prosecuted.
To make matters worse, the case of Martha Stewart was tried first, resulting in the domestic diva spending 6 months in jail. There were plenty of pundits quick to claim that Martha Stewart was a victim of a culture that does not like strong women. She is out now and playing the victim violin to perfection.
Of course, both of these claims were ludicrous. Bush had nothing to do with the culture of corruption that developed on Wall Street during the 1990s; in fact, he refocused the government on regulating these activities the way the were always supposed to. Meanwhile, Martha’s case was simple and straightforward enough that it could be tried quickly. She was found guilty because it was just a little too obvious that she had traded ImClone on insider information (gotten from one of her close friends, Sam Waxal, former CEO of same company).
Eber’s case, on the other hand, was extremely complex, requiring extensive research and preparation by federal prosecutors. Kenneth Lay’s case is even more complex. That one requires even more time and will be tried in January 2006.
Martha Stewart got her due. Sam Waxal is in prison, even though it turned out that his company really did make a breakthrough in cancer treatment. Ebers will soon be moving into prison for a long, perhaps permanent, stay. There is little doubt that Kenneth Lay will follow. In the end, all of these excesses of the Clinton era are getting their just rewards. You asked for it and you got it. So, have you thanked Bush, Michael Moore?
But, where does that leave us with regard to the corrupt election in King County? Is someone going to pay for that? Are the same people that were busy screaming that fat cat businessmen were not being prosecuted also going to scream that Ron Sims, for example, should be investigated and prosecuted for his role in a fraudulent election?
Sims’ excuses are similar to those used by Ebers. Errors, ignorance, and “no knowledge” are the arguments used by Ron Sims, Dean Logan, and plenty of others involved. Ron Sims even falsified numbers with his famous claim that the election was more accurate than a bank’s accounting (he seemed a little surprised that people could actually do math despite his efforts to refocus education on politically correct propaganda). Just as corporate scandals destroyed the credibility of the stock market, fraud in King County has destroyed Washington State’s belief in democracy. Christine Gregoire is in the governor’s office, but few of us believe she is there legitimately.
Betraying the people’s trust was plenty enough to put Ebers in jail. Why shouldn’t he have a former politician as a cell mate?
Bernie Ebers, the former Chairman and CEO of Worldcom, has been found guilty of cooking the books. He claimed in court that he was ignorant about accounting generally and specifically said he was completely in the dark about what his side-kick, Scott Sullivan, was doing when he misclassified billions of dollars in expenses as capital expenditures. I have to say, even if Ebers where ignorant of Sullivan’s actions, negligence and incompetence on that scale should be enough to put a CEO in jail for a good long time.
The question is, have the screaming “progressives” from the 2004 election noted the fact that white collar crooks really do eventually get their due? More importantly for those of us that live in Washington State, do we believe that crook politicians should eventually also get their due?
Throughout the 2004 election cycle, we heard plenty about how Bush was somehow complicit in the big accounting scandals that fell out of the economic bubble that burst in 2000. It didn’t seem to matter that all of the fraudulent activities occurred during the anything-goes Clinton years. Whining Democrats attempted to link Bush to Ebers and Kenneth Lay of Enron because the crooks involved had not yet been prosecuted.
To make matters worse, the case of Martha Stewart was tried first, resulting in the domestic diva spending 6 months in jail. There were plenty of pundits quick to claim that Martha Stewart was a victim of a culture that does not like strong women. She is out now and playing the victim violin to perfection.
Of course, both of these claims were ludicrous. Bush had nothing to do with the culture of corruption that developed on Wall Street during the 1990s; in fact, he refocused the government on regulating these activities the way the were always supposed to. Meanwhile, Martha’s case was simple and straightforward enough that it could be tried quickly. She was found guilty because it was just a little too obvious that she had traded ImClone on insider information (gotten from one of her close friends, Sam Waxal, former CEO of same company).
Eber’s case, on the other hand, was extremely complex, requiring extensive research and preparation by federal prosecutors. Kenneth Lay’s case is even more complex. That one requires even more time and will be tried in January 2006.
Martha Stewart got her due. Sam Waxal is in prison, even though it turned out that his company really did make a breakthrough in cancer treatment. Ebers will soon be moving into prison for a long, perhaps permanent, stay. There is little doubt that Kenneth Lay will follow. In the end, all of these excesses of the Clinton era are getting their just rewards. You asked for it and you got it. So, have you thanked Bush, Michael Moore?
But, where does that leave us with regard to the corrupt election in King County? Is someone going to pay for that? Are the same people that were busy screaming that fat cat businessmen were not being prosecuted also going to scream that Ron Sims, for example, should be investigated and prosecuted for his role in a fraudulent election?
Sims’ excuses are similar to those used by Ebers. Errors, ignorance, and “no knowledge” are the arguments used by Ron Sims, Dean Logan, and plenty of others involved. Ron Sims even falsified numbers with his famous claim that the election was more accurate than a bank’s accounting (he seemed a little surprised that people could actually do math despite his efforts to refocus education on politically correct propaganda). Just as corporate scandals destroyed the credibility of the stock market, fraud in King County has destroyed Washington State’s belief in democracy. Christine Gregoire is in the governor’s office, but few of us believe she is there legitimately.
Betraying the people’s trust was plenty enough to put Ebers in jail. Why shouldn’t he have a former politician as a cell mate?
posted by Iguana at 5:54 PM
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