Corrupt America

[Deathwalker]

Anyone can buy a pardom from bush

[Roland]

Almost like "Pardons grow on trees"....

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Deathwalker
Anyone can buy a pardom from bush

Nope, poor folks can't.

[David Floyd]

"No one" being defined as 90% of the population.

Sorry. "90% of the population" is not anchored to the bottom, either in the US or especially in a true capitalist system.

That would be true for communism, of course, or at least communism as it has been practiced anywhere in the world so far.

[Adam Smith]

re: 90 percent

Might want to take a look at the 2000 US Census Data.

'90s Boom Had Broad Impact

2000 Census Cites Income Growth Among Poor, Upper Middle Class
Washington Post
June 5, 2002; Page A1

The economic boom of the 1990s raised the incomes of the poorest Americans, held the size of the middle class steady and swelled the ranks of those with six-digit incomes, according to census data released yesterday.

I read the entire article when it came out, but this is the only part I can access electronically. Can anybody else find the rest?

[Sten Sture]

Yawn - the all big corporations are corrupt brooding evil machines thing is patently absurd... it isn't even true for Enron! It is almost a form of racism, and unfortunately a widely accepted racism that will probably be around for a long time because of ignorance about how large organizational structures work.

[rah]

Originally posted by Deathwalker
Anyone can buy a pardom from bush

Please provide a quick list of all the pardons that Bush has given out since taking office.

Then provide a quick list of all the pardons that Clinton gave out in his last two years.

The results will surprise you. (unless you already know that Clinton was scum )

[Roland]

"Then provide a quick list of all the pardons that Clinton gave out in his last two years."

I actually see my point based on the Clinton precedence. Why would you think Bush would change the practice ?

"...the all big corporations are corrupt brooding evil machines thing is patently absurd... "

Evil not, but corrupt. You must have a very narrow definition of "corrupt".... All are engaged in lobbying, and lobbying often turns into corruption, esp in the US.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

First, I didn't start this thread. Second, were none of the above malefactors being held accountable and punished for their misdeeds, then pointing out that such issues would need to be addressed is fine. Shooting rampage perps are in jail. Ken Lay is on a beach in Barbados.

Give the justice system some time. I suspect that some of these guys are going to pay back some of what they swindled. They may even see the inside of a country club prison. In general I would like to see large scale property crimes treated with the severity that drug heretofore has been reserved for drug dealers.

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

It's not just Enron. It's Tyco, imClone, Global Crossing, Lucent, Nike, General Motors, General Electric, ChevronTexaco. Is it every company? No. Is it a lot of the biggest ones? Definitely. And since they control most of the wealth, they have the most power to ruin the lives of most people.

Hyperbole or ingnorance? What percentage of the money in the U.S. is controlled by all corporations big and small? Who owns those corporations?

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

Who the hell do you think runs the U.S. Government?

Noone. Anyone who thinks that an organization as large as the U.S. government is "run" by any particular subgroup is kidding themselves. The U.S. government spends much of it's energy fighting itself, a proxy war between the competing interests of literally millions of people.

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Campaigns are run on corporate dollars. Bills are passed based on which corporate interest can lobby the hardest. The problem isn't Bush, he's a stool pigeon. He's the puppet of the oil and energy companies, and they loan him out to their other corporate buddies. Bush didn't destroy Enron, it destroyed itself, and Bush was lucky to dodge the fallout (so far). Especially given the fact that Enron single-handedly manufactured the phony California energy crisis of 2 years ago, I think it's pretty damned impossible to assert the problem lies with some braindead politician.

It's not only possible to assert, it's possible to prove to anyone with an open mind that the California energy crisis was caused by the California legislature and excacerbated (that word always makes me smile, perhaps because I can't spell it) by Governor Davis, his attempts to shift the blame notwithstanding. Californians know who to blame, which is why Davis spent his campaign war chest in the Republican primary propping up a right wing (ie beatable) candidate rather than restoring his own image or airing his own issues. Considering the fact that California is heavily Democratic it seems to me that Davis is aware that he is in trouble.

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
The problem is the nearly-unlimited ability corporate executives CEOs have to abuse their power and the trust of their employees and stockholders and get away with it. Ken Lay got away with it, don't you see? He's not being charged. He's keeping his millions. Who cares if his company collapsed, he made out like a bandit.

Some CEOs don't take advantage of the system's weaknesses and are good, upstanding people. That in no way means we shouldn't make it as hard as possible for those who aren't so nice to pull the same kind of crap that Lay did.

I agree. Steal a million dollars and go to jail for 10 years. Steal a billion and have a seat on the electric chair. If we cannot build a society with effective ethics, then perhaps it's time we took our dumb-dumb zero tolerance policies and applied them to white collar crime.

[ZoboZeWarrior]

I consider that when a politician steal money from the state for private use, this is simply treason and must be judged as it.

[Roland]

"What percentage of the money in the U.S. is controlled by all corporations big and small?"

What do you mean by "control" ? The final controller of money is the fed, and that one is owned by the banks and the speculators.

Political decisions have other influences of course, but those are usually extremely narrow special interests. The steel tariffs for example are the result of this.

I have serious doubts that anything will come out of the investigations. It'll take a couple of another bombshells to get anything out of this.

[chequita guevara]

Adam Smith, now that I'm more awake, Greg Palast is a trained economist, under Milton Friedman at U of C in the early '70s. He is, in fact, one of the Chicago Boys, though he didn't go to Chile. His expertise in sorting out accounting stuff has been used by unions for decades to ferret out where corporations have been hiding their money. He also has helped the gov uncover some accounting skullduggery with regardess to some East Coast nuke plant. These days he's a journalist for the Guardian and the Independent.

[markusf]

Originally posted by Roland

I have serious doubts that anything will come out of the investigations. It'll take a couple of another bombshells to get anything out of this.

I agree with you, as many of the people being accused either have seats on the stock exchange, or the SEC. Its not to far fetched to suggest that when your assigned to investigating yourself or friends your not going to find anything wrong.