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Industry

Enron's Skilling Sentenced; Bush Walks

Update of the original report for Truthout

[October 24, 2006]
Don’t kid yourself. If you think the sentencing of Jeff Skilling, former Enron CFO (criminal financial officer), to twenty-four years in the slammer means that justice has been done, think again.Ken Lay
First, Skilling got away with murder – or at least grand larceny. Like Al Capone convicted of failing to file his taxes, Skilling, though found guilty of stock fraud, is totally off the hook for his BIG crime: taking down California and Texas consumers for billions through fraud on the power markets.

Lawyers, Guns and Money

“Just Put Down That Law Suit, Pardner, and No One Gets Hurt.”
There are 200 million guns in civilian hands in the United States. That works out at 200 per lawyer. Wade through the foaming websites of the anti-Semites, weekend militiamen and Republicans, and it becomes clear that many among America’s well-armed citizenry have performed the same calculation. Because if there is any hope of the ceasefire that they fear, it will come out of the barrel of a lawsuit.

Palast for Conyers: The OTHER Memos from Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue

Greg Palast, unable to attend hearings in Washington Thursday, has submitted the following testimony:
Chairman Conyers,
It’s official: The Downing Street memos, a snooty New York Times “News Analysis” informs us, “are not the Dead Sea Scrolls.” You are warned, Congressman, to ignore the clear evidence of official mendacity and bald-faced fibbing by our two nations’ leaders because the cry for investigation came from the dark and dangerous world of “blogs” and “opponents” of Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush.

French Fried FriedmanThe Nouvelle Globalizer

Vicente Fox got a well-deserved boot in the derriére for saying Mexicans come to America for taking jobs “not even Blacks want to do.”
But Thomas Friedman earns plaudits and Pulitzers for his column which today announces that East Indians are taking jobs the French are too lazy to do. [See, “A Race to the Top,” New York Times.] Friedman’s fit of racial profiling was motivated by his pique over France’s rejection of the globalizers charter for corporate dominance known as the European Constitution.