And so begins the next chapter in The Enron Chronicles. Yes. Well. I hardly know where to begin. First off, I thought the judge was rather optimistic in thinking he'd have all jurors picked and ready to go by the end of the day. This day. A one-day pick-'em session for a case that took 4 years for prosecutors to put together. But he did it.
I love the defendant counsel's view: finding impartial jurors in Houston, where Enron was based, will be difficult, if not impossible. Ya think? I mean, in a town of 4 million people, what are the odds that Juror X will have some connection to laid-off, ripped-off Enron ex-employee Y? Not too low, I'd say. Even if the connection is tenuous, like "I didn't really know anyone specifically but I stood by while my local economy tanked," it's not likely to me that anyone would be utterly impartial.
Yet I think the issue of impartiality misses the point. It isn't whether they would be impartial that should be the defining issue. In order to be truly impartial, you'd have to be wooden. You'd have to be a clod of dirt. Flat-lining. Is that who you want for your jury? I'll take 12 people with IQs in the plus column, thanks. I'll take 12 regular people who understand that literally thousands of people had their futures ruined by the horrendous malfeasance of these guys. (TrogDigression: my favorite datum in all this is that a jury consultant hired by the defense to study potential juror responses, noted that among 280 questionnaires, the word "greed" appeared 272 times.)
Fellow Trogs know that people like, say, Antonin Scalia aren't impartial about issues that are important to them. But that isn't to say that Justice Nino or any of the other Supremes are incapable of justly applying the law.
A judge tries the law; a jury tries the facts. If we can extend that capability to the Supreme Court, is it any less believable that a jury of 12 randomly selected registered voters would be capable of serving out their civic duty regardless of whether or not they had a personal opinion in the matter?
If the facts are shown to be with Misters Lay and Skilling, and their story holds, that's great for them. The truth, as I see it, is that "we didn't know" is a damn thin veneer and it won't fly. But it wouldn't fly whether people had a personal agenda or not, b/c it's a crap defense and no one believes it. The jobs of a CEO and a chairman are to know.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/business/businessspecial3/30cnd-enron.html?hp&ex=1138683600&en=6daa9c0db084e66e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/30/business/JURY.php
Monday, January 30, 2006
Monday, January 23, 2006
Jobbity Job
Good day, Fellow Trogs. Today I’m thinking about jobs. One current trend is an increase in contract employment. Not too difficult to understand: it’s a lot cheaper for a company to hire you as a contractor than as a fulltime employee because it won’t have to pay for your benefits, which are roughly 40% of an employee’s overall package.
Yesterday's NYT had an article about considering whether to become a contract employee. It's funny how the inherent assumption is that it will be your choice. The likelihood that you will have to consider this at some point in your life is not insignificant, and it will probably not have been your initial choice. Your initial choice would have looked like a fulltime job with benefits. Your initial choice probably didn’t include a layoff. Or a company that called you back several months later to do what you like to do, what you’re skilled at, for a salary that probably won’t cover the “benefits” you’ll now have to pay out yourself. (Language query: If you pay for them yourself, are they still benefits? Should I start calling my weekly grocery expedition the Food Benefit? Quick, get Safire!)
But while the article details ideas like whether you can afford your own health insurance and how much you like bookkeeping, there's no real discussion of the idea that you will have to put away for your own retirement, or what you would do if you were to become disabled. It doesn’t address whether you’re covered, as a contract employee, under Worker’s Comp. And it doesn’t mention that people who aren’t putting in facetime at an office aren’t getting promoted, either.
Hey, a job’s a job, and there are times when you do what you have to for food on the table. There are also times when it really is your choice, and the value of working from home and not worrying about dry-cleaning or having to commute and not having to put little ones in daycare is worthwhile. I'm not disputing that.
I just don’t want contract employment to seem like some halcyon holiday, b/c if the company really gave a crap about your having balance in your life, they could still pay your benefits and you could work from home. It doesn’t take a whole lot of vision to see that happy employees are better employees, but who can talk vision when that pesky bottom line keeps getting in the way?
As far as future trends, BlogTrog’s crystal ball says: When the baby boomers retire, there will be a lot less workers in the market. It's an opportunity for the workers who are left to demand better wages. However, I’m betting on a revival of Edward III’s approach.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/jobs/22contract.html
http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/laborer1.html
Yesterday's NYT had an article about considering whether to become a contract employee. It's funny how the inherent assumption is that it will be your choice. The likelihood that you will have to consider this at some point in your life is not insignificant, and it will probably not have been your initial choice. Your initial choice would have looked like a fulltime job with benefits. Your initial choice probably didn’t include a layoff. Or a company that called you back several months later to do what you like to do, what you’re skilled at, for a salary that probably won’t cover the “benefits” you’ll now have to pay out yourself. (Language query: If you pay for them yourself, are they still benefits? Should I start calling my weekly grocery expedition the Food Benefit? Quick, get Safire!)
But while the article details ideas like whether you can afford your own health insurance and how much you like bookkeeping, there's no real discussion of the idea that you will have to put away for your own retirement, or what you would do if you were to become disabled. It doesn’t address whether you’re covered, as a contract employee, under Worker’s Comp. And it doesn’t mention that people who aren’t putting in facetime at an office aren’t getting promoted, either.
Hey, a job’s a job, and there are times when you do what you have to for food on the table. There are also times when it really is your choice, and the value of working from home and not worrying about dry-cleaning or having to commute and not having to put little ones in daycare is worthwhile. I'm not disputing that.
I just don’t want contract employment to seem like some halcyon holiday, b/c if the company really gave a crap about your having balance in your life, they could still pay your benefits and you could work from home. It doesn’t take a whole lot of vision to see that happy employees are better employees, but who can talk vision when that pesky bottom line keeps getting in the way?
As far as future trends, BlogTrog’s crystal ball says: When the baby boomers retire, there will be a lot less workers in the market. It's an opportunity for the workers who are left to demand better wages. However, I’m betting on a revival of Edward III’s approach.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/jobs/22contract.html
http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/laborer1.html
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Preemptive Clarity
I don't want to bore you insensate with my take on the law, nor is it my goal to alienate prospective employers, but am I the only person connected with the law who thinks a little proofreading would go a long way?
How many cases would not exist if the writing of a statute were clear? Hundreds, I can assure you. Maybe thousands--I stopped counting after my eyes glazed over during first year. Here's a classic example of what I mean: If there is a sign at the front of the park that says "No vehicles allowed" does that include bicycles? You might think of what constitutes a vehicle, look at the dictionary definition, try to determine what the writer of the sign meant, what the local customs are, etc. There are any number of ways to try to determine whether it includes bicycles.
These are not morons writing these statutes, mind you. These are legislators, a number of whom are lawyers and have read extensively about the very problem I just detailed to you in Paragraph 2. So how come they write in a resolution just three days after 9/11 that the President can use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the terrorist acts? Here's what the effect of that action is. A guy named Dick Cheney is now running around telling people that the National Security Agency's program of domestic eavesdroppping is totally legit, "critical to the national security of the United States," and has "helped us to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people." (TrogDigression: did we even know who was responsible for the terrorist acts three days after 9/11?)
This is exactly the kind of rhetorical spew this Administration has been putting out for five years. Why does no one insist on specifics? If it has helped, I'd like to know precisely how. When Cheney says the program "saved thousands of lives" I want to know how he derived that datum. It's my money that's funding this, so I think I'm entitled to the same inside knowledge as any other shareholder would get. We The People, Inc. has some splainin' to do.
If Congress had specificed exactly what 'necessary and appropriate force' meant, they might not have included spying on email and phonecalls of Americans to their overseas friends and families. We'll never know. But it does make me think twice about emailing my college friends who live abroad. Or at least curtailing the detail in those emails. And when I have to limit my own voice so I can go on being as threatless to my gov as I was before they snooped on that email, how is that not an infringement on my First Amendment right?
Vague=evil. You read it here first.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/20/cheney.wiretap
How many cases would not exist if the writing of a statute were clear? Hundreds, I can assure you. Maybe thousands--I stopped counting after my eyes glazed over during first year. Here's a classic example of what I mean: If there is a sign at the front of the park that says "No vehicles allowed" does that include bicycles? You might think of what constitutes a vehicle, look at the dictionary definition, try to determine what the writer of the sign meant, what the local customs are, etc. There are any number of ways to try to determine whether it includes bicycles.
These are not morons writing these statutes, mind you. These are legislators, a number of whom are lawyers and have read extensively about the very problem I just detailed to you in Paragraph 2. So how come they write in a resolution just three days after 9/11 that the President can use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the terrorist acts? Here's what the effect of that action is. A guy named Dick Cheney is now running around telling people that the National Security Agency's program of domestic eavesdroppping is totally legit, "critical to the national security of the United States," and has "helped us to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people." (TrogDigression: did we even know who was responsible for the terrorist acts three days after 9/11?)
This is exactly the kind of rhetorical spew this Administration has been putting out for five years. Why does no one insist on specifics? If it has helped, I'd like to know precisely how. When Cheney says the program "saved thousands of lives" I want to know how he derived that datum. It's my money that's funding this, so I think I'm entitled to the same inside knowledge as any other shareholder would get. We The People, Inc. has some splainin' to do.
If Congress had specificed exactly what 'necessary and appropriate force' meant, they might not have included spying on email and phonecalls of Americans to their overseas friends and families. We'll never know. But it does make me think twice about emailing my college friends who live abroad. Or at least curtailing the detail in those emails. And when I have to limit my own voice so I can go on being as threatless to my gov as I was before they snooped on that email, how is that not an infringement on my First Amendment right?
Vague=evil. You read it here first.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/20/cheney.wiretap
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Truth
So apparently James Frey glossed over, or outright lied, depending on whom you read, about the veracity of his book A Million Little Pieces.
I heard a book critic speak about several other authors whose stories may or may not have been perfectly honest, notably Augusten Burroughs' Running With Scissors. Today I see that Elie Weisel's Night, which has just been retranslated into English, has a few mistakes. Night is Weisel's memoir of living through a concentration camp during the Holocaust.
So here's today's point. Why does it matter, or does it actually matter, if what an author purports to be true isn't exactly as it happened? And frankly, why do we accord more validity to the one saying it's untrue than to the original storyteller? Late sociologist Robert Merton said that if you define your reality as true, then it's true. So if Burroughs saw a situation one way and that became for him the truth and he wrote about it as such, is it valid/does it matter for another person who was part of his story to debate the veracity of what he's written? Is Weisel's story any less horrifying b/c he can't remember exactly how old he was when he entered the camp?
Or is it the fact that the author has actually said, "This is the truth" that is so upsetting to us? It's more the sense that we've been lied to, that we've misplaced our sympathies, that we were taken for a ride.
But if that's the case, that we don't like being lied to, how come The Smoking Gun, which came up with the dirt on Frey in the first place, isn't positively ripping on White House spokesman Scott McClellan every waking day?
Hunter S. Thompson wrote for years about drug-addled activities in the first person, and developed a cult following of um, recreational-drug supporters, but said repeatedly that none of it was true b/c if it had been, he'd be dead by now. (Actually, Hunter is dead now. But by his own gun, not from massive amounts of mescaline consumed in the Nevada desert.)
If I read a story that seems like an account of the author's life, is it any less meaningful if I find out the author tweaked it a bit? Don't movies do that all the time? I think we can all agree on the value of editing, prior post re: the quality of that editing notwithstanding. We happily endure the idea that someone else will determine the end-product that gets to us. It occurs in all media all the time. (I mean, I think my ass would give out if I were forced to sit through the entire contents of War and Peace on film, no?)
I just don't see the big deal. Whether it's 100% true or even not true, who cares? If it's a compelling tale and you're somehow changed for interacting with it, I think it's done its job.
Seems like we're holding Frey up to some standard the rest of us don't strictly adhere to and I don't understand why.
And frankly, when you become a grownup, believing 100% of what someone tells you gets you branded a naif.
I heard a book critic speak about several other authors whose stories may or may not have been perfectly honest, notably Augusten Burroughs' Running With Scissors. Today I see that Elie Weisel's Night, which has just been retranslated into English, has a few mistakes. Night is Weisel's memoir of living through a concentration camp during the Holocaust.
So here's today's point. Why does it matter, or does it actually matter, if what an author purports to be true isn't exactly as it happened? And frankly, why do we accord more validity to the one saying it's untrue than to the original storyteller? Late sociologist Robert Merton said that if you define your reality as true, then it's true. So if Burroughs saw a situation one way and that became for him the truth and he wrote about it as such, is it valid/does it matter for another person who was part of his story to debate the veracity of what he's written? Is Weisel's story any less horrifying b/c he can't remember exactly how old he was when he entered the camp?
Or is it the fact that the author has actually said, "This is the truth" that is so upsetting to us? It's more the sense that we've been lied to, that we've misplaced our sympathies, that we were taken for a ride.
But if that's the case, that we don't like being lied to, how come The Smoking Gun, which came up with the dirt on Frey in the first place, isn't positively ripping on White House spokesman Scott McClellan every waking day?
Hunter S. Thompson wrote for years about drug-addled activities in the first person, and developed a cult following of um, recreational-drug supporters, but said repeatedly that none of it was true b/c if it had been, he'd be dead by now. (Actually, Hunter is dead now. But by his own gun, not from massive amounts of mescaline consumed in the Nevada desert.)
If I read a story that seems like an account of the author's life, is it any less meaningful if I find out the author tweaked it a bit? Don't movies do that all the time? I think we can all agree on the value of editing, prior post re: the quality of that editing notwithstanding. We happily endure the idea that someone else will determine the end-product that gets to us. It occurs in all media all the time. (I mean, I think my ass would give out if I were forced to sit through the entire contents of War and Peace on film, no?)
I just don't see the big deal. Whether it's 100% true or even not true, who cares? If it's a compelling tale and you're somehow changed for interacting with it, I think it's done its job.
Seems like we're holding Frey up to some standard the rest of us don't strictly adhere to and I don't understand why.
And frankly, when you become a grownup, believing 100% of what someone tells you gets you branded a naif.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Why is this News?
Every now and again I run across some article that makes me hope no one actually spent money on the study it trumpets. Ridiculous: I know a grant went to the researchers. But did we really need to spend money to know that smoking is bad for you or that if you eat butter 10 times a day your cholesterol will go through the roof?
I mean, maybe if you're not a Court watcher, you find it newsworthy that the Supreme Court did its job in leaving the states alone both in the matter of the Oregon assisted-suicide case and the New Hampshire abortion case. I could understand that. But you'd have to be seriously demented to think the following counts as news:
Traffic Officer Knocked Unconcious
Look, I sincerely hope for the officer and his family that he's OK. But way worse stuff happens all the time where I live, and where you live, and it doesn't make national newswires.
Today's rant is not about the poor traffic cop. It's about the editing judgment or lack thereof of people who edit news for a living and how it's gone from bad to worse. It's offensive. It's insulting. What are we doing about this? Oh right--nothing.
Here are some more headlines from NewsNet5, a TV station in Ohio. I love these:
Man Buries Car, Reports it Stolen
Come on. Some drunk woman drove down my street in August 2004 and totalled my car and told the police someone else had stolen her car before the incident. No news crews came by about it. And I was even home all day that day. Yes, this guy's a criminal and probably engaged in insurance fraud. But Ken Lay and Dennis K. and Bernie E. did a lot worse; by a depth-of-damage ratio they should be a news headline every single day and yet they're not.
Akron Zoo Holds Contest For Naming Jaguar Cubs
You have to be kidding me. Wal-Mart won't pay its workers' health insurance, my car gets totalled, the world is in shambles, and this is news? Maybe there's something I just don't get. If my fellow Trogs (you know--both of you) feel like this is truly news, do us all a favor, email me with your name suggestions for the jaguar cubs, and I promise I'll send them to the Akron Zoo speedy quick. Hell, if it's true I'm just an imbecile, I'm just misinterpreting everything, the naming gig is probably some sort of public service. So hop to it--those cubs ain't gettin' any younger.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com
http://www.newsnet5.com/news/6206516/detail.html
http://www.newsnet5.com/akroncanton/6154562/detail.html
http://www.newsnet5.com/akroncanton/6154562/detail.html
I mean, maybe if you're not a Court watcher, you find it newsworthy that the Supreme Court did its job in leaving the states alone both in the matter of the Oregon assisted-suicide case and the New Hampshire abortion case. I could understand that. But you'd have to be seriously demented to think the following counts as news:
Traffic Officer Knocked Unconcious
Look, I sincerely hope for the officer and his family that he's OK. But way worse stuff happens all the time where I live, and where you live, and it doesn't make national newswires.
Today's rant is not about the poor traffic cop. It's about the editing judgment or lack thereof of people who edit news for a living and how it's gone from bad to worse. It's offensive. It's insulting. What are we doing about this? Oh right--nothing.
Here are some more headlines from NewsNet5, a TV station in Ohio. I love these:
Man Buries Car, Reports it Stolen
Come on. Some drunk woman drove down my street in August 2004 and totalled my car and told the police someone else had stolen her car before the incident. No news crews came by about it. And I was even home all day that day. Yes, this guy's a criminal and probably engaged in insurance fraud. But Ken Lay and Dennis K. and Bernie E. did a lot worse; by a depth-of-damage ratio they should be a news headline every single day and yet they're not.
Akron Zoo Holds Contest For Naming Jaguar Cubs
You have to be kidding me. Wal-Mart won't pay its workers' health insurance, my car gets totalled, the world is in shambles, and this is news? Maybe there's something I just don't get. If my fellow Trogs (you know--both of you) feel like this is truly news, do us all a favor, email me with your name suggestions for the jaguar cubs, and I promise I'll send them to the Akron Zoo speedy quick. Hell, if it's true I'm just an imbecile, I'm just misinterpreting everything, the naming gig is probably some sort of public service. So hop to it--those cubs ain't gettin' any younger.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com
http://www.newsnet5.com/news/6206516/detail.html
http://www.newsnet5.com/akroncanton/6154562/detail.html
http://www.newsnet5.com/akroncanton/6154562/detail.html
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Wal-Martyr
I think it's great the way Wal-Mart positions itself as Wal-Martyr by hiring no less than four lobbying firms, per the NYT, to rail against Maryland's holding it to the law. Apparently, companies in Maryland with 10,000 or more employees have to spend 8 percent of their payrolls on health insurance, or else pay the difference into a state Medicaid fund. Statewide, there are only four companies that fall into this category. Johns Hopkins does it, so does Giant Foods. So does military contractor Northrop Grumman. That leaves W-M.
Fellow Trogs may recall that this is actually the second time the MD Legislature voted on this bill. The first time, Governor Erlich vetoed it, with a senior Wal-Mart executive sitting right next to him as he did so. I wonder if said executive got to keep that pen.
What percentage of its payroll does W-M spend on its employees' healthcare? We don't know b/c they don't divulge that. Hmm. Isn't W-M a public company? Why, yes it is--WMT on the New York Stock Exchange. Shouldn't that information be listed in its annual report to its shareholders? Could the difference between what W-M currently pays and what it will have to pay be that substantial?
Other states around the country have been anxiously awaiting the outcome of this. It's not certain whether Wal-Mart will mount some sort of legal campaign. But it's also not likely to set a precedent unless the other states also have a similar payroll percentage minimum for large employers.
It does make one wonder, if W-M is such a stand-up corporate citizen, why doesn't it pay the 8% in the first place? Just come out with a press release that says, "Gosh darnit, we're making money hand over fist and we keep telling you what a good neighbor we are and we're going to take care of our employees to at least the standards of these other big companies."
Why is it important to always keep an eye on what Wal-Mart is doing? Because it's the largest retailer in the entire world, with $285.2 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending last January. And with apologies to Pat Metheny, as falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/business/13walmart.html
http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-story.asp?guid={3F22E53C-68EC-40E1-93A4-BEFCAF1C7343}&symb=WMT&sid=5318&siteid=NYT&dist=NYT&osymb=WMT
http://www.walmart.com
Fellow Trogs may recall that this is actually the second time the MD Legislature voted on this bill. The first time, Governor Erlich vetoed it, with a senior Wal-Mart executive sitting right next to him as he did so. I wonder if said executive got to keep that pen.
What percentage of its payroll does W-M spend on its employees' healthcare? We don't know b/c they don't divulge that. Hmm. Isn't W-M a public company? Why, yes it is--WMT on the New York Stock Exchange. Shouldn't that information be listed in its annual report to its shareholders? Could the difference between what W-M currently pays and what it will have to pay be that substantial?
Other states around the country have been anxiously awaiting the outcome of this. It's not certain whether Wal-Mart will mount some sort of legal campaign. But it's also not likely to set a precedent unless the other states also have a similar payroll percentage minimum for large employers.
It does make one wonder, if W-M is such a stand-up corporate citizen, why doesn't it pay the 8% in the first place? Just come out with a press release that says, "Gosh darnit, we're making money hand over fist and we keep telling you what a good neighbor we are and we're going to take care of our employees to at least the standards of these other big companies."
Why is it important to always keep an eye on what Wal-Mart is doing? Because it's the largest retailer in the entire world, with $285.2 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending last January. And with apologies to Pat Metheny, as falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/business/13walmart.html
http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-story.asp?guid={3F22E53C-68EC-40E1-93A4-BEFCAF1C7343}&symb=WMT&sid=5318&siteid=NYT&dist=NYT&osymb=WMT
http://www.walmart.com
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