Feb. 17, 2002 - 21:13 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Bits And Pieces

I just deliberately dumped a rabid foaming at the mouth ranting entry in disgust. Disgust at all the lying and finagling going on over this Enron deal. Obviously there was not enough oversight over the companies operations. And to me obviously the two top dogs are trying to make us believe that they didn't really know the shape the company was in. Why then did Lay sell $70 million of his stock back to the company last year ? Money paid out to him . . . . An article by Marcy Gordon says, "Added to sales of Enron shares on the open market which he (Lay) had previously reported, the new filing shows that Lay sold around $100 million of company stock in 2001. Hmph. Penny ante pocket change, yeah right.

Molly Ivins brings up this, "Take for example tidings that Enron paid no taxes whatsoever during four of the past five years by cleverly transferring its assets to 881 subsidiaries in tax shelter countries." Now doggonit, if I had a few bucks and tried junk like that the slammer would be my home forever. Molly Ivins goes on to say, "Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and now a hero because he saw this coming -- nobody paid attention to him in the 90's, of course -- testified, ""What has failed is nothing less than the system for overseeing our capital markets,"" Molly goes on, "Unfortunately the new Securities and Exchange Commission Chair is Harvey Pitt, a Bushie who thinks the way to cure the accounting scandles is to have tighter VOLUNTARY (caps mine) regulations for accounting firms. Bush tried that VOLUNTARY (caps mine) when he was governor. Did it Work ? Not hardly as they say in West Texas."

So why am I upset about this tempest in a teapot ? I didn't have any Enron stock to lose. Yeah, but, for years companies and corporations have been evading paying taxes by just such activities, money which of course necessarily has to come come from the taxpayer's pocket. From a long time back our businesses have been shipping manufacturing and, management of same, jobs overseas. The mystique that has been bruited about is that somehow, magically the working people in the US will be educated to the point that they will all be top dog technicians at higher pay. That just ain't gonna happen. We need manufacturing jobs here in our country for our people. So, now, these biggies ship jobs and money out of the reach of any overseeing that can be done here. Reaping huge profits on underpaid workers working in miserably unsafe places who do not have health care assured with no unemployment insurance and barely enough income to feed a family.

I remember reading about the reparations made to some of our big companies for factories destroyed in Europe during World War two. Seemed that those factories were partly owned by some US corporations and were turning out armaments and machines for the Nazis through the war. There is smoke there to my nose, I wonder if anyone will ever be able to find out how much of the profits from those factories found their way into the pockets of US businesses ?

It seems that now there is no oversight, no control of how many of our jobs go overseas to underpaid crapped on workers, and how much business money is hid out by various means in tax free countries and no control over what skullduggery they do here in this country. Big business and government seem to be pushing us in the "Right To Work," direction. Some facts about that indicate that Right To Work actually means right to work for a hell of a lot less. Else, why the movement from the right to work states to states where unions can bargain for the group.

I'm out of context ? I don't think so. I am just looking at the recently uncovered Bits And Pieces . . . . . . . .

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