Got a telemarketing call from MCI yesterday. Just wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh. I worked for those bastards too, way back when as a Temp. Laid everyone off. So in honor of WorldCom, this is something I whipped up a couple of days ago. It's not actually about WorldCom, but more about a certain high-level politician who seems to have avoided being linked with all the corporate hanky-panky despite the fact he was involved in some major corporate hanky-panky-

Oh, that Martha Stewart, accused of insider-trading and making a bundle of money on stocks. A thing, of course, in which nobody, but nobody, has ever done. Especially heads of major corporations. Yet, despite the fact every day there's another story about this corporation or that corporation going under and being investigated for all sorts of funny accounting flim-flammery, it's Martha's whose getting all the heat.


Why, it's almost enough to make you think, especially if you were of the paranoid conspiracy bent- that the Powers That Be saw that they were suddenly underneath the microscope and somehow figured out a way to frame Stewart so she'd be accused of the same things. And so, like that, she was thrown out to the wolves. Because we all know the press would go after the Martha Stewart story like a bunch of drunken frat boys at a Tequilla Sorority mixer. Especially when the alternative is yet another story about some boring white guy cooking the companies books and screwing over thousands and thousands of stock-holders, employers and tax payers while they fly back and forth between their Aspen estate to their Bermuda estate. Not to mention all the leg-work the press would have to do to follow the obvious money trail and have to explain to everyone how half of the corporate scams are the result of policy loopholes created by the buying off of every politician in Washington. Or how every attempt to close said loopholes are being stymied by lobbyists carrying buckets worth of change. That would just take too much actual reporting and writing to do and what self-respecting journalist would want to do that when they can go over, in minute detail, what Martha Stewart has done with her stock portfolio.

Of course, there is another celebrity involved in several funny (funny as in "yer all getting screwed by this funny" as opposed to "ha-ha" funny) corporate games. Well, not exactly a celebrity, but someone who has been made fun of on SNL. Of course, it was because he's the Vice-President and not because anything he did is being investigated by the SEC.

You, of course, have heard all about this, haven't you?

Basically, the company Cheney was running before he became VP, Halibutron is now being investigated for hiding millions and millions of dollars from it's shareholders. The Accounting firm that helped set this up, by the way, is Arthur Anderson. Strange how Arthur Anderson seems to be getting around these days.

And, oh the irony. Like how Cheney told people during the campaign that unlike all those slackers in Washington, he was creating jobs as a CEO when in fact, due to his brilliant work as said CEO, he actually laid off thousands of employers. And there's just so much more good stuff like that out there .

The best description of what's been going on comes from one of my fave columnists, Frank Rich from the NY Times. In his column, Sacrifice Is for Losers, Rich writes:


"And then there's Dick Cheney, who has achieved a trifecta through his official dealings with Enron, his stewardship of Halliburton during alleged accounting irregularities and his on-camera appearance in a 1997 Andersen promotional video touting the firm's "good advice." (It's too late to find a Rosemary Woods who might erase it.)"


Yeah, yeah, I know, we're in a war right now and it is bad form to do all these kind of sneaky political type things during a War, especially when Cheney is the ventriliquist to Smirkboy's dummy. But still, it makes you wonder what would of happened if, for instance, Al Gore was running some company that possibly pulled some sort of accounting scam that defrauded everyone? Whitewater was about what, exactly?

Sigh.