November 4, 2002
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So, like, it's kind of complicated to understand and hard to explain, but W. kept forgetting to tell the SEC when he sold some stock in Harken Energy, a company that merged with his energy company Spectrum 7. The SEC looked into it at the time and said everything was okay. That SEC guy was Richard Breedon, who was W.'s poppy's lawyer, and when poppy became president he put him on the SEC. Then W. wanted to be president so Kenneth Lay who was the head of Enron gave W. a bunch of money to help him, and poppy's friend Cheney quit his job at energy company Halliburton and got like a $20 million nest egg for his retirement as vice president and now the SEC is kind of investigating Cheney and Halliburton for bad accounting practices which were approved by Arthur Andersen who also approved Enron's, by the way, but Enron's a whole nother story.
Anyway, W. rose to the task, showed his leadership and gave the CEOs a big slap on the wrist by making them SWEAR that their books were accurate and everyone felt reassured. So now the SEC chairman is Harvey Pitt who used to represent big Wall Street firms who were in trouble with the SEC and stuff so he knows how it all works from all sides, and Pitt brought in William Webster to head the accounting oversight board, not thinking that it really mattered that Webster was on the auditing committee of a company called U.S. Technologies that's under investigation for fraud. Anyway, he SWORE to Pitt that he didn't do anything wrong and everything worked out just fine and W. said it was okay. And they're all a bunch of smart people who know the law and how to make money and they all know each other and get along, so they should do a good job, right? No worries. And while we've been selfishly thinking about our own little nest eggs, our leaders have been hard at work behind the scenes to make sure our future generations are safe and sound. They passed the "Born Alive Infants Protection Act," and the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act," and they even found a creative way to get government health care to poor, uninsured pregnant women by classifying fetuses as "unborn children!" This is what compassionate conservatism is all about! We're also doing the same things for other countries too, making sure they don't use our dollars for abortion or family planning or anything like that, even though those people say the dollars were for helping women get better lives, not abortions. Anyway, we gave the women in Afghanistan better lives, didn't we? Our leaders have also been working real hard to protect us from evil and terror. Had to take a few things away from us, but it's for our own good. There's that USA PATRIOT act, which we all need to be good patriots and follow so we can keep the bad people out of our country and ourselves out of harm's way. Anyway, we can always get the Bill of Rights back when it's safe again. For now, if we don't have anything to hide, and we keep quiet and don't make trouble, we'll be okay. Meantime, there's a lot of good things our leaders want to do for us, but it seems like every time they try, something more important, like Iraq, comes up. You know exactly how it is -- you say to yourself, this weekend I'm going to take a nice long bike ride and then have a picnic and relax, but then your drain backs up and you spend all weekend fixing it and cleaning up the mess and when you're done you feel relieved that you fixed it and wonder what will go wrong next and you say to yourself, I SWEAR I'm going to take that bike ride next weekend. There's always next weekend... Election day? Whatever. Everything is JUST fine the way it is. We can always vote next time, if something important comes up. · · · · · ·
Resource Beyond The Lesser Evil, by Gilles d'Aymery Jan Baughman is a scientist in the Biotech Industry. When Jan does not travel around the world on behalf of the company where she manages a clinical research department, she spends most of her time devouring books like candies and relaxing over the preparation of the finest recipes in Northern California. She started writing at a very young age when she found this mode of expression easier than having to answer the perpetually boring and conservative chit-chat around her. Jan's sense of observation is directly related to her sense of humor. She is a founding member and co-editor of Swans, and brings to the site wit and a lightness of being. Do you wish to share your opinion? We invite your comments. E-mail the Editor. Please include your full name, address and phone number. If we publish your opinion we will only include your name, city, state, and country. Please, feel free to insert a link to this article on your Web site or to disseminate its URL on your favorite lists, quoting the first paragraph or providing a summary. However, please DO NOT steal, scavenge or repost this work without the expressed written authorization of Swans, which will seek permission from the author. This material is copyrighted. All rights reserved. |
This Week's Internal Links
Beyond The Lesser Evil - by Gilles d'Aymery
Political Expediency, Media, And Democracy - by Eli Beckerman
Guerrilla TV - by Michael W. Stowell
Marching For Peace - by William Funke
The Fourth Estate - by Deck Deckert
Bad Novel - by Milo Clark
Iraq, The Ozone Layer, And The Hummer - by Gilles d'Aymery
The Death Of Merlin - Poem by Sandy Lulay
I Am The People, The Mob - Poem by Carl Sandburg
Jan Baughman on Swans
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