The Poet's Eye
commentary by Lightning Rod
The Poets' Eye is skeptical without being cynical, innocent without being naive and critical without being judgemental.
Martha Bites the Big One
03-09-04
"In my dream Martha Stewart was demonstrating to Jessica Alba the proper and formal way to perform fellatio. I was a priapic crash-test dummy with a perpetual erection and a smile enameled on my face. This gig sure beat being driven into brick walls at sixty miles per hour. As Jessica Alba drew her collagen pout slowly over my wooden member MS adjusted her hand into the socially correct position. No, no it's more of a swirling motion. I'm going to show you one more time. Boy could that Martha suck cock. It was a classic case of technique over enthusiasm. Only thing was they had this sensor on me and every time it said I was about to ejaculate Martha would break for a commercial. I woke in the gooey pool of my own anticipation." Excerpt from The Pookah Papers
All humor aside, I am sorry for Martha Stewart. She is a sacrificial lamb. While I have little doubt that Martha acted on privileged information when she sold her ImClone stock, arresting her and conducting the circus trial was a diversion of attention. It was like a cop arresting a jaywalker while a bank robbery was in progress.
Among the investor class, people make buys and sells every day based on inside information. Who you know and what you know makes you money. To suggest that what Stewart did was in any way aberrant is naive if not hypocritical. The whole spectacle of her trial and now her sentencing attended by all the news stories about how dark or cold her cell will be is a misdirection of attention.
If you really want to see an example of insider trading, look at the cases of Halliburton or the Carlyle Group. Martha may have put her well manicured hand into the cookie jar to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand bucks, but companies like Halliburton have already made millions, perhaps billions, from contracts with the government during our adventures in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. These contracts were awarded without the benefit of competitive bidding. This type of theft is swaddled in the flag of patriotism.
So while we look on in fascination as Martha is pilloried, billions in taxpayer money is being funneled into the pockets of cronies of the Bush administration. And if you believe all the flimflam about officeholders putting their assets in 'blind trusts' and if you believe that Dick Cheney has no continuing ties with Halliburton, then I have some underwater real estate to sell you. Halliburton enjoyed $3.6 billion in revenue last year from work in Iraq, including maintaining and transporting US troops and repairing Iraq's oil infrastructure. Doesn't this make Martha Stewart's infraction look like jaywalking?
The revolving door between government and big industry is well oiled. Why else would a man pay 200 million dollars campaigning to get a job that only pays 300 grand a year? Somewhere, somebody is getting their money's worth.
The Poet's Eye sees that.next season K-Mart will be selling prison striped jumpsuits and Halliburton will still be stealing us blind and Bush and his corporate backer thieves will have purchased the White House once again with money and lies.
Lrod 03-09-04
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