Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Lay Down

Well, the man is sly as a fox - he'll do anything to avoid a life sentence.
Seriously, who will miss Kenneth Lay? He probably has a circle of friends, but anyone who ever did business with him is surely glad he's gone, unless they had found a way to ruthlessly exploit him back. Even George W. Bush is backing off, insisting through Tony Snow that Lay was only "an acquaintance".
Kenneth Lay was the ultimate, number one, big daddy User. He played Monopoly with your money, whether you knew you were in his game or not. And even now, he's keeping it. If you lived in a state where he sold energy, you have been screwed by Ken Lay. If you worked for him and had your money in a pension fund, you have been screwed and left naked by the roadside. He sucked a lot of money out of the general economy and redistributed it to home-theatre shops, yacht salesmen, Island Rental realties, lawyers and public relations firms. If there was ever an example to disprove trickle-down economics, it is Ken Lay.
We should all be grateful that he was convicted before he died, because that example was made. I guess we should also be grateful that he wasn't tried in California, because even Hitler would have gotten off scot-free with one of our juries. It's a little reminder, along with the Supreme Court saying "yes, it is wrong to hold people at Guantanamo without a trial or due process", that there is only so much injustice society can absorb at one time.

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