From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2004 - 21:29:41 GMT
Leland:
> > How did Martha "enrich herself?" Preserving the value of you assets is
> > hardly "enrichment."
>
> So using fixed dice in Vegas (assuming you could ever get away with it)
> would be a moral exercise? The stock market is a gamble, Martha knows that
> (she was a stock broker, for Pete's sake!). Martha also knows people lose
> money playing the stocks. However, she used a privileged piece of
> information to ensure that she didn't lose on her gamble. She abused the
> system, she cheated. Use whatever term you like, but she was in the wrong.
You do know, of course, that the charge of insider trading against Martha--
"cheating" as you put it--was thrown out of court.
> And then, to top it all off, she lied about cheating. I'd have more
> respect for her if she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar
> and said "It's a fair cop." We are all responsible for our actions
> (whether "right" or "wrong"), and we have to face consequences when our
> actions take us outside of the social framework of law. If the law is just,
> then the punishment will be. If the law is unjust, then it will be changed
> in the process and our actions will be vindicated.
So why wasn't Clinton held responsible for lying and punished like Martha?
> >> She lied under oath, forged documents,
> >> and even got others to lie and forge on her behalf.
> >
> > An apt description of Clinton's behavior during the Lewinsky affair. Yet
> > do you see him behind bars? Hardly equal, even-handed justice in my book.
>
> Sure, what Clinton did was immoral as far as his relationship with his wife
> went and illegal as far as the marriage was concerned, but it was a private
> matter and had little to do with how he ran the country.
Clinton committed perjury under oath in court and was punished by being
fined and losing his license to practice law. Much worse, as chief legal
officer of the U.S. government he committed perjury before the entire
country when he stated to one and all,: "I did not have sex with that
woman, Ms. Lewinsky" He lied like a rug and got away with it.
>Martha stole money
> from investors and endangered the very corporation that she founded, which
> employs thousands of people. Which immoral action do you think affected
> more people?
Clinton's by far. Decades will pass before the poisonous denigration of
value's injected into America's youth by the Clintons, a legacy of
dishonesty, promiscuity and immorality, can be overcome,. We continue to
pay a terrible price. Simply look around you. In 1991 Pirsig described the
environment that produced the the likes of the Clintons who, as advocates
of the Hippie mentality, only made matters worse.
"Today, it seemed to Phaedrus, the overall picture is one of moral
movements gone bankrupt. Just as the intellectual revolution undermined
social patterns, the Hippies undermined both static and intellectual
patterns. Nothing better has been introduced to replace them. The result
has been a drop in both social and intellectual quality. In the United
States the national intelligence level shown in SAT scores has gone down.
Organized crime has grown more powerful and more sinister. Urban ghettos
have grown larger and more dangerous. The end of the twentieth century in
America seems to be an intellectual, social, arid economic rust-belt, a
whole society that has given up on Dynamic improvement and is slowly
trying to slip back to Victorianism, the last static ratchet-latch. More
Dynamic foreign cultures are overtaking it and actually invading it
because it's now incapable of competing. What's coming out of the urban
slums, where old Victorian social moral codes are almost completely
destroyed, isn't any new paradise the revolutionaries hoped for, but a
reversion to rule by terror, violence and gang death-the old biological
might-makes-right morality of prehistoric brigandage that primitive
societies were set up to overcome." (Lila-24)
> > The real thief in this story is the Federal Drug Administration which
> > disapproved of ImClone's application for a new anti-cancer drug, and
> > application which they later approved! Your friendly government robbed
> > ImClone investors, not Martha.
>
> The FDA is well within its rights to approve or deny any application it
> likes.
Subject of course to behind-the-scenes arm twisting and political
pressures.
> I'm not familiar with the 'ins and outs' of the ImClone application,
> I don't know if there were any amendments to it between the initial denial
> and the subsequent approval. Martha, however, is not within her rights to
> use insider information to profit herself on the stock market. The FDA
> acted legally (as far as I know), whereas Martha acted illegally.
Again. Martha was not convicted of insider trading.
> >> Regardless of the alleged quality of her products or efforts on
> >> behalf of "average shlubs", her refusal to plea to the crime she
> >> actually
> >> committed and decision to lie and cover-up endangered the corporation
> >> she built and the hundreds, if not thousands, of hard-working "average
> >> shlubs" who depend on it for their livelihoods.
> >
> > All of which pales in comparison to the coarsening effect on the
> > culture
> > of Clinton's lying and sexual escapades. Furthermore, anyone who
> > depends
> > on someone else for his livelihood better grow up and get some skills
> > that are marketable regardless of who signs their paychecks.
>
> OK, what do Clinton's escapades have to do with Martha's case?
> Clinton's thing is done. It's finished. Get over it. You're comparing
> apples and oranges here. Also, do you mean to tell me you DON'T depend on
> someone else for your livelihood? Do you own your own company? If so, do
> you employ anyone else? Guess what... those people depend on you for their
> livelihood. Pull your head out and take a look around you. Contrary to what
> your comments imply, jobs DON'T grow on trees.
You're right. They are created by entrepreneurs like Martha who rose from
abject poverty to head a multi-million dollar company by providing
products and services that the public chose to buy of their own free will
in a free market. That's what liberals can't stand. That's why she was
persecuted. And no one put a gun to the head of people she employed and
said, "You must work for Martha." No one owes anyone a living.
> > "The strongest moral argument against capital punishment is that it
> > weakens a society's Dynamic capability-its capability for change and
> > evolution. It's not the "nice" guys who bring about real social change.
> > "Nice" guys look nice because they're conforming. It's the "bad" guys,
> > who only look nice a hundred years later, that are the real Dynamic force
> > in social evolution."
>
> I hardly think Pirsig is condoning wanton ignorance of the law. To be
> honest, I see this as one of the more ambiguous paragraphs in the book.
It's crystal clear to me. It's the envelope pushers and risk takers like
Martha and Bill Gates who bring about real social change, not your FDA
types.
> I'm all for improving the legal system, and DQ is the only thing that can
> do it. What Martha did was not DQ (and it is insulting to DQ to suggest
> that it was). I get the point, you like Martha and are outraged that she's
> been convicted. However, the charges aren't trumped-up. She broke the
> frelling law and now she has to face the consequences. Deal with it.
I never suggested that how Martha behaved in her dealings with government
bureaucrats was DQ. What she did with her business was partly DQ-inspired
by her originality. (And what in God's name is the "frelling law?")
> BTW, as far as Bill Clinton is concerned he ALSO broke the law (or at least
> one of society's stronger social moral codes) and he, too, ended up facing
> the consequences, in the form of massive public embarrassment.
Surely you'll agree there's a huge disparity between public embarrassment
and hard jail time.
> He's
> fortunate that he couldn't have run for office again, since it is certain
> he would have lost (and by a greater margin than Gore lost) because of his
> actions. Maybe that's why conservatives are so pissed at him, he never had
> anything taken away from him (read, the presidency). To some, it looks like
> he got away with it.
He did get away with it. But the real reason many are pissed at him is
because of what he and his cohorts did to degrade the culture. It takes
millennia to build a civilized society, but only a few years of misguided
leadership to tear it down.
Platt
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