Thursday, October 11, 2007
(9:52 PM) | Stephen:
Republic Of Bananastan
Kagro X has a post up at DailyKos that should make your blood run cold. It's worth a read, believe me, but I'm going to summarize it quickly here so that I can make one point that Kagro X alludes to but doesn't make clear.
Joe Nacchio is the former CEO of Qwest, the only telecommunications company to stand up to the Bush Administration's demands for unlimited access to their records and phone lines. He was convicted of insider trading and faces 6 years in prison for it. The case against Nacchio was that he knew Qwest's earnings were going to fall short of projections and that its stock would fall, so he sold it early to get his personal stash taken care of.
What's interesting is Nacchio's defense, which is that shortly before he sold the stock he was in meetings with the Federal Government for a $100 million contract and was told Qwest had the inside track on a $2 billion deal to build a network between the US and South America. The problem is that he can't say what the $100 million contract was for because of "national security" concerns, and any mention of it in documents is redacted.
So Qwest's earnings aren't looking good and Nacchio sells a bunch of stock that turns out to have been overvalued. Nacchio's defense is that he believed that Qwest was going to be in great shape and, if anything, the stock was undervalued at the time of the sale.
But those contracts went to other companies and Qwest's stock took a hit. The NSA tells the telecoms to hand everything over and Nacchio says no. All of the sudden the SEC gets real interested in the stock sale, and the DOJ pulls the US Attorney off the prosecution, replacing him with some guys from DC. Sound familiar? Have there been any other situations in which a US Attorney has been pulled from a case, or perhaps fired, with the replacement initiating charges against some "enemy" of the Bush Administration?
What I think Kagro didn't quite say is that it looks like the Bushies had some reason to be unhappy with Nacchio back in early 2001. They knew he sold the stock based upon getting those contracts, so they awarded them to other companies, knowing that if their fears proved true they would have a clear-cut case against him with the SEC.
When you get down to it, inertia is the only reason that the USA still functions as a free country in any form at all. Inertia is the only way to explain why any of our laws are still upheld - that and perhaps an inability for the Bush Administration to put all their plans in place before Congress changed hands.
These are dangerous people, especially because there are still millions of Americans who think that George Bush is a committed Christian, and honest man who only wants what's best for America and who is right about just what that means.
Joe Nacchio is the former CEO of Qwest, the only telecommunications company to stand up to the Bush Administration's demands for unlimited access to their records and phone lines. He was convicted of insider trading and faces 6 years in prison for it. The case against Nacchio was that he knew Qwest's earnings were going to fall short of projections and that its stock would fall, so he sold it early to get his personal stash taken care of.
What's interesting is Nacchio's defense, which is that shortly before he sold the stock he was in meetings with the Federal Government for a $100 million contract and was told Qwest had the inside track on a $2 billion deal to build a network between the US and South America. The problem is that he can't say what the $100 million contract was for because of "national security" concerns, and any mention of it in documents is redacted.
So Qwest's earnings aren't looking good and Nacchio sells a bunch of stock that turns out to have been overvalued. Nacchio's defense is that he believed that Qwest was going to be in great shape and, if anything, the stock was undervalued at the time of the sale.
But those contracts went to other companies and Qwest's stock took a hit. The NSA tells the telecoms to hand everything over and Nacchio says no. All of the sudden the SEC gets real interested in the stock sale, and the DOJ pulls the US Attorney off the prosecution, replacing him with some guys from DC. Sound familiar? Have there been any other situations in which a US Attorney has been pulled from a case, or perhaps fired, with the replacement initiating charges against some "enemy" of the Bush Administration?
What I think Kagro didn't quite say is that it looks like the Bushies had some reason to be unhappy with Nacchio back in early 2001. They knew he sold the stock based upon getting those contracts, so they awarded them to other companies, knowing that if their fears proved true they would have a clear-cut case against him with the SEC.
When you get down to it, inertia is the only reason that the USA still functions as a free country in any form at all. Inertia is the only way to explain why any of our laws are still upheld - that and perhaps an inability for the Bush Administration to put all their plans in place before Congress changed hands.
These are dangerous people, especially because there are still millions of Americans who think that George Bush is a committed Christian, and honest man who only wants what's best for America and who is right about just what that means.
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