Fishing - Movie: An Inconvenient Truth

We found this on Reuters New Service today, regarding Ken Lay's
funeral:

The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared Lay with civil rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would
eventually be cleared.

Now, we at Americans for Equal Justice don't claim to be experts on MLK
or Jesus, but COME ON. I mean, seriously. Jesus Christ? The Prince of
Peace who said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to get into heaven? That Jesus Christ? Or is
there another Jesus Christ who I don't know about who enriched himself
and his family at the expense of hard-working folks while leading the
collapse of a huge corporation? Because I am confused here, Reverend.
And Martin Luther King, a man of God who was killed trying to reverse a
400-year-old racial injustice being perputrated on 20 million
Americans? Please Reverend, just quietly bury the man and ask the
family to give back the money.

Please Visit http://www.kenlayisalive.org

Link to Reuters article
http://today.reuters.com/business/ne...1-ArticlePage1

wrote:
On 12 Jul 2006 13:12:23 GMT, (Jonathan Cook) wrote:

RDean wrote:

Well, yeah, he [me] did write, but he neatly ignored certain points
presented...such as his own "sickenly bloated" salary and giving a large
chunk of it up...

Well I'm cutting and pasting from google groups because our
local newsserver gets only about a third of ROFF posts, and
right now yours aren't showing up. I missed your first paragraph
and then forgot about it after writing.

But yeah, if someone wants to offer me $10M, I'll gladly talk
them down to 5. In the meantime, you're free to research NMSU
faculty salaries

Um, talk them _down_? You're not in the business school, are you?

as compared to peer state institutions.

What do such comparisons have to do with it? Why not compare yourself
to a child in Pakistan or China? To them, you make a huge sum, and so,
based on the (supposed) premise that "sickenly bloated" is not highly
subjective and relative, you should be willing to cut your salary
dramatically. Here's some more grist for the mill: Warren Buffett, the
world's 2nd richest man, is giving (well, not exactly, but let's ignore
that point for a moment) 31 billion USD to a charity started and run by
the world's richest man. The interest paid on CDs at current rates is
about 5%, so that'd be about $1.55 billion a year, or $30 million a
week, on his "gift." Which is about $6 million a day, based on a
five-day work week. What's interesting about $6 million, you might ask?
One thing might be that it is the amount of money Key Lay recovered from
his (alleged) insider trading in selling off (or out, if you must) what
shares of Enron he did in mid-late 2001. Another interesting thing
about the number is that it is less than what he borrowed against his
remaining large amount of Enron holdings during the same timeframe to,
guess what? Buy more Enron stock.

So what's the point, you ask? Well, several, but here's a question
based on one of them: why would you guess that Lay is now seen by many
as a reviled criminal, yet Buffett, who has amassed so much money that
he could have bought and sold Ken Lay, Fastow, and Skilling at their
richest using just the interest on some of his pocket money, and do it
without ever leaving the country club, is seen by many of those same
folks as some sort of hero?

It's
all public domain information. You probably could find my
exact salary and post it on ROFF if you wanted to...

I don't.

.but anyway, you admit that
you're more than a small part of the problem, and that problem is that
you and people with whom you include in your meaning of "us" consume
unnecessarily and to excess,

I drive 7mi to work, I work in a climate-controlled office, I
live in a climate controlled house. That alone puts me as more
than a small part of the problem. Driving anywhere, be it 40
miles or 400 (to the san juan, for me) just to _recreate_ also
makes me part of the problem.

So if the "government" made you walk to work, took away the climate
control, and banned you from driving to where you recreate, that'd be
not only OK with you, but a necessary and proper thing, right?
Regardless of your answer on that, if you feel that your behavior is
causing a problem, why don't you control it?

but you want someone else to oversee it or
make it work better. Maybe "the government" can help you out

Government can and has done many good things over the years.
It could have much more of an impact than I could by myself
(maybe I'm making excuses; I'll admit it). It could raise fuel
efficiency standards, it could invest in more regional and
national rails, it could mandate building standards, it could
offer incentives to increase renewable energy use rather than
incentives to extract more oil and gas, and on and on.

It could, but you could just stop what you're doing, and it would be
easier and cheaper for you to do it directly rather than have you do it
to yourself via "the government" (...of the people and all that other
Gettysburg stuff...). I'd offer that when "the government" tries to do
such as you suggest, those who would be controlled are entirely behind
all sorts of regulations, laws, and other controls...well, at least as
long as it is someone else having to do without (or, having to put up
with whatever).

I'm not skeptical of government's ability to do good things,
nor am I skeptical of the free market's ability to do good
things, nor am I skeptical of a union's ability to do good
things, or any other "pick-your-social-institution".

It sounds as though you are, however, skeptical, and not unreasonably
so, of your ability to control your own actions, suggesting that "the
government" is better suited to controlling you than, well, you. To
that end...

But any one of them, unchecked, will be corrupted.

...any time a person or people attempt to place upon others that for
which they themselves ought to take responsibility, corruption and other
problems won't be far behind.

Take care,

You too,
R

Jon.