Can’t belive they called a mistrial and these Tyco thieves may get away with their crimes.
they said there will definitly be another trial right? i hated seeing them walking out of the court with huge smiles, and their families with huge smiles… bastards
But martha stewart got screwed on a technicality.
I agree. It is a travesty of justice. What is fair is fair. These guys belong behind bars with horny big lifers!
Strange, how can all of you be so certain that these men are guilty? Because you read some press accounts and automatically believe them? Because they are wealthy men and therefore must be guilty? Do you believe everything you read in the newspapers? I doubt any of you have any first hand knowledge of this particular case.
You need to be reminded that in America you innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, not a court of public opinion. If these men are indeed guilty of what has been alleged I do hope they receive the maximum sentence allowed by law. If they are not guilty think for a moment the undue pain that has been caused them by the press and people like you jumping to conclusions.
Sorry Zeb, but according to the Internal Revenue Service, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. What you are talking about belongs on “Myth Busters”. Besides that, the facts brought out at the trial proved to ME that they are guilty. The fact that one whacko, senile old juror wants to be a rebel and waste 6 months of the taxpayers’ money does mean they are innocent.
Avoids
Roids,
They could very well be guilty, however I don’t think that you and I know that from reading the newspaper accounts of a mistrial. As for the IRS they may investigate you, and find that you owe more in taxes (their opinion), however that can be appealed and or taken to court as well.
Guess my last thread wasn’t so far off bas after all…white collar crime kids, its where the real money’s at.
Let’s see if Martha gets any real jail time. Should be interesting.
Zeb, i agree up to a point: but, if you have seen the footage of the pary in Sardegna thrown by Tyco’s CEO, it is difficult to imagine that it is a legit business expense.
Sonny S,
At one time I worked for a company that used to throw very lavish parties on a regular basis (4 times per year). The owners were very honest hard working people who simply loved to play as hard as they worked. Is that a criminal act?
The press is powerful indeed!
It is obvious the party was thrown for personal reasons. If you believe otherwise, then I’m not going to belabor the point because we simply are not going to agree.
Re; your job: If its a publicly traded company, the owners have a responsibility to increase profitability wherever possible and one way is to cut spending. THat’s the rationale behind outsourcing and moving factories abroad etc.
Now if its a private company you worked for, good for them! If I was wealthy and owned a company I’d throw lavish parties as well.
Sounds like a good company to work for.
Sonny S,
Why is it “obvious the party was thrown for personal reasons?” Did you read it somewhere? It is my understanding that it was a company function. There was nothing wrong with that. They did nothing that many other companys do not do. In fact, I understand that Warren Buffet throws some mighty big parties, as does Donald Trump. Are they guilty of something too?
Let the courts determine whether these people are guilty. Stop playing judge and jury. None of us are good at that unless we have all of the facts!
If you want to be envious of someone who has more than you, that’s your right. If you also want to be happy that someone who has far more than you is suffering, that is also your right. However, you should at least be honest with yourself as to why you are snap judging these men.
Do you also think that every unemployed person who is accused of shoplifting is guilty before a trial, or is it just the rich that you assume to be guilty without proof?
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
H. G. Wells
Wow, that’s an emotional response.
To say that only a judge and jury are the only ones who know for sure whether someone is guilty or not is bullshit.
Back to topic:
Donald Trump has been in and out of bankruptcy his entire career, so Buffett is a better example.
And hey, if Warren Buffett throws lavish parties as well, then I may have to rethink my thoughts on this subvject. Nobody knows more about $$$ than Buffett!
ZEB, I see your point of view and you have “opened” my mind up, so to speak.
AFA jealousy, absolutely not. If I wanted to make a lot of money, I would have chosen an entirely different career path. I’d be studying for an MBA and not an MS in Secondary Ed.
I have acquaintances who work on Wall Street who I could ask for
an “in” and an AMEX executive just offered me, out of the blue, an opportunity to apply for a managerial training program paying $90,000 per year.
Considering she coordinates the program, I think I could have had the job 
But, its not me. I don’t have the desire or energy to work long hours at something I don’t really care for.
I AM against: ridiculous salaries for top executives, multimillion dollar bonuses, golden parachutes while jobs are brought overseas to increase profits.
Sonny S,
No it’s not an “emotional response.” We have a system in this country where Judges and Juries are privy to all of the facts presented by both sides. Other than that, unless you are a court reporter, you and I get only biased highlites from the media. Right now it’s cool to be aniti corporate, so that is what you are reading. If you think for one minute that you can judge a case by reading about it in the media I respectfully disagree.
I agree with your choice of careers. I think you are a smart guy for not going into something that you are not interested in, just to make money. Furthermore, I admire it!
I am for a free market capitalist society. As long as the top brass operate honestly and above board, then they can pay themselves whatever they like. It’s up to the stockholders (the owners) of the company to protest. If they are fine with it, so am I.
One more point-Things like Enron and other corporate debacles really put a bad taste in peoples mouths about corporate America. I think it’s important to remember that of all the thousands of Public companies there really has been only a dozen or so over the past several years, that have seemed to betray their stockholders by operating outside the rules of the game. If it is any consolation to you, I think those people need to pay stiff fines and also serve jail time, that is “if” they are found guilty!
i can tell if someone is guilty or not just by looking at them.
tyco execs… guilty
oj… guilty
see?
and zeb i disagree with you. while most of us might be jelous of them or just hate them or hope they are guilty just so we can see them pay, the fact is in this country there is no innocent until proven guilty and the system is not pure.
so saying let a judge/jury decide is bullcrap. look at all the deathrow people put to death who were found out to be innocent after, look at all the people who have gotten off when evidence proves they have done the crime.
its just not that easy.
the fact is i dont know if they did it or not, but it looks like they might have, and they look scumbags, and if they did it i want them to pay.
so let us all hate them 
One more thing, re money: I used to sell cars, and if I had stuck with it and gotten better at it, I could be making better money. But the hours are long, the other salesmen tend to be real pieces of shit, and, frankly, to make the most amount of $, you have to fuck people over.
My buddy sells big rigs in OH/KY/IN, and he likes to tell me when he “screws the rednecks’ eyes out” and another friend is a finance manager at a dealership and he brags about how he screwed someone over and made good money while doing it. Its all towards his goal of breaking that mythical $100K a year mark and driving a Jag.
(Not looking for a response, just some more thoughts that popped into my head.)
Innocent until proven guilty is the standard for the state to punish someone. This is because our founders wanted to make it difficult for the state to punish people.
It is not necessarily the standard on which I will base my personal opinions. See: O.J.
On the Martha point, the trend these days is to make more and more things illegal. I actually think the law under which she was actually convicted, namely, lying to a police investigator about activity that in and of itself was not illegal, is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Not everything that is morally wrong should be a criminal violation.
iamnobody, you are silly, and most likely a kid, end of response.
Sonny, Your friend is wrong by trying to cheat people to make money. And he is to be pitied. However, keep in mind that most who make large sums of money do it honestly. Let’s not draw conclusions about an entire class of people from a handful of examples. That would be called discrimination.
BostonBarrister, I agree with you completely!
“Sonny, Your friend is wrong by trying to cheat people to make money.”
Yup. And its 2 friends, not 1! And I also have a cousin who is kind of sleazy as well and wouldn’t trust if he weren’t a relative.
Re class of people, if you meant car salesmen, well of course they’re not all sleazy, just the vast majority. And finance managers are the worst.
ALWAYS HAVE A LOAN FROM ANOTHER SOURCE BEFORE BUYING A CAR!
THe only way you will not get screwed is when you don’t need a loan from the dealer and they negotiate to a lower interest rate.
Unless you have a sky-high credit report that is.
Some thoughts on Tyco and greed
The holdout juror in the Tyco case has finally gotten to speak for herself (NYT $):
I feel very strongly throughout this whole process that even ugly people deserve justice. Even people who have bad habits deserve justice. People who have repellent lifestyles. Even greedy people ? if they are greedy. Even people who have so much they don’t know how to spend it, and still want more. Even they deserve justice when it comes to whether or not they committed a crime.
This is refreshing. It?s hard to avoid the conclusion that the criminalization of corporate misconduct, including Martha Stewart and Dennis Kozlowski recently, and Mike Milken of old, is about resentment. Not merely envy (one?s discomfort at comparing oneself with another), or wanting to have what another person has, but disliking that person for having it and believing that his good fortune is undeserved. The resenter wants to lower the envied person to his level.
To some extent this is inherent in a market system that produces losers as well as winners. Envy and resentment are potentially strong destabilizing forces in a capitalist system.
One alternative to resentment is disengagement – ignoring the disparity or perhaps making a virtue of it (“I got plenty of nothin, and nothin’s plenty for me. . .”). Another is using envy as a spur to achievement.
The law can attempt to reduce resentment by bringing the rich to heel. Politicians are more than willing to serve as “envy entrepreneurs” to garner votes. One example of an anti-resentment law is progressive taxation. Hence politicians? criticisms of ?tax cuts for the rich.? Other strategies for bringing the successful to heel include insider trading laws, antitrust laws, regulation of executive pay, and criminalizing corporate misconduct.
We should lament this development. Catering to resentment can only increase it by crediting the impulse. But more importantly, we benefit from the relentlessly greedy. More reasonable people stop producing when they’ve satisfied their modest need. The people who need endless power and money keep producing forever. Where would we have been if Bill Gates had stopped after his first billion? Typing DOS commands into black screens? (Or am I getting carried away with this idea?)
If greed is good, criminalizing corporate misconduct is bad. Corporate executives’ fear of being sent to a New York state prison (where Dennis Kozlowski may be bound) can put a damper on more than just Sardinian party planners.
The Tyco trial brings some hope that jurors are starting to see through all this. The mistrial was provoked most immediately by a threat to the holdout juror. But the interview with Ruth Jordan suggests that she would have continued to hold out, provoking a mistrial on that ground. There may be other Ruth Jordans on other juries to hold out against criminalizing greed.