Posted on 08/04/2002 10:13:58 PM PDT by Libloather
GOVERNMENT BY PIN-STRIPED PERP WALK
Sat Aug 3, 9:02 PM ET
By Richard Reeves
NEW YORK -- Can perp walks save America from itself? Can perp walks save President Bush from himself and his friends?
A "perp walk," for the uninitiated, is a little conspiracy between police and reporters to produce photos for morning papers and film for evening news. It goes way back; some of the most famous perp walks were part of the frenzy of arrests in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Photographers using big old 4-by-5-inch Graflex cameras and flashbulbs in the 1930s were tipped off by cops about when and where suspected "perpetrators" would be moved from precinct buildings or courthouses.
Obviously perp walks are back in style as the government arrests and handcuffs corporate executives in pin-striped suits -- say, 78-year-old John Rigas of Adelphia and Scott Sullivan of WorldCom -- and then marches them to cars past alerted photographers. The pin-stripers are treated like common criminals -- people love it -- though they are not very likely to make a break for it or grab for a cop's gun. Bums they may be, but they are just props for media events before their lawyers arrive and they are returned home for cocktails by the pool.
There is great power in the pictures. The first big-time pinstripe perp walks of our time were staged by a young federal prosecutor in New York in the 1980s. He had his men put cuffs on three brokers from Kidder-Peabody and walk them down Wall Street in an explosion of camera lights. That would be Rudy Giuliani, who rode his instant celebrity into City Hall.
It did not matter that the handcuffed bankers were acquitted of all charges; Giuliani made his name. And there was a theory that other pin-stripers would be so frightened by the cuffs that they would be good boys and girls and play by the rules in the 1990s.
Didn't work out that way, though, did it? The bad apples, as President Bush calls the perps -- bad orchards might be more accurate -- just learned from earlier perps. They took criminal advantage of the deregulation of the financial world during the Reagan administration and, to a lesser degree, during the business-friendly Clinton administration. Witness Adelphia, Arthur Andersen, Enron, Global Crossing, Imclone (the big question here is will the feds have the guts to cuff Martha Stewart), Merrill Lynch, Tyco and WorldCom.
We live in corrupt times, with richly blurred lines between opportunism and crime. On Friday, The New York Times reported on the WorldCom perp walks, the jailing of the principal perps in the price-fixing of auction commissions at Sotheby's and Christie's, and then, on the sports pages, the fixing of ice-skating events at the Olympics. Is nothing sacred? No. But it was a slow day for arresting child-abusing priests.
Pin-striper financial machinations, we now see, were incredibly crude and simple. In 1993, Congress, reacting to signs of public outrage about exponential increases in corporate CEO salaries, passed legislation capping (at $1 million per year) the amount of executive compensation that corporations could count as tax deductions. So the corporate types began to reward themselves with stock options. After that, an 11-year-old Monopoly player could have figured out what would happen next. Bad apples jacked up profit figures to increase stock value and then sold their options at the bubbled new price. They just lied and lied to investors, employees and the public, and looted corporate revenues and pension funds.
Now, the president, imitating Giuliani in the 1980s, is trying to round up scapegoats to divert attention from the deeper rot eating away at corporate honesty. Will this satisfy the masses? If not, we may have to invade Iraq before the elections this year or Bush's re-election year of 2004. He is desperate because the Republicans, after all, are the party of business -- although Democrats are far from blameless in the breakdown of government and public oversight -- and they will pay the higher price, as they should, if they are unwilling to do more than make arrests.
The regulation system broke down (or was gutted), and a pro-business president has to lead the struggle to rebuild it -- or he will soon be a pro-business ex-president.
Sounds just like the *Crintons and their moving van - eh?
(the big question here is will the feds have the guts to cuff Martha Stewart)
I'd settle for perps Rubin and McAuliffe.
The reasons why perp walks and subsequent trials are inadequate as a solution are nearly self-evident. So, it is no surprise that the lamestream media have (as usual) missed the point. Anyone interested in that booklet can get more information from its own website, which is already up and running. It is the top click link on my website, per below.
The first person on FreeRepublic to see any of the text of this booklet will be Jim Robinson, as I sent him a pre-publicaton page proof by snail mail. I look forward to his reactions and will be guided by his judgments.
Congressman Billybob
-Old US News Report on bribery, corruption & money-laundering--
The spectacle of insider trading stock fraud king "Global Crossings" McAuliffe lecturing us on financial ethics is enough to make mr barf...oops too late, I soiled myself. DNC head McAuliffe turned $100,000 into $18 million just before the public was informed that we had bought was a worthless fraud.
I absolutely ADORE the aroma of a roast bubbling and succulant liberal slowly turning on a spit above a blazing open fired oven.
Complementing this festive meal would be recommendations for Rubin flambe, McAulifee mush and Torricelli tortellini.
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