perfidy

The amount would have to be in the very high milions to billions for me to accept any prison time. The sober midwesterner in me would never quite get over the shame of having a record, and it would take a very large number of yatchs, private islands, and entrepreneurial import-export ventures in places like Jamaica and Bahrain to assuage that shame. it would help if I became wealthy enough to enter the rarefied air where doing white-collar time becomes a badge of honor.

As for the felon prison, no amount of money could make me go there. No amount.

The more interesting question is this: given that Bernie Ebbers is being made an example of and richly deserves his sad fate besides, what is the point of making an example of him? Many if not most of the accounting strategies he used were in and of themselves legitimate or at least generally accepted light gray areas. At some point, these in-themself skeezy but legal practices come together into illegal action. But where is that line drawn?

Consider the following: You buy a gun. You buy some bullets. You spent all night sitting in a lawn chair in your backyard with a loaded rifle. As soon as the neighbor's dog wakes up for its 3AM barking session, you plug it in the head. There, we have a clear line that was crossed. Up to a point you were acting in a clearly legal fashion (except in certain areas of the country whre gun ownership is a priori evidence of guilt of... well... something!), but then you shot a dog, you sick bastard.

But in many of the corporations that are now feeling the heat of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, and are feeling the acute heat of Bernie Ebbers'jail time, managers are at a loss as to how to figure out at exactly which point they shoot the metaphorical dog. You look at the numbers one way and you see a divergent book-tax accounting structure that is monumentally obfuscatory, to be sure, but nominally compliant with modern reporting requirements. Looked at another way, the numbers tell a story of systematic earnings misstatements and looting. But they're the same numbers.

Not that Bernie Ebbers isn't guilty as hell, but I'm not sure what his going to prison is going to prove to anyone, much less solve.

Excellent. I particularly appreciate that they've stripped him of his savings and most of his worldly posessions. Though I bet that his house is worth enough that I could live for several years on what it would net at today's values.

But what about the Enron guys? Last I heard they were going pretty much scott free...

Actually Paul, Enron is the poster child for the phenomenon I described. Investigators and forensic accountants are taking immense care and time to figure out what exactly went on there, because their record-keeping and intercompany transactions were so fiendishly - that's not to say ludicrously - complex. Everyone can agree that a dog died, but nobody can agree on what dog or when it died, not to mention by what means.

From what I hear, they are still working on putting together a case that will damn Enron's principals on numbers and ugly facts, not just the glamorous "burn baby burn, I just shoved 40,000 megawatts up Ma Kettle's ass!" stuff that so ably captures their lack of ethics, morals, or souls.

Then again, OJ is still looking for the real killers, so what the hell do I know?

Call me old fashioned but I hope I could avoid the temptation. I don’t like the idea of putting that kind of stain on my honor.

Also, the question lets us lose sight of the fact that Ebbers and the Enron crooks stole money from real people. Their crimes cost thousands of people their jobs, and / or much of their life savings. I could not enjoy the yachts and Ferraris with that on my conscience.

I’ll do my best to be happy with what I can earn honestly. (Yes, I was a Boy Scout)

I agree on the entire stained honor thing - no amount could make me wish to be something I'm not.

As for Bernie, I think 25 years in stir, with 22 before he's eligible for parole, from his standpoint, is preferable to his living as a free man, penniless and unemployable, ever again.

So I think he's gotten off rather lightly, in an odd sort of way.

And, for the record, while I think he's among the lowest of the bottom-dwellers, I sincerely hope Bernie doesn't get his hole widened any worse than has already happened metaphorically and financially.

The fact that prison rape is even a topic of conversation is among the more stinging indictments not of those who mention it but of our criminal justice system itself, because the guys who enjoy inflicting such indignity are essentially getting all the free tail they couldn't get on the street, and are unfairly adding to an already punitive situation for the fuckees.

Patton, do you seriously think Bernie Ebbers is unemployable? I don't, unfortunately.

As a strict cost-benefit analysis, the min-sec example of being out of commission for three years and largely unemployable for life would be somewhere around maybe $10 million to me - basically, enough that I could live very nicely off the proceeds for life. That said, I wouldn't actually do it for a billion(the collateral damage is way higher than I'd ever want to inflict), but looking at a limited example of how much cash it'd be worth to me to be put away, $10M should do it.

As for the second question, it'd be a fair bit more - call it maybe $50M? The marginal utility of money gets pretty negligeble up there, so it'd take a helluva lot to make me take that big of a downgrade. I'd probably do better than many others(I'm 6'3" and a 19-yo male, so given some time to actually get in shape, I wouldn't be anyone's bitch), but better isn't good when we're talking about the world of felon-filled modern prisons.

Also, to Patton, I don't give a damn if the prisoners get worse conditions - I'm glad prison culture is nasty enough to keep people out, since the prison itself sure isn't. Mind you, it should be the system keeping people out, not the system's failings, but disincentives to crime are disincentives. And yeah, the fact that it's a bunch of cons getting off does bother me, but honestly, I don't care very much.

Alsadius, the thing about prison rape is it's the strong preying on the weak. The life in prison multimurderer tears the colon and dignity out of a weed merchant. How's that okay at all?

Anal rape as a disincentive to crime? Tell me... do you believe in the death penalty? As a deterrent?

If our prisons in this country exist solely to punish, then I guess that's fine. But they also exist, in theory, to rehabilitate. I know that's a fraud, but it's there. Moreover, we're Americans and our standards for prisoner treatment ought to be a damn sight higher than "well, it ain't a Turkish prison!" Cuz that just isn't right.

I've talked to several guys who served time in minimum-security prisons. Does not sound like rape is a common occurrence. Can't speak for the maximum lock-ups.

The death penalty probably is not much of a deterrent. However, I really do like its ability to prevent future crimes by an individual.

Alsadius - there's a disconnect between the punishment and the deterrent effect for guys like Ebbers, who never thought he would get caught, let alone convicted. Unlike Bram's death penalty deterrent example, which is clean and inarguable, I don't believe white collar criminals even consider the sanctity of their pooters while doing their deeds.

As a result, absent a clear link to any deterrent effect, I feel that the entire prison rape part of the crime and punishment cycle is beneath us as a society.

That, and it seemed like the best chance for me to use the word "fuckee".

J:

Other than as a license plate puncher, yeah, I do think Bernie would be washed up in the employment market.

His primary skills, other than coaching basketball and being the night auditor at a hotel (I'm exaggerating, of course) involved various degrees of flamboyant overstatement, penny-pinching, and wretched excess, which is the role of a guy raising money to build the kind of company he built over not-too-long-a-time.

Notwithstanding the claims that he was a good Christian man, I wonder how many of the folks over whose toes he ran to build Worldcom will still be willing to take his calls? Without the good will of his business contacts, a guy like Ebbers is toast, at this point in his life.

And, aside from being a freak show attraction for the local Burger King, who would really want to put up with the overhead of having a guy like him around? Contrary to what might be popular belief, most people would be embarrassed to see a guy like him working in humbled circumstances, and would stay away in droves from a business that employed him in anything other than a purely back-office function.

Patton, you also missed a golden opportunity to use the word, "mangina."

Yes, I do think that the death penalty is a good thing to have in the judicial toolbox - I'm not exactly Hammurabi on this, but I can't see any good reason why first-degree murder shouldn't automatically carry a death sentence. If you commit a crime on that scale, you do not deserve to draw breath. The deterrent effect may or may not exist, but I don't actually care all that much.

And while I agree that rehab is a good thing, prison should still be a highly unpleasant place - minimum security prison is almost not a punishment, and that's a bad thing. Maybe the people who commit a crime when threatened with probation and a stern lecture will think twice about it if they're threatened with picking up litter for 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for a few months. Nothing crazy, but it should be a highly unpleasant experience.

"Mangina." Heh. Deuce Bigelow is a terribly underrated movie. Now stop it before I he-bitch man-slap you.

Alsadius, I will agree with you completely that prison should be the opposite of pleasant. But I would much rather that the unpleasantness be of the existential variety: litter 16 hours a day/7 days a weak, hard beds, bad food, no TV, open toilets, no cigarettes or booze kind of bad. The thing about prison rape is that it's not *institutional,* or merely *unpleasant,* it's a random and predatory phenomonen that as Patton said tends to let the strong ones get their rocks off at the expense of the weak, or merely outnumbered. If prison is about locking people up for a defined amount of time so that they can suffer for a while, come to feel sorry, or just be off the streets for a while, then prison rape has no place. If on the other hand prison is also about ruining utterly the lives of the people in there, forget about second chances or rehabilitation, no matter the duration, then...

And I don't mean to pick on you. This is a problem that's been bugging me for a while. I'm not all milksoppy on prisoner's rights, but prison rape ruins lives in a far more profound way than four walls and ten years can.