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Microsoft Settlement For Private Suits Rejected
Lumpish Scholar writes: "Reuters story here. The judge "could not endorse the settlement ... Microsoft will have to start from scratch in negotiating a new settlement or fight the scores of suits in court."" Reuters also has an article from yesterday that looks at the positions of the various parties prior to this news. You will recall that Microsoft was proposing to settle the civil suits brought against it by donating free Microsoft software and old computers to schools. And do remember - because this always seems to confuse people - that the case brought by the Department of Justice and state governments is distinct from these suits filed by individuals.
January 10, 2002
Compassionately Conserving Enron
by Arianna Huffington
So now we know why the White House has spent the better part of a year fending off congressional efforts to find out who Vice President Dick Cheney met with for input on his energy task force. Turns out that the vice president and his staff had at least six meetings with representatives from Enron--including one with Chairman Kenneth L. Lay--the last of which occurred just six days before the company revealed that it had vastly overstated its earnings, signaling the beginning of the end for the energy giant.
Since the Enron collapse, President Bush has been acting like Lay was just some good ol' boy who also happened to hail from Texas. This new information proves otherwise: that Lay and his company's sizable political contributions had bought what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) has termed "extensive access" to the epicenter of American political power. It's Teapot Dome, the Sequel.
During his run for the White House, Bush fought long and hard to convince us that he was a new breed of conservative--a Compassionate Conservative. But recent events make clear that he is actually the standard-bearer of a far more coldhearted breed. Call them the Enron Conservatives. Enron Conservatives are people who use political money and connections as levers to free themselves of all accountability to laws, regulations and responsibility--even to their own employees. Simply put, they are people who consistently, shamelessly and aggressively put their self-interest above the public interest. And when the lives of others are destroyed in the process, they just look the other way and hope that the law does too. And, all too often, it does.
It probably is too much to expect the Federal Trade Commission to hop on the Enron investigation bandwagon and look into whether Bush violated truth-in-labeling laws during his campaign, when his pledges of compassionate conservatism were stump speech favorites. But it should. Because we've heard precious little of them since Bush took the oath of office.
"While many of our citizens prosper," the freshly anointed president said in his inaugural address a year ago, "others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our own country." And those nagging doubts are only aggravated by the behavior of Enron executives who continue to prosper even as thousands watch their jobs--and their life's savings--disappear.
Candidate Bush was so eager to paint himself as a Compassionate Conservative that he even dared to impugn the moral supremacy of the free market--blasphemy in the eyes of his party's doctrinaire right wing.
"The invisible hand works many miracles," said Bush during the summer of 1999, evoking Adam Smith's famous paean to market forces, "but it cannot touch the human heart." This simple truth lies at the core of the need for fair and rational government regulation of industry. All too often, after all, the human heart is filled not with goodness but with greed, selfishness and a desire for profit at any cost.
Too bad Bush left this noble idea on the campaign trail. Since taking office, the hallmark of his administration has been an unwavering belief in the free market's invisible hand. In the last year, the president and his anti-regulatory appointees have (take a breath): abandoned a campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide; repealed workplace ergonomic rules designed to improve worker safety; proposed reversing regulations protecting 60 million acres of national forest from logging and road building; and canceled a looming deadline for auto makers to develop prototype high-mileage cars. And that's just a partial list.
Not even the rapacious excesses of the Enron debacle have quelled the drive for deregulation--or the ardor of Enron Conservatives who champion the cause. Pat Wood, Lay's handpicked choice to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, insists that the collapse of Enron "doesn't seem to be tied too much to deregulated energy markets." You know that something is rotten in Washington when the top energy industry regulator is so unabashedly anti-regulation.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, is another Enron Conservative who sees the energy giant's collapse as an aberration, not a smoking gun. He dismisses Enron's demise as "an in-house problem" and continues slaving away on a deregulation bill that would make Lay proud.
Then there's Lawrence Lindsey, the president's top economic advisor and a former advisor to Enron, who went so far as to claim that the Enron disaster "is a tribute to American capitalism." And Sept. 11 was a tribute to Islamic ingenuity.
Not that long ago, Bush was vowing to battle domestic suffering with "armies of compassion." Instead, he and his cadre of Enron Conservatives are adding to the carnage.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
wacka wacka
You moron, why are you copying me? And the name is KATY, not KATIE. SHE WOULD KILL YOU.
I'm having a really strange Java applet problem. Whenever I sign an applet, after I load up the applet,and the 'do you wish to accept this certificate?' dialog box shows, the applet runs much more slowly!
I've checked every other possibility, and I am not kidding, it's the dialog box that does it in. You might be saying "Well, that's easy, you've got thread starvation" except that, well, no part of the Applet begins running until AFTER you've accepted that darned certificate.
Has anyone else ran into this problem before? Anyone know how to solve it?
Go Kathryn Thurber!
I sure Katie (or Katy) is very, very proud.
Katy is f0rked anyways...
Actually, my wife's name is Katie, and I started in on this about the same time you did, when I was trying to hit bottom again...
Anyone else not able to see the page now?
How the hell can all the responses to this be "Offtopic -1" and this POS still be "0?"
"Coarse" and "whore" do not rhyme.
You suck at the internet.
Thank you.
- The AC Avenger
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?g=events/ts/08010 1microsoft&a=&tmpl=sl&ns=&l=1&e=3&a=0
Mostly because most of the people who replied posted at score 0... besides, it's hard to waste one of your 5 mod points on a post this dumb, when you know someone else will do it eventually.
By the way, you are a cunt.
Thank you.
- The AC Avenger
Check out the Top 72 Ways That Bill Gates Should Spend His Money ,
and the Top 27 Answers To "How Does Bill Gates Change A Light Bulb?"
as well as Many many more
Too bad she's a lesbian. Why is it that women who are even remotely interesting are not interested in us men?
You are, perhaps, one of the only crapflooders who even occasionally is amusing.
This, however, does not mean you aren't a twat.
- The AC Avenger
What does the friends / foe thing do anyways? I've never been able to figure out, and the friends/foe pages doesn't bother to explain it.
Go Kathryn Thurber!
In your "messaging" prefs, you can automatically change the score of all friends and foes, from -6 to +6, allowing you to always see them, or never see them.
It's only flawed because you can see who has declared you friend or foe, and thus the crapflooders can become lame ass stalkers, too.
- The AC Avenger
Fuck republicans. and fuck the 20 second rule. How fucking stupid is that? fucking stupid i say.
I just shuddered when I saw Gates dressed as Harry Potter. What a travesty!
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Damn, my bad. Keep up the good work. So, you actually know of my Katy posts? I haven't done them in a while (we went to college). I do lots of Calculus first posts now. :) Not as fun, but much more annoying to people who don't care for the subject. hehe
Allright so you want to fuQ Cmdr Taco, we got the message. Now be a nice kid and bugger off.
This is not the first post so you may continue reading on.
Golf club's to a certain Magnum P.I. actor?
I think giblet is abusing his moderation points!. ...waiting 20 seconds so i can post again.
Odds of being killed by lightning and winning the lottery in the same day: 1 in 2^55
"My dick" and "your ass" do not rhyme either.
However, that doesn't mean they're not a perfect match.
Thank you.
- The REAL AC Avenger
Of course they don't. But you, in all of your pathetic glory, were trying. It's obvious. Drop the facade, put down the pistola, and let the orphans go, foul ruffian!
- The AC Avenger
Exactly. In fact, I think he may have been the one they had in mind when they started the system.
- The AC Avenger
El mensaje primero.
----
I Am The Why Troll
Pathetic attempt. You forgot the space in front of the dash, for one of many things. Try harder next time, worthless manwhore.
- The AC Avenger
Feel free. While you're at it, could you be more amusing than a *syringe? That would be great.
Fuck. I must have forgot to hit 'Post Anonymously.'
You seem to think that you honestly give a damn whether there's a space in front of your name or not. You forget that you don't care about any of this, you're just on here to burn moderator's mod points.
If you flamed much more than you do right now, your desk would catch on fire. And I don't mean flame in the sense that you're posting evil hate-filled messages. Your kind of flaming would do rather well in San Francisco.
- The REAL AC Avenger
The Democrats in the Senate are bungling on this one, as revelations come out of Republicans turning a deaf ear to requests from ENRON.
And, as if he didn't commit enough felonies in office, it turns out there were instances of ENRON paying former President Clinton to do things (no deaf ear here).
Sheesh, Daschle tries to fabricate a Bush scandal and it really turns out to be another Clinton scandal already!
Sometimes you wish the folks at /. would make expceptions and just start banning people.
What implications between the Bush administration and Enron?
Some Enron execs called cabinet members and INFORMED then that Enron was about to tank. Was there a bailout? No, nobody did anything, which is exactly what should have happened.
Clinton is the one who took donations and then used his presidential power to help Enron construct a power plant.
It looks like Enron has done nothing illegal. Immoral, cheap and underhanded certainly, but not illegal. Besides, what kind of MORON puts 70-100% of their retirement plan in ONE STOCK. Those kind of morons don't have any right to complain when that stock tanks. I feel no sympathy for that kind of stupidity. Diversity is the name of the game when it comes to life savings.
Try this this if you want the other side of the story from what you've been reading and hearing in the mainstream media. (Yes, it's ultra-right-wing, but almost everything else is ultra-left-wing.) Balance is good.
Phathead
Your statement is a myth.
But Malcontent, you are nothing more than a troll. Why should anybody believe the tripe you push forth on slashdot?