If you ever thought I blathered on just a little too much about corporate personhood you should go watch Enron, the smartest guys in the room. It tells the sorry story of how a bunch of executives, a bunch of squeaky clean investment bankers and an academy of greedy fools sucked down tens of billions of wealth and just pissed them away in an accounting slight of hand. So long as some greedy exec (take your pick) said it was okay all fell into line with their lies, damn lies and annual reports.
Everyone, to a tee at one point thought they could just get away with it. A few did - fleeing to Hawaii with hundreds of millions, a few others will do jail time, but still have millions and mansions to show for it (civil suits not withstanding). The vast majority just got their pay checks for a while and then watched as their 401k and pension evaportated, and their jobs turned into bullet points on their resume they might prefer to omit.
All in all I can only imagine a scenario where corporate personhood wasn't a fact and employees all felt as responsbile for doing the right thing as the CFO thought he was responsbile for pushing up the stock price. If there was a culture that recognized corporate priviliges should go hand in hand with corporate responsibilities commenserate with their ability to do great damage to scoiety then perhaps this all would never have happened.
Until that day I, like most Californians, will continue to suffer vastly inflated power bills and be governed by an Austrian weight lifter because a bunch of rich kids did whatever the hell they wanted just because they could and it made them feel good. Like kids frying bugs with a magnifying glass, whatever didn't hurt them was fair game for giggles and kicks. If that doesn't remind you of something else that is going on this country then I don't know what will.
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