“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into”

Jonathan Swift
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"The Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital." - Bill Maher
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"The city is crowded my friends are away and I'm on my own
It's too hot to handle so I gotta get up and go

It's a cruel ... cruel summer"

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Two Reasons I Have A Hard Time Opposing The Death Penalty

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There is no shortage of opinion in Blog World regarding Enron, with many people more qualified and capable of addressing the topic than I, but I want to comment for one reason. Over the years I've moved to the left from a moderate, or more accurately, apolitical, point of view. For the most part it has been a gradual process with little steps taken along the way. However, if I had to pick a single moment that cemented my status as a liberal, a giant leap forward as it were, it would be when the Enron scandal first erupted. It's when I first fully realized what could happen when corporate power runs amok. I'm not going say that Enron was strictly a conservative problem. There are more than a few conservatives who suffered at the hands of those criminals. Many conservatives have been appropriately outraged that Enron happened. I'm not going to say that Enron was strictly a Republican problem. Many of the changes to accounting law that allowed Enron to happen occurred during Clinton's watch. What I will say is that Enron happened because liberalism was taken out of the equation. Oversight and accountability were scaled back. If you take down all the speed limit signs it's only a matter of time before some jerk is doing 90 through a school zone.
The Cunning Realist is the only conservative blog I read on any kind of regular basis and for the most part I agree with TCR's take on the Enron scandal (Whither the Pitchforks?). Ben Stein, who TCR references, makes good points, too. They're both disgusted with the Corporate America Gone Wild we've seen for more or less the past decade, and it is questionable what impact the Lay/Skilling convictions will have on the Culture of Corruption. Whether or not I spend my golden years taking it easy and enjoying the good life, or working part-time and eating catf ood for dinner, depends heavily on the conduct of people like Lay and Skilling. Millions of other people are in the exact same position.
So when will people reach the boiling point? If Enron, WorldCom et al don't do it, what will?