For those of you pushing for privatization of government...

[widebody911]

Chew on this:

The former chief of American International Group Inc. transferred more than $2 billion worth of company shares to his wife as a gift only days before he was pressed by company directors to resign, according to a regulatory filing.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=&e=20&u=/ap/20050413/ap_on_bi_ge/aig_probe_greenberg

[legion]

So your argument is that because one executive did something unethical (though I believe, perfectly legal), all attempts at privatizing anything should be abandoned?

By that line of reasoning, we should have overthrown the government when Clinton got a Lewinsky.

Edit: BTW, he transferred the shares to his wife that he had already received in compensation...he didn't steal them. The unethical thing he did was to "gift" them to his wife for the purposing of shielding them--once he realized what was going to happen to him.

[928ram]

I'm not seeing how exactly this relates to privatization of government; explain please.

Isn't AIG the company that Kerry/Kennedy did the back room deals for to protect them from fraud commited on the "big dig" project?

[Superman]

Originally posted by legion
So your argument is that because one executive did something unethical (though I believe, perfectly legal), all attempts at privatizing anything should be abandoned?

By that line of reasoning, we should have overthrown the government when Clinton got a Lewinsky.

Edit: BTW, he transferred the shares to his wife that he had already received in compensation...he didn't steal them. The unethical thing he did was to "gift" them to his wife for the purposing of shielding them--once he realized what was going to happen to him.

We have guys here who seem to think that the unethical folks are the gubmint workers, and the ones we can trust are the corporations. That vision is hysterical. Doesn't pass the "straight face test."

I also notice that private companies always think that every bit of their information and every document they touch is strictly confidential. Gubmint workers, by contrast, understand that all their papers are public records. I deal in public works construction so I see both examples each day. Sometimes I just want to slap people. Companies come out here to perform public works, with laws like prevailing wage, and they think their workers wages are top secret. Give me a break.

With privatization, we'd struggle just to get data from the contractors. Without privatization, you'd already own the documentation as a taxpayer.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Gubmint workers, by contrast, understand that all their papers are public records.

Supe, have you ever tried to get documents from a gov't agency? "All" their papers are not available to the public.

I'm not sure the instance you cite makes your case, Thom.

JP

[Superman]

Sure, JP, some docs are confidential by statute. These are, or should be, rare. Judges tend to narrowly construe ecemptions from public disclosure. In other words, they tend to conclude that there are few documents a public agency can withhold.

Just recently, our Legislature tried to exempt its paper. Didn't fly, or at least the attempt has been reported in the media. The jig is up. I've said many times here that government agencies, while not perfect, are not the big problem with gubmint. It's the elected folks. You have to do more than just vote occasionally. Those kids need closer supervision.

I've been a bureaucrat, so I'm probably more savvy than most requestors of public records. No, I have not had trouble getting documents. If I did, my next letter would be the "put up or shut up" type, asking for statutory citations, descriptions of withheld docs, etc. You're entitled to all that. It's your gubmint. Who's to blame when your own gubmint fails to perform?

[Overpaid Slacker]

Supe, I know a lot of this in ministerial/mandarin stuff, but having had to go through FOIA requests against the government in order to enforce contracts against the government leaves one with less than a charitable attitude towards the government. It is the 800 lb gorilla -- and often it's a rabid, unchained and hungry 800 lb gorilla, against whom nobody has any leverage.

With our litigation-frenzied fellow citizens out there, I have no problem with (most) confidentiality-minded private business practice.

JP

[ronin]

Originally posted by Superman
We have guys here who seem to think that the unethical folks are the gubmint workers, and the ones we can trust are the corporations. That vision is hysterical. Doesn't pass the "straight face test."

and even less does the obverse pass the test! you been paying attention to the King Co. election debacle lately

[Drago]

I'll tell ya who we can't trust....Porsche mechanics who wear their hair long and drive water-pumpers, that's who!!!

[ronin]

HANG THE CREEPS BY THEIR TESTICLES!!!


oh, wait...

[Superman]

Originally posted by ronin
and even less does the obverse pass the test! you been paying attention to the King Co. election debacle lately

Ronin, your example, frankly is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. The main reason we don't talk about the administrative errors committed within private companies is......can you guess...because they refuse to provide any information whatsoever. You take any group of folks and ask them to sort and score a million and a half ballots coming in from several sources and in several forms, whaddya think is just going to happen? The office I managed also handled quite a large volume of paperwork filed mostly by various construction contracting firms. If we had had the latitude to make as many mistakes handling those documents as the companies that filled them out....and notarized each one.....then we could've just made mistakes all day and still underscored the contractors. In reality, my staff was deadly accurate. But when you handle that many forms in a year, mistakes WILL happen. If 1% of paperwork is handled with some kind of error, then in 1.5 million documents, there would be FIFTEEN THOUSAND ERRORS.

Frankly, I expect this...ummmm...."case" filed by the R's in Chelan County to go nowhere. If finding errors is going to invalidate elections, you can expect to never have a legitimate outcome from any future election. I wish, in vain, that people would think when they read.

[Dantilla]

The problem with both the government and private enterprise is that both are run by humans! Plenty of ammo to point fingers both ways.

[Superman]

Originally posted by Dantilla
The problem with both the government and private enterprise is that both are run by humans! Plenty of ammo to point fingers both ways.

Precisely.

[Dantilla]

Superman and I agreed on something!