Why I Love The Nation

"Normally, I am a 'bleeding heart' when it comes to long prison terms," writes William Greider, "but an appropriate sentence for the Enron boys might be six trillion years. Kenneth Lay with his million-dollar smile and Jeffrey Skilling with the cold, confident eyes of a viper made their company into the symbol and showpiece for a glorious era. It was the hyper-modern and market-efficient 'new economy,' in which the concept of wealth falling out of the sky became briefly hip and widely believed in respectable circles."

Moreover, asks John Nichols, "Now that Kenneth Lay, the man who paid the bills for George W. Bush's political ascent, has been convicted, with Jeffrey Skilling, of multiple counts of fraud, isn't it time for President Bush to end the fraud of claiming that he was ever anything less than a political partner of Lay and the Enron team?"

Last night on the local Los Angeles news, ordinary folk whose lives were forever changed by the Enron fiasco were given some air time. Why doesn't this happen more often? Why aren't the victims given just a little more substance? Anyway, those questions aside, several ladies were interviewed: two teachers and a secretary, all retired, and all still angry and in bad financial shape because of the greed of the Enron bastards. One woman who was easily in her mid-70s put it this way. "If I saw one of them walking down the street, I'd kill him." Lots of folks will go to the grave with emotions they never expected to hold this late in life.