Asymmetrical Information

Welcome back, Megan;
And while you were ...elsewhere - check this out:

Personal (or almost) info revealed, celebrity status achieved. So now's the time for "the money and power with which such fame is often associated"...

Welcome back.

The bigger factor in Martha getting prosecuted was lying to investigators. There's nothing that gets a prosecutor's hackles up like the sense that they are being lied to, stonewalled, etc. (this is famously true even of novice prosecutors like Ken Starr).

That doesn't answer where the original investigation came from, but then I don't believe Martha was the original target; the CEO of the company was.

No need to say you're sorry to me...I didn't care about the Martha thing either, and I think it has everything to do with fame, lying to prosecutors and nothing to do with being a woman. More to the point, she used to be a broker and should have known better than to trade off inside info (which it's pretty clear she did).

Welcome back. Glad you're well rested and not burned. You're supposed to come back from vacations the same pasty white color you were when you left now-a-days.

You realize of course that the reason for harsher sentences on crack was at the insistence of black lawmakers who wanted something serious done about something that was plaguing their communities.

Now it is just another cudgel with which to paint Republicans as racist, and make white people feel guilty.

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

In partial defense of the French, I cite one example: The Belgian Congo.

And welcome back, too!

BR,
Fritz
/f

Perhaps you might wish to ask which colonies were successful? Darned few by any nation. The major Anglosphere ex-colonies were basically Brits in another land, since the native people and culture were nearly wiped out.

Other than that, I don't know if Uganda, Burma, or Bangledesh were much better than Haiti, Quebec, or Louisiana.

Megan, it was a pleasure to meet you, albeit an opportunity all too brief. Do please return to LA when you're able!

The Brits were probably as bad or worse than the French. I would say that they largely created many regional conflicts today including India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine.

I cannot understand your "she should not have been prosecuted", along with, because poor, dark skinned or unfovored groups suffer greter injustice, it is OK to injustice Martha.

I mean, I guess it would be Ok to unjustly lock up a person like you because you have been so favored (good parents, good school, good job, good skin color), because many suffer conviction unjustly due to bad economics or unfavored skin color..

Why is anything other than the crime charged relevant. Should a poor person get less justice? Shold a rich person get less justice because you fear a poor person gets less justice?

Your comment about clorox and drinking water reached me. In 1937, in Jamestown California, I remember my dad pouring a cup of clorox down the well every day.
A few years ago, some people in, I believe Peru, read the pseudo science screed that chlorine in drinking water caused cancer to about one in 10 million users, and so they stopped chlorinating the water until three thousand or so died of water borne diseases.
In the Ugly American, the hero wanted to give the people a better breed of chicken to improve their diet. This was the ugly. Everyone else wanted beautiful monuments. Ugly lost.

Martha's conviction is problematic because the crime of making unsworn false statements is problematic, not only as a matter of justice, but perhaps in practical terms as well. A lot of people are going to come to realize that speaking to Federal offcials regarding official business, whether one is a prosecutorial target or not, is unwise, which will make investigations much more difficult and drawn out, if not impossible. This particular instance is but another example of a very smart person behaving stupidly. Everybody's an idiot about something, and given enough time, that something will be revealed.

Napolianic code for starters. Don' even need history of Frecnh colonialism to suffer from it.

Napolianic code for starters. Don' even need history of French colonialism to suffer from it.

Kate,

> she used to be a broker and should have known
> better than to trade off inside info (which it's
> pretty clear she did).

I thought that was the one charge that the judge threw out as groundless--or was it the charge that the prosecution didn't even make? I forget. Either way, it wasn't insider trading because she wasn't an insider to this particular company.

It was a pleasure to see you. Come our way more often.

Well, as former French colonies go, Louisiana didn't turn out half bad.

Of course, that's probably because it's been part of the US for a couple of centuries. I daresay that Confederate control of Louisiana did more lasting damage than French control, overall.

A few years ago, some people in, I believe Peru, read the pseudo science screed that chlorine in drinking water caused cancer to about one in 10 million users, and so they stopped chlorinating the water until three thousand or so died of water borne diseases.

I wasn't aware that was "pseudo" science as such; reportedly, chlorine can react with organic matter in the water to produce disinfectant by-products (DBPs), including chloroform. On the other hand, DBPs are a very small risk compared to the risks associated with waterborn disease. The problem is usually in the presentation: people like zero-risk and, given the opportunity, frequently gravitate toward "involuntary risk" characterizations of something like DBPs rather than recognizing that some trade-off is inevitable.

A reasonably entertaining paper on the topic -- at least, "entertaining" for those who enjoy social sciences literature -- is:

Driedger, S. Michelle, and John Eyles. “Different frames, different fears: communicating about chlorinated drinking water and cancer in the Canadian media.” Social Science and Medicine 56 (2003): 1279-1293.

Besides Clorox, the sickness can be treated with ridiculously cheap pills. The low price is because it's just various common salts, which prevent dehydration.

I don't think the British can be blamed for the Israel-Arab or India-Pakistan problems. They failed to prevent them of course, but I doubt that it was even possible for outsiders to prevent them. I think the British made these places, and places such as South Yemen, nicer places by spending money on them and preserving some degree of stability. Places were relatively peaceful under their rule although their tendency to leave when things got bad makes it hard to tell if they really made things more peaceful.
In addition, the fact that things are really bad NOW in former colonies does not prove that the colonialists screwed up. It may be the norm in these countries, which would suggest that the colonialists temporarily improved these places.
For instance, I'm sure they would put some Clorox in at least some of the water

Would French involvement in Iraq have made a difference in the re-establishment of a government?

I'd have done the same as Martha IF I heard word of something affecting stock price; she would have been stupid not to do so. However, she knew there was risk, and a $60k loss is a drop in the bucket for her to risk here reputation upon. Lying? She should have know better here as well. As should have Clinton, who would have perhaps been crucified had he lied to a prosecutor. The American public is so much more forgiving.

Welcome back, Megan... the blogosphere just wasn't the same last week without its daily jolt of Jane Galt - and don't worry about the tan: you can always explain away your stylish "resort pallor" as a sign of good skin-care consciousness!

Re Martha Stewart, though: IMO, too much being read into the "significance" of a recognized Celebrity running afoul of the law: even the more arcane corners of it, such as the "insider trading" regulations (which, curiously, were the charges that the prosecutors in the Stewart case dropped,/i>). The best nutshell recap of the Martha Stewart trial, though, comes from InstaPundit:

"So, am I correct in assuming she has been found guilty of covering up crimes the government couldn't prove she committed?"

I haven't followed this case closely, but I think that's the gist of it.

My new policy is to refuse to speak to any government police or regulatory agent without a lawyer. I'll make exceptions for local police writing me a traffic ticket or asking directions or the like.

The UN is responsible for the partitioning of the Middle East that resulted in the British administration of Israel/Palestine.

Bolie IV

Okay, this Martha thing has me confused (as do a lot of other things, but that's another story). I thought we all had learned in the late 1990's that it was moral and all-but-legal to lie to investigators (let alone to a judge and a grand jury while under oath) about sex. Now we learn it's not only improper but you can go to jail if you lie to investigators about your personal financial dealings. Is this because sexual harassment is not a serious enough problem in our society that we don't need to require citizens to be honest when responding to questions (while under oath)? Or is it that financial transactions that MIGHT involve insider trading are just that much more serious a social ill than is sexual harassment?

Jane, you are in most respects a sensible person, so, please!

Could you stop having feminist sisters!

Jesus, that stuff is so awful, so me-too, so damned selfish and crazy... and so reminiscent of the great days of the Reds, when all good "sisters" called each other "comrade".

It's like getting hit over the head with a sledgehammer. Could you please divorce yourself from this grim idiocy and try individualism in this arena of your life, as well as the rest?

God, how I pray that I live long enough to meet another woman (besides my wife) who is not a member of the feminist sisterhood! Every demented woman I've met for the past 50 years has introduced herself as a member of the sisterhood and continued to brag that she can't cook. (And, God help them, they think this is bragging.)

Why do you see the value of individuality in every other sphere of your life, and still kowtow to this foolish nonsense?

Well, I can cook, and I think I'm pretty individualistic . . . but I also know that while I might not have enjoyed having a cocktail with them, those radical feminists of the sixties and seventies, humourless and tiresome though they may be, ensured that I don't have to look for work in the "help wanted -- female" section of the paper, that I get the same money for the same work as my male colleagues, that I can get a credit card or a mortgage without a man to sign for me, and so on.

Bolie: never, ever talk to any law enforcement officials without a lawyer present. The State is not your friend.

The Martha Stewart case is disgusting. Hundreds of millions of dollars in equity wiped out, thousands of jobs at risk, and for what? I think she's mainly guilty of being an unsophisticated investor. Anything as intrinsically volatile as Pharma and Biotech stocks, where a regulatory decision can make the price alter by a factor of ten in minutes, should be protected with a moving stop loss at the bare minimum. Really her broker should have recommended a straddle.

Frankly, Jane, I disagree with you that the feminists had much to do with what you've outlined. Feminist history is the application of ideology in reverse.

Feminist history lied first by asserting that men predominantly worked in soft, executive jobs. They did not. Like my father and grandfather, they worked at hard, dirty, dangerous and often disgusting jobs for poverty wages. Second, feminist history lied about women not working. When you grew up poor, as I did, the notion that women didn't or shouldn't work was laughable. In my family, we dreamed of being wealthy enough that my mother wouldn't have to work.

The change in society's view of women was already occuring out of the goodwill of men by the end of the second world war. Remember, it was men who invented washers and dryers, not to mention birth control.

The rambunctious history of the great women's rebellion is entirely a fiction. There was no resistance to the entry of women into society. And that is and was the problem. Feminism is a total lie, start to finish. And that lie has led to a revenge taking that is entirely unjustified. Throughout my life, women have been behaving as badly as they possibly can in the belief that they are taking revenge against men for having behaved badly in the past.

It's like sitting in the KGB cell and being beaten on the soles of the feet, listening over and over to the feminist lies, especially the lies about the great, non-existent rebellion against the ruthless power of the men. The men should have fought back, but they didn't. And it's been a catastrophe for the women.

Jane,

Thought I'd illustrate my point with a conversation I had with my daughter on a trip home from college ten years ago.

"Don't you think women are oppressed?" she asked me.

"No," I replied.

"Well, women didn't even get the right to vote until 1920."

"Well, men in my family didn't acquire the franchise until after 1900. They immigrated from Wales and Ireland to the U.S. in what were called coffin ships. They walked out onto the streets of New York City to find signs that read 'Niggers and Irish need not apply" or they were force conscripted into the Union army. You might think that it's a rare display of compassion and enlightenment on the part of men in my family that less than two decades later, they favored the franchise for women."

"Oh," my daughter replied.

I am the first member of my extended family to graduate from a four year college. Are you aware that prior to 1960 it was not at all common for working class people to use a checkbook, or to look in the newspaper for a job? Charge cards did not exist. Home ownership only became a reality in my family as a result of the GI bill after WWII.

The phony history of feminism is a monstrosity. It is a series of virulent and sneaky lies with the sole purpose of demonizing what were mostly very good men, like my father and my grandfathers.

I too would recommend Megan reconsider her opinion of attractive, articulate, famous women who can cook, being fair game for prosecution.

At any rate, she'll almost certainly have the conviction overturned on appeal. The judge actually prohibited the defense telling the jury the truth (i.e. neither Stewart nor Baconovic were guilty of insider trading). That allowed the prosecution to insinuate that they were, and judging from the comments of the jurors who have gone public, it worked.

Fortunately, Martha has an ally in Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who predicted just what befell her in a 1996 opinion:

http://www.professorbainbridge.com/corporation_law_insider_trading_martha_stewart_case/index.html

------------quote-----------
"The prospect remains that an overzealous prosecutor or investigator - aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case - will create a crime by surprising the subject, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial," Justice Ginsburg wrote in a concurring opinion in Brogan v. United States, warning against the "sweeping generality" of Section 1001's language.
--------------endquote---------------

As I've said, I think the case was weak, the pretext flimsy, and the outcome bad. I simply don't think it's some uniquely horrifying example of prosecutorial abuse, as many of my friends who are financially successful and/or female do.

Welcome back.

Now,Blog Damn You. Blog like the Wind.

" If you're walking down the street and overhear Bill Gates discuss Microsoft's upcoming earnings announcement with Steve Balmer, and then you go and trade stock based on that conversation, you're guilty. Whammo."

I doubt it, that information becomes public when its talked about in public.

" Sure Martha was guilty of that. "

Almost surely she wasn't. There is not a shred of evidence to support any other explanation than that she sold because the price was dropping below the $60 trigger. Faneuill's testimony doesn't support insider trading. If it did, she'd have been so charged.

No Stephen,

You make absolutely no sense at all. You were poor. Boo Hoo. I say if you can get yourself an education and if you can learn to write in a coherent sentence you should be given the same opportunities as anyone else who has gotten themselves an education.

You say no. Your poor ignorant ancestors were stepped on and the jobs they were unqualified to get were given to more qualified, smarter, better educated women because of feminism. Oh, gee, my mistake. I didn't realize we should forgo any other type of equal rights because we needed to get your poor, stupid, dirt farming ancestor a job they are unqualified to do.

Why, if I am qualified to do a job, should I not get the job because I am a woman? I don't claim to be oppressed, I have a very good life and I am treated just as I should be by almost all of the people I know. Why is that a bad thing?

By the way, my "rich" grandmother had a full scholarship to go to Radcliff and even then it was a terrible sacrifice to send her. The cost of a train from Ohio to Boston almost broke the bank. My Grandmother spent a great deal of her social life in college "dating" for meals. I suspect if she were alive and I told her she was rich she'd laugh her a$$ off. She just wasn't too poor to live in an unheated shack. If you look at Depression Era statistics most people weren't that poor.

All right, Stephen. I'm the first person--man or woman--in my family to earn a college degree. My grandfather didn't have so much as an unheated shack during the Depression--he was a hobo. Now that we've all established our reverse snob credentials, I'd like to wholeheartedly affirm everything Kate and Jane have said about the feminist movement. You may now proceed to come up with non-socioeconomic arguments against feminism.

Frankly, anyone who can say "Mine are the problems of the poor. Reminds me, in 1999, I hired a young man...." without blushing needs to check his hypocrisy meter.

The lesson for everyone is DO NOT TALK TO LAW ENFORCEMENT INVESTIGATORS. Even if you are not guilty of what they are investigating, you can go to jail for mis speaking about something. The rule used to be that lying was only a crime when you were under oath and that is the way it should be again. It would serve the whole law enforcement community right if everyone shuts up and they can not investigate anything anymore.

Stephen, I concur with Kate in that you are making a false comparison -- namely, claiming relative level of income as a differentiator between right to be free from discriminatory practice. True equality is admittedly utopian, and the rich will inevitably have certain advantages, but that doesn't nullify the need for practical attempts to ensure that opportunities are not denied based on arbitrary criteria such as race or gender. Your ancestors were told they couldn't work because they were Irish; fine. That is indeed discriminatory practice, but how is it substantively different than a woman being told "you can't work/can't work at the level of your qualifications/can work but won't make the same income as a similarly-qualified man"?

I have little use for contemporary feminists. I think the majority approximate the charicature of spoiled whiners you presented; having accomplished an ostensibly valid set of goals, the movement shifted and modern feminists are primarily focused on manipulating circumstances for power gain. (FWIW I feel similarly about most unions.) But try not to tar every action in the realm of so-called "feminism" with the same broad brush.

Or perhaps just answer me a simple question. The background information is this: I know a single female who completed college, currently works as a research chemist for a small pharama firm, and -- until she finds a suitable mate -- supports herself in a modest rented townhouse and owns a reliable car. Now, what set of past actions are most responsible for her possession of these living circumstances and abilities? Because as a single woman she arguably would have found that difficult even fifty years ago.

As for intellectual diversity on campuses, I'm currently taking a fascinating course in Politics and Ethics (covering Aristotle and Kant) by one Mark Blitz, who long ago was denied tenure at your alma mater, U Penn. (Denied of course, because he is a sinister conservative. Unprovable, of course but I'm sure that is the reason. He's probably the most formidable intellect -- I've known a few -- I've ever come across).

Love your blog. Sorry to have missed you at the LAX meet-up. Hope you visit the city again soon!

I find it hard to feel very sorry for Martha while people in my county are imprisoned for up to a year before trial simply because they don't have bail money. Martha may go to prison for five months, but she had a jury trial and the chance to have a decent lawyer. The folks rotting in county jail may be guilty of nothing more than a low bank balance.

Furthermore, I'm baffled that Martha would say anything to federal authorities. Surely her lawyers would have warned against it. I'm not going to say a word to any federal offical unless they give me complete immunity.

Good responses, and I thank you.

I have succeeded in life, despite my family background (and in part because of it). Kate, you asked me why I hate feminism. I answered. Hating things is not rational, and I'm not rational about it, nor do I intend to be and this is a good thing.

What I stated was that you had no special complaint that entitled you to a political movement to advance your agenda. All my life, including today, I am told that I have and had no entitlement to such an agenda. I am white, male and hetero, and thus everything was given to me. That is the root of the feminist argument.

I don't doubt that you like something that gives you the advantage, and that delivers the goods to you. Oddly, I want that for myself. Where is my political and social movement demanding same? Answer: I will be called a member of the Klan for suggesting that it should exist.

On a larger note, my hatred of feminism is aethetic. I am an artist and a religious man. The feminist mantra about sex, love, romance and the spiritual nature of humans is ugly, Marxist and stupid in every way imagineable. And that's enough for me.

I'm not asking for pity, I'm just stating, Kate, that I am coldly uninterested and hostile toward a political movement that benefits you and villifies me. Make sense?

I'm usually the last person defending the French, but maybe the problem in those other places is that... they left.

After all, go to Martinique. It's fabulous. Then compare it to, say, St. Lucia - the next island down, and a former Brit colony - and there's a whole different story. St. Lucia, while similarly beautiful, is very, very poor.

I've been thinking of a trip to Martinique, actually. How fabulous is it?

"I'm not asking for pity, I'm just stating, Kate, that I am coldly uninterested and hostile toward a political movement that benefits you and villifies me. Make sense?"

Only if you are a narcissistic blowhard. Which your comments make you come across as.

"I am an artist and a religious man." Well. I'm an artist and a religious woman. Big deal. Excuse me while I get out the World's Smallest Violin.

My understanding of the problems with French colonialism is that they tended to get into protracted and bloody wars to keep their colonies (see Algeria, Vietnam), or they just pulled out abruptly without any sort of nation-building infrastructure beforehand.

The British usually had some exit plan executed over a number of years, plus a history of working more closely with some indigenous ruling class. This caused its own problems, but on the whole left some sort of infrastructure in place

These are huge generalizations, and its been a while since my undergraduate 20th century African history class, so feel free to correct me, if anyone cares this far into the thread.

Brennan

Gabon is in reasonably good shape, and if nothing has happened to change this in the past ten years, Togo was considered a model of stability and legal sophistication.

I also think Tunisia and Morocco are successes among their peer group.

Yehudit,

The casual contempt for men and your arrogant belief that everything should be conferred on you simply because you are a woman is not the stance of a religious woman.

You should hate and revile me. I am an enemy of women like you.

You are not supposed to like it. More and more men will be telling you this. Be prepared. Also be prepared for the moral payback that women are about to incur for displaying the moral arrogance of which you are so proud.

Oh, I know I shouldn't answer this, but I will. I only hope Stephen has moved on...

"Yehudit,
The casual contempt for men and your arrogant belief that everything should be conferred on you simply because you are a woman is not the stance of a religious woman."

Stephen, perhaps she doesn't have a casual contempt for men. Perhaps she loves men? I really can't gleam whether she does or not. I find it facinating that your levels of testosterone have given you psychic powers of deduction.

On the other hand, I believe that Yehudit has a casual contempt for you and not men in general. After reading your off the wall comments here, I can only say that I share her casual contempt for you, as, I suspect, do many of Jane's other readers.

"Only if you are a narcissistic blowhard. Which your comments make you come across as."

She seems pretty correct to me, you do sound like a narcissistic blowhard.

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