THE TRUTH
LIESWITHIN
June 29, 2002
Volume I Issue 149
Environmentally friendly since late
1999
Made entirely of recycled bits &
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Commentary
By
now you must have heard that my fellow Long Islander, Martha
Stewart, has gotten herself into quite a dilemma. For those
of you who are just joining the party, here is a recap of
the events so far. Martha, a former stockbroker
herself, owned shares in a drug company called ImClone
which was owned by a friend, Sam Waksal.
The company was working on a new cancer drug called Erbitux.
About two weeks ago, Mr. Waksal
found out that the FDA was not going to approve Erbitux.
In the drug business, this can be death to a small drug company,
especially one that does not have a lot of other blockbuster
drugs to fall back on. Mr. Waksal was arrested by the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) as he apparently told some relatives and friends
about this news a day before it became public. This allowed
them to sell their stock ahead of the news and avoid the inevitable
big losses that us peons, who are not privy to such inside
information, would be subject to if we decided to sell shares
of the company during the stampede for the exits. Which, by the way, is exactly what happened. Not to me, thank
God. Not because I am so smart, but only because I had already
lost a great deal of my money in the previous stampede in
the tech industry. At least I didn’t buy Enron, like a good
friend of mine did. Despite his recommendations, I managed
to find enough losers on my own.
This
type of thing is called insider trading, which simply means
that "insiders"( people who have access to information not available to the
general public) are using that inside information to profit
from it by buying and selling stock. This is illegal. The
problem is that the definition is so broad it can be applied
to almost anyone. Suppose you are at a high school reunion
and you meet an old friend you haven’t seen in thirty years.
You trade pleasantries, and he tells you he works for Microsoft
and he is tight with Bill Gates. Bill just confided in him
that he is tired of all the government harassment and the
lawsuits and he is selling all of his shares in Microsoft,
retiring from the company and is going to join a Buddhist
temple run by his good friends Steven Segal and Richard Gere,
and retire to the quiet life of multi billionaire Buddhist
monk. You, being the genius you are, realize that Microsoft
without Bill Gates is like Apple without Steve Jobs. So you
immediately call your broker and sell all 13 of your shares
of Microsoft. When the news is announced two days later, that
Bill Gates is indeed packing it in for personal reasons(these
days CEO’s often leave for "personal reasons" which
are undisclosed, like pending charges of sales tax evasion,
accounting fraud and other such "personal reasons.")
You laugh to yourself at your prescience as the stock quickly
loses half its value in a few days. You also laugh because
you know what Bill is really up to and you are picturing him
with the glasses and the sweater and the shaved head. You
have to admit, that is a very funny image. I hope my web people
are talented enough graphic artists to come up with that image
for the web page. If not, let us hope that I am a talented
enough writer that you can imagine the picture in your mind.
I
mean, I ain’t no Billy Shakespeare. You know if William were alive and working
today, he would probably be a hip hop artist working under
the name of Billy Shakes. "I say, Go Hamlet. Go Hamlet.
The plays the thing to catch the conscience
of the king. That’s what I’m talking about. Can you
dig it? I knew that you could ‘cause
Hammie is the prince of the Danish hood. His momma’s a ho knocking boots with his Unc,
while his father’s barely cold. That’s cold. But Hammie
is cool ‘cause he’s no fool. He’s
old school. With his chick Ophelia by his side he will learn
how is father really died. Then he’ll chill ‘til his uncle
he kills and takes revenge in the end." Thank goodness
Shakespeare isn’t alive to see this. He is dead, isn’t he?
Just checking. I don’t want any lawsuits from any stray relatives.
I took the liberty because I was certain that there was a
paucity of Shakespeares working
in theater today.
Now
back to the regularly scheduled program which is already in
progress. Don’t you hate when they do that on TV and you missed
who the murderer was? If you had cashed in the knowledge that
your old friend casually passed on to you, you my friend,
would technically be guilty of insider trading. But, let us
do my patented reductio ad absurdum. Isn’t anyone who beats the market either
lucky or in possession of knowledge that we don’t all have?
We employ stock brokers and financial analysts, and subscribe
to stock picking newsletters and Web sites in order to pick
the brains of pundits who allegedly know something that we
don’t in order to cash in and get a piece of the capitalist
pie. At what level does it rise to a criminal offense?
That
is the million dollar question. I imagine that the amount
of money the person made plays into the decision. If you sold
your thirteen shares of Microsoft, you would not have made
a great deal in terms of gross dollars. Of course, to you,
that few hundred dollars might be more important the $143,000-$220,000(I
have seen figures in this range and I don’t know what the
actual amount was) that Martha made by allegedly getting an
inside tip from her friend, Sam, just before the feds carted
him off. Of course, the problem with that logic is that it
uses the half-pregnant criterion. It is like the old joke
where a man asks a woman if she would sleep with him for a
dollar. She laughs and says no way. He then says, "Would
you sleep with me for $1 million dollars?," to which she replies, "Sure." He answers,
"Now that we know what you are, we are merely haggling
over the price." Do you get where I am going with this?
Good! Then perhaps you can explain it to me, because of that
memory thing I spoke about in last week’s article, I lost
my train of thought. Just kidding.
I didn’t lose it. I never had one to begin with. My point
is that we are using the half-pregnant argument here. If you
are at all familiar with our criminal justice system(and
I use the term loosely) all crimes have varying degrees. We
run the gamut from A felonies to
Class D misdemeanors. It reads like an old pre-buffet Chinese
menu.
Despite
Martha’s assertions to the contrary, it appears that she may
have had a tip about the stuff hitting the fan before the
actual collision. She uses the same stockbroker as Sam Waksal(who by the way was just fired by Merrill Lynch, who by the
way, just agreed to pay New York $100 million because they
mislead the public about stocks they were touting.) Martha
claims that she had a stop-loss order in at $60 and that is
why the stock was sold on the day before the news. It was
a coincidence. A stop-loss order, for the uninformed, is when
you tell your broker to automatically sell the stock if it
goes below a certain number. This will preserve your profits
or keep you from losing more than a certain amount. If my
broker had only suggested these things to me, he would be
broker than I am right now. This is perfectly legal and acceptable;
however, there is no record of such an order being placed.
Usually you do it in writing. Now it is possible that Martha
is telling the truth, but her public has been punishing her
by selling shares in her own company, which has cost her a
great deal more than she profited from the ImClone
deal.
You
see Martha’s business is entirely built upon image. She is
the helpful rich person who teaches us peons how to live elegantly.
To prove she is not an elitist, she chose to market her products
with K-Mart. Not a smart move on her part. She should have
chosen Wal-Mart but maybe the Kathy Lee thing left a bad taste
in her mouth. I would be willing to bet that she would have
clamored to book passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.
How could she resist such elegance and opulence?
Why
is the government going after her? Well, for one thing, the
low paid civil servants who oversee these things,
rarely get a shot at the spotlight, and they love to go after
high profile people. The public loves to build people up and
then tear them down. Makes you wonder what kind of sicko society we are running here. If you recall, the IRS
jailed Leona Helmsley, another woman
of impeccable taste, but far too elitist to bother with the
common folk. She was the Marie Antoinette of her day. She
went to prison for four years for income tax evasion when
the amount that she allegedly evaded did not rise to the 20%
of income standard that the government usually applied to
determine when it rises to a criminal level. The fact was
that she not only paid taxes, but indeed overpaid and was
owed money. If Martha goes to prison, which is a possibility,
there is a precedent. Perhaps she can get Leona’s old cell,
which must surely have fallen on hard times since Leona vacated
it and is no longer around to maintain the changes she must
have surely made to it.
If
Martha were to go to prison, I am sure she will make the best
of it and find a way to profit from it. She has overcome adversity
before. After all, she did live in Connecticut before moving to Long Island. (No offense to my CT readers,
if I have any left after this.) I think that Martha would
be more than up to the challenge to decorate her modest new
abode. First of all, she would go for the simplicity and the
best thing to do there is to apply the principles of Feng
Shui. She would choose her colors
carefully to reflect her centers of power, business, and love.
To quote our resident Feng Shui
consultant, CheyAnna, "
Ah, yes. The flow of chi in a prison cell would be
very
important to the happiness and well-being of its occupant(s).
Even a small
space can be arranged to have a positive impact on one's life
experience."
I
know Martha will serve her time as a model prisoner and help
the less fortunate inmates by starting a prison herb garden
and teaching the finer points of culinary cuisine. Did you
know that a simple shiv made from
a sharpened spoon makes an excellent weeding tool? No? I didn’t
either. Or that you can pick up those ubiquitous bars of soap
from the shower room floor and carve then into lovely Christmas
ornaments using that same all-purpose shiv? She will show you how to make all kinds of wonderfully
decorative things with simple items laying
around your cell. I can see her doing her Christmas special
right from her cell. And if you think that the state of Florida has a lot of license plate
designs, wait until Martha gets to making
her designer plates.
Ah,
who am I kidding? If indeed Martha does get convicted and
ends up in prison, do you think she is going to the same prison
that we ordinary folks go to? Don’t kid yourself. She would
be going to Rich Man’s White Collar Prison. There are two
that I am aware of. There is one in Allentown, PA. And the other overlooks
the Miamus River in CT. She will probably
go there because it is closer for her relatives to visit her.
Just think, she may get to explore this marvelous old prison that once
held the likes of such public enemies as Ivan Boesky, Michael
Milliken, Bob Haldeman, the Johns, Dean and Ehrlichman
and the rest of the crazy Watergate bunch. Yes, all the president’s
men once served time here. Then they got out and resumed their
roles in society and wrote books about their experiences and
became even richer. Ah, if only these walls could talk. The
stories they would tell. The parties, the
hookers, the weekend conjugal visits from the wives and girlfriends.
Who says that prison doesn’t rehabilitate? Not me. Crime does
pay if you do it right. In fact, this reporter has it on good
authority that Martha may be on the short list to take over
the "Ann Landers" column from the recently departed
Ann Landers.
Or, better yet, why not a new prison to house her right there in the
Hamptons. Where better to build a
bright upscale detainment residence for those elite mis-interpreters
of the law, designed and decorated
by the queen bee of under-stated elegance and craftiness?
Perhaps she could do an helpful mini-series
for the other detainees on "Using the Correct Spices
to Cook the Books." If only it were available to the CEO of Tyco Industries before my
stock went below $60(which, coincidentally, is the magic number
that Martha allegedly set to sell her ImClone
shares.)
Like
all of you, I anxiously await the outcome of this case. Only
because it is a slow news time as we have mopped up Afghanistan and we have not yet begun
to make our move on Iraq. These wars move at such
a slow pace, don’t they? Until then, I will leave you with
some of my famous words of wisdom and a new wrinkle on an
old saw. "Honesty is the best policy. Unless
you are 100% certain that you won’t get caught."
Good
luck, Martha. And if it goes wrong and you do get convicted,
I will be the first on line to pay you one of those conjugal
visits. It is a well known fact that I have a thing for you.
Besides, the prison stripes have such a slimming effect. And
if they give you one of those icky orange jump suits to wear,
I just know that you will accessorize it beautifully and make
it work for you.
And THAT, was my two-cents plain!
Irvmeister
The
artist formerly known as
Meisterzingers
You’ve
heard of having a bad hair day? Well, I am having a bad hair
life.
When
it rains, it pours.
Our
resident Feng Shuist, CheyAnna
provided this timely Martha update on the recall of one of
her products.
Today's
Recalls
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Candle-lite Has Recalled Martha
Stewart Everyday® Brand Potpourri Simmering Pots Sold at Kmart.
Reason: Flames from the tea light candles inside these potpourri
pots can flare out of the side ventilation holes, possibly
causing burns to consumers.
Distribution: Nationwide.
http://www.safetyalerts.com/recall/p/02/p001072.htm
Did
you know that warm Yak urine can be very soothing to fresh
burns? If you don't have access to a Yak, a baby’s urine will
do in a pinch.
Fries
Have Gone Funky
If
you think some of my foods like Spaghetti-on-a-Stick and Microwave
Haggis are silly, I have been outdone by the American food
industry. Ore Ida now has a new line
of French fries called Funky Fries.
They come in flavors such
as Cinna-Sticks, which are cinnamon and sugar coated, Sour Cream
and Jive, and the killer of them all, Cocoa Crispers. Chocolate flavored
French fries. I guess they were looking for a way to make
kids eat more fries, as if that were a difficult task. Kids
eat far too much French fries, and fried food in general,
as it is. They are no longer just a side dish. Apparently
now they can be for desert as well. I saved the best for last.
Kool Blue fries. I don’t know about
you, but if my mother served me blue French fries, I would
not eat them. I think that is usually a sign that they are
no longer edible. I can’t wait to see how
this will go with Heinz’ new EZ Squirt ketchups in fashion
colors Passion Pink, Awesome Orange, and
Totally Teal, and of course the old standbys green and yellow. Cocoa fries with green ketchup?
Blue fries with yellow ketchup would make me turn green. Ore
Ida is a Heinz company, and I am
certain that their food scientist made sure that the colors
of their ketchup is compatible with their new fries.
I
imagine they felt that American kids are not obese and unhealthy
enough and something out to be done about it. I can’t wait
for McDonald’s to start putting these things in their crappy
meals. At least I came out with a new line of Diet Waters
to go with my Spaghetti-on-a-Stick line of foods.
Letters to the Editor
Re:
Memory Degradation in the Middle-Aged Male.
"My
mother used to iron our sheets and my father’s shorts."
When
I was growing up (about the same time you were growing up),
my mom taught me the basic necessities for young ladies: cooking,
laundry, etc. She was quite specific about the order in which
one irons shirts (sleeves last) and my dad's shorts. She failed
to mention, however, that the handy can of spray starch which
always sat on the ironing board was not to be used on everything.
My dad discovered my "enthusiasm" the hard way!!
Keep up the great work!
Jane in GA
Thanks
Jane,
I'll
bet he didn't appreciate your cooking the laundry either.
We know today that we have to cut down on the starch as there
are just too many carbs in our diet.(-Ed.)
Since
the Taliban cannot stand nudity and consider it a sin to see
a naked woman that is not a wife, this coming Saturday afternoon
at 2:00 pm. Eastern time, all North American women
are asked to walk out of their houses completely naked to
help weed out any
neighborhood terrorists. Circling your block for one hour
is recommended for this anti-terrorist effort.
All men are to position themselves in lawn chairs in front
of their houses to prove they think it's
okay to see other women nude and to show support for their
fellow sisters. And since the Taliban also does not approve
of alcohol, a cold six-pack at your side is further proof
of your anti-Taliban sentiment.
The United States of America appreciates your efforts
to root out terrorists and applauds your participation.
God
Bless America! any
Terrorists in the house now/ guess not.
Charlene
O’Connor, Brandon, Fl.
We
at the Sleuth support all feasible antiterrorist methods.
Since there are not women in my household, I cannot provide
one for the event. But I am rushing out to Wal-Mart to purchase
their best pair of binoculars in order to keep an eye out
for any terrorists in my neighborhood(-Ed.)
The staff of The Long
Island Sleuth wish you a Happy and Safe Fourth of July
A
proud member of the Net Wits, well not too proud because I
joined anyway since the dues were cheap.
©Copyright
June 29, 2002 Meister Enterprises All
Rights Reserved
