Feb. 14, 2003 - 17:20 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Questions

I've got questions, five in number -- answers right now are zilch, give me a bit of time please.

That time again Friday Five is alive once more.

1. - Explain why you started to journal/blog.

A. - After posting to a few forums it seemed to me that maybe I had something to say. With mentors behind me I began my diary.

2. - Do people you interact with day to day or family members know about your journal/blog ? Why or why not ?

A. - Some do and some don't.

Why or why not ? - - - - I don't have a job to worry about on that score. Some of my family members have my url and can read if they wish. Some of my friends here in town have my url too. Some who have the url seem to be too busy to read it and some follow along. Its there and they are welcome to read.

3. - Do you have a theme for your journal/blog ?

A. - The title explains the theme more or less. THE WONDERING JEW. Wherein I try to figure the world out and myself too. Trying to figure out why our politicians act the way they do. Which is a wonder in itself.

4. - What direction would you like your journal/blog to go in over the next year ?

A. - I would like my diary to become more lucid, grammatical and interesting to me and to others. What more can I say ?

5. - Pimp five of your favorite journals/blogs.

A. - Keeping up with journals tends to make people my friends, at least it seems so to me. How is it possible for me to pick five of my friends to put on the list, without slighting my other friends ? If I made a list, it would be long and written in a circle, with nobody on top.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

There is an article in the business section of today's Rocky Mountain News by Daid Cay Johnston of the New York Times regarding Enrons past sins against the taxpayers. First paragraph leads off, "Wall Street banks, acting on the advice of leading lawyers and accounting firms, helped the Enron Corp. devise shelters that left the company operate tax free for years while exaggerating its reported profits by billions, the Senate Finance Committee was told Thursday."

A bit later in the complicated article it is noted, "The front page of one tax shelter deal was entitled, 'Show Me The Money!' The transactions acording to the report and testimony at Thursday's hearing, relied on technical interpretations of the differences between tax and accounting rules to allow Enron to deduct some dollars from its tax liabilities more than once, treat some of the company's capital as an expense and generate tax losses while creating the appearance of of profits."

Later it says "One shelter used Cayman Islands entities to hide money from the Internal Revenue Service, an example of what the report said were transactions so complex that the IRS lacked the capacity to deal with them."

From what the article says, the banks on the advice of lawyers and accountants built the shelters and funny finance reporting for Enron. Looks to me that banks should know that such things were tainting the purity of sacred accounting practice and legal mores. It appears to me that the whole blinkin' bunch knew that something was rotten. But what the heck, the only ones affectd were the little Joes like you and me.

I think that the corporations in the effort to gather much profit have actually been robbing the common citizen of the United States for a long time by sending work overseas or south to keep American citizens, "in their place," constructing phony shelters and working things out to the point that they paid NO taxes and profited unfairly to the tune of billions of dollars.

And we wonder why prices are going up in the United States ? Because of tactics long engaged in by the Money Men.

I do have a sense of outrage and multiple Questions . . . . . . . . .

Blog