That's an interesting question. As far as the executives go - well, people on the upside of wealth usually seem to go by the belief that since wealth creates all the jobs, anything that's done to preserve wealth is good for the greater good. Individual disaster is kind of collateral damage. Also, there tends to be a weird disconnect at work with some people who have way too much money. Our company stock has taken a really nasty tumble in the last couple of years and our company is in deep trouble. Some employees bought stock, but it was their choice. It's nothing like Enron. 401Ks do not hold the company stock. It's just that when we went public some people elected to buy stock. It was their choice and I'm not claiming anything different. It was only sold in blocks of 100 shares, so those who bought it had to put up at least 1500 bucks. Then it went up a lot and everyone who bought was happy. Then it went down, down, down and everyone who bought was unhappy. Anyway, one of the heads of the company said, in conversation with a regular guy who works here and bought too much stock, that what the regular people didn't understand was that when the stock went down, they lost thousands at most but he was losing millions. What he didn't understand was that everyone knew what he got when the company went public and they also knew that if he didn't have enough put away to live on comfortably for life and still leave his kids a nice bundle, then he's just an idiot, whereas, the regular guy doesn't have much to fall back on. I mean..how much money regular people have and don't have and what that means to them is something that the very wealthy all too often, really, really don't comprehend. I think that lack of comprehension makes it easier to sleep at night when your actions have deprived someone of their retirement income. There's a part of the brain of the wealthy exec who doesn't really believe that there's anyone who doesn't have at least a modest trust fund somewhere.

As far as campaign contributions - well, we really need to figure out how to have effective campaign finance reform. It really is a difficult issue, even without the obvious but unavoidable conflict of interest in having recipients of camapaign financing making the law.

Ceashel, I was thinking of a full blown word page, not thread. I mean..permanent stuff. If you're interested let's start a thread to discuss it.

A word page sounds manageable. I kind of wondered how a word thread would work. Whew!

Pat, I do believe I have noticed that when some people say they're "broke," or that they are "down to their last (fill in the blank) _______ dollars," or that they "can't afford" something, they are referring to an entirely different financial situation than the one other people are talking about when using those same words and phrases. I've also seen an attitude/belief among certain well-to-do folk that a) being in their position is really quite easy, so anyone who wants to be there is there; b) that they deserve what they have and are entitled to it because they earned it -- and did so without help, breaks, or special treatment from anyone else; c) that everyone else does exactly the same thing(s) they do, but they are simply better at it (and therefore more deserving); and d) like Shakespeare said, "They laugh at scars, who bear none".

People who are never really hungry would appear to have a hard time fathoming the very concept of hunger. I was watching a show about the training Marines go through, and the drill sargeant barks at one of the recruits, who is complaining of pain, "This may well be the most pain you've experienced so far in all your 19 years, but believe me soldier, this is not pain."

A word page sounds good. I mentioned it to Sherry last night and I think she's interested, too.

Muffy et al., I've seen that, too. A total lack of understanding, much less empathy. Example: a few years ago, my (then) boss was hot for me to fire a woman because she was late so much due to car trouble. We don't have great (back then, much of any) public transportation. She was a young single mom, well below the poverty line in her "wonderful" job. She always made up the time, and being there on time wasn't critical in her job. This guy made three times what I made, and six times what she made. In one discussion I had with him, he nearly broke down, he was so distraught because she couldn't understand all she had to do was just get a car that ran well and keep it properly maintained. I never did get through to him, and he grew to despise me for being so "soft." She eventually found a better job in the company (so did I), and he to this day thinks she and others like her are just too lazy/stupid to keep their lives running smoothly, and that people like me are ineffective because we can't make them "toe the line." Funny thing is, she's fine in the new job--makes enough to have decent transportation.

Doesn't everyone have that little voice in their head that says, "This is not right!!!"
Do money and power really make your conscience inaudible? Or did these people not have a conscience in the first place? Nature vs nurture????

Well, you probably can't generalize, but I doubt if it's true that none of them have a conscience. It's probably just that they can work around it when necessary.

I think it's a work-around, with more conscience and empathy showing the more the other people resemble them. (I think we all <u>tend</u> to do that.) This guy's still out there "slaying" 'em, but he's on the front pew every Sunday and takes every opportunity to tell you about his religious activities, so he's cool with his conscience.

It's amazing how well we are equipped to rationalize when it comes to our own behavior. I don't even think that, in many cases, it's even that people ignore their consciences. They honestly can't conceive that anything they do could be wrong. I don't think most people are really even aware of a great deal of what they do and say, to tell you the truth.

Or rather, they see what they are doing, and do get angry about it, but they project what they are doing onto others. At best, they simply don't examine their own actions. It's always someone else doing all these terrible things -- never, <u>ever</u> themselves. I've learned that those who become the most irate, and who take the toughest stand, are inevitably those who are the most blatently guilty of the very behavior they censure and berate in others. i.e., When someone sneers with disgust about "that drug addicted alcoholic", I know immediately to look for a bottle of vodka hidden in the dishwasher of the person who's doing the sneering, and wonder exactly how much they are spending each week on cocaine and crack. It takes the attention (and the heat) off of themselves, and conveniently places it on someone else. Remember the guy who ate all the Christmas cookies Pam sent me? He had vented his spleen only minutes before, lashing out vituperatively about the "pigs" he'd encountered at a party he'd waited on that evening. Apparently, one of the guests had loaded his plate up with a sizeable amount of a particular appetizer. The caterer (who was there strictly as a server, and didn't know any of guests or who they were in relation to the hostess) apparently went so far as to scold said guest for taking too much. Mind you, this wasn't a gathering of poor people who weren't going to get any other dinner. This was a party for the sort of folk who look to meals mostly as a way to break up the monotony of their day (if you know what I mean), and wouldn't know a real hunger pang if they sat on it.

As for the church going stuff ... one of the main reasons I stopped going to church myself had to do with the pretensions of piety one finds in them. It's like those parables in the New Testament about the 'worshippers' who are in church mainly to be seen.

One of my brothers became a deacon. My mother told him how happy she was that he had finally found and was actively pursuing spirituality in his life. He burst out laughing, as if it was the most absurd thing he'd heard in his life. He informed our mother that he was 'doing the deacon thing' for networking purposes, for image, and for the standing it gives him in the community -- spirituality really didn't enter into the equation at all, as far as he is concerned. He continued by saying that as far as he's concerned, all that 'spirituality stuff' is just so much bunk and nonsense. I don't think his attitude is particularly unique, but it sure did create another crack in my mother's heart ...

Enron retirement mugs on e-bay: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1064769625

Little did they know that the mugs *were* their retirement plan.

See, that's why I find it difficult to place any blame on the Enron employees for getting themselves into this mess. They were following the advice of financial planners and investment "experts". They were being told by people who supposedly knew what they were talking about (after all, it was their job to know, right?) that this was a terrific investment -- and I'm sure they had rosy pictures of Micorsoft millionairiage planted carefully in their heads. They did what they were being told was the wisest thing to do with their money. So, they didn't have market savvy -- Why should they be expected to?