OK – here is the disclaimer for this rant. Just so you all know, I am no fan of Martha Stewart – I do not buy her magazine, watch her show, and find that the whole "here is how you should decorate to prove that your life is worth living" mantra more than a little annoying.  I would not have her to dinner, and would not give her a second thought if I passed her on the street, except to possibly scowl and say "who cares."  That all changed this week with yet another asinine act of our federal government - indicting Martha Stewart for lying to investigators and allegedly obstructing the investigation regarding the insider trading allegations made against her.  I guess I should not be surprised that the SEC found a way to indict Martha Stewart, rather than going after the real villains in corporate America like Ken Lay, Sandy Weil, Jack Grubman and Bernie Ebbers. At this point, I do not even care if she is guilty of insider trading; the whole thing is just ass-backwards.

Let us recap: we have experienced two of the largest bankruptcies in history, WorldCom and Enron. Both companies, once high fliers on the stock market, crashed and burned when the true facts surrounding their business operations were disclosed: cooked books, executive compensation packages that made professional athletes look like underpaid school teachers – falsified financial statements and illegal off the book transactions. Enron and WorldCom alone resulted in billions of lost investor dollars - many of those dollars fleeing the pockets of the small investor.  Thanks to the activities of Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, Jack Grubman, Sandy Weil and the rest of their scout troop (and lets not forget good old Dick Cheney when he was the head of Halliburton) confidence in corporate America has been justifiable been shaken to its core.  With all of this clear evidence of corruption rampant among these men, who do they indict?  – Martha Stewart – the queen of all things that scream "good taste."  Maybe since our government cannot find Saddam or Osaka, cannot (or will not) indict Kenny Boy (as Dubya calls him), Bernie Ebbers, Sandy Weil, Jack Grubman, or any of the other major players in the meltdown in corporate ethics, they go after Martha Stewart.  It just makes me sick – and I do not even like Martha.

 

What did Martha do? Well, apparently since they cannot make an insider trading case stick, they are now charging her with protesting her innocence to insider trading charges and thereby obstructing the investigation on the allegations they cannot prove. Apparently, by proclaiming her innocence, Ms. Martha misled stockholders in her own company, Martha Stewart Omnimedia ("MSO") resulting in an inflated stock price that damaged the MSO investor. So, by taking the track of saying "I am innocent of insider trading" she is now guilty of market manipulation: Talk about a stretch to save face. I guess since Martha Stewart owns about 94% of the MSO’s stock they are indicting Martha on behalf of Martha. Does anyone else smell a rat out there? Hmmm – all these men, all of the billions of dollars lost, and they indict ... Martha Stewart. There are you tax dollars hard at work once again.

Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney are not held accountable for the misconduct that occurred when they were in charge of a variety of companies, and they, along with Donnie Rumsfeld, continue to lie about the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Does anyone else find it incredible that we have an intelligence community that was been brow-beaten into manipulating data to find justification for the Administration's policies and actions.  Oh, and let us not forget that John Ashcroft continues to pursue his goal of making the United States a police state where personal liberty and freedom are a thing of the past - apparently the attack on the constitution that is the USA Patriot Act does not go far enough - he wants even more power to undermine our constitutional rights.  Then, there is the recently passed tax cut that pads the pockets of the rich at the expense of the working poor. Isn't there something impeachable or indictable in such conduct? Nah, that just boys being boys – politics as usual.

OK, how about the TRILLIONS of investor dollars lost when Kenny, Bernie, Sandy and Jackie mislead the American public down the investment path to poverty – again, nah, that is just boys being boys. Instead, it is all Martha's fault - she is the cause of all of our woes.  Get real, she is an easy target, she is a woman, and as a woman, she doesn’t have a penis.  There lies the rub.  Can someone please explain to me why the penis is so important in the Republican Party – if you have one and use it, you get impeached, if you don’t have one, and you try to play with the big boys, you get indicted.  But, if you have one and fleece the American public out of trillions of dollars, you get a tax break.  It seems to be all about the penis to me.  I think that for my next birthday I will ask for a penis – I swear I won’t use it, but it seems that if the Feds ever come sniffing my way it just might come in handy.

As for Martha, I can only shake my head and mutter- damn, she should have had a penis.