ERRORS IN JUDGEMENT, ETHICS, AND JUST PLAIN GREED

Dynegy Abandons Plans for 5 New Coal Plants
Posted by Bruce Nilles, Sierra Club at 3:11 PM on January 2, 2009.
Chalk one up for the environmentalists. It's about time someone wins against the evil of the greedy ones who care nothing about the health and lungs of the people of the USA.

At Plant in Coal Ash Spill, Toxic Deposits by the Ton
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By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: December 29, 2008

"In a single year, a coal-fired electric plant deposited more than 2.2 million pounds of toxic materials in a holding pond that failed last week, flooding 300 acres in East Tennessee, according to a 2007 inventory filed with the Environmental Protection Agency.

The inventory, disclosed by the Tennessee Valley Authority on Monday at the request of The New York Times, showed that in just one year, the plant’s byproducts included 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese. Those metals can cause cancer, liver damage and neurological complications, among other health problems."

One can compare the government, especially with the research and scientific findings knowledge in the past few years, as being the worst kind of selfish parent, killing its children, offering no medical care for those who were dying, because of governing greed. However, they are not the sole bad influences. This administration has allowed many corporations to behave totally immorally.

A 12/15/08 "Siemens AG and Three Subsidiaries Plead Guilty to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Violations and Agree to Pay $450 Million in Combined Criminal Fines" The DOJ released details of the substantial fine Siemens finally paid. "According to court documents, beginning in the mid-1990s, Siemens AG engaged in systematic efforts to falsify its corporate books and records and knowingly failed to implement and circumvent existing internal controls. As a result of Siemens AG’s knowing failures in and circumvention of internal controls, from the time of its listing on the New York Stock Exchange on March 12, 2001, through approximately 2007, Siemens AG made payments totaling approximately $1.36 billion through various mechanisms. Of this amount, approximately $554.5 million was paid for unknown purposes, including approximately $341 million in direct payments to business consultants for unknown purposes. The remaining $805.5 million of this amount was intended in whole or in part as corrupt payments to foreign officials through the payment mechanisms, which included cash desks and slush funds." This is only one of the gross losses of revenue due the US because of the lack of oversight, among other things.

Was the 'Credit Crunch' a Myth Used to Sell a Trillion-Dollar Scam?
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted December 29, 2008.
There is something approaching a consensus that the Paulson Plan -- also known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP -- was a boondoggle of an intervention that's flailed from one approach to the next, with little oversight and less effect on the financial meltdown.

But perhaps even more troubling than the ad hoc nature of its implementation is the suspicion that has recently emerged that TARP -- hundreds of billions of dollars worth so far -- was sold to Congress and the public based on a Big Lie.

President George W. Bush, fabulist-in-chief, articulated the rationale for the program in that trademark way of his -- as if addressing a nation of slow-witted 12-year-olds -- on Sept. 24: "Major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse ... [and] began holding onto their money, and lending dried up, and the gears of the American financial system began grinding to a halt." Bush said that if Congress didn't give Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson the trillion dollars (give or take) for which he was asking, the results would be disastrous: "Even if you have good credit history, it would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college. And ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession." You can read the entire story.