Political Irony

Last Wednesday Diebold agreed to pay $25 million in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraudulently manipulating its earnings to meet financial forecasts. But the SEC is pursuing additional fraud charges against three former executives, including their chief financial officer, controller and finance chief, and the director of corporate accounting.

Some of you may remember Diebold as one of the villains in the whole electronic voting mess a few years ago. Last year, they sold their voting machine businesses to Election Systems & Software, but the current SEC charges cover violations incurred during the same time that Diebold was defending itself against massive irregularities in their voting machines.

What Diebold was doing was using illegal accounting practices to make their revenues look larger than they actually were, in order to inflate their stock price. This in turn defrauded their investors. But what I found interesting was how they did it. The company distributed internal reports called “flash reports” that compared actual earnings to Wall Street analysts’ forecasts, and then employed a smorgasbord of fraudulent accounting practices in order to make their real earnings look like their desired earnings. And they did this year after year.

Does this sound similar to figuring out how you want an election to turn out, and then fixing the numbers so that the actual vote looks like the desired vote?

According to the SEC, the illegal accounting inflated Diebold’s reported earnings by at least $127 million, which makes the $25 million penalty look paltry.

Oh, and if you’re glad that Diebold is no longer in the voting machine business, just remember that they make most of the ATMs you use to get cash.

© M.e. Cohen

This is one of those stories that is either a great example of American ingenuity, or crazy beyond belief. Oh well, that’s Texas for you.

Visitors to the state capitol in Austin, Texas are now required to pass through security, including metal detectors and inspections of purses, briefcases, and other bags. This is sometimes causing long delays, especially when busloads of schoolchildren are touring the building. But as usual, lobbyists have found a loophole to speed their way into the capitol. The law exempts lawmakers, state employees, and — strangely enough — any Texan with a concealed handgun license. Those people get to go through an express lane.

According to lobbyist (and former state legislator) Pat Haggerty:

Every lobbyist in Texas is going to become a card-carrying member or a gun-carrying member. We’re going to have more damn guns in here than we know what to do with. And there are some lobbyists I don’t know whether I’d trust — or trust myself if they’re around. It would certainly be a good way to do away with the competition.

But you don’t actually have to be carrying a gun to get into the fast lane, you only have to have your concealed weapon permit.

Another lobbyist, Bill Miller, arranged for his office colleagues to take an day-long training class to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. According to Miller:

Nobody I know is getting it for purposes of a gun. They are getting it strictly for purposes of expediency. … Not that I have anything against schoolchildren, but when you need to be at the Capitol, you need to be at the Capitol. You don’t need to be standing in the line. It’s hard enough to get people to talk to you, and they’re not going to talk to you if you are standing in line with a bunch of kids.

Many of the lobbyists getting a concealed weapon permit don’t even own a gun.

So, curious what could possibly go wrong with Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigrant law? Don’t think it will be used to discriminate against Mexicans (or people who look like Mexicans)?

Consider the recent case of Eduardo Caraballo. Caraballo was held for three days by federal immigration authorities in Chicago, was told that he was an illegal immigrant and that he was going to be deported.

The only problem? Caraballo is a US citizen. He was born in Puerto Rico (yes, Puerto Rico is part of the US, in case you don’t know that). He showed authorities his Illinois state-issued ID, but that wasn’t enough. His mother even brought in his birth certificate and his social security card, but they didn’t like that either. They finally released him, but only after his mother contacted Representative Luis Gutierrez.

According to Caraballo, officers asked him specific questions about Puerto Rico, which he couldn’t answer since he left there when he was eight months old. Apparently they thought his official papers were fake.

So, does anyone think that something like this would ever happen to someone who wasn’t hispanic?

© Matt Bors