Gads. I can tell that it’s going to be impossible to keep up with all the Skilling/Lay trial happenings. Opening arguments are already over, and the first prosecution witness is testifying as I blog. Just subscribe to the feeds for the two Enron blogs plus Loren Steffy’s Full Disclosure and you’ll be in good shape.
Well, okay, you’ll also need to follow Tom Kirkendall’s analyses. Here’s his pregame review, and here’s his recap of the opening arguments. The defense team is talented and aggressive, and he thinks they did pretty well yesterday. One place where I think they may have stumbled a bit is captured in this Trail Watch post, from the opening statements by Skilling’s lawyer Daniel Petrocelli.
“What is Jeff Skilling’s motive?”, asked Petrocelli. The indictment said he committed crimes for money and prestige. “In 1999 he had more money than he ever dreamed of having,” Petrocelli said. He said he already had plenty of prestige.
For what it’s worth, that’s an argument that would cut no ice with me. It’s called “greed”, and even though Attorney Petrocelli also said that Skilling wasn’t greedy, the question I’d have for him is if Skilling had all the money and prestige he ever needed, why didn’t he quit in 1999? Especialy if he was (as you also claim) “uncomfortable” running Enron? Lou Pai, the former Enron exec whom the “Smartest Guys In the Room” film fingered as the reason why Enron and strippers went hand in hand, retired with his millions (and as I recall, a stripper girlfriend) to Hawaii a couple of years before the implosion. That’s what someone who has “more money than he ever dreamed of having” does. Why didn’t Skilling take his fortune and disappear into the sunset? One might say that as long as he was doing a CEO’s job and getting a CEO’s lavish pay, he still had room in his heart for more money and prestige.
Just my opinion. I’ll close here with Dwight’s behind-the-scenes look at the logistics of blogging a big trial. And Dwight, in the event that Judge Lake does shut down the courthouse’s WiFi network, there are alternate technologies available to your blogging crew.
Not greed alone but hubris and unbridled ego.
Koenig is nailing their hides to the wall this morning.
…and Bullying as a Business Plan…
………….
Well, legal data mining of DeLay, Abramoff, Eberle, Enron and GOPUSA (Jeff Gannon’s outfit) and the California Energy Crisis emails
from:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/2/1/10953/58081
Ready for some data mining?
by Cho
Wed Feb 01, 2006 at 08:09:53 AM PDT
Anyone interested in trying to connect the dots among the cronies — Delay, Enron, GOPUSA (Jeff Gannon’s outfit) and that little thing called the California energy crisis?
Grab your shovels and your picks, the ePluribus Media researchers received some very interesting data and can use help. On a tip from the Moon of Alabama folks
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2006/01/open_weekend.html#c13497363
they’ve got access to a treasure trove of emails among Enron and GOPUSA, “employer” of our old friend Jeff Gannon. As just one tantalizing tidbit, all the key GOPUSA-ers had Enron email addresses, how convenient is that? Right now some of the ePMedia folk are combing through and collating what they find.
………….
Kfred’s starting pulling together the data that links Abramoff, Reed and Delay here:
ENRON FILES: Abramoff? Reed? Delay?? Yes.
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/1/31/221021/232
WanderIndiana’s been tracking the interesting connections between Enron and GOPUSA — more than just the convenient email address “connection” at:
Help Us Dig Through Enron Email: GOPUSA
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/1/31/21518/2147
………………
As kfred noted in her Cheers and Jeers post:
Anyway – Cheers to someone putting all of the Enron emails sucked up by the government onto the web in a searchable form.
Cheers to the fact it was legally obtained, by court order, approved by a judge, unlike some data sucking that has been done by a certain guy who has jaw twitches and stands behind a podium and goes “heh heh”
If you want some brain exercises or just plain fun, check the preliminary results of our playing in this candy store, Join US!
If anyone would like to get caught up on the Enron scandal while the trials are going on I would highly recommend the movie Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. It is a great behind the scenes look and the scandal from its roots and all those who were involved. It was shocking to see just how many people knew about the fraud that was being carried out on a daily basis by the Enron executives as well as traders. Go to http://www.enronmovie.com for more information. It is now available on DVD and was just nominated for an Oscar