01 Nov 2002
Oops. Turns out that the perl script I wrote yesterday to automate
putting photos online produced HTML that caused certain browsers (Internet
Explorer) to not display photos. Anyway, the problem has been
fixed. If you tried to view the photos yesterday or the day before and they didn’t work
for you, try them again.Exactly two trick-or-treaters came to our house last night.
In Alameda, a seemingly endless wave of trick-or-treaters came to our
door. As such, I had nine bags of candy on hand for Halloween
this year. I guess we’ll just have plenty of candy to tide us over
until Easter.
Wednesday night, Sarah and I went to a local bar to see the St. Louis
roots rock band, The Bottle Rockets. We have a couple of the band’s
albums and we’d never gotten to see them play live before. The $10
cover charge seemed reasonable, so it was an easy decision to go.
Since the band tours all over and has put out several CD’s, I expected to
see quite a crowd on hand. Instead, just over fifty people were there
to hear the band play (in a venue that could hold three times that
many). Well, it wasn’t crowded and the folks that weren’t there missed
a good show.
If you missed it, William H. Webster was appointed to lead the new SEC
board charged with overseeing the corporate accounting industry.
Oops. It turns out that not only does Mr. Webster know jacksh*t about
accounting (so he isn’t part of the solution), Mr. Webster is part of the
problem. See, Webster was the head of the auditing committee for a
company named U.S. Technologies. U.S. Technologies is now insolvent
and being sued by investors who claim the company defrauded them.
Seems that the external auditors hired by the company thought there were
several irregularities in the company’s books. So, the audit
committee, under Webster’s leadership, fired the external auditors.
Webster told this sordid tale to Bush/Cheney’s flunky at the SEC, Harvey
Pitt, the day before the election to make Webster the new board’s
chairman. Pitt, like all good Bush/Cheney flunkies, sat on the
information and didn’t disclose this little mishap of Webster’s to the other
members of the committee until after Webster had been elected..
So, the committee elects Webster, someone with very recent experience
in corporate accounting fraud (having been intimately involved in creating
fraud), to oversee
a committee designed to eliminate corporate accounting fraud. Would
everyone who still believes that the Bush/Cheney administration is actually
acting in anyone’s best interest other than those of big business, please stand up?
Hmm…that’s a mighty sparse crowd. What was the official response of
the White House to these revelations: