Martha Stewart Sentencing Today

jhiggins

jhiggins

Joined
Jul 11, 2003
Messages
3,258
What do you guys think she'll get?

I think the judge should sentence her to five years of living with me and taking care of my family. Cruel and unusual punishment? Nope. It's celebrities with huge bank accounts like her that forced me and my entire family out of the home town I grew up in, jacking property values up to a million+ per acre. Now, I can't even afford to go back and visit for more than a couple days. Not that I'd want to.. there aren't any more NATIVE Mainers on the islands anymore. Gah! I better stop bitchin'. This is getting me grumpy. :grumpy:
 
She is an overbearing, egotistical, obnoxious bitch, but.....I see very little to send her to prison for. Sure, she lied to the Government.....The Government lies to us everyday.
 
I see what you mean, Don. I see your point. I also agree with you to some extent, but where does it begin and end? Why do honest folks like us always wind up either poor or just getting by? Its because of people like Martha who prey upon us. You buy her magazine, or watch her show, or buy something onlline at her webstore and you line her pockets with cash, and its all greed. Somewhere, she has to fess up and make restitution for that whole insider trading mess. If I did it I'd get caught and they'd throw me in the slammer in the blink of an eye. Just because she's a celeb is no reason to show leniency. She's still going to get the best of care while she's in. Its not going to be like hard time or anything. I doubt she'll be sipping tea and munching on scones every day, but its definitely going to be easy time.
 
I don't disagree with your reasoning Jeff, just the punishment. This country is prison happy.

Prison is to take really bad people and keep them away from good people...period.
Forget the BS you hear about rehabilitation. Without exception, people come out of prison more dangerous than before they went in.

One of the most unhappy memories I have is of a kid (23 or 24) who used to come to Va from Florida every year to hunt with his brother in a hunt club. Every year he would drink a few too many beers prior to the season, drive somewhere, get pulled over and get arrested for DWI.

MADD put on a big push here to have mandatory sentences and Va finally had an habitual offender law. The next time the kid came to town and drove round he got pulled and was charged with a felony. He made Bond, went back to Fla. swearing never to come back.

Because it was a rural county and the Commonwealths Attorney was a Boss Hogg type, he asked the FBI to issue an interstate flight warrant (UFAP). They didn't normally do that for non violent crimes but someone owed the Commonwealth a favor. They sic-ed me on him, I caught up with him at home and brought him back. He had a nice wife, a child about one and a half, mortgage, job, etc.

He got 3 years, lost his wife, kid, house, job and I guarantee he was a potential criminal when he got our. You really get the best training in prison.

Now before anyone jumps up on the soapbox and shouts...he could have killed someone........he didn't. I don't deal in what ifs,
If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his butt.

The simple fact is, our desire to lock up everyone who does anything, ruins lives and creates criminals. Smart and well trained criminals at that!

A very large fine would be much better punishment in Martha's case in addition to making her lower herself to doing community service.

One of my favorite lines from Trading Places is:
The worst thing you can do to rich people....is make them poor people! :D
 
She isn't being sent to jail for the trading gig. She's being sent to jail for not telling the truth to big brother. I dont blame her for lieing to protect herself.

If anything , she needs to be made some outlaw biker gang's old lady for about six months to teach her about real life. These hollywhores dont have a clue about what us little pee-ons have to go through just to make ends meet.
I personally would like to see hollywood burn to the ground and never be rebuilt. The elitist scumbags are just getting filty rich perverting our youth with their sick version of what is cool. It's about time for a social revolution.
 
I told my wife if we had Martha taking care of us, I'd make her wear a French maid's costume, and I'd make her deserve. She got all pissy about that! I said hey hey hey get your mind out of the gutter! I was only saying that so's I could make her scrub the floors and stuff like that, relax, woman! :rolleyes:

Then I said, "Well is we can't get martha to stay with us, can we adopt a 16-year old Korean girl?"

That was when she stopped talking to me and walked off. Sheesh! A guy tries to be altruistic and look what he gets! :D
 
Mark Williams said:
5 months in the pokey and 5 months in the house. Wonder how much time she'll actually do.
Click to expand...

Told you she wouldn't do any hard time. She'll appeal anyway. Most likely win it. She got a what... $30k fine? Big deal. If I were her I'd say okay take $100k and 1 year probi.
 
Martha was a billionaire at the time of her insider stuff, and she had lots of friends. It's almost impossible for someone in that situation not to have insider info, and given this stock moved both ways, it's hard for her to avoid being accused of acting on it. She was probably stupid to have held some of a friend's stock, but that's almost a social obligation in certain circles.

Let's say she lied to the government, that was bad judgment, she tried to ride out the controversy, and not cause it to blow up in everyone's hands. If she had shut up it might have turned out differently, or maybe they would have prosecuted the insider stuff, though it's lower percentage.

Meanwhile, the government, which didn't have too much choice once the ball started rolling, wipes out at least 1000 jobs, and billions in shareholder value, because Martha did this dinky trade at a time when real insiders had already dumped plenty of stock into the market, meaning it was hardly really a secret. All this in the name of preserving investor confidence.
 
I guess I'm with Don and Protactical on this one. Our prisons are so full of non-violent offenders we can't keep the dangerous ones locked up. What kind of system gives a life sentence to some idiot with a quarter pound of weed and paroles a murderer in five years? That just doesn't make sense. Better to keep violent criminals in jail forever and let all the others do road work.

As far as I'm concerned Stewart is the least of the corporate offenders. I'd probably have done the same thing had I been in her shoes. You want to find something to be pissed about, look at the energy companies, the music and film industries. The former are actively stealing from all of us and the latter are studiously building a nice profitable vanilla culture for us to live in. And using their bought legislators to eliminate fair use rights to copy music and movies for our own uses. These have far more impact on our lives that Martha Stewart's mini failures of judgement.

Just my 2c. The legal system is far too politicised to be just.
 
And, this has WHAT to do with knives?

#1. Martha Stewart did a show on sharpening knives. :eek:

#2. Martha Stewart can't own a gun anymore so she has to carry a Knife. :D

#3 The Bi$%@'s tongue is sharp enough to cut tempered steel. :footinmou
 
Pros widely regarded the government's attempt to link the insider accusation, to the manipulation of her own stock, as ridiculous, and ultimately the judge threw out that charge. With that charge on the floor, Martha's case ceased to have any connection, however tenuous, to the corporate crook culture. Her case was entirely personal. As far as one knows she has run her company admirably, except for the fact that her personal conduct is linked to the stock's sewering.

One of the features of corporate culture over the last ten years is that CEOs and senior management have pocketed about 10% of total US corporate value through options etc... The corporate aberations largely have to do with speeding that transfer, or hitting various exercise prices. One feature of MSO is that Martha pretty much is the company, well at least 10% of it. And she was also the founding proprietor, so while someone in that situation could be subject to exactly the same greed, at least some significant portion of the wealth was created by her.

I don't know whether Martha is nice or not. I've never met her, and it doesn't matter to me. Most people with her profile are hell on wheels. At least her business product is all about her behaving herself.
 
It was interesting hearing of her demure demeanor before the judge and during the trial. The arrogant b**ch part of her resurfaced afterwards as she faced the cameras outside without any seeming remorse at all.

She will probably go to one of those nice little federal prison-preserves like up in central Wisconsin and live in a little cabin with almost all the privileges she has now except freedom to travel. She will run her business fom there and essentially come out of it having a nice rest and not having to live by the File-A-Fax schedule she'd normally keep. Such is justice when one has lots of money and white-collar crime. She'll suffer some terrible indignity like having to pick up errant wind drift litter or keeping the gardens.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in some of the Paleolithic-era states, some guy will get 3-5 for brutal rape and some kid with a bag of smoke will get 10-20 and come out a hardened criminal because of the brutality he's suffered......

Justice my ass....
 
Well I wasn't going to step into this mess, but since my ole buddy fitz did I've got to counter. I look at it this way, we're all educated people here, we know whats right and wrong according to the society we live in, so if your willing to take the chance to line your pockets by do something not agreeable or drive while under the influence of whatever. Then you should be willing to pay the consequences. Martha is no dummy and knew things might back fire but she proceeded anyway. so be it. She'll think twice about it next time.

Peter, I'm not jumping on any soap box, but if this feller had been caught a time or 2 or 3 before for DWI and didn't think much of the warning then I believe it was time more drastic actions be taken. You say you don't believe in IF's, well I don't either. But this feller was pretty ignorant from the get go and had no thoughts of what he might inflict on anyone else or anyone elses family, should the odds runs out. He had been warned probably several time but choose to ignore, so he really has no one to blame but himself. Now IF this feller wanted to go drive off a cliff and do himself in, I have no problem with that. But to endanger others because of his self centered actions, I feel he got what he was asking for.

:footinmou :footinmou :footinmou

Bill
 
I agree to a certain extent Bill. A felony is a serious step though and at one time in this country was held out for truly bad people. Further, as I said, IMHO we are breeding our own criminals.

If you plant a smart ass kid in prison, you grow a criminal when he gets out. There are better ways to punish.

I don't like Martha. Not one bit but she sure isn't a menace to society. She was only fined $30,000. That's pocket change. Fine her $3000000. and I'll bet she never does it again. We once believed that the punishment should fit the crime. I have no idea how the powers that be figure punishment anymore. I guess by who donates the most to their campaign.

Anyway...feeling the way I do about some of the people that I locked away is considered baggage from days that I don't remember fondly.
 
Why all the dislike for this gal ??? She started with a small catering shop (kind of like a small shop in the garage, sound familiar ???) and built it into a very profitable business. I'll bet it didn't just happen to her either, I suspect she worked long hours (anybody relate to this) and worked like crazy to market her product ,(hmmmm) made a bunch of good business decisions. and invested a bunch of money into the business (close to home for me) I thought that this was what the american dream is....as a knifemaker I don't think that our business has the potential to make that kind of money, but I am sure trying to be a success at it, and I am sure that there are people that think that I am an arrogant ass. (oh well)
I don't dislike wealthy people who built and earned their empire, I don't respect people who inherit the wealth and then blow it.
 
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