Of what, ink poisoning from all the bills he handled?

(also, I'm not 100% sure I buy this. If anybody could arrange a fake death, this guy could).

he topped himself? *Good.* He fucking deserves to be dead.

Burn in hell, Kenny Boy. Now for the rest of the gang...

If anybody could arrange a fake death, this guy could

I thought exactly the same thing, giovanni

The real Ken Lay is winging his way to Rio in an unlisted private jet, while faux Ken Lay -- a formerly homeless gent of Lay's approximate age, height and weight -- will undergo a cursory autopsy. The autopsy will reveal nothing untoward, as the coroner will ignore any evidence of recent plastic surgery and other reconstructive surgeries.

Yeah. I'm skeptical.

I thought exactly the same thing, giovanni

Maybe we should start a death-faking business, matteo. Demand could only go up.

I hate the greedy rich as much as any good American does, but I have a couple dead grandfathers myself, so I can't join in your gleeful gravetop jig.

I'm amazed Rigas from Adelphia didn't think of this first. He's in his 80s, with him it would be a lot less of a surprise.

I guess this means I owe my roommate $25. I'd bet his pardon would be one of Bush's last acts in office...

My coworkers and I were saying the same thing, Boringpostcards.

Hugh, you misunderstand... I'm not gleeful, I'm PISSED because we'll never find all the offshore accounts, and because a peaceful death in an Aspen vacation home is too good for a man who robbed thousands of people of their retirements.

I don't hate the greedy rich (I just dislike them), but I do hate thieves with a passion.

so I can't join in your gleeful gravetop jig

I don't see a lot of jigging here -- and frankly, we all have dead grandfathers I guess, but if some of these grandfathers stole billions, left thousands of people jobless and without pensions and life savings family college funds, well, I'm sure not many people would cry over said grandfathers' deaths

just a hunch. robber barons are one of those social groups like, say, paedophiles, who just don't get a lot of sympathy, but one is of course free to react to the news as one pleases

*
from the Vonnegut lexicon

I'm not one for jigging. My style is a little more earthy. Hugh, I have a long list of graves worth pissing on. Karl Marx is on the top of that one. And a special list of open graves worth pissing on -- with Ron Arnold in the #1 spot.

If I ever make it to Highgate, I'll put a picture on Flickr.

wtf?

counterrevolutionary agitation is a very serious crime, comrade

what about counterrevolutionary agida?

that, too

ah, madonna santa maria...

prega per noi peccatori adesso e nell'ora della nostra morte, amen?

Ken Lay dorme con i pesci, capisce?

Yeah, I know it's easy to hate on thieves. I just usually give them a grace period after they die so as not to seem bloodthirsty.

All the guy did was steal. If you think just desserts for property crime include death, well, bully for you. Makes you seem kind of bloodthirsty.

Sign of the times?

One more time: I AM PISSED THE GUY DIED. HE DID NOT GET WHAT WAS COMING TO HIM. Listen to what I say and not what you think I am saying.

Also, leaving thousands of people with no means to support themselves in the future is a bit more than "property crime." Property crime is taking somebody's bike or garden gnome.

No, taking a garden gnome is gnomenapping.

If you want to see my bloodthirsty side, you're better off looking here.

Hugh, as someone whose dead grandfather lost more than half a million dollars due to Lay and his cronies, I'm pretty gleeful. Just sayin'.

Please don't shout at me, BoringPostcards; you're not the only one on this thread I'm addressing.

I doubt a massive coronary is all that peaceful, but I've never had one so I don't know. I don't expect anyone to cry, but I don't expect anyone to smile and laugh, either. I expressed surprise at the general laughing, but it's clear my feelings are inappropriate.

And it is property crime, as opposed to crime against the person. I'm not a lawyer, but I think that's a reasonable way to divide it up.

Just because I disagree with your methods doesn't mean I disagree with your ideas, or that I'm not reading them carefullly, or that everything I say is aimed at you. It's perilous sometimes to tell people they're being unkind. I clearly do it too much, but then I'm not wrong, either. And seriously, don't fucking shout at me.

This all reminds me of that Pope thread on meffy. Carry on.

And on preview, WolfDaddy, that sucks. But so does death, for more than just the dead. To me, being glad Ken Lay is suddenly dead means you're glad his family has a funeral to attend and memories to be wept over, and a lot of pain to deal with that has nothing to do with his crimes.

I'll stop harshing your fun now.

I'm actually in the minority in tending to believe that Lay was closer to what he claimed and that it was some of the others who were the primary villains. Not that I think this really means that much in terms of his legal and ethical position as the CEO. But it does mean something to me in terms of how much I agree with the sentiments expressed above.

It's like comparing Bush and Cheney. I think that Bush is closer to your ordinary person who finds himself complicit in numerous crimes because of his typical variety of human failings and vices. He's a bad guy, and he's accrued enough responsibility regardless that there's not many possible cruel fates for him that I'd be much upset about, but to me he's not even in Cheney's ballpark. Cheney deserves torture. It's the difference between mundane human evil and much more uncommon variety. I tend to only be bloodthirsty about the latter.

I gotta agree with Hugh on this one. . .reading this made me kinda queasy from the jump.

I'm glad this fucker is dead, period. He's a bastard, a low-life and a greedy, selfish pig. There's a special room in Hell waiting for him.

Hugh, I can separate my feelings about Lay's death from what his family must be going through, as I certainly don't hold them culpable for his decisions and actions, even though they might have benefited from them (which, given all the stress they've undergone probably is small benefit indeed). Me and my family feel grief for Lay's family, sure--we did business with them for quite a long time--but we grieve more for the families who lost everything as a direct result of Lay's actions (or inactions, whatever).

I also feel that he has received justice in his death, given the fact that a presidential pardon was certainly a possibility, if not a guarantee.

It'll be interesting to see how all the civil suits against Lay now shake out.

Spend ten years trying to take down wealthy, politically-protected malfactors and observe their immunity. Then take a look at who ends up on death row and how they got there. I've got a friend who is one of the best PIs in the country - she mostly does death penalty defense work. You'll probably come around to my point of view.

Society has no problem killing the wrong people. I just want to see a few more millionaires on death row. It's not much to ask.

Society has no problem killing the wrong people.

I have a problem with my society killing anyone.

I never said he didn't deserve a lengthy prison term. I did say that an article announcing a man's death isn't cause for the kind of gleeful, wisecracking schadenfreude on display here. That's all.

I don't think much of Ken Lay. I don't think anyone should be on death row. I don't think theft ought to be punishable by death, the way anyone who says Ken Lay deserved to die for his crimes does (or says they do). Unless they're joking, and don't really feel the death penalty is appropriate for even a big-time thief like Lay; in that case I wonder why they'd be so happy to hear he had a massive coronary and is now dead.

It's ugly to call for someone's death, just like it's ugly to rejoice at someone's death. It may be a relief, or a thrill, or a laugh, but it's ugly and shameful. There are exceptions (mass-murderers and terrorists and evil murdering dictators come to mind) but to class Ken Lay with such monsters is out of line.

But to class Ken Lay with such monsters is out of line.

I've always found the difference between the ways we view white and blue collar criminals interesting. I've been studying the whole Enron breakdown in the past few weeks- the ways they hid and deceived and stole money was pretty out of control. Particularly in the ways they kept their employees from selling off the stock in their retirement funds as the stock was plunging. And then to watch the finger-pointing after the fall (Kenneth Lay still maintains that even though he was CEO for most of the time this craziness was going on, he didn't know anything and he shouldn't be held responsible)... amazing.
That said, I do feel bad for his family (particularly his wife) who has already been through enough, and I hope he didn't commit suicide. Or sneak off in the dead of night.

The whole point of retributive justice is not prevention or deterance. It's well established that penalty means nothing to the criminal during the perpetration of the crime.

Where retributive justice comes into play is during the detection and aprehension of the criminal. It is during this phase that the criminal contemplates the consequences of his action. And the severity of the penalty increases the stress on them, thus making it more likely they will make a fatal mistake while attempting to evade the consequences of their action.

White collar crime and sexual child abuse are the two most premeditated and cold-blooded crimes out there. The criminals contemplate, plan, prepare, consider and act with full knowledge that they are doing wrong. They also evaluate (with a great deal of care and consideration) the possibility of getting caught and how to avoid discovery or evade the consequences of being discovered.

The utter depravity of these evil-doers needs to be fully understood for society to defend itself.

I am opposed to the death penalty, but I would soften that opposition if there were a few more people like Lay on death row and fewer of the poor, insane, weak or defenseless.

Lay was a lying sack of shit. Dead is good enough, but I would be quite happy to have spent fifteen minutes with him hand-cuffed to a hot radiator and me with a rubber hose. His bullshit lies would have evaporated like snow falling on a hot stove.

As far as it being just a property crime -- he still inflicted suffering on huge numbers of people; suffering that his death does nothing to rectify.

I just want to see a few more millionaires on death row.

Why do you want to see anyone on death row?

I understand that your ideology may stand in opposition to an economic system that allows for the accumulation of vast wealth, but do you really want to impose your ideology by killing rich people? That seems just as unjust and inefficient as killing poor brown people in an effort to "fight the war on drugs" or whatever silly reason we use. In all likelihood, your garden-variety millionaire (or even billionaire) hasn't even violated the law.

In all likelihood, your garden-variety millionaire (or even billionaire) hasn't even violated the law.

Millionaires maybe, but billionaires? You don't get that rich without screwing somebody over severely.

Warbaby, do you mean to say that cuffing Lay to a radiator and beating him with a rubber hose would rectify the suffering of huge numbers of people?

Seriously, when I said "Sign of the times?" upthread, I meant this kind of thing. Something has got people thinking that just killing folks is just retribution for a whole host of crimes, and making people think, hell, if we can't kill him (or if killing him is too good for him) I'd sure like to get my hands on him and torture him a bit. Whatever it is that causes these thoughts, it's turning people who mean well into people who think like killers and torturers.

I've followed the Enron case closely, and I think Ken Lay was a bad man who deserved to go to jail. White-collar criminals aren't like child molesters, period. Hate is a terrible thing.

I hate the fact that I'm defending Ken Lay, of all people, against folks I generally agree with.

You don't get that rich without screwing somebody over severely.

Who did Michael Dell screw over? Who did Pierre Omidyar screw over? Who did Buffett screw over? Who did the Google guys screw over?

And what does "screw over" mean? I'm sure Buffett has fired plenty of people in his career, but that isn't against the law. He's also created thousands of jobs through efficient asset allocation. Even if those jobs were never created, he still didn't break the law.

I would be so bold as to state the opposite of your assertion, jon. If you manage to become a billionaire, it probably means you did something incredible to create real value or you were just extremely lucky (both are reasons why my above list includes mostly technology/internet entrepreneurs)*. In either case, you would have faced a ton of scrutiny. Stealing your way to billionaire status is practically impossible in the US nowadays--it is just too much capital to hide. Eventually your plans will go awry just like Enron and Worldcom. The more likely case is that there are 10 crooks with $100 million each for every 1 innocent billionaire.

Anyway, this is besides the point. My broader point is that you'll get nowhere by persecuting people based on their net worth. The way to affect the change you want is to convince the populace that what you see as "screwing over" is exactly that and not just the American-way, and from there modifying the law to match the popular sentiment.

*I'm picking "new money" examples here on purpose. The Saudi princes' and the robber baron heirs' wealth is, I think, something entirely different and not possible for a modern American.

mullacc: as long as there is a death row, there should be millionaires on it.

Hugh: Nope, cuffing him to a radiator and beating the crap out of him would break him down for a complete confession pretty damn quick. The only reason he kept lying was he got rewarded for stalling and shifting and evading. I'm not defending torture or even advocating it as a policy. I'm just saying it's worth a try on anybody with a net worth of over $1mil. I could be wrong, but the hypothesis needs testing. If it doesn't work, maybe after a hundred years or so we could try something else.

It's not that far away from your good advice on ending a fight: don't threaten or bargain, just tell 'em to knocki it off; and if it comes to ending it, end it decisively and quickly.

mullacc: as long as there is a death row, there should be millionaires on it.

Why?

If you manage to become a billionaire, it probably means you did something incredible to create real value

True. But it probably means you were fairly ruthless, too, like using underpaid overseas labor, squashing local competitors, busting unions, etc. I'm not trying to claim any holy status here, I'm no class warrior and everybody's guilty of something, but the billionaire level is where all the welath and power is and getting there does not favor nice guys. And don't forget, an awful lot of wealthy people are wealthy simply because of who their parents were.

mullacc: sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. In simple fairness, whatever the system of justice, it should apply equally to all. The under-representation of the rich in penal institutions is ample evidence that the "justice" system is really just a means by which wealth, power and privilege express themselves.

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Honore de Balzac
French realist novelist (1799 - 1850)

If, as jon suggests, some people think there is a class war between the rich and the poor, it's not too hard to figure out who is the agressor. Or as my friend Bo said, "You can't have a class society without prisons."

Seriously, Dorothy Otnow Lewis did a study of minors on death row -- they were all poor and mentally handicapped. Every single one of them suffered from an organic or traumatic brain disorder.

In simple fairness, whatever the system of justice, it should apply equally to all. The under-representation of the rich in penal institutions is ample evidence that the "justice" system is really just a means by which wealth, power and privilege express themselves.

For the most part, I agree with this. But I fail to see how you can go from this reasonable position to one where it's acceptable to wish violence upon the rich.

I've encountered plenty of people, rich and middle-class, who spout off lazy platitudes about poor people (they're lazy! they're stupid! etc). Usually my impression is that they have probably never known a poor person. I'm finding more and more that when I hear people say angry things about the rich, my impression is that they've probably never known a rich person. Our system may very well be fucked but it wouldn't be any less fucked if the rich and the poor swapped places.

Ugh. What a disappointing discussion. I think everyone here is more capable than this. It seems absurd to me to assert that property crimes can be worse than physical violence without strong argument to back it up. Yes, I can imagine several arguments; but they each seem to have flaws in comparison to the intuitive and almost universally agreed upon standard which sees assault as worse than theft.

While I am certain that a) there must exist some non-violent crimes which are worse than some violent crimes, and that b) there are some accumulations of non-violent crimes which are worse than some violent crimes, I am also certain that any specific example will be met with wide disagreement and argument. I'm also quite certain that such strong ambiguity being the case, then many or most individual arguments will be strongly motivated by personal bias and emotion. In other words, it's an attractive smokescreen for self-serving vilification of groups of other people.

What is deeply unjust and offensive about the prosecution and punishment of white collar crime, especially in the US, is that in general these criminals bring to bear both material and social resources to their defense that others don't. Very specifically, within the context of property crimes (removing violent crime from the discussion), white-collar crimes are grossly under-prosecuted and under-punished in comparison to the kinds of property crimes that, say, poor people commit.

The proper corrective for this endemic injustice isn't to move in the direction of equating embezzlers to murderers, but to move away from the direction of equating shoplifters to rapists.

All the guy did was steal. If you think just desserts for property crime include death, well, bully for you. Makes you seem kind of bloodthirsty.

How many retires are going to kick off early because they can't afford proper nutrition thanks to Ken? How many people are going to die because they are now unable to afford medical care? How many people died because they were unable to afford electricity because of Ken's illegal activities?

I feel sorry (in that distracted I don't even know anyone who knows them kind of way) for Ken's family. I don't feel sorry for Ken.

I've made it pretty clear that I'm not saying everyone should show sympathy, or feel sorry, for Ken Lay. There's a big difference between not showing sympathy and clapping one's hands in glee.

I've also made it pretty clear that I'm disturbed by calls for the death penalty for crimes of property, and that, knowing torture yields bad intelligence (and dehumanizes the torturer), I'm shocked that folks would be inspired by a death notice to suggest that all millionaires should be tortured and made to confess (the presumed crime that every rich person committed).

It's a strange mix. On the one hand, you display the bloodlust of the administration and its supporters: Abu Ghraib must not have been disgusting enough for you, and all this calling for the death penalty sounds like Ayatollah Hannity or Limbaugh or someone of that ilk.

On the other hand, you tell us that anyone with money is a crook, and a bad enough crook to deserve beatings or death. And that Ken Lay (a stupid, greedy man) is just the tip of the iceberg; the rest (of the millionaires) are just evil as, or more evil than, killers and child molesters.

Is this out of a sense of retributive justice? Would you will Ken Lay alive so you could torture him through eternity? Or would you have us admire your nobility in going after the evil rich (I guess you'd say that was redundant)? Either is misguided; both are twisted reflections, perhaps, of the bloodthirsty times in which we live.

Hugh, I think you are extending my argument beyond the limits I have expressed.

But this is normal in discussions that are essentially about values. Values are not verbally accessible for the most part but rather consist of, er, shall we say "social instincts" or "reflexes" or other portions of the personality and behavior that can be inferred from behavior but can not be verbally expressed without considerable difficulty and self-examination, if at all.

So this sort of discussion is going to get tangled up in people reacting according to their values and getting emotionally stirred up (because the values that are getting activated are, for the most part not accessible to the conscious and verbal intellect.)

OK, so far? I'm not going to claim that I'm operating from social values (or norms); I'm working from carefully considered experience in actually dealing with mass murderers, serial killers, rich white collar criminals (mostly con artists, fraudsters, money launderers and tax evaders) and child abusers.

And that personal experience seriously shattered many of the social values shared by you and many others. I have had decades to examine my values (it's a long and difficult process because values, for the most part, must be inferred from behavior and reactions to situations) and the positions I'm taking on this are serious and considered ones.

And my position produces paradoxes when bumped up against normative social values: it probably appears to you that I am advocating some sort of atavistic descent into savagery. Not so. If the rich were given the same treatment as the poor and disabled, the injustice inflicted would diminish quickly, since the rich and powerful (what C. Wright Mills calls the "power elite") determine the laws and their execution. When power and privilege exempt the lawmakers from the consequences of their action, power and privilege become very influential enabling factors for the depraved.

Let us compare and contrast two individuals: Ken Lay and Boyd Malvo (the DC sniper.) Lay essentially beats the rap and dies in the comfort of his home. Malvo falls into the hands of a depraved child abuser who programs him into a killing machine. Lay is a supporter of war, torture, mass killing, theft on an almost unimaginable scale and is part of a cadre of the rich and corrupt who have destroyed the republic in which we lived and replaced it with a dynastic oligarchic tyranny.

Boyd Malvo, on the other hand, was the innocent victim of John Mohammed. I say this as the person who initially detected Mohammed and Malvo's activities. Though I was unable to identify the individuals, I did an investigation, notified law enforcement and consulted with expert forensic psychologists about the crimes that preceeded the sniper killings.

Malvo became the prize in a circus of death, with various prosecutors bidding for the privilege of killing him. Lay efectively beat the rap and died in bed.

Where's the justice in this?

I'm not saying that the wealthy should be indiscriminately subjected to savagery. I'm saying they should face the same treatment as Malvo and then maybe they will see some personal and direct advantage to justice for all.

Consider the case of Romania: a corrupt and brutal tyrant is torn from his palace and killed by a mob. Is this the path to a better world? I say yes. We need a little more of the plutocrats' retributive justice applied to the plutocrats themselves.

There is no doubt in my mind that Lay approved and supported a savage and unfair retributive justice inflicted on the poor and powerless. Too bad he never got a taste of it himself.

Our system may very well be fucked but it wouldn't be any less fucked if the rich and the poor swapped places.

Someone once said that if you took all the rich people's money and gave it to the poor people, in 2 years the rich people would have all their money back. Because that is ultimately rich people's true skill: accumulating money, and the rest of us are generally lousy at hanging on to it. Not saying that it makes the rich bad people necessarily, but that's the lay of the land so to speak. (I should add that when I say "rich," I mean the truly wealthy Bill Gates/Donald Trump class, not the merely affluent or successfull.)

And just so you know, I don't have much sympathy for poor people who committ crimes either. I'm nobody's bleeding heart, in either direction.

I'm not defending torture or even advocating it as a policy. I'm just saying it's worth a try on anybody with a net worth of over $1mil.

I'm not saying that the wealthy should be indiscriminately subjected to savagery.

You can see how I got the impression that you were.

The trouble I have with some of your reasoned points is that almost all of them paint with a broad brush, advocating witch-hunt tactics against a group of people who may have committed crimes, but who may also have worked hard and been legally successful, too.

I get into this problem, too, and probably have here. In an effort to explain myself, I turn into such a didact that I end up making these wild general claims that ignore the variety of both the people I'm talking about and the people I'm talking to. And that's just the point: I don't know what your area or level of expertise is in what we're on about here until you tell me, and I can only interpret your statements with a mind to shared social values, not knowing, as you say, that yours have been shattered.

I think, also, that you're taking as a given certain theories which I may either not know of or which may not have for me the smack of truth to them. I'm not a criminologist, I'm just an ordinary guy, and it wouldn't be hard to assume that most of your other readers don't have the experience and the conclusions you do. Which doesn't make them wrong about Ken Lay not deserving torture or death row. You'll have to forgive me my equanimity. I'm human.

It's a good conversation, though, and if you think I'm extending your argument beyond the limits I have expressed, it's only because you've expressed your argument, until now, without limits. I understand better now, but I still think grave-dancing is crass.

More concisely: Want to end things like the death penalty, torture, etc? Start applying it indiscriminantly to the wealthy. That would be some social change, eh?

And a final thought: This is very concrete for me. I think it's more abstract to others.

I'm just saying it's worth a try on anybody with a net worth of over $1mil.

I recognize the wisdom in a lot of what you say, warbaby. But I just can't get away from this sentence. One million dollars? That's not rich, that's a nice middle-class retirement. When I think of someone with $1 million in net worth, two examples come to mind: 1) my best friend's parents, a pharmacist and an elementary school teacher, who have lived in the same house for 30 years and have saved money diligently; and 2) a family friend, a plumber, who now runs his own small plumbing company. I can't imagine you are refering to these people--but I fear these people would probably think you are. It makes it tough to have a level-headed discussion.