Serious For A Moment

So many posts today. To be serious for a moment.
Here are a couple of articles worth reading.

Ben Stein
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/
business/yourmoney/29every.html?_r=3&oref=
slogin&oref=slogin

Thus, in a series of evil events, management of UAL basically ruined the lives of the employee-owners, if that is not putting too fine a point on it, by taking away their savings, incomes and pensions. ...........

Here comes the good part: management has asked the bankruptcy court to let it have — free — roughly 15 percent of the stock in the new company, or about $900 million. Mr. Tilton, the chief executive, who plays the Orson Welles character in this drama, would get about $90 million personally for his hard work shepherding UAL through bankruptcy (for which he was already paid multiple millions of dollars).

The bankruptcy court, instead of ordering Mr. Tilton's arrest, instead cut the management share to about 8 percent, so he will get more than $40 million, more or less.

A tale of greed beyond belief, but it's happening all around us.

And George Will
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article
/2006/01/30/AR2006013001159.html

Tonight, on the 1,050th day of the Iraq war (the 912th day of American participation in World War II was D-Day), the nation needs an adult hour, including a measured meditation on overreaching, from the Middle East to Medicare's prescription drug entitlement. But in State of the Union addresses, rarely is heard a discouraging word.

And these are conservatives writing.
Think hard about it.