Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Checking ID The first four letters (TAS, "Correspondence") in your September issue, by Messrs. Smith, Watson, Ross, and Seitz attacking Dan Peterson for the effrontery...
...It is regrettable, though, that Mr...
...Fraud kills free markets...
...SOX simply tells all executives to push back on what was an era of aggressive (translate "wrong") accounting...
...Perhaps Mr...
...DOUG ROLL Jacksonville, Texas Every day...
...For sure, the offerings include courses in black and women's literature, one of which is required of English majors...
...Schlafly fought so effectively to avoid...
...The curriculum is something to marvel, and the academic standards are rigorous, but one professor told me, a few years ago when I was researching the college for its entry in a college guide, "The English department has gone to hell...
...abhors phony off-thebook insurance deals (MG and General RE) (and did Hank Greenberg not pay attention 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2005 C O R R E S P O N D E N C E when the Enron off-the-books strategy was lambasted...
...As for Mr...
...Moore would ex-amine both the pre- and post-SOX prosecutions he could conclude only that the SEC attacks fraud, not interpretation of GAAP and FASB rules or errors in addition...
...How, you ask, can a mature man say that about a man he never met...
...No passing fancy this...
...Moore failed to recognize in the trite and inaccurate statements of his subjects that they may well be following the old formula of "the best defense is a good offense...
...The trustees, appropriately, voted August 16,1996, to remain all-male...
...Not too long ago the college's then-new president announced that "diversity" should be taught in the classroom...
...However, we do know that every company was pushing the accounting envelope in terms of EBITDA and every other creative way of saying, "If it hadn't been for those expenses, we would have had earnings...
...They come across as a knee-jerk reaction, so like much of what passes for scholarly debate among liberals of the day when they are faced with factual challenge to their dogma...
...You would think someone in internal audit would have asked for a receipt or two...
...Hampden-Sydney should remain the college that time forgot, not stopped...
...They were also clearly not math errors...
...That eliminates one of your sources of mindless opposition to conservative, objective, and, yes, Judeo-Christian values, which serve the purpose of re-minding us that there really are people like that out there...
...it is not some-thing for you to make fun of and/or offer lurid comments...
...Carey School of Business Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona Bavarian Humor The latest issue of The American Spectator ("The Continuing Crisis," October 2005) that I received had an article saying that the EU rules may ban dirndls at Bier Gar-tens in Bayern...
...C O R R E S P O N D E N C E Checking ID The first four letters (TAS, "Correspondence") in your September issue, by Messrs...
...I especially look forward to Ben Stein's near super-human wit, and his aura of coolness...
...Moore taken the time to interview CEOs and CFOs who have little fear because they were doing it right all along...
...He is also strong...
...He has no guile...
...Hampden-Sydney has a speech code, not quite as Orwellian as the typical campus, but it is a policy that expresses restrictions...
...Lots of flapping and squawking, but not much sub-stance...
...We read his Diary and we know...
...I do not believe every company was an Enron or a WorldCom...
...However, when markets, companies, and executives do not self-regulate, the government steps in and is almost always misguided...
...I share Mr...
...I and other academics have written extensively on these issues with true objectivity...
...It began with the worthy and harmless statement, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex...
...It is love pure and simple...
...Smith, Watson, Ross, and Seitz attacking Dan Peterson for the effrontery of his article on Intelligent Design all seem to have one thing in common: they do not reflect any recognizable knowledge of the scientific data available on the subject...
...Perhaps more of Hampden-Sydney's faculty, if the time comes, will follow the examples of the college's courageous namesakes and stand up against overtures to increased political correctness...
...However, and amazingly, markets do not move as quickly as regulators to self-correct fraud...
...Their financial statements were spun yarns...
...You surely know he would stand against op-position with all-abiding tenacity...
...He means every word he says, and he would march straight into hell to explain his view quietly and succinctly to the devil himself...
...quoted by the who's who in Washington and talk radio...
...Has Mr...
...This was a poisoned culture of sycophants trying to maintain their record of meeting earnings goals 47 quarters in a row...
...What an unalloyed sweetness...
...The problem is with the second part, which Critchlow omits, the insidious sentence that first appeared in the 13th Amendment, "Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation...
...What a joy...
...and takes umbrage with analysts who just plain lied to those they were supposed to serve even as they chuckled behind those customers' backs in e-mails that reflected their real feelings about companies and stocks (and free markets cannot function with asymmetrical information...
...HOECK Leonardtown, Maryland Time's Comeback Hampden-Sydney College (TAS, "The College That Time Forgot," September 2005) indeed is a place the world has passed by, primarily because of two enduring campus traditions: 1) the mentioned Honor Code, which 18-year-old freshmen pledge to honor not only for the next four years but for their entire lives, and 2) the unmentioned custom that everyone greets persons they pass on campus, morning, noon, and night...
...DAVID ROBERTS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Heart Sign I love Ben Stein...
...Pontuso leaves the impression that the PC crowd at the college is limited to a few naive assistant professors frolicking into the classroom...
...The college hired a diversity administrator, and black alumni hold separate programs...
...The main fudge in Professor Pontuso's essay, however, is any mention of the faculty-led charge, in fa111995, to turn the college coed...
...Then we see vividly what we have only seen darkly...
...SOX was passed because, for example, WorldCom capitalized $11 billion in ordinary expenses...
...MARIANNE M. JENNINGS Professor of Legal and Ethical Studies W.P...
...His prose lifts me, carries me along effortlessly...
...What a breath of fresh air...
...SOX is my least favored means of restoring trust...
...Spitzer, he is not the Antichrist...
...Even if they were to read, for example, Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, I doubt that it would make any impression on their etched-in-concrete mindset...
...This was fraud...
...SOX is the price businesses must pay for an era of moral relativism and financial reporting anarchy...
...Frequently these people are a source of some amusement, when they are not simply disgusting...
...That trust cannot come with finger-pointing at those people who enforce the laws that now exist because of the past abuses of those who now point their fingers...
...Capitalism depends upon trust...
...Moore would do better spending his time investigating how CEOs and CFOs might do abetter job of earning investor trust...
...Then, too, he writes like an angel...
...You will find no greater proponent of the free market than I, save it be Adam Smith...
...Methinks thou dost protest too much is a good cynicism to take into interviews with CEOs and CFOs...
...Moore would do well to review that work before relying on the whiners who must now comply with basic notions of fairness after years of abuse...
...Enron spun off over 3,000 off-the-book entities to conceal its debt...
...A rational look at the cases he has brought shows that he detests price-fixing (Marsh-McClennan) (and what free marketeer does not share that view...
...The second part would have enabled all the mischief that Ms...
...If Mr...
...He has an unabashedly child-like vision of life in America...
...The leading proponents of the PC agenda that slipped onto the campus in the 1990s—a provost and an English professor—have moved on, but there is reason to be observant...
...Facts and factual evidence are given short shrift in these days of vicious epithets and mendacious vitriol...
...The first part, standing alone like the First Amendment, would have served as a standard for tests in court...
...Well, I believe a person can love another person on faith—by virtue of his words alone, man or woman, seen or unseen, touched or untouched...
...Moore's view (along with many others) that SOX is costly and agree that it has put the fear of God and the Antichrist into many a CEO and CFO...
...I marvel at his choice of words and his clean-cut sentences...
...While the point of your article started to be an attack against the growing EU regulatory bureaucracy, you switched into an attack against women wearing trachten...
...They invest be-cause they trust...
...As a journalist he must surely realize that those who feed him the lines about math errors are probably worried about real accounting missteps and are setting up SOX and the resulting regulatory morass as an excuse for what may be real fraud...
...Find out what the Washington Prowler Regular appearances by has uncovered...
...Fraud prevention was the purpose of SOX and fraud prosecution will be the goals of the enforcement agencies...
...For example, the first post-SOX case involved Richard Scrushy and his gang at HealthSouth who forced over $3 billion in earnings restatements by a company they bankrupted...
...Oh, if only that were true...
...PAUL E. RIED Professor Emeritus Syracuse University Syracuse, New York Today I subscribed to The American Spectator...
...JAMES G. McFADDEN Edgewater, Maryland Do the Right Thing The problem with Stephen Moore (TAS, "White Collar Witch Hunt," September 2005) and the other fellas and gals at the Wall Street Journal is that they sound and behave Howard Deanish when it comes to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and Eliot Spitzer...
...A dirndl is traditional Bayerische tracht...
...These were not exactly close legal calls nor gray areas...
...FREDERICK K.H...
...But his pronouncements lack the conviction of a believer, and end with the phrase, "for now...
...Watson is canceling his subscription...
...Moore's claim that executives feel they could go to jail for arithmetic errors is precisely that: a feeling...
...Last, there is a light in his essays—not just the glow of fiery feeling...
...Investors don't invest because there is an SEC...
...Insidious ERA In his interesting review of Donald Critchlow's new book on Phyllis Schlafly (TAS, "Closing the Gender Gap," October 2005), Bracy Bersnak commits an important sin of omission...
...The Equal Rights Amendment consisted of two parts...
...I am even tempted to sing psalms or to write poetry, something I have not felt since the seventh grade...
...The president also declares to 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2005 C O R R E S P O N D E N C E uphold Hampden-Sydney's single-sex status...
...We see meanings behind mysteries...
...I was a contributing editor...
...Jed Babbin • Lawrence Henry • Marina Malenic Enemy Central • John Tabin • David Hogberg • See what daily insight from Shawn Macomber • Reid Collins • Paul Beston George Neumayr gets and of course, RET...
...But it must step in when gigantic frauds shock the collective con-science...
...He sees the United States as it truly is without shades, tints, twists, or turns...
...But TAS readers in-the-know about Hampden-Sydney will wonder why James F. Pontuso overlooks the evident political correctness that has crept onto the campus...
...Directed by Wlady 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2005...
...He was not referring to a range of intellectual ideas...
...WILLIAM F. MEEHAN III Hampden-Sydney College, Class of 1977 Bloomington, Indiana Note: The college guide I refer to is Choosing the Right College, 2nd Edition, Eerdmans, 2001...
...Adelphia and Tycowere classic executives-in-thepiggy-bank cases...
Vol. 38 • November 2005 • No. 9
