Fogbow

MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 2:22 pm

Off Topic

And Enron is the poster child for why you do not heavily invest in employer stock. A lot of Enron employees owned a lot of Enron stock in their 401(k)s so not only did they lose their jobs they also lost their retirement savings.

They were prohibited from selling unlike their bosses

Flatpoint High wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 2:03 pm

MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 2:22 pm

Off Topic

And Enron is the poster child for why you do not heavily invest in employer stock. A lot of Enron employees owned a lot of Enron stock in their 401(k)s so not only did they lose their jobs they also lost their retirement savings.

They were prohibited from selling unlike their bosses

Employee contributions to Enron's 401(k) plan could have been put into a number of investment vehicles including Enron stock. The company match of 50 cents to the employee's one dollar was made in Enron stock which could not be sold until the employee was 50 years old.

Right before the financial issues became public, Enron changed the 401(k) fund manager. As is common when fund managers are changed, assets in a 401(k) were frozen. No Enron shares in the 401(k) could be sold at that point.

So employees less than 50 years old were doomed to lose their company match Enron stock. They never could have sold it. Employees 50-years old and older could have sold their Enron stock before their 401(k)s were frozen. If they were smart about not having all their eggs in one basket, they would have.

But hindsight is always 20/20.

Spending most of my adult life working for schools, churches, and charities solve any issues I might have about investing in company stock.

Breaking NYT: State prosecutors in Manhattan investigating Trump and the Trump Organization have subpoenaed the personal bank records of company CFO Allen Weisselberg and are questioning gifts he and his family received from Trump.

tek wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:40 am

Off Topic

My first job as an engineer was in Manufacturing.
After about 3 months on the job, I was writing up an Engineering Change Order to a process sheet, dealing with the installation of the CRT high-voltage lead in a computer terminal. I went out on the line, with the permission of the line supervisor, to ask the assemblers what they thought about my changes - and got good feedback.
Two days later I get called into the office of an engineering manager and had a new orifice installed.. "you're an engineer, you're supposed to be smarter than an assembler!"
Marched right over to the Plant Manager's office, told his admin assistant what happened, "Oh, dear. I think Joe can see you right now!"
That engineering manager got a formal reprimand.

"everyone brings something to the table" are words I've lived by. They have never let me down.

Kendra wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:43 pm

Breaking NYT: State prosecutors in Manhattan investigating Trump and the Trump Organization have subpoenaed the personal bank records of company CFO Allen Weisselberg and are questioning gifts he and his family received from Trump.

Awwww... poor DFO. He’s already lost the election and his Twitter account. Isn’t that enough of a heartbreak for him?

Flatpoint High wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 2:03 pm

MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 2:22 pm

Off Topic

And Enron is the poster child for why you do not heavily invest in employer stock. A lot of Enron employees owned a lot of Enron stock in their 401(k)s so not only did they lose their jobs they also lost their retirement savings.

They were prohibited from selling unlike their bosses

That's only technically true and a terrible coincidence. Yes, Skilling and Lay etc were allowed to sell their stock that was not held in a 401K plan, which ain't the same thing.
Second, the employees who were "not allowed to sell their stock" were well aware and informed at least 3 times in the,90 days leading up to the 30 day blackout when they were changing Benefits Administrators, something that is both common and customary when companies change vendors. Taking millions of dollars in all the myriad accounts possible in a 401K is a lot more complicated to do than you would think, and everyone has to sit still for a minute (or a month) while they're doing it, and trying to not influence the market price of all those funds when they do. I hate to see people lose their money but I have infinitely more sympathy for the employees of GM (the old version) and Chrysler (at the time) who literally lost everything when the government broke the rules and both stocks went to zero (never been happier that I worked for the other motorcar company). Yeah, you shouldn't own stock in the company you work for, but it can be forgiven is the relatively unsophisticated autoworkers bought shares in the only 401K option offered them that they thought they knew about and were 100 year old companies with hundreds of thousands of employees making things people can understand, instead of a building full of guys who thought they were too smart for us peasants and looked down on everyone, who then turned out to not know what they actually did afterall. Those people were told, we are going to lock the funds on X date, and they didn't start crying until the smartest company in the world imploded 20 days into that 30 day hold. Aside from the legacy employees of the gas company that Enron came from, I say phuck em, they were smart enough to know better.

Full disclosure, I disregarded my own advice in 2007 and mortgaged a paid for house to buy hundreds of thousands of shares of Ford, and I have literally lived off that transaction since. I bought my Gettysburg house and restored it with cash from that trade. I sent 3 or my sisters kids to college on that money and I still have more shares now than I initially bought. I collected dividends that amounted to $10 a share give or take on stock I paid less than $1.25 a share for. For most of the last 10 years I have made more on dividends owning Ford than I make working for Ford, and they pay me pretty well.
But I'm single, and if Ford dies in less than 30 days, I'll figure something out. I don't owe anyone anything, I live a simple life and I don't have kids or family to worry about providing for.

The dividend has been suspended since last year, so for the first time in a long time I've actually had to worry about the paycheck. But I'll get by.

Is this the Enron thread? If not, perhaps someone should start one so we can talk about the former guy, Individual -1's current problems in New York here.

(Enron was in New York, right? I guess that's why this is here. New York investigated Enron's fraud in Texas.)

Returning to Trump's potential legal troubles, I have a hypothetical (or maybe not so hypothetical) question.

If Trump were actually brought to trial in a New York court, can his lawyers ask potential jurors who they voted for, and disqualify those who voted for Biden?

I realize that defense attorneys usually have a relatively limited number of peremptory challenges, meaning that they can reject a juror without stating a reason, but would a court allow them to reject a Biden voter for cause, on the grounds that such a juror is biased against for former guy?

If such challenges were allowed, it seems to me that it would be very difficult to seat a jury. If the defense was allowed to reject Biden voters, wouldn't the prosecution similarly reject Trump voters?

AINAL, but I couldn't imagine any eligible voter being required to reveal who they voted for. Now if they voted or didn't vote at all, I believe that's a public record, yes/no?

The Supreme Court of Michigan ruled that voters cannot be compelled to reveal their vote. This was decided as a result of the 1977 Ann Arbor mayoral election (in which I voted), because, as I was about to enter my rooming house, a young woman asked me if I had voted and said I should because "it was important". So I turned around, walked to the polling place, and voted. The candidate I voted for won by one vote. Several voters had been mistakenly sent registration materials by the Board of Elections. They lived on a city block that was not in the city of Ann Arbor, but was surrounded by the city. Neither they nor the Board of Elections were aware of this. When a recount was ordered and this fact was discovered, they were subpoened to reveal their votes. A couple of women refused, and this went to the Supreme Court. I could not find a Wikipedia article about this. I thought there was one. Anyway, I found this in the Ann Arbor News correcting statements made by the mayor who won the special election.

Many years later, our then teenage son said he did not see why he should vote, because "a single vote would never make a difference". I told him the story of the young lady who asked me to vote in 1977. It definitely made an impact.

Ann Arbor News: Women who refused to reveal how they voted in contested 1977 mayoral race weren't jailed

Belcher had challenged the election in court after it was determined that 20 people who voted were not residents of the city. In his interview with Lance, Belcher said that the visiting judge appointed to the case had subpoenaed all 20 voters and asked them who they voted for. Court records show that the subpoenas were issued by Belcher's attorney, not by the judge, and five of the voters were asked how they voted.

Belcher went on to claim in the interview that when one of the voters refused to tell the judge how she voted, the judge held in her in contempt, and she was hand-cuffed and taken to jail. He also claimed that photos of her being taken away in handcuffs appeared in the national media.

Sue VanHattum, the woman who refused to say how she voted, confirmed in an email to AnnArbor.com that she was briefly hand-cuffed in a room in the courthouse, but the handcuffs were taken off and she not taken to jail. Instead, she and another woman who refused to say how she voted were sent home later that day. The state Court of Appeals issued a stay of the proceedings and the state Supreme Court later ruled that the voters did not have to testify further. VanHattum said she has kept a record of the media coverage, and there were no photographs of her in handcuffs published in local or national media.

Enron thread https://thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=424

much ado wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:37 pm Many years later, our then teenage son said he did not see why he should vote, because "a single vote would never make a difference". I told him the story of the young lady who asked me to vote in 1977. It definitely made an impact.

much ado wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:37 pm The Supreme Court of Michigan ruled that voters cannot be compelled to reveal their vote.

Belcher v. Mayor of Ann Arbor, 402 Mich. 132 (1978).
https://casetext.com/case/belcher-v-mayor-of-ann-arbor

The Michigan Supreme Court decision reversed a court of appeals decision that had relied on "settled law in Michigan that the constitutional right of secrecy in voting does not extend to persons who are not qualified to vote under the constitution." The prior rule doesn't sound nuts, but the change was probably a good thing.

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Belcher

There were other irregularities in the disputed 1977 election, which were resolved in a new special election, which Belcher won, the first of three terms.

/threadjack

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html

Manhattan district attorney seizes evidence from Trump executive’s former daughter-in-law

The subpoena, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, ordered Jennifer Weisselberg to produce all of the records she possesses for her ex-husband’s bank accounts and credit cards plus his statements of net worth and tax filings. Barry Weisselberg is a Trump Organization employee and manages an ice rink for the company in Manhattan’s Central Park. The subpoena asks specifically for records related to the Trump Organization and Wollman Rink.

Nice to see full boxes.

My, my. She had a lot of records, didn't she? There's probably some meaty material in there.

So......

He was keeping the records at his ex's place, thinking the Feds would never find them there.


Ooops.

Chilidog wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:52 am So......

He was keeping the records at his ex's place, thinking the Feds would never find them there.


Ooops.

I don't think that's correct. I believe she said she acquired many of the financial documents in their divorce case (through discovery). It's quite likely that there was some kind of non-disclosure agreement in the divorce case and hence the subpoena.

Thread at the link, worth reading. Maddow did a segment on this too. A lot of money flowing through that small cash only business that doesn't run the whole year. How does a person wth a father as an accountant not know how his money/taxes accounted for?

Hugo Lowell
@hugolowell
·
40m
Source confirms Justice Dept under Barr blocked a warrant for Giuliani — meaning House Judiciary chair Nadler may have been right all along that Berman ouster from SDNY was to disrupt probes implicating Trump.

Nadler, days after Berman testified to House Judiciary about his ouster as US Attorney for SDNY: “Barr’s scheme was designed to disrupt the work of the office — including those implicating the president.”

I'd be OK with Barr getting some indelible trump taint.

tek wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:25 pm I'd be OK with Barr getting some indelible trump taint.

He already does.

tek wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:25 pm I'd be OK with Barr getting some indelible trump taint.

Now I'm thinking about Trump's taint.

fierceredpanda wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:55 pm

tek wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:25 pm I'd be OK with Barr getting some indelible trump taint.

Now I'm thinking about Trump's taint.

I'm not.