Posted on 03/10/2004 8:28:00 AM PST by ConservativeStLouisGuy
RUSH: Let's go ahead and do this Martha Stewart business, and not get it out of the way, but I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it because you have been inundated with it all weekend long. But here are just a couple of observations. Martha did not lie under oath. Bill Clinton did. Bill Clinton actually committed perjury before a federal judge. Now, Martha Stewart lied, but she didn't lie under oath in court. She didn't testify. What happened was, the FBI shows up, asked her some questions, they said you don't have to talk to us, but if you do, you'd better not lie to us, and she did. She told them some things, but this is where her problem comes in.
Martha Stewart is part of the New York, Hamptons, intelligentsia glitterati society set that championed people like Bill Clinton, and they saw what Clinton got away with, and they saw the different standards that set in when Clinton was in the White House. And they saw in themselves, I think, the chance to be on that same level. "Law enforcement just doesn't come after people like us," they say, "we get away with things like this, we are protected, we're too important," or what have you. And it has come to pass here that Martha Stewart's discovered that she's not, or was not, on the same level. And look at this. Martha Stewart saved $51,000, I mean she would have lost $51,000 had she just shut up and gone along with this whole thing and if she had just said she's sorry, all these things up front, "Yeah, I might have made a mistake, I didn't know I was making a mistake," any number of ways to handle this, but she had a stiff upper lip and hung tough.
In the meantime, Hillary Clinton made a hundred thousand dollars on real insider trading with the cattle futures. Martha Stewart could not possibly - and this is another problem she's got is this jury - the judge should have told this jury to shut up. This jury has made it plain they convicted her of things she wasn't charged with. She wasn't charged with insider trading and one of the reasons why is she's not capable of insider trading because she's not an insider. Insider trading is among market people. She's not, she was not literally qualified to be an insider and thus insider trading is not something - she wasn't charged with it anyway, and yet if you listen to some of these jurors that came out of there, “This is a victory for the little guy and our 401(k)s and our health care and our...” I just wanted to throw up. What do you mean your 401(k)s and your health care? This case had nothing to do with it. All Martha Stewart did was hire about 500 average little people who are now going to be in deep trouble because her company's been destroyed. And who destroyed her company? She didn't. She built it up from nothing. She may not have been a likable person to people, I don't know. But she sure is paying the price for not being one. She got convicted because she's a b-i-itch in people's minds because she wasn't friendly, because she's not nice to people, and this is a chance to take it out. This is a class envy verdict. The feds destroyed her business, she didn't. With all these charges and everything, they're the ones that have destroyed the business for Martha Stewart. But she's sitting around thinking this is not going to happen to her, she just can't fathom it happening to her, and part of it I think is because of the circle in which she runs.
Why did she get caught and the Clintons didn't? It's like I've always said to you people, don't try this stuff at home. Leave it to the professionals. Martha tried it on her own, she didn't tell the truth to the feds, and, you know, when you do that, you got to leave it to people who are professionals at it, like the Clintons. If you're going to lie to the feds, don't try it at home, let the pros that know how to get away with it all their lives like the Clintons do it - ill gotten information. Yeah, Hillary can do it, but, Martha, you can't, you are not Hillary, and you are not Bill. You leave this stuff to the pros. You know, she did build her business. She didn't use accounting tricks. She did deliver quality products. She worked and worked and worked, and that's all she did. And, yes, she probably is not the nicest person in the world to people, and she probably was persecuted at the same time. I'll tell you something else I don't think helped her and I don't know if you've heard, I don't know if anyone else has said this because, frankly, this is another one of those things after the first hour of coverage there wasn't anything more to learn. They had covered what the sentencing guidelines are and the rest of this weekend was just a devotion to the new 24/7 news cycle. But as I listened to the jurors that spoke, I was appalled. I was literally appalled.
These jurors had their own agenda in there. They heard what they wanted to hear. They saw what they wanted to see in many cases, and you have to understand who they are. In fact, jury deliberations on Friday were delayed because of a subway accident. These jurors rode the subway to court. They don't ride limousines. They don't ride in the back of big SUVs. They don't do anything that Martha Stewart does. If you live in New York and you read the tabloids every day, you quickly discover that there is a strata of society that is hip and "it," and then you discover that you aren't in it. And every day you read about how Martha and her friends are always doing something fabulous. They're either in the Hamptons, or they are at the top of the tallest building drinking champagne and wine or they are in St. Martin or they are in Connecticut at an arts and craft show, or they're at the latest movie opening, or they are somewhere really fabulous where the members of the jury don't get to go. Members of the jury are average Cretans compared to the beautiful set in New York. See, to the average New Yorker, the world is not Tina Brown, it's not Barry Diller, it is not all of these people whose names are typed in bold in the gossip columns along with Martha Stewart's. The world is what you heard these jurors talking about coming out of there. The world is where they get shafted because the big guys are having all the fun, getting rich and then making all the little guys pay for it with their 401K's and all this, and so I think it came down to one thing, though.
I think it came down to one thing. If Martha had not treated Douglas Faneuil like a pimple, she would have been okay, but when Faneuil, who already had the truth on his side, came in and talked about how mean she was to him, that fueled the conceptions that the jurors had for the kind of person she is and then the nature of the evidence was such that she had not told the truth. And if you believe Faneuil, as the prosecutor said, this trial is over, but you take the emotion out of it, or you give the emotion to the jurors and take it away from Martha, I just think there are so many cultural things to learn from this verdict because there are people who have done far worse. If you look at the Clinton years, folks. I mean stop and think of this. We're going to send her away. Forget whether you like her or not, why should it matter whether she's liked or not when it comes to justice and the law, why should it matter?
So here's a woman who, however she did it, did it on her own, builds her business, employs a lot of people, she brings products to the market that wouldn't otherwise be there in affordable stores for people, and it did really well because she sells a lot of stuff. I don't think she connected with her audience. I think she remained a distant figure, but nevertheless she had things that people liked and they bought them in droves. You go back and look at what they said, "She lied to the FBI," and now we've got all these people saying, "You do not lie to the government." Well, for crying out loud, we just came out of eight years of it, and Bill Clinton got away scot-free with doing so much more than this. And Hillary as well. And so I don't know whether there's a backlash against that or whether Martha thought that she was part of that and you couldn't blame her. I mean that is the crowd she ran in. Bill Clinton was her guy. She was doing fund-raisers for Clinton, and, you know, you cannot argue and dispute the notion that what happened in the late nineties with Clinton had to change the way the beautiful people looked at the way people like them are treated by the law. So there's a lot of things here to consider, but she's going to go to jail for 16 to 20 months.
She's not going to get a presidential pardon. Well, I don't know. That's not a bad idea. I hadn't thought about that, but barring that she's going to go to jail for 16 to 20 months and end up with a destroyed business, and you can take a look at people far more powerful than she will ever hope to be getting away with far, far more and being excused for it.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
RUSH: By the way, this jury, the jury getting even, for all little people getting screwed. Let's not forget all the little people that have invested in Martha Stewart's business, and are going to see the stock plummet now. A lot of little people getting hurt because of this jury. A lot of little people getting hurt. I mean, I'm not saying that's not a reason for the verdict, I'm just taking the words of some of these jurors. They were getting even for what's been done to the little guy. Well, this jury's got some culpability here in doing some damage to the little guy is all I'm saying. This class envy stuff, folks, is dangerous, dangerous stuff, and there's one political party out there pushing it. Here's Alex in Staunton, Virginia. Hi, Alex, welcome to the program.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush, happy to be on.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Die hard Republican, I actually have the Bush-Cheney '04 sticker on the back of my car, not like that woman from Friday. But the defense of Martha Stewart, both my wife and my father-in-law are stockbrokers and Martha Stewart was a stockbroker, has a series 7 license and the cardinal rule is you don't trade on inside information, and Martha violated that, and on top of that, Martha was a board member of the New York Stock Exchange. So she had a double responsibility to ethics in this and she broke those rules, and, you know, I've read a lot of defense of Martha in the conservative press and the Washington Times, et cetera, and I just flat out disagree with it. She got caught, she knew she was wrong.
RUSH: Wait a second, there's no conservative-liberal to this. And, by the way, I'm getting very suspicious here of all you people who call here and say I'm a registered Republican, I have a Bush-Cheney sticker on my car, just talk to us and we'll know whether you do or not. But I mean you people call here, I got a Bush-Cheney thing on my car, Bush sucks, Bush and Cheney are cheating everybody with Halliburton. Well, then why you got the thing on your car? You're not fooling us. Or me, anyway, with this talk of "I have a Bush-Cheney sticker on my car" and then launch into some stuff about the conservative media. That's just seminar caller get-up and I don't fall for it. Substance of your comment I will make in just a second. All right, here's the final Martha Stewart analysis. Given what she was charged with, and given what she got - she got what she got. That's what H.R. just told me, so there you have it.
Cramer of CNBC said that the one way you make white collar crime go away is to put these people away. Fines are nothing to them.
Untill you asked the question it was a market rumor. Once you knew he was passing along insider information (like Martha did) you can not legally act on the information.
She will lose her civil case.
Rush needs to check his facts. Non insiders can and do trade on inside information.
No. She knew Waskal was selling shares because Waskal's broker told her. That is insider information - not market information
I'm sorry, but that's incorrect. It doesn't matter who told her. Selling shares is market information, regardless of the source. The reason behind the sales may or may not be inside information - but no one is alleging she was told that.
Drew Garrett
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