[The Raven]

Goodness...if they put people in jail for telling whoppers or breaking the laws.......where will we put all the Democrats?

[BikePacker]

If she goes to prison, I guess she could teach other prisoners how to cook

Holiday Pruno recipes?

[reg45]

Martha Stewart's ex-husband, Andy Stewart, feared the princess of perfection's long-held habit of telling whoppers

No wonder she was a Clintonista!

[shhrubbery!]

But...but...but...I thought that lying to a federal prosecutor and obstruction of justice were no longer crimes!

If it was OK for Billary, why not for Martha?

[PBRSTREETGANG]

EX-HUBBY SAW FALL COMING

Let me guess, he saw it coming right around September 21st.

[dennisw]

She Lied Her Way To Top - And Back Down Again [Martha Stewart]
New York Post ^ | March 7, 2004 | CHRISTOPHER BYRON


Posted on 03/07/2004 8:20:39 AM EST by John Jorsett


SHE lied to her family, and she lied to her friends and business partners. She lied to the FBI and to the SEC. She lied to Congress, to the prosecutors, to the judge, and even to her own lawyers. In time, she wound up lying to the whole of America and ultimately to the entire world.

For more than 40 years, lying had been a way of life for Martha Stewart. But in the end, she lied to 12 people too many, and Friday, shortly after 3 p.m., a jury of her peers brought Martha Stewart's lifetime of lying to an end.

Now, her image lies in ruins, her career has been destroyed, and her 580-employee company faces almost certain collapse.

All this happened because Martha Stewart never learned - in anything more than an abstract and theoretical way - the difference between the truth and a lie. Instead, she learned early in life that b.s. sells, and she peddled her con-job spiel wherever it fetched the highest price.

Martha Stewart grew up the second of six children in a dysfunctional, tension-filled family of working class Polish-Americans. Her entire childhood was spent teetering on poverty's edge in a cramped row house in the Newark suburb of Nutley, N.J.

Martha's father, Eddie Kostyra, was a nasty-tempered and narcissistic boozer who couldn't hold a job, and who blamed the world for his own shortcomings. Martha's mother, also named Martha, went through her days in a cloud of sullen resentment over what her husband had turned out to be, and spent a lot of her time in a house dress and curlers at the kitchen table, smoking, drinking beer and playing cards with her girlfriends.

Martha yearned desperately for something better than this for herself.



So, in adulthood, she reinvented her past into an "I Remember Mama" fantasy powerful enough that it mesmerized the world. This fantasy became the foundation of her entire business empire, repackaged as "truth" in the pages of her books and magazines.

AS a young career woman in New York in the bull-market '60s, Martha gravitated to Wall Street, where she landed a job as a broker. The fly-by-night firm where she worked became heavily involved in a stock promotion that triggered a probe by New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz.

In the course of the stock promotion, Martha put her friends into the shares. Then when the market crashed at the start of the '70s, she reassured her clients that everything would work out fine and to stay fully invested. Meanwhile, she herself secretly bailed out and quit the firm (which soon went bankrupt, anyway). Thereafter, she fled with her husband to the Connecticut suburbs.

In celebrity-filled Westport, Conn., Martha started a catering service. Her business partner, a high-fashion model named Norma Collier, subsequently claimed Martha lied to her about the business, stole clients behind her back, and ultimately drove her from the business entirely.

Martha's career in business is festooned with similar complaints. After she became a success, she bought a second home for herself in Westport. She then misled her business partner, Kmart, into thinking she didn't yet own the house, and that Kmart would get a lot of valuable publicity if the retailer gave her the money to buy it, which Kmart agreed to do. Propelled by such deceptions, Martha Stewart began to market a false version of her life as America's "perfect woman" - the hyper-competent, ultra-organized, perfectly at ease doyenne of gracious living.

THE message resonated with harried housewives who dreamed of living their own lives the same way. Some read her books and magazines as "how to" guides; others just leafed their pages as escapist entertainment. Either way, the demand for Martha's messages proved insatiable, spawning an entire media conglomerate based on celebrating the Perfect American Woman, as performed by Martha Stewart.

In the process, Martha began to mistake the gracious and super-competent woman she was pretending to be with the disorganized, short-tempered and hassled businesswoman she actually was.

When New York state tax examiners sent her a bill for back taxes in 1994, she claimed she didn't owe the money because she hadn't been in New York on the days in question.

In fact, she couldn't convincingly prove where she had been at all because her personal travel records were in chaos, and she had not even bothered to keep a day-planner of her activities. Her own testimony in the case, based on nothing more than scraps of paper and travel vouchers from limousine services, wound up being impeached by articles and photographs in her own magazines, which showed she had indeed been in New York on the very days she had insisted the opposite. A Tax Court judge pronounced her testimony in the case "non-credible" and all but called her a liar.

AFTER fighting with Martha for six years, the New York Division of Taxation won a final appeal in the State Tax Court of Appeals, which ruled against her in 2000, and hit her with a bill of $221,677.

Seeking to keep the private reality of her life hidden from public view, Martha Stewart grew increasingly challenging and defiant toward anyone who dared peek behind the curtain of her false public persona. In this way she was able to deflect more than isolated criticism of her behavior in the press.

But when federal investigators in the ImClone affair asked her on Feb. 4, 2002, for some simple and straight answers about her fishy-looking sale of even a relative handful of ImClone shares on Dec. 27, 2001, she had already convinced herself that she'd done nothing wrong because she was, after all, Martha Stewart, the perfect woman, who by definition is incapable of doing wrong.

So she simply showed the feds the other face of Janus, and told them a lie. And as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks became months, it became easier and easier for her to believe she was telling the truth - and easier and easier for the feds to see she was lying. And in that way she sealed her fate. And now she's going to prison, with her sentencing set for June 17.

And though she will probably keep insisting on her innocence until the door slams behind her, only the diminishing and teary-eyed members of her cult will be waving her goodbye, wailing at the "injustice" and the "outrage" of jailing the criminal liar who betrayed them.

Post business columnist Christopher Byron is the author of "Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia."

[tdadams]

She said Stewart's husband, who split in 1990 after more than 20 years of marriage, was watching his ex-wife on television embellish small details of her life several years after the divorce when he made a prophetic comment.

I've worked in entertainment for many years. The truth is, almost every celebrity's biography is embellished. There's always a bit of truth to it, but you have to ask yourself what's being omitted.

The rock star who started his own record company in his college dorm room... was financed by his millionaire father. The indie director who made a smash film for $7000... received post-production services and marketing worth millions from a major studio.

[SolutionsOnly]

Boy, if this isn't ever one of the those 20/20 hindsight crocks, I don't know what is.

[traumer]

HUBBA - BUBBA

[TheBattman]

I have a question----

Say you have a sizeable stock investment in a company. Someone you know that has connections to the higher-ups in the company gives you a call and says that the head of the company is dumping stock. What would you do?

Not to devend Martha on this - she did lie which is basically what got her convicted - but I would probably dump my shares too.

Thing is, if Martha holds onto her stock and the stock tanks - she made a poor judgement and threw money out the window that she shouldn't have.
On the other hand, if she does the smart thing and jumps out of that stock ASAP, she is guilty of insider trading. So what does Martha do? The smart thing, she dumped those stocks.

Now, if she had told the truth - she would have been charged with insider trading and other higher-penalty crimes and would now be preparing for a sentencing with much worse terms that what she is facing now. If she lied, she is in the situation she is in now.

Sounds like she was between a rock and a hard place.

What would you have done?

[smiley]

That old and wise adage: "Pride Goeth Before A Great Fall" was never more appropriate than it is in Martha's case. Martha did herself in...period.

[Reelect President Dubya]

She didn't, by any stretch of the imagination, commit insider trading.

But I sure am glad we put her in her place.

That's what the law is for.

[Capriole]

Some people on this thread are imagining Martha in an orange jumpsuit doing hard time in the state correctional facility with a lot of enormous tattooed women whose hair is cut very, very short. But this is unlikely to be the case. There are quite a few no-security facilities or pre-release centers where the more delicate can be sent. Someone I know committed a rather serious crime, but was extended some mercy by the judge because his age and background made it unlikely he'd last long in an ordinary prison. He was sent to a "prison" that looked like an office building in a nice suburb. You would never guess that this place was a prison. Many of the inmates were allowed out during the day to go to jobs or church. It's likely that Martha will be sent to the same sort of place. It's not a hotel, and she'll have to pull some pretty menial tasks, but this will be as well, for she might just learn a bit of humility.

Do you not see? Martha could well give the government $30 million and do a meals-on-wheels sort of activity rather than going to prison--but what message does this send? The message would be that a rich arrogant woman could engage in securities crimes and then buy her way to freedom. Believe me, there are a lot of other rich people in New York who would like to hear that if they get caught commiting securities crimes all they'd have to do is spend six months in a comfortable pre-release center; they might well consider that the gamble was worth it. If Martha can buy her way out or is perceived as too delicate to be punished, this gives a green light to all the arrogant, high-rolling risk-takers who infest Wall Street and think they too are too smart to get caught.

The government does not need her money, which is a drop in the federal bucket. What it needs desperately is to communicate to people who are the big players in securities trading that this sort of dishonesty will not stand. Investors must be able to believe that the markets are basically well-policed and that investors who are not Martha Stewart can trade in safety, without being backstabbed by insider trading.

[cartoonistx]

[Walkingfeather]

But she said Stewart should be spared prison. Instead, she should be made to devote her money and energies to running a "meals on wheels" program for elderly folk.


First I don't see martha as the Babetts feast type

"If she goes to prison, I guess she could teach other prisoners how to cook. That would help their self-esteem," Collier said.

And second, it was her high self esteem that got her into trouble in the first place.

[Dead Dog]

"but said her one-time pal had always viewed life as a "zero-sum game. She just isn't used to being the loser."


The reason she is a liberal socialist, elitist, pinch faced b!Tch.

[antonia]

"If she goes to prison, I guess she could teach other prisoners how to cook ..."

WoW! What a great idea! Martha Stewart could transform the prison ~ transform the prison system.

Stewart's ability to make stuff beauty out of elemental things, make the ordinary something very special; just like Chuck Coleson, this could be a transformation for Stewart that could put new life into her calling. She has already taken the suburban farm, family home, as far as it can go, this could be a great opportunity to take it to the next level, not just transforming a suburbanites life, but for those who never had anything. She has the no nonsense attitude to do it.

 

[Ann Archy]

She's a Democrat....they LIE..PERIOD.

[Don Joe]

My, my, my, the French Knitting Team certainly has been busy in this thread.

Some of you people should be ashamed of yourselves. I'm not going to name names, but you know who you are. This is the most pathetic mass catfight I've ever seen, bar none. Class warfare is alive and well -- on a "Conservative" site, no less.

The Republic is done. Stick a fork in it.

This isn't about M. Stewart. This is about ME. And YOU. And ALL of us.

But go ahead. Laugh. Knit. Be the Harpie. The bleachers beckon, take your seats. Let the games begin.

Just don't go losing your head over it.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of articles you might want to take a peek at.

First:

"Are U.S. senators real 'inside traders'?
Study shows stock portfolios outperform market by 12%"

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37480

Hmm, now isn't that interesting.

So when are we going to put *them* in the dock -- and in the cell?

Allow me to place the first bet: "Never."

And now, for the "kill shot":

"Free Martha Stewart"

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37490

Some excerpts, for your fuming pleasure:

"Free Martha Stewart"

By Joseph Farah

---

Posted: March 9, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

I don't like Martha Stewart.

Like so many other average Americans, I detest her cult of celebrity. I find her perfectionism annoying. I, too, would be severely tempted to convict her if I saw her pal Rosie O'Donnell in the courtroom. Her financial support for Bill Clinton, Al Gore and any other breathing Democrat is enough to make me sick.

However, let's face facts. She's guilty of nothing. The charges against her amounted to trumped-up nothingness. Unless the conviction last week is reversed on appeal, she almost certainly faces jail time.

This is not right. This is not justice. This is not the American way.

For those of you who haven't followed the details of the case closely, here's what really happened.

One of Stewart's many friends is a man named Samuel D. Waksal, the founder of a company called ImClone that developed a promising cancer-fighting drug. A day before the company announced the Food and Drug Administration had refused to approve the drug, she dumped 4,000 shares of ImClone stock, valued at $51,000.

Waksal is serving a seven-year sentence on several charges of security fraud related to ImClone stock. Ironically, the FDA later approved the drug – which offers great hope to cancer patients throughout the country.

So what is the big offense that will send Martha Stewart up the river with Waksal? Lying. More specifically lying to government officials.

What did she lie about? She maintained her innocence about stock fraud – a charge she never actually faced because of lack of evidence. But because she said right along that she was innocent, the government tried her on the bogus charge of lying.

What ever happened to the notion in this country that we oppose self-incrimination? Martha Stewart got herself in trouble with her own words – in trying to protect herself, in trying simply to maintain her innocence.

Outside the courtroom, U.S. Attorney David Kelley said all Americans were victims of Stewart because lies to investigators weaken the nation's law enforcement system.

I hope he was joking. We have judges in this country making up laws. We have judges enforcing unconstitutional orders. We have government officials breaking the law with impunity. Chaos is reigning in the streets of America because of government law-breaking, lies and deceit. So, to set an example, a government prosecutor pursues – at a cost of over $10 million to the taxpayers – this nothing case against Martha Stewart to plaudits of those who relish class warfare.

"When we first indicted this case, we said it was about lies, all about lies," Kelley said. "As you saw in the evidence, that's what it was."

Yes, that's all it was.

Now, I don't like liars, but let's face it: Nobody lies nearly as much as government officials. They lie. They steal. They defraud the American public on a daily basis. Lying to them shouldn't be a crime, it should be a constitutional requirement.

Let's recall that Bill Clinton lied under oath while serving as president. He lied in a lawsuit charging him with sexual harassment. But we were told that was no big deal.

Perjury is a much bigger deal – and should be – than lying to a government official.

Yet, the way things actually work, government officials – who should be required to live under a higher standard of ethical behavior than ordinary taxpayers – have some kind of immunity.

The Martha Stewart case is a travesty of justice. The real lesson is that the government can put away anyone it wants, any time it wants.

That's not a lesson that should give comfort to any American – no matter what our station in life.

---

My, my, I got a bit carried away there, didn't I. I excerpted the whole article. Oh, well. I guess now I know how the Off-With-Her-Head! harpies feel, getting caught up in the moment.

No I don't. I was just kidding about that. If I *really* felt like one of those harridans, I'd throw myself in front of the 123 IRT. I *do* have a conscience, after all.

Well, niteynite, all.

[FFIGHTER]

Let's see Martha is going to jail for lying, while former President Bill Clinton did not, something is a little out of balance.