Free Republic

Jeffrey K. Skilling

Count 1 (Conspiracy) GUILTY
Count 2 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 14 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 16 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 17 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 18 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 19 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 20 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 22 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 23 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 24 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 25 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 26 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 31 (False Statements to Auditors) GUILTY
Count 32 (False Statements to Auditors) GUILTY
Count 34 (False Statements to Auditors) GUILTY
Count 35 (False Statements to Auditors) GULTY
Count 36 (False Statements to Auditors) GUILTY
Count 42 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 43 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 44 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 45 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 46 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 47 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 48 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 49 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 50 (Insider Trading) NOT GUILTY
Count 51 (Insider Trading) GUILTY

Kenneth L. Lay

Count 1 (Conspiracy) GUILTY
Count 12 (Wire Fraud) GUILTY
Count 13 (Wire Fraud) GUILTY
Count 27 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 28 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY
Count 29 (Securities Fraud) GUILTY

BANK FRAUD - ALL GUILTY

Live updates as verdict is announced from inside the courtroom (local reporter blogging from courtroom here):

http://www.beloblog.com/KHOU_Weather_Watch/archives/2006/05/jurors_reach_ve.html#more

I'll gladly add to your beer collection if you know of anyplace that has gas.

I have an invite to hunker down on Lake Conroe tomorrow, but I'm inside the loop and running on fumes right now.

Bro, people left around 10 or so LAST NIGHT and, as of early afternoon, still had not left the Greater Houston area.

Yes, having large percentages of people heed the voluntary evac call is good, sure, but to not couple it with a contra flow plan---and TXDOT DID NOT HAVE ONE IN PLACE, accoring to Mayor White---was unconscionable.

I know: I spent 8 hours heading east, got only about 110 miles, gave up and headed back.

Pathetic, insane, ridiculous. How the hell do you expect a city of nearly 3 million to evac in 48-72 hours w/o contraflow? Hell, even New Orleans got that part right.

"Bush's fault."

Don't be silly. Surely it's Ray Nagin's fault.

Where is the "10 hours" coming from, exactly? People were told to get out of town at least 60 hours before landfall.

It's not like City of New Orleans officials were telling people in the still-unblemished Twin Tower on 9/11 to "stay where they are and not evacuate the building" after the first tower was struck...oh, sorry, you New Yorkers are above reproach and cannot be questioned, right?

Name's Nagin, dude. Nice job...

Bring it.

Are you seriously comparing the actions of the mayor of arguably the richest city on the planet to handle a tragedy that impacted, what, lower Manhattan to the mayor of one of the poorest mid-level cities in the country that had city-wide issues to deal with---deaths occurring in areas throughout the city on a rolling basis over days, not over a more compact period like Giuliani did?

Granted, what happened in New York was tragic, but comparing the two as you are is comparing apples and oranges. Besides, when you run the most affluent city in the world, state and national politicians answer, "how high?" when you say "Jump." during a crisis.

Point blame at Kathleen Blanco and FEMA, sure, but how Ray Nagin could have changed the course of events much over the past 6 days is very unclear to me.

Sure I can.

Tourism is the lifeblood of that city, for the most part, and the stories coming from the city are bad enough.

Adding the rape, beatings and murder of tourists to the already terrible list of atrocities would be a terrible blow to future efforts to resurrect the city as a reasonable place for tourists to visit.

Well, I've had it with the blind hatred I'm seeing for Ray Nagin on this site, so I guess we have something in common...

"Starting" to grasp? All Ray Nagin's fault, no doubt...

"Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri said Friday night that the Federal Emergency Management Agency reneged on a promise to begin relieving county emergency preparedness staffers 48 hours after Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans metropolitan area.

Maestri’s staff has been working almost around the clock since Katrina approached the Louisiana coastline on Sunday. Today, the staff is expected to finally switch to a 12 hours on/12 hours off schedule, he said, adding that they’re both tired and demoralized by the lack of assistance from federal officials.

“We had been told we would be on our own for 48 hours,” Maestri said. “Prepare to survive and in 48 hours the cavalry would arrive.

“Well, where are they?” he said.

Maestri said the agreement was signed by officials with the Southeastern Louisiana Emergency Preparedness Officials Association, the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of this year’s Hurricane Pam tabletop exercise. That exercise began the process of writing a series of manuals explaining how to respond to a catastrophic disaster. Financed by FEMA, it included a variety of federal, state and local officials.

A FEMA spokesman late Friday said they couldn’t confirm or deny that the agency signed the agreement Maestri referred to.

FEMA Director Michael Brown also raised Maestri’s ire when he said in a television interview Friday that he waited so long to respond because he didn’t want to interfere with local aid attempts, and that local officials hadn’t asked FEMA to come in.

“My response is very simple,” Maestri said in an interview on a cell phone after repeated attempts to reach his office. “We didn’t have any communications. We still don’t have outside communications.”

He said FEMA officials have now informed him the first members of a liaison team might arrive at the Emergency Operations Center this morning or Sunday."

Comments from the decidely non-African American (and, since he's from Jefferson Parish, assumedly Republican) Ron Maestri.

"The federal response was noticeably different last week. Even before Hurricane Charley struck, the second Bush White House was poised to act, this time backed by another Bush in the Florida governor's mansion. Hours after Hurricane Charley made landfall, federal aid was flowing, and the president arrives this morning.

As emergency crews and National Guard troops swooped in to help residents across the state, the start of the cleanup on Saturday brought a public relations effort apparently designed to show that history would not be repeated.

President Bush, brother Jeb Bush - Florida's governor and the president's state campaign chairman - and other state Republicans showered Floridians with promises, assurances and lists of toll-free numbers they could call for help."

The 2000 census shows a population figure in New Orleans of about 485,000 (give or take).

I've seen estimates of some 80% of the city's population having evacuated in order to escape the storm. The true number may be higher, may be lower, but I think we can all agree that figure is accurate for the most part.

Therefore, some 20% of 485,000 did not leave town. That's about 97,000.

Drilling down further, approximately a third of the city lives at or below poverty level; one can presume that a large chunk of these people do not drive cars, or at least do not drive cars fit to drive hundreds of miles out of harm's way.

I'll be conservative and say some 30,000 people were without means to drive or fly away from the city. We know that there are a heck of a lot more people than that who did say, so my figure is absurdly low, but I'll stick to it.

Now, could 30,000 people be driven away in the face of an approaching storm? That assumes, of course, that 100% of the people able to drive or fly away do so, which is never the case.

Anyway, 30K people have 72 hours to get out of town. Is there an event any of you can think of that called for the removal of 30,000 people from a major metropolitan city in 72 hours time?

The convoluted point I'm trying to make here is, what could Ray Nagin have done differently to stave off this disaster? Deputize a large portion of the population, arm them and have them forcibly go door to door, evicting people at every turn? The guy's primarily hired, as are most mayors, to fill potholes, attract business and such.

Talk about those city buses? Ferrying people to the Superdome, a facility designed to withstand 200 mph-plus winds, a seemingly sensible plan at the time and to all interested.

Common sense suggests that the city, inundated with water and therefore paralyzed, would need extensive assistance from state and federal resources. The order of magnitude of this disaster was that great, and those of you braying about "local control" and "solving one's own problems" have taken leave of your good senses in this instance.

Also, can anyone verify for me that Ray Nagin has "abandoned" New Orleans? Every resource I've checked, including locals who, you know, may know such things better than most of you sitting smugly a thousand miles away, swear Nagin has been in the city for most of the past week. One just told me he'd heard that Nagin, "is not leaving the city until the last person is pulled out."

Yeah, I'm angry. New Orleans is far from perfect, but this hyper-criticism of Ray Nagin is terribly misplaced. Direct it where it belongs, which in my opinion starts in the governor's mansion some 80 miles to the northwest of New Orleans.

By the way, when the President himself said he was disappointed with the relief response so far, do you really think he was referring to Ray Nagin not figuring out how to fire up some school buses in the hours preceding the storm?

Get a clue.

"If this woman had any class at all she would resign immediately."

Spot on.

Impeach, impeach, impeach. Some used to find her obvious incompetence cute...but now it's getting people killed.

"REMEMBER MAYOR NAGAN SAID SUPER DOME WOULD WITH STAND 200 MPH WINDS ALSO."

LOL, some of you folks slay me. Now Ray Nagin is a definitive source regarding structural soundness and stress capacity levels?

If Nagin looked up at a darkened sky and said, "Looks like rain"...and it didn't, is that his fault, too? Should we discount all else he says and does because he was wrong?

Let me ask all of you who are attacking Ray Nagin so viciously: how does the mayor of one of the poorest mid-sized cities in America forcibly remove nearly half a million people in less than 72 hours?

The logistics of moving and sheltering thousands and thousands of borderline indingent people are staggering. Just look at the unintended consequences caused by the bus trip from New Orleans to Houston--the mayor of Houston went from confidently saying Houston was ready for the evacuees the other evening to now asking Houstonians to open their homes to people b/c there's not enough room for all those who keep coming (and coming)...and this is in a city nearly five times the size of New Orleans, not under the gun of a Cat 4 hurricane and with a nation and federal government ready to foot the bill for it all (as FEMA is doing, right down to the last bus heading west from the Superdome).

I know this is a very emotional event, and we all want what's best for those involved, but, c'mon, think some of this stuff through before you post it here.

I don't disagree with your comments, but again putting all of the blame at the state and local level is too simplistic.

The river itself has wanted to change direction for some time now, but leaders from the Federal level on down consider letting it do so to be a non-starter. This is just a small example of how complex the situation really was, so to place all blame at those "typically lazy and corrupt" Louisianians is, well, lazy.

"You know, the Feds are supposed to provide funding and materiel in support of local government, not do the job that local government was SUPPOSED to do . . .

Are you serious with this last comment? Since when is it the "job" of "local government" to forcibly move nearly half a million people from their homes in under 72 hours?

Name on city anywhere on earth that can and would do such a thing. One.