Business Heroes They Forget To Tell You About @www.ontheborderline.net

Or there's no "fair" in laissez-faire.

...or the first will be last and maybe Senator Bill Frist will be next!

Frist stock sale draws federal scrutiny ...


WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors contacted Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office about his sale of stock in HCA (HCA), the hospital operating company founded by his family. The Securities and Exchange Commission began an investigation, too, and prosecutors asked HCA to turn over documents about the transaction.


My friendly neighborhood bloggers @ www.ontheborderline.net like to tell us about the good old days when taxes were non-existent, all moms stayed at home, there was no business regulations holding back a survival-of-the-fittest robber baron's quest for success, etc. I can name a few reasons why business regulation is a necessary part of our economic system. Listed below are the names of few companies and their executives that took greed to new levels of corporate shame.


•TycoInternational Ltd.: Former Chief Executive L. Dennis Kozlowski and Chief Financial Officer Mark H. Swartz each were sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay a total of$134 million in restitution. Both were convicted June 17 on 22 of 23 counts of grand larceny, conspiracy, securities fraud and falsifying business records.

•WorldCom Inc.: Bernard Ebbers, former chief of the one-time telecom giant, was found guilty of fraud, conspiracy and making false regulatory filings in WorldCom's $11 billion accounting scandal. Ebbers was sentenced July 13 to spend 25 years in prison.

• Enron Corp.: Enron founder Kenneth Lay, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling and former top accountant Richard Causey are scheduled to go to trial in January on federal fraud and conspiracycharges. Former CFO Andrew Fastow pleaded guilty in January 2004 to two counts of conspiracy. He agreed to serve the maximum 10-year sentence after he testifies against his former bosses. Fastow's wife will complete a year long sentence in July.

• Adelphia Communications Corp.: Founder John Rigas and his son Timothy were convicted in federal court last year of conspiracy, bank fraud and securities fraud. On June 20, John Rigas was sentenced to 15 years in prison and Timothy Rigas to 20 years.

• Credit Suisse First Boston: The company's former investment banking star, Frank Quattrone, was convicted in May 2004 on federal charges of obstruction of justice. He is appealing the conviction.

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If you ever wonder why there never seems to be a shortage of help at the local Wal-Mart when you are shopping during your lunch hour, this might be the reason...

Wal-Mart, workers in court over lunch breaks
By David Kravets, Associated Press
September 20, 2005

OAKLAND, Calif. - Lawyers representing about 116,000 former and current Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees in California told a jury Monday that the world's largest retailer systematically and illegally denied workers lunch breaks.

The suit in Alameda County Superior Court is among about 40 cases nationwide alleging workplace violations against Wal-Mart and the first to go to trial. Wal-Mart, which earned $10 billion last year, settled a lawsuit in Colorado for $50 million that contains similar allegations to California's class action. The company also is accused of paying men more than women in a federal lawsuit pending in San Francisco federal court. The workers in the class-action lawsuit are owed more than $66 million plus interest, attorney Fred Furth told the 12 jurors and four alternates.

"I will prove the reason they did this was for the God almighty dollar," Furth said in his opening statement.

Nine jurors must side with the plaintiffs to prevail. Millions of dollars also are sought to punish the company for the alleged wrongdoing. The case concerns a 2001 state law, which is among the nation's most worker friendly. Employees who work at least six hours must have a 30-minute, unpaid lunch break. If they do not get that, the law requires they are paid for an additional hour of pay.

The lawsuit covers former and current employees in California from 2001 to 2005. Wal-Mart declined to give an opening statement, reserving its right to give one later. Its lawyers also declined comment. In court documents, the Bentonville, Ark., company claims that workers did not demand penalty wages on a timely basis. Wal-Mart adds that it did pay some employees their penalty pay and, in 2003, most workers agreed to waive their meal periods as the law allows.

Wal-Mart also says some violations were minor, such as demanding employees punch back in from lunch and work during their meal breaks. In essence, workers were provided a shorter meal period than the law allows. The case does not claim that employees were forced to work off the clock during their lunch breaks.

The lawsuit was brought in 2001 by a handful of San Francisco-area former Wal-Mart employees and took four years of legal wrangling to get to trial. During that time, Wal-Mart produced internal audits that plaintiffs' lawyers maintain showed the company knew it was not granting meal breaks on thousands of occasions.

That 2000 audit was given to top-level executives, according to evidence submitted to jurors Monday. One company document called results of the audit "a chronic problem." A one-week review of company policies showed thousands of instances in which workers were not given a meal break in accordance with the law, according to the documents provided to the jury.

"This is Wal-Mart auditing Wal-Mart," Furth said.