I’d never heard of ‘billionaire entrepreneur’ Mark Cuban before he was decked by the SEC for illegal insider stock trading, but apparently he has something to do with professional football. Or maybe basketball. Who cares? The interesting thing about the indictment is the buzz that maybe it was retaliation for his backing of a 9/11 conspiracy film that accuses Bush of masterminding the whole attack to provide an excuse for the Iraq invasion.
Now anything that suggests that George W. Bush could mastermind his way down a toboggan slide on trainer wheels is obviously fruity. But if the guy got clipped for exercising his free speech rights, further questions are in order.
It’s tempting to just ignore these cases in the spirit of, They all steal and so what? But the use of selective anti-corruption prosecution is a time-honored tool of tyranny and a constant feature of unlovely polities such as those found in Russia, China, Zimbabwe—in fact, in half the world.
Nor does it matter if Cuban is guilty, which he sure appears to be. But he shouldn’t be singled out because he financed the cult film ‘Loose Change,’ even if no one in his right mind would want to go see it. Especially in that case.
Naked Capitalism relates how an SEC lawyer in Fort Worth named Norris wrote a threatening email explicitly mentioning how ‘upset’ SEC chairman Christopher Cox must be over the film, and Cox was aware enough of the implications that he recused himself in the vote on filing the complaint. Curioser and curioser.
We know enough about how the Bush administration and its minions use every lever of power to persecute their enemies in ways old Tricky Dick Nixon could only have dreamed about. The tawdry tale hangs together—hope there’s more revelations to come.
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Mark Cuban called the government’s allegations false and indicated a belief that SEC staffers were out to get him. He will will vigorously fight to prove his innocence. IMHO this is just another example of the feds unfairly making an example of a high-profile citizen who has dared to publicly criticize the government. $750,000 is chump change to Mark Cuban and he has never made a secret of his sale of mamma.com stock when the company decided to go “private” and change direction. Mr. Cuban is a long time critic of both the federal government and the SEC. the secret news given Cuban was essentially “We’re about to F you over, Chump.” I don’t see how that should be considered a matter of fiduciary responsibility.
I hope that this federal targeting will inspire Mr. Cuban to support the Libertarian Party with some of his billions. Government at all levels is too large, too expensive, woefully inefficient, arrogant, intrusive, and downright dangerous. Democratic and Republican politicians have created the status quo and do not intend to change it. http://www.lp.org
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