I had the distinct, and creepy, pleasure of sitting in front of a group of fellows yesterday in, ironically, the cheap seats at the Seattle Mariners game. They were discussing business.

One fellow, who of course may have been speaking out of his butt, detailed a list of business exploits, while the other fellows basked in his glow:

1. Helping a fellow buy a company from someone later to do time for sideways business practices.
2. That company making a tidy sum through that company from the US Treasury, via the Iraqi provisional government [a wholly owned subsidiary of the US State Department], with some interesting anecdotes about SUVs driving from Iraq to Jordan, filled with cash.
3. Another company now that uses a Maquiladora outside Tijuana.
4. They bring in 40 busloads of workers every day.
5. They pay them each a solid, firm, unwavering, quite serious $1.20/hour.
6. They have their own armed militia for payday [it’s all in cash].

If you think the rich aren’t getting richer and the poor aren’t getting poorer, I wish you could have listened to this fellow yesterday while he bragged, and fielded questions.