I was just reading an article on the net about the trend of companies not to let shareholders speak at annual meetings.
One of the more bizarre references was to Whole Foods. Apparently they decided not to allow people whose proposals were being voted on to make a brief presentation. A representitive from an investment company that co-sponsored one of three shareholder resolutions at the meeting expressed dismay at the refusal to allow presentations.
Saying he didn’t want the meeting to become a “circus,” Whole Foods founder and Chief Executive John Mackey asserted that shareholder comments would be a “waste of time” and that those who didn’t like it could buy someone else’s stock.
Say what? Maybe Whole Foods should use that as an investor relations quote! I had been considering buying some Whole Foods stock, ummm…but, I didn’t like it. I guess I will buy someone else’s stock. Thanks John Mackey!
The referenced article can be found at http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060512/biz_all_business.html
I had seen a few little news updates about it last week, and then nothing. Did they put the trial on hold while they do something or other? I want to see Lay and Skilling rot in prison!
Blackberry
What is up with that? They are going to be shutting down Blackberry (a small wireless device made by Research in Motion) service to it’s users because of patent stuff. But apparently the shutdown will not affect government users? What? If it’s the government judges that are deciding that Blackberry infringed on a patent and decide to shut it down, let them go and buy something else to use. Why should government still be allowed to use the patent infringing devices while no one else can?
These guys should have been tried a long time ago. Bastards! These guy’s and coherts such as Andy Fastow and greedy A-holes like them caused the collapse of the stock market. I did not even have a significant investment in Enron or any of the other companies that were involved in financial wrongdoing, but with money in the S&P 500 and other funds, I took a big hit anyway. My 401k which dropped to about 40% of it’s value, is finally back up to where it was. And it only took 5 years! And all of the employees of Enron, and the handfull company’s who lost their jobs and savings, while sons of bitches like these got rich. Ken Lay with those fat cheeks is going to make a nice bitch for some lonely prisoner with a name like Cletus or Bubba!
I heard tapes of some of these guys calling to have power stations taken off line to cause power shortages to drive the price of electricity up to make themselves rich all the while raping the end consumer. Now maybe Kenny and Jeffy will know what it’s like to be raped…literally! 
Apparently Ford is going to make it’s employee who drive non-Ford cars to park across the street from it’s plant. It would seem that some Ford employees found other cars more desirable than the Ford cars they make. It also seems that Ford is trying to punish it’s employees into buying Ford vehicles. Are Ford vehicles bad enough that the company has to force them onto it’s employees?