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OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 12/25/14

Billionaire Sentenced to Five Years in Prison

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No, don't be ridiculous. Don't even think it, or wildly speculate. It was not in the US and not a US billionaire.


Bloomberg News reports "Billionaire Thomas Kwok, the former Sun Hung Kai Properties co-chairman, was sentenced to five years in jail and fined $64,460 for conspiring to corrupt Hong Kong's No. 2 official."
Just imagine that happening in the US-- any billionaire going to jail. Is it possible?
The US has one more statistic going against it now-- a nation where no billionaire goes to jail. And frankly, it surprises me that any nation has the integrity and strength of its justice system to actually bring such a wealthy person to justice.
Of course, even in Hong Kong, billionaire Kwok will be appealing his sentence and conviction.
There are more billionaires in the US than any other country in the world. The only one I can think of who was convicted was probably no longer a billionaire by the time he was convicted-- Kenneth Lay's Enron shares had become worthless. And then he died-- though Wikipedia says, "There have been conspiracy theories about his death."
Still, with 492 billionaires, according to Wikipedia, we might estimate that at least 40 or 50 of them are psychopath or sociopath. That's a frightening thought. Then again. there are no stats or studies on billionaires. It could be that half of them or more are predatory, narcissistic sociopaths.
As I've written in the series this article is a part of, it is time to legislate and by other legal means end the age of billionaires. They are far too dangerous, even the well meaning ones.
Maybe, though, the way Ken Lay ended up being prosecuted is the way it needs to be done-- taking down the whole company that's been run by a criminal.
I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them (Occupy DC)
I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them (Occupy DC)
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Signs with that message were all over Occupy locales. Maybe that's what it takes to take down a billionaire. It's estimated that eight percent of the population is sociopathic and that there are a higher percentage running corporations. I'd speculate that it takes some sociopathy to become a billionaire-- not for all, but for many. Sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists don't believe that laws and rules apply to them-- they live as thought they are above them.
We've had 14 years of Attorneys General who have protected the wealthy and prosecuted the whistleblower heroes. It's time that is changed. Hong Kong can do it. The Bloomberg article even suggests that mainland China influence helped to make it happen.
I wonder what it will take, what kind of influence will be necessary for the US to start prosecuting billionaires, CEOs and let's throw in bad cops too.
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Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

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Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

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