Sunday, December 23, 2007
Corrupt is as corrupt does
I always knew Arkansans have a primitive grasp of conflict of interest, and after the Clinton years everybody knows that politics there makes New Jersey look like Scandinavia by comparison. Even I, however, did not realize the extent to which it was a freaking banana republic.
Can't we just send the 101st to Little Rock? We've done it before.
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Dec 23, 12:56:00 PM:
Banana republic barely describes it. Nearly twenty years ago a team was putting together a joint venture to acquire several ordinary manufacturing operations in Arkansas. JV partners were some hard-bitten, street-wise Chicago nationally prominent tough executives, our team included a guy used to very dicey Latin American countries.
I have often thought of retiring on the screenplay rights to our experiences, everything was unbelievably corrupt in Arkansas. Sellers were interconnnected elites with names you would recognize, Rose Law Firm heavily involved.
Due diligence exposed major fraud and asset problems, mid-level employees at the target locations were white with fear, some destroyed documents and moved their whole families out almost overnight. Our sellers said they decided to take the kids to Disneyland for a couple of weeks, movers just cleaned out their houses to the bare walls. Sheriffs of two counties threatened to "make trouble" and the guy on my team said the Honduras death squads were less of a worry to him. We beat it out of the state, backed out of the deals, and of course lost the suit to recover the deal deposit.
Yep, Arkansas is in a class of its own, I still hear some stories from people who will do business there, our group has nexus in 48 states but refuses to get involved there ever again.
By , at
Sun Dec 23, 02:46:00 PM:
Follow up since the above post is too condensed to do justice to the subject, this was only one of several experiences in Arkansas. In each case, our aborted deals included some very sleazy characters who were working with much of the Arkansas business and political establishment. That establishment had no problems with the most outrageous and cynical practices, environmental damage, falsified documents, overstated collateral on loans as long as they were originated out of state, goons threatening people who could provide corroborating evidence, lying to officers of the court as standard operating procedure. We got to know some folks who later became well known in Washington, as well as people often covered favorably in Fortune and Forbes. The truth was very different from the news coverage. There are banana republics that are more on the up-and-up than Arkansas. Wait for the movie!
