Lieberman and Accounting for Options

Michael Froomkin reminds us of yet another moment when Joe Lieberman was the bad guy:

Discourse.net: Lieberman + Bad Accounting = BFF: [M]ore than anybody else in America, Joe Lieberman is responsible for some of the worst corporate abuses during the recent tech bubble and for the current growing options backdating scandal. The Connecticut media has noted this, but not the national media, and it is real important.... [I]n 1993 Lieberman saved amazingly bad accounting for when a company pays an executive with stock options instead of cash. This caused options to flourish. Options make an executive more concerned with short-term fluctuations in her company's stock price than in running the company well....

In 1993, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) was set to fix the accounting rules for compensatory stock options.... Cash compensation is an expense. Giving an executive a piece of the company for nothing dilutes the value of the stock for the other shareholders every bit as much as paying cash, but no expense was booked. There were a few weak technical arguments in favor of the old rule.... FASB rejected these arguments. Along comes Joe Lieberman! Reflecting the cost of options on financial statements will hurt high-tech companies.... Lieberman pushes through a Sense of the Senate resolution that Congress would disband FASB if they require expensing of stock options. FASB caved. PBS has a nice discussion of all this online at Lieberman v. FASB

Just this year, FASB began requiring expensing of stock options. The Republic did not fall. FASB was able to hide behind residual post-Enron public distrust of corporate executives and Europe adopting options expensing to finally get things right 13 years later.

One can wonder how much better American business would have been run for the last 13 years were it not for Joe Lieberman.

Comments

[J]

Joe (Arthur Anderson's boy) was Enron's Democrat in the Senate, ensuring that his party could not capitalize on Lay's ties to Bush. He was the lead Democrat the committee that might have investigated, and what he said was, "It would be as bad to do too much as to do too little".

This is a truism, but in this context it meant that the fix was on.

[John Emerson]

"Ken Lay Dead"
the paper said,
and dead he still lies.

"Ken Lag in Todes Banden" will be sung at the funeral.

[christo]

Is he dead or just disappeared off to the U A E retirement home?

[zenseeker]

Happy July 4th to all of you. I just made a flash game where uncle Sam is seen throwing knives at Joe Lieberman called Back Stabbing Lieberman. Check it out at my site here: http://zenwire.com/flashmedia-lieberman.php. There are also other games there: bush rampage, bush-rice-terror, bush shootout, dancing bush and Blair and other political games as well. Feel free to comment for I plan to make more.

Anyways, back to the meaning of July 4th for my kids.

I was watching all the fireworks outside with my kids, and my 8 year old daughter asked me to explain what was Independence day all about. I gave her the story about colonial settlers under British rule and how we united with help to fight off the Brits and finally won our independence for the right to self rule. And when I told her that this is when our founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, and she asked me what was that? I did not remember most of the words, but incredibly my wife did and we utter some of those magic words together. I told her that when I was a kid and read those words, I thought that they were the most beautifully written words I had ever read. And I told her that the meaning and values of that document was why I love America so much; this was the country that taught me what it meant to be equal and fair, good and just. But I also told her that half of it is no longer true, and my son, a typical Nintendo kid, interjected: “You mean, like Bush.” I did not even have to reply or convince him, somehow he already knew. In a way I should be glad that even my kids can see what is going on, but somehow I actually felt sad. Sad because they don’t know the full weight and tremendous implications of those words written so long ago. Sad because they don’t realize the power of words and the actions they can generate; and those specific words were so powerful that countless men have willingly died through the eons in their fleeting attempt to manifest and live out those words and its ideals. And sad because I grew up in a world full of idealistic ideas and enthusiasm, teaching us to not only help and improve ourselves, but all of humanity and mankind as well. Reaching the moon and back was just a small sampling of things to come. I am what I am is because of these words and it makes me sad to realize that my kids will not have these words and the absolute belief and trust in those very words (inscribed by our founding fathers) to guide and instill in them a sense of justice and equality. They know the world is not fair and they will never expect it to be fair. I have always hoped the world will be so, but I can no longer say this with a straight face to my kids that the world will be this way when they grow up or if it will ever even get any closer to those ideals; just like the moon is no longer feasible to travel to anymore, there is easy money to be made elsewhere subjugating the people of this planet.

After reading the Declaration of Independence at this site: http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html, it struck me that I was wrong in telling my daughter that half of it was no longer true. I actually thought that most of it is no longer true. For brevity, skipping the preamble and just going through the grievances, I saw many justifiable grievances then that equally apply to now, the year 2006. Just read them for yourselves and see how many of them our government is guilty of or in the process of taking those very same rights away. I will mark the ones I feel they are guilty of.

Guilty: He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
Guilty: He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
Guilty: He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
Guilty: He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
Guilty: He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
Guilty: He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
Guilty: He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
Guilty: He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
Guilty: He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
Guilty: He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
Guilty: He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
Guilty: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
Guilty: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
Guilty: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
Guilty: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
Guilty: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
Guilty: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
Guilty: He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
Guilty: He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
Guilty: He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
Guilty: He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Ok that is enough for Independence day, and be sure to chech out all the political games at http://zenwire.com
Take Care,
Zenseeker

[christo]

Oh, yeah, Lieberman and the options, he's been the representative for Likud/finance industry/big pharma, he just happens to need Conneticutt votes.

Support individuals, not partays. It'll take a while to take back the country and it's not certain it's going to happen. We should all be reading up on recent Argentinian history so we can work on our fall back plans.

[christo]

More fun on the Fourth, John C Yoo, professor of creative law, U. C. Berkeley, will hold a seminar guest lectured by Joe Lieberman on the innovative use of options and the creative destruction of the United States, open to p r/poli sci majors only to fulfill math and/or soft science requirements.

[Hal Varian]

I think that the hoopla over option grants is vastly exaggerated.

Companies were required to report details of all option grants and it was very easy for anyone with a spreadsheet to apply their favorite valuation formula. Work by David Aboody and others has shown that financial markets incorporated this information efficiently. That is, stock prices accurately reflected the value of the option grants.

It is by no means clear that the current FASB rules offer an improvement over the former system since the valuation models they recommend are not very well grounded in theory. Black-Scholes, for example, significantly overstates the value of employee options.

The best way to value options, IMHO, is described by Jeremy Bulow and John Shoven in the latest JEP. Unfortunately, FASB does not allow the Bulow-Shoven accounting model, at least for the present.

See my column about options valuation for more details:
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/%7Ehal/people/hal/NYTimes/2004-04-08.html

[Xavier Q. Evil]

Just for accuracy, not Michael Froomkin, but his guest blogger, George Mundstock.

[a]

Just to clarify: options, like the stock grants, are not expenses. It delutes the value of the stock because there's more of it. Yes, it would work out around the same if you calculate the number of shares for dilution by looking at the probability of an excercise as if you value them by BS - in the perfect market (not in this Universe). FASB is full of it.

[Luis Enrique]

I dunno. Cash expenses to the company are one thing and the issuance of shares in that company is another. Making up an arbitary (sorry, theoretically robust) notional charge to the P&L to capture share issuance is not terribly satisfactory. To my mind the fault lies with analysts and investors who failed to incorporate options into their thinking.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/opinion/25sun2.html

June 25, 2006

Making Your Own Luck

A series of investigations may show that many companies have been rigging the timing of option grants to jack up their value, to the benefit of executives and the detriment of shareholders. At a time when compensation for executives is approaching the lordly levels of the old robber barons, it should come as no surprise that the system may have been abused. What is surprising is the number of companies caught up in this widening scandal.

Dozens of companies are under investigation for the practice by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service, and even more by corporate boards themselves. There are a number of ways to manipulate grants to ensure that options quickly end up "in the money," whether it is backdating, picking the lowest price in a time window or timing the grant ahead of good news that will buoy the share price.

Stock options are supposed to align the interests of executives with those of shareholders, not give the former an unfair advantage at the latter's expense. A difference of a few dollars in the share price can add up to millions in profit given the large size of many grants to executives. Option timing undermines the whole point of a stock option, which is to give executives the incentive to put in the extra effort to ensure that the corporation performs better. Then when the stock rises, shareholders and executives alike benefit.

Handing out in-the-money options is legal — provided companies disclose them and count them as expenses. Instead some executives have apparently decided to cheat and pretend the timing was not manipulated to increase the odds of a big payoff. In many cases corporate boards seem to have been complicit, asleep at the switch or kept in the dark....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/business/businessspecial/19options.html?ex=1308369600&en=44e28a9a7d738f8b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 19, 2006

Inquiry Into Stock Option Pricing Casts a Wide Net
By ERIC DASH

Throughout the 1990's, Silicon Valley companies were locked in an intense battle to recruit employees, and stock options were their primary tool.

Micrel Inc., a semiconductor company based in San Jose, Calif., was no exception.

So when new hires began complaining that the company's volatile share price meant that colleagues who had arrived just days earlier were receiving stock options worth thousands of dollars more, Micrel executives moved to satisfy the troops. They raised with their auditor, Deloitte & Touche, the idea of adopting a new options pricing strategy similar to one that other tech companies, including Microsoft, used at the time.

Instead of granting options at the market price on a new employee's hire date, Micrel proposed setting the price at the lowest point in the 30 days from when the grant was approved.

It seemed like an ideal solution. The 30-day window could help Micrel attract and reward new hires on a more equal footing, while helping to retain existing employees. And if it were extended up the corporate ladder, the prospect of built-in gains and tax breaks, worth millions of dollars, could enrich senior executives.

But the 30-day pricing method, which Micrel adopted in mid-1996, was an aggressive move legally and financially. In hindsight, it was also a major misstep.

Nearly five years later, Deloitte reversed its opinion and urged Micrel to restate its financial reports. The Internal Revenue Service came banging on its door. And today, Micrel and Deloitte are passing blame back and forth in court.

Micrel is hardly the only firm ensnared in such a mess. What began as a creative solution among a handful of technology firms to address recruitment issues soon became common practice in Silicon Valley. It appears the practice also became a way to enrich chief executives and other top managers.

The result is a nationwide scandal with major accounting, corporate governance, tax and disclosure ramifications. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of companies are caught up in a giant civil and criminal law enforcement sweep by the Justice Department, the I.R.S. and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It is no coincidence that stock option abuses are once again taking center stage in an unfolding scandal. The easy money that options can rain down on recipients motivated many of the numbers games that companies played with their quarterly earnings during the stock market boom, leading to numerous accounting fraud prosecutions at Enron, WorldCom and others.

In the latest scandal, companies seem to have handed out stock options that were already "in the money" on the date of grant, undermining the idea of using options as a pay-for-performance tool. The practice appears to have been widespread from the early 1990's to 2002, and possibly beyond.

Handing out in-the-money options is not illegal as long as the grants are disclosed to shareholders. At the time, in-the-money options had to be counted as an expense on the company's books. (New rules now require companies to routinely deduct options as an expense.) ...

[christo]

The cash expense to the company is through share repurchases to control the float. Tech companies that have been issuing options as if they were valueless pieces of paper have also been heavy in the market repurchasers where acutally money is spent, otherwise the high number of shares floating would make each share worth less. Options have been a way for upper management, 95% of all options for the top five guys, to eat the shareholders lunch. Dell doesn't pay dividends; it's book value is less than GM's.

Options are for the tipity-top of our two tier economy. Lieberman rolled over for some doggy bones.

[pgl]

Glad someone said this. Everything the anti-Joe left (that likely includes me) blogs say their opposition to his re-election is about more than his support for the Iraq War, I find myself leaving a comment to Joe's opposition to SFAS 123.

[save the rustbelt]

"...It delutes the value of the stock because there's more of it...."

Corporations can't just dilute stock. The options should be coming from "treasury stock" purchased in the market by the company to satisfy the options.

Expensing options is no panacea and may create misleading financials, but at least in a conservative direction (in accounting parlance tending toward understatement of income is considered "conservative").

The current scandal du jour is the backdating of options. That could have some major repercussions.

[anne]

Actually the options game is played by a proposal to issue options approved by the board of directors, which allows stock to be granted from corporation holdings. When the options are exercised and the issued stock is sold there will be an increase in shares outstanding in the market unless the board has allowed for buying back stock and unless management follows through and buys back stock.

[wilberton]

Hey there,

Im sure Im in the wrong place, but Im looking for help and like so many before me, I rely on the kindness of strangers:

Here is my need:

If the rate of inflation increases primarily as a result of energy cost impacts, then how can the historical inflation-adjusted cost of energy (benchmark) remain somewhat fixed?

Can someone help put into perspective how an increase in energy costs (which will increase inflation) impact future or current adjustments for inflation. I have always been curious as to the way this info is distorted, thus any help in clarifying this economic valuation puzzle will be greatly appreciated!!

In a nutshell, I wonder if an increased rate of inflation (over time) will reduce the benchmark $90 adjusted oil value, i.e., at some point in the near future, will adjustments for inflation outpace past oil costs, e.g: if inflation rises above 3% to say 6% and oil is @ $80, wouldn’t that bring the $90 benchmark to a lower dollar value?

Re Puzzle Parts: Oil prices are now roughly 26 percent higher than a year ago, but still below all-time inflation-adjusted highs of around $90.

The average retail price of gasoline is $2.93 a gallon, according to OPIS. But Kloza said pump prices are likely to surpass $3 a gallon as early as this weekend.

If, gas cost $3.13 in 1970 and dollars were adjusted for inflation, gas would cost $15.77 in 2005.
Also, if you were to buy exactly the “same” gas in 2005 and 1970,
they would cost you $3.13 per gallon and $0.62 per gallon respectively.

In today's dollars, the all-time high of $3.13 was reached in Sept. 2005. Prices are DOE's US average prices for all formulations of regular gasoline. Because "Today's dollars" are worth less than the "Today's dollars" of a year ago, The March 1981 price is listed as a bit higher now, then it was on this same graph a year ago.

You may see inflation-corrected graphs using CPI-U, the urban consumer price index. They will show a lower price in 1981. A newer CPI, called the chained consumer price index, tracks the GDP deflator very closely (yet another measure of inflation) very closely. Unfortunately the new CPI only goes back to 2000.

[zenseeker]

Happy July 4th to all of you. I just made a flash game where uncle Sam is seen throwing knives at Joe Lieberman called Back Stabbing Lieberman. Check it out at my site here: http://zenwire.com/flashmedia-lieberman.php. There are also other games there: bush rampage, bush-rice-terror, bush shootout, dancing bush and Blair and other political games as well. Feel free to comment for I plan to make more.

Anyways, back to the meaning of July 4th for my kids.

I was watching all the fireworks outside with my kids, and my 8 year old daughter asked me to explain what was Independence day all about. I gave her the story about colonial settlers under British rule and how we united with help to fight off the Brits and finally won our independence for the right to self rule. And when I told her that this is when our founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, and she asked me what was that? I did not remember most of the words, but incredibly my wife did and we utter some of those magic words together. I told her that when I was a kid and read those words, I thought that they were the most beautifully written words I had ever read. And I told her that the meaning and values of that document was why I love America so much; this was the country that taught me what it meant to be equal and fair, good and just. But I also told her that half of it is no longer true, and my son, a typical Nintendo kid, interjected: “You mean, like Bush.” I did not even have to reply or convince him, somehow he already knew. In a way I should be glad that even my kids can see what is going on, but somehow I actually felt sad. Sad because they don’t know the full weight and tremendous implications of those words written so long ago. Sad because they don’t realize the power of words and the actions they can generate; and those specific words were so powerful that countless men have willingly died through the eons in their fleeting attempt to manifest and live out those words and its ideals. And sad because I grew up in a world full of idealistic ideas and enthusiasm, teaching us to not only help and improve ourselves, but all of humanity and mankind as well. Reaching the moon and back was just a small sampling of things to come. I am what I am is because of these words and it makes me sad to realize that my kids will not have these words and the absolute belief and trust in those very words (inscribed by our founding fathers) to guide and instill in them a sense of justice and equality. They know the world is not fair and they will never expect it to be fair. I have always hoped the world will be so, but I can no longer say this with a straight face to my kids that the world will be this way when they grow up or if it will ever even get any closer to those ideals; just like the moon is no longer feasible to travel to anymore, there is easy money to be made elsewhere subjugating the people of this planet.

After reading the Declaration of Independence at this site: http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html, it struck me that I was wrong in telling my daughter that half of it was no longer true. I actually thought that most of it is no longer true. For brevity, skipping the preamble and just going through the grievances, I saw many justifiable grievances then that equally apply to now, the year 2006. Just read them for yourselves and see how many of them our government is guilty of or in the process of taking those very same rights away. I will mark the ones I feel they are guilty of.

Guilty: He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
Guilty: He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
Guilty: He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
Guilty: He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
Guilty: He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
Guilty: He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
Guilty: He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
Guilty: He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
Guilty: He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
Guilty: He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
Guilty: He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
Guilty: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
Guilty: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
Guilty: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
Guilty: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
Guilty: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
Guilty: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
Guilty: He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
Guilty: He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
Guilty: He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
Guilty: He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Ok that is enough for Independence day, and be sure to chech out all the political games at http://zenwire.com
Take Care,
Zenseeker