Joe Nacchio heading to jail; Justice weeps anyway

Don’t call it schadenfreude. That’s the term for taking pleasure in the misfortune of others, and I’m not guilty of that.

What I feel today, as I review the news that former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio’s conviction has been upheld, isn’t about pleasure in his mighty fall from power. In fact, it’s not “pleasure” at all.

Instead, tell me what the word is for “taking satisfaction in justice served,” because that’s what I’m guilty of. Right now I’m feeling powerfully and righteously satisfied that a man who caused so much misfortune is getting at least a small slice of what he deserves.

Sadly, there will never be full justice for the likes of Nacchio – and Lay and Skilling and Ebbers and Kozlowski and Rigas and Madoff – because our system of law simply doesn’t allow for it. Any punishment you could mete out that would legitimately count as justice for annihilating the lives of hard-working people the way these men did would run afoul of the 8th Amendment before it was 1% administered.

It’s a curious and unfortunate quirk of our legal system that one man can spend longer in jail – a real jail, not a federal country club – for selling comparatively harmless drugs to consenting adult customers than another man who destroys the life savings of hundreds and thousands of people who never did anything but show up every day and work their asses off in hopes that they could afford to retire one day.

If it seems like I’m taking the Nacchio case personally, there’s a reason. While my case pales in comparison to those his actions harmed the worst, the arrogant bastard did me significant material damage, as well. When Qwest’s “merger” with US West was finalized in the summer of 2000, I was one of the many USW employees shown the door. Joe had a burr under his saddle where the USW PR group was concerned – we’d worked pretty hard to protect our interests against what we saw coming, and he didn’t much like it – so when the deal was sealed a host of were kicked to the curb. To be honest, Nacchio fired more talent than most companies will ever have. Lean and mean, that was the mantra. His favorite metric was “revenue per employee,” and if there was any question about somebody’s ability to drag cash in the door, they were useless.

I’d had the pleasure of working on some really interesting projects prior to my turfing. I had been given the freedom to develop programs so innovative that, to the best of my knowledge, they had never been done before. We had online PR successes doing things that many companies still, nine years later, think of as “new.” We were in the process of rewriting the book on how PR was and could be done. We were aligning these efforts directly with community concerns, and other parts of the business (which also got axe-murdered on day one of Nacchio’s reign) were responsible for dramatic levels of corporate giving. If I described the benefits that USW employees received you’d think I was making it up, but rest assured that nobody today – nobody, short of very high-placed executives, gets anything like the benefit packages USW provided for its managers and workers. It’s true that a lot of our customers weren’t happy with us and rejoiced when the stake was driven through US West’s heart, but I predicted – accurately – that the day would come when they’d wish they had us back.

In other words, US West was a pretty good company, and I personally was doing some of the best work of my professional career. I had unfinished business, and that gripes me to this day. And financially I’ve never quite recovered. The fact that he damaged so many people so much worse than he did me is infuriating.

I’m not the only one who hasn’t recovered, either. Neither has the company. In the wake of the Nacchio debacle it has charted a course that frankly looks a lot more like US West than Qwest, but even though it has figured some important things out, the damage the man did wasn’t of the sort that’s going to get fixed in just a few years.

I can’t imagine a tool, a method or a metric that would allow us to fully asses the damage, the sheer unbridled havoc that Joe Nacchio has inflicted. Even if there were, I’d be afraid to see the results. So while I’m glad to see that he’s going to jail, I lament, and will until the day I die, that he’ll never see true justice.

But imprisonment isn’t the only way life punishes us, I guess, so maybe justice will visit Joe Nacchio in another guise. Whatever the case, let it not be said that I’m a malicious person. I wish for Nacchio nothing more or less than the same thing I wish for every single human alive – that he gets precisely what he deserves.

43 replies »

  1. I worked for USWorst once upon a time, too. They were too big. I worked for Mountain Bell before that, and they were even bigger. Qwest isn’t any different. I, personally, refuse to have phone service through Qwest.

    No matter the name, the company wastes money at a nuclear rate, doesn’t get anything done and, most astonishingly, thinks that a “problem resolution rate” of around six months for identified issues is A-OK.

    Nacchio was no better or worse than any CEO who pre- or succeeded him.

    Don’t feel bad about your unfinished business — that’s standard operating procedures in Corporate America these days.

  2. Dr. Slammy,

    No doubt about it, Nacchio was a crook and should be doing hard life in Marion, Illinois. In fact, all the crooks should get hard time whether they rob a 7/11 or they loot a company, and it’s shareholders. Nacchio was a heartless bureaucrat, not a company founder, who would love his company not fuck it. He happened to be the best guy playing the office politics, and that propelled him to the top. Now, he’s at the bottom. I’m a firm believer in karma, and he got his due. Karma sometimes acts in different ways, whereas a person might not get punished an eye for an eye regarding his particular transgression, he might suffer some other punishment equally as bad or worse. The universe has a way of balancing things out, and he might get a serious case of debilitating pain…..whatever, guys like that will end up in hell anyways, so the punishment will be forever.


  3. Nacchio was singled out because he refused to go along with the illegal wiretapping that every other telco ceo gladly did. You lost your job, America lost its freedom. He’s taking a fall now for standing up for citizens rights.

  4. Mr. Nacchio did not go to jail because he laid you off. Laying you off was not illegal and, I’m sorry to say, in the world of business it wasn’t even immoral. Mr. Nacchio went to jail for a sequence of events that flowed from his refusal to cooperate with President Bush’s illegal wiretaps on innocent Americans – political enemies and journalists, mostly. He was the only major telco exec to do so, and is paying the personal price for this. He is not a crook – he is a hero. Don’t believe the crap they sold you on this one…

    • CitizenTom:

      1: Can you point me to the place in my post where I say that Nacchio is going to jail because I got laid off. Because somehow I missed that part when I wrote it and and again all three times I proofread it.

      2: Nacchio was, in fact, right on the domestic spying issue. And hey, what do you know – I wrote about this myself over a year ago! As best I can tell, it’s the only time he’s gotten one right in his life.

      3: As for the idea that he’s a hero, well, may the gods deliver us from such heroes. And, for that matter, the morons who love them.

  5. So, for the sake of argument, Mr. Nacchio was “singled out” for prosecution… does that mean he’s innocent of the crimes of which he was convicted? If the prosecution is vindictive but the accused is guilty, what then?

  6. Ann: Well, I do have a problem with selective enforcement, since it means the law is used against only those people who break it AND have offended law enforcers in some way. Whether that’s the case with Nacchio or not is much in dispute. And, of course, selective enforcement means others get away free if they just play along, and that is hardly proven.

    Sam: I will take your word for it that the PR department at US West was first rate. You know what you’re doing, and you would be able to judge that. But the flip side of this is that everyone I ever worked with at US West thought they were first rate when, in fact, they mostly sucked pond water.

    The HR department at US West was a case in point. Every time someone there read about some new fad, they’d try it out, only to have it fail because they didn’t know what the @#$%$ they were doing and did a piss poor job of implementation. On some of those fads, I could have told them that they were way overhyped and not appropriate for US West in any case. But they never asked anyone, because, in their own minds, they were just the BEST. I have only been in one company with a worse HR department, and that was Nike. And Nike’s problem was that they grew so fast that they ended up promoting the stupid (in every area but marketing) five levels above their Peter Principle max. US West got that way just by existing.

    • JS: Let me be clear. The PR unit was first rate. It was the best I have ever seen in person, although there are no doubt others that as talented, maybe moreso. The crew at Volvo Car NA a few years back was probably as fabulous, although it was a much smaller group. We won a number of awards and earned lots of accolades for various things. And I say this as a guy who has also been associated with less than stellar organizations, as well.

      But I’m not talking about ALL of the company’s units. To be sure, USW had its problems. And if I had to point you to half-trained chimps, yes, HR is where I’d start. That was the first place in my career where I began to understand that HR groups are full of people who couldn’t quite cut it in third-rate elementary education programs.

      So I hear you, and want to be clear as to exactly what I was defending. I do stand by my overall assessment that, on the whole, the company’s customers would have been far better served had Sol Trujillo been at the helm of the merged company than Nacchio. Of course, that’s not really what you’d call climbing out on a limb, is it?

  7. “Always” is a big term. I think there are degrees. For example, a stretch of highway is monitored by the police, who pull over only those speeders with out-of-state license plates. That’s clearly selective enforcement, because the police know of other speeders, can pull over other speeders if they want to, and fail to give them tickets, anyway. In Nacchio’s case, if the feds knew that other telecom CEOs were guilty of insider trading (or other financial crimes), had the evidence to convict, but didn’t arrest them, then it’s the same principle, and is quite wrong — especially if they went after him because he defied an illegal wire tapping scheme.

    I was speaking in principle, of course, since neither I nor anyone else on this board has a clue why Nacchio was investigated or if others were not investigated.

  8. The rule of law doesn’t depend on anything superstitious, but Karma and Religion do. I’m starting to get a much better feel for where the root of the problems of mankind come from, especially after reading articles like which shows that we have this superstitious belief in this country that “people end up where they are supposed to be”, yet we insist on making laws that allow some people to do things that other people can’t do. We’ve removed the real pay for performance model and replaced it with some vague lie dressed up to look like it’s fair. People like Nacchio are simply playing the game the public puts out there.

    “Nacchio was a heartless bureaucrat, not a company founder, who would love his company not fuck it.”

    This seems to be the kind of thinking prevalent in the right-wing. That some how, “the little people that start companies” only do so because they love their company, love what they do, and only want the best for their employees. Superstitious hopes not rooted in reality. Business owners of all colors and stripes are just as subject to greed and abuse as people like Nacchio. In fact, I’d argue that a significant portion of those who have businesses of more than a dozen or so employees are in it for the _money_, and nothing else. Not because they “love their company”, but because they want to get money, and the company was a good way to do it. That means that their _nature_ is to do what it takes to get money, which means they are more like Nacchio than we feel comfortable saying in polite company.

    And, of course, most people in this country work for companies that are being run not by the company founder, but by someone that took over the business or was hired to come in and run it. That means, most companies out there don’t have the “love of the owner” factor (a superstitious premise anyway) and are subject to being used as blunt instruments of money gathering, not some well cared for, loved, decent child.

    Hence the need for regulation and oversight. Companies are tools to be used by the masses to get something done in society. They are not living entities and aren’t run by saints. Being tools in society, a society of self governed human beings that seemingly would pass laws to protect themselves, not some piece of paper allowed to engage in business activities, it seems this modicum of justice being served on Nacchio is laughable. Justice means not letting companies get that big, not letting people have the option of ruining millions of lives while hiding behind a license to operate a business. Those at the top aren’t working hard in the traditional sense, they are simply abusing the public for their own gain, and we should clamp down on that and put _every_ one of these guys in prison when they do this.

    But that’s considered “bad business” by some folks, it’s considered a bad thing to hold those poor corporate executives accountable, because they are just doing their jobs, right? making money? as much as they can for themselves and their “investors”? So we pass laws that let them do that, and we look the other way when they don’t play nice, or we call them “great businessmen” like we do with Bill Gates and his insanely long line of lawsuits that shows he’s a crook, not a saint. But we don’t call corporate thieves criminals when they steal ideas from other companies, then kill those companies in court (financially draining them until they have to quit filing suits). The paperwork gets straitened out after the fact, and then we go “see? all the paperwork got cleaned up, no more problem”.

    Justice can’t be served in this country until we hold everyone accountable to the rule of law, and the law is being written to protect the public instead of the ruling elite. Ignoring the rule of law and having “faith” that “karma” or “god” will fix it is 100% counter to what this country was founded on, and what the rule of law is all about.

    I still don’t have a clue how so many people can have no clue what a Socialism is, or why so many “common folks” have a problem with it… other than that article I referenced above that shows we still hold on to the lie of the American Dream. We simply have too many people and not enough wealth for the American Dream to apply to more than a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the public, but we sure as hell have enough resources for everyone in this country to have a very nice quality of life. We just have to redefine “quality of life” to mean “lack of suffering and increased access to intellectual pursuits” instead of “shiny bling!”.

    Justice will continue to weep as long as so many suffer and are abused for the so few to live so well.

  9. Savanster,

    Since you added your $0.02, butting in just to beat up on me, I’ll make note of a small observation. I’ve noticed some of your funniest, strangest, and longest diatribes are written on weekdays, during working hours. Are you writing this stuff at work? If you are, isn’t that stealing time from your employer? Since you work for the public sector, wouldn’t that be stealing from the taxpayers who pay your salary? If you’re stealing at work, you’re no better than Nacchio, just a common thief. Or do you write your ramblings on your own time during the day, perhaps when you call in sick? Perhaps you’re not working at all, merely being a parasite, lor homeless. That would explain a lot of the cognitive dissonance. Your writings suggest that you expected that an education would propel you to glory and instead you’re slogging away in a thankless, low paid job in the public sector. Your palpable anger is understandable in that context. However, you missed the boat, refusing to admit that that most successful people just work much harder than you do. I know I do, and I don’t even know you. There is no such thing as an equal outcome, nor should there be.

    You’re constantly referring to the conservatives as stupid. The real definition of stupid is one who refuses a free case of champagne. I can’t understand that one, as you’d gladly suck on the teat of the government, but not an individual. Look in the mirror….can you see yourself in 25 years still commenting on blogs, seething with anger?

    Get a life before it’s too late, and have the courage to use your real name.

    Sorry to the fine folks who host this site, no more threadfucks, but Savantster did start it.



    The cognitive dissonance is that you decided somewhere along the line that more money = better person. That’s simply not true. Yet, you refuse to understand that other people can be truly happy in life without (excessive amounts of) money. Let me restate your failed understanding (as has been pointed out with a few examples, and should be obvious on its own merit)

    “refusing to admit that that most successful people just work much harder than you do.”

    You can’t define “work harder” in any meaningful context to support your delusion because I can show example after example of “harder” that you find “not worthy of inclusion”. Your definition is tailored to your delusion so you can justify your stealing from the real engine of production (hint: it’s not some jerk off clicking the “buy” and “sell” button a few hundred times a day).

    “The real definition of stupid is one who refuses a free case of champagne. ”

    Another example of your dissonance. Sticking by one’s principles, to you, is stupid if it means not getting more stuff. I don’t know how to more plainly say “this is what I’m talking about, you’re obsessed with stuff, and your entire existence is spent justifying your abuse of others so you can have more stuff”.


    Again with the disconnect with reality and simply not getting it. A) what government teat am I sucking on? and B) you might as well be saying “who cares if the cash that guy is giving me came from the girl he just raped and killed, it’s free money!”.

    I can see from following your assumptions and broken logical trails that you’re really just too laughable to take seriously. I doubt I’ll bother responding to any more of your “just attack Savantster” posts unless you’re also contributing to the thread. You’ll note that the post you’re referring to of mine _does_ address the post, even though it takes a pot-shot at you. I find it amusing that feel the need to address those posts and take them personally. That means I’m doing something right, I guess. Mostly because I know you have conflicting views that you can’t justify, and when my general premise shows that, you get your panties in a bunch. Case in point, with regard to this thread and Corporate America in general, you want the government to stay out of business, no regulations that protect the unwashed masses, a “free market”, but you also want the government to pass laws that protect YOU in your money making plans (i.e. no insider trading because that’s unfair to other investors, but fuck consumer protection laws).

    And I’ll continue to post to blogs and be seething with anger for as long as morons in the business world continue to buy off politicians that were elected by the public to pass laws to protect the public. Yes. In 25 years, if I’m still alive, I’ll be railing against the Corporate Abusers out there, lying and stealing and cheating to get ahead, while they shit on the public that does the actual work that allows them to have the (undeserved) power to abuse that same public… all rooted in ignorance and greed and vanity. Nacchio, and all those like him (including people like you, who keep hiding behind the rigged game you help setup by buying off corrupt politicians) are not likely to go quietly into the night, so I’ll have plenty to be angry about.

    And as a point of note, I don’t know anyone that gets a degree in Computer Science that expects it to “propel them to glory”. I simply expected to get a job that I enjoy, am good at, and pays enough to cover my bills. Not having to be out side in the heat of summer and cold of winter was a big consideration, too. … but “glory” never crossed my mind.. And most jobs in our society are thankless.. because those looking to get rich off the backs of the real labor don’t thank people, they shit on them. duh?

  11. Sav,

    But you drone on endlessly and don’t answer the real question.

    Are you a thief of time from your workplace?

    Stealing is wrong.

    I speculate that you are a thief and realize that your love of socialism is compatible with your thieving ways.

    Just out of curiosity, what school did you get your computer science degree from. I’m very curious, because you ought to demand for a refund as they didn’t do a very good job of teaching you how to think. Unless you spent most of your time smoking dope.


  12. I too was moved by the Matt Miller article on the Daily Beast that Savanster cites. Excerpt:

    Wealth in America increasingly comes not as the proverbial reward of the “free market,” but from rigged compensation systems that reward mediocrity or outright failure. This is causing a brain burp among many professionals — a group I call the Lower Upper Class – because it’s an affront to an idea they’ve cherished since they first started bringing home A’s from school and acing their SATs.

    American capitalism is a meritocracy, they’ve always been told, a place where people basically end up economically where they deserve to. Yet you can’t open the paper nowadays without seeing screaming evidence that this notion is a fraud. Does former CEO Kerry Killinger deserve to retire to an island with $100 million after destroying Washington Mutual? Did Bob Rubin deserve his $115 million for making Citigroup a ward of the state? …

    At about this point. . . a quieter question naturally occurs. What if this is the way of the world, and that stuff about capitalism being a meritocracy was always baloney?

  13. Russ,

    Miller’s wrong as more wealth is created by the free market than any rigged system that enables the old boy CEO network to enrich itself.

    Do the math and you’ll see that Miller is just editorial, nothing more

    . I’m all for holding the feet of the plunderers to the fire, but I’m not for the attack on wealth that this country seems to be shifted towards.

    Interesting sidebar” in the past week, I’ve been Amazon’s best customer, sending out over 200 copies of “Atlas Shrugged” to my friends and readers, Rand’s prescience is amazing,

    The sensationalists try to stir you up with the payouts of some big CEO’s u=in order to gert you mad. They’re playing you like Gepetto played Pinocchio.. A sage person would realize that these are actually the best of times for a smart, courageous, sagacious person with an idea to Whythehawk has giid street cred,his business going. Ever optimistic, there will be plenty of money to be made, despite the Obama hard turn to crypto-fascism. One needs to just keep their eye on the ball.. I can see Dr. Slammy doing well, as with JS and even bonesparkle doing great. Ann’s Festiveness will serve her well, Whythehawk has been noticed by friends of mine over at Daiky speculations, and possibly has a good future if he plays his cards right. Sav isd probably going to end up in assisted housing, and on the dole, a broken man,

    What most have to realize here ia that politics is politics, and business is business, and a dispassionate mind will separate then with a Berllin Wall. Some here are quite well prepared to do well in business, Sav is not, and he needs to make an appointment to Health and Human services asap..

    If anyone is looking for a job, I will be hiring three assistants jn the next three months. There will probably be 100 candidates for the job, mostly laid off guys looking for positions, My pkan is tio take a smart person without any market experience,, and teach them to trade. No bad habits that way, I certainly don;t czre what the politics of my workers is,just ther ability ti learn amd make mi=oney,

    anyone interested, contact me at watsurf at comcast,net and send a cover letter and resume,

    A small caveat…tradimg is tje hardest job you will ever do. However, you wii probaboy make mire in a year than you did in a kufe,


  14. LMFAO…. wow.. drunk at the keyboard, much?


    Let me translate.. This is a great time for someone that sees “selfishness as the greatest virtue” to make a LOT of money by running the rigged game. That is, if you don’t mind stealing from the masses, you’re in LUCK!

    Since the reality is that the top 1% is chock full of people that have never worked an honest day in their lives (Paris Hilton? Nicole Ritche? etc etc etc), yet they keep 75% of all this nations wealth tied up in their families, there is simply not enough to go around.. if you want some, you have to take it from the mouths of babes, but that’s ok.. they aren’t worthy, and their pain is irrelevant.. right, Jeff?

    I still can’t get my head around how such a supposedly smart guy can’t understand what a Democracy is about.. We’re self governed, and we should be passing laws that are to our own benefit… not the benefit of the tiny tiny minority. Strange, that, how laws aren’t favoring those doing the electing, but instead favors the tiny few with the most money..

    You know, for a rich guy that makes as much in 1 day as us “lowly civil servants” make in 10 years, you sure spend a lot of time trolling the internet. *sniff sniff*.. nope, doesn’t pass that test..

    Who, in their right mind, says “trading is hard work”? .. have you ever slugged concrete for 8 hours? Have you ever dragged cow carcasses around a slaughtering plant for 12 hours? Have you ever unloaded pallets of dirt and manure at 75 lbs a bag for 10 hours? .. hard work. You’d not know hard work if it was laying naked under you in a cheap hotel.. oh, wait.. that’s your hooker.


    Hmmm.. “contractor”, is that “private company paid by the government, but isn’t government”?

    So, your “we can do it much better than government” buddies managed to have some jackass not follow the rules and potentially get the President killed? .. and, isn’t he paid, ultimately, with tax dollars? The same dollars you say don’t account for “real work” if someone isn’t there, in the middle, siphoning some off for his yacht? …

  16. Terribly sorry, Jeff.. missed your deluded rant at #17.

    See, when you work on the weekend on occasion, or you work longer before/after “normal working hours”, or if maybe your job is mostly to “be there if someone calls, then help them get their problem solved”, that can leave a lot of valid down time to send the occasional post.

    That you can’t conceive of that tells me a lot.

    Where I got my degree from is irrelevant, it was an accredited college. That I was near the top of my class is also irrelevant, and that I have above the scale problem solving abilities is also irrelevant.

    I’m curious as to why you are stuck on this “smoking dope” thing. I find it pretty interesting since many well educated, sharp individuals have smoked cannabis, and it seems to have some pretty decent medical uses, too.. It would appear you’re wanting to try and paint some kind of stereotyped picture not based in reality, but based in public perception, to prove your point.. isn’t that kind of what a straw man argument is? using something not reality based to prove a point?

    So, it seems, you don’t have anything in reality to stand on, so you resort to trying to attack my character by saying I went to some “third rate school”, as that is meant to have some innate implication, and failing my school having been something from a cereal box, I must be a dope fiend?

    you gotta try harder than that.

    To answer your question, I’ll ask you another.. if you can produce 3 times as much as the guy next to you that gets the same pay as you, should you do 3 times as much work and benefit your employer that much more than he’s willing to pay you for? or should you perform to the pay you’re receiving, that is, do the same amount of work as those getting the same pay as you, even if that means not performing to your limit.

    You call it stealing, but I suspect if the shoe was on the other foot, you’d call it “doing what you’re paid for”. Let’s see how you spin this one..

  17. Chad is right. Nacchio was a political prosecution. Nacchio was the only Telecom CEO who refused to participate in illegal wiretaps.

    Right-wingers will have you believe that’s merely a coincidence. Rove’s track record of politically-motivated prosecutions proves otherwise.

  18. Stopping the government from listening to everything we say was/is not the responsibility of corporate CEO’s. It was/is our responsibility.

  19. Those who knew this arrogant prick when he worked at AT&T would characterize him as a schoolyard bully, a punk, a slob who managed by intimidation and publicly belittling people, a true fucking jerk. Now, he’s been actually proven to be a criminal. That’s not hard to believe.

    Don’t delude yourself into believing that Nacchio stuck his neck out on the wiretap issue motivated by altruism. It was a clear maneuver to cover his own ass, and then twisted into a defense of government retribution. Lying sacks of shit operate that way. It’s all about them.

    I’m sure that there’s a silent wave of “hallelujah” being whispered across the tony hills of Northern New Jersey, from Basking Ridge to Bedminster to Morristown, from everyone this guy stabbed squarely in the back.

    Of course, this is all second-hand information. He might have been a fucking saint for all I know. Yeah, right.

    Hey, Joe, I hope you enjoy being Bubba’s bitch. And remember: better K-Y than dry.

  20. Jeff wrote:

    Sav is probably going to end up in assisted housing, and on the dole, a broken man

    That’s not Savanster you’re describing, Jeff, that’s me. Also, you deserve serious credit for hiring traders with no previous experience.

  21. Savantster,

    Hey buckaroo, why won’t you divulge where you went to school, but you manage to mention that it was accredited and you graduated near the top of your class? Most people have a certain sense of pride in their college, and don’t hide where they studied. Lets see, you won’t give your name, schooling, or other information except that you supposedly graduated as a computer major. Sounds to me like you went to a third rate school, perhaps a community college??? I mean, you never said anything about 4 years.

    You also jump to wrong conclusions. You got it wrong about me being drunk while writing that comment. In actuality, I was mainlining heroin with a used syringe that I got from a Haitian HIV+ male prostitute, while being fellated by a pair of midget siamese twins, while getting snorting crystal meth. Drunk,,,,,,you idiot, I was ripped out of my mind. Get your facts straight before jumping to conclusions.

    Savantster, I gotta say that I sure love you. You’ve made my day a whole bunch of times the past few months….not to mention helping my pocketbook. Thanks good buddy:)


    You’re not broken, period. Broken is a homeless toothless guy with addiction issues. Broken is the loss of will to live. Broken is a loss of credibility and integrity. Broken is laziness. Broken is just giving up. As long as you don’t give up, there’s a chance of positive change and you’re not broken. Finances, or lack of, have nothing to do with self worth, but a positive attitude does. Hell, I’m a lone conservative who remains cheerfully optimistic. I might have had a few curve balls tossed at me this year, and might be a little bent, but certainly not broken.

    Finally, getting back on the topic of Nacchio, he was a used condom. A real douche, someone beneath contempt. People like him give us real capitalists a bad name and ought to be banished to the woodshed forever. He has hurt untold people, and has no respect from the real capitalists. Real capitalists don’t have to cheat.

  22. Joe is a bastard plain and simple. He spat on the working man. This jerk would call out hard working people just so he could laugh it up with other executives on golf tours. No lower scum on earth. Joe is a phony, bible toting, tail chasing, low life, cad, rotten coward. Joe’s is a used scum bag, but he would give scum bags a bad rap. Now that he is in jail, this coward will be first on line to be the bitch. Hope your prostrate isn’t too large Joe.

  23. David,

    Although I agree that he is a bad person, such invective is counterproductive. Anyways, all of the accusations you make regarding him, can you quantify them? You sound like you either lost a job or lost money in the market due to him.


  24. Joe is a low life scumbag crook. CEO up his worm filled ass, now he’s in the clink cleaning shit bowels. But the real deal is that he ripped off Quest for hundreds of millions while shitting on the employees with his phony rants. This mf should pay his own lawyer’s fees. Why is this sack of shit still sucking the tit of Quest? Bastard. Joe, hope your ball roasts in hell.

  25. I’m late coming to this thread while doing a casual search on “Nachio jail”.
    I worked for 26 years before retiring last year–essentially made it to retirement by ‘hiding’ heads-down
    doing my job. Had I been brave enough to ruffle any feathers or ‘ask questions’ back in 2000, I probably would have been laid-off too. the past few years were a rough ride down, and I think you can call yourself lucky for getting out.

    I’ll never forget the famous ‘arena’ introduction to Joe Nacchio where he appeared in a cloud of theatrical smoke, a self-proclaimed six thousand dollar suit, and was presented a horse (yes, a real live horse) given to him by investor Phil Anschutz. He declined to climb up on the horse, not wanting to wrinkle his suit. That was the meeting where he called the U S West employees ‘clowns.’ Okay, he didn’t directly call us clowns–just told us it was time to take off the ‘clown suits.’

    He kept talking about himself, his revenge at AT&T for not promoting him, and kept looking at the stock monitor which was proudly displayed for all to see (I think the stock was at 68 and climbing at that time). I went back to my desk and sold.

    During the next few months, we were asked to ‘make up numbers because they needed to be such and such’, ‘think outside the box’, ‘take huge risks’, etc. As things declined and bills weren’t paid, employees began taking stuff from the building (lap tops, printers, etc), and you could feel collapse coming, and Joe began selling. Everyone knew Joe was selling his stock. Everyone. Hell, lots of us sold ours too. We were all part of this giant sham. We took our quarterly bonuses along with Joe (albeit his were much larger), even though each of us knew the numbers were bogus.

    In some ways I wish I’d walked out with all my dignity in 2000.

    on to some new circus.

  26. Ah, yes. The Nacchio is a rock star show. I was there, sitting up directly to his right maybe 25 or 30 rows. I knew my butt was out the door already, but I really knew the place was fucked when he started talking about his end-all-be-all metric: “earnings per employee.”

  27. Each hour of each day may someone torment this bastard in jail. I’m sure this punk will end up the bitch. Maybe can be the jail clown too.

  28. Incurable pox on all greedy bastards like Nacchio (and their families) that have wrecked the American worker. Hell is too good a place for the likes these excrement eating worms.

  29. Slammy asks, “Can you point me to the place in my post where I say that Nacchio is going to jail because I got laid off. Because somehow I missed that part when I wrote it and and again all three times I proofread it.” You make it very clear that you are pleased he is going to jail for reasons other than the insider trading. This includes your employment termination. From your Article:


    “… the arrogant bastard did me significant material damage, as well.”

    Now, to parse this, you clearly state that Nacchio going to jail is getting what he deserves. You clearly state that he deserves this for reasons other than insider trading – including your termination. Can we infer that you suggest Nacchio is going to jail “because [you] got laid off”? In that jail = justice, yes we can. Don’t hide behind the literal meaning of what you wrote, it is clear what you mean and the emotion you convey. That is not a bad thing. Why run from it?

    • I said he did me wrong (me and a lot of other people, most of who got worse than I did). I said I’m happy to see him going to jail. I did not say I’m happy to see him going to jail because of what he did to me.

      Important difference. But believe what you want to.

  30. I see the US Supreme Court turned down hair piece Joe’s request. No matter, the prick spent 75 more million of Quest investor money on lawyers. It was probably more like a billion, but Quest wants to keep it on the down low for PR reasons. WTF, Joe can continue to spend Quest money, it’s all in his contract. Bring it up to the Supreme Court again Joe, it’s not your money. This num nuts bastard goon will continue to f_c_ the shareholders until he rots in the grave. No getting rid of this cancerous scum laden sore. A rat’s rat that shall burn in hell forever and ever. Maybe someone will break his legs in jail before it’s all over.

  31. Joe Nacchio won’t be doing any “hard time”. The Feds have sent Joe Nacchio to a resort! Check out this post about the prison CAMP being run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at FCI Schuylkill where Joe Nacchio reported April 14, 2009 to do his six years.

    This is a farce for anyone expecting justice to be served.