'Macaca' isn't the only odd-sounding word that's haunting George Allen these days. Now he's got to worry about 'Xybernaut,' too. That was the name of a Virginia tech company on whose board of directors Allen sat in the late '90s. And as Garance Franke-Ruta reports, Xybernaut--which filed for bankruptcy last year and is currently facing a raft of shareholder lawsuits--wasn't exactly a good corporate citizen.
What's this?~! Could Bored George have made a mess on the Board of Xybernaut??
There's no evidence that Allen did anything illegal, and he has not been named in any of the shareholder suits, which post-date his tenure on the board. Yet Xybernaut clearly engaged in questionable activities--and did plenty of business with questionable characters--while Allen was a director with a responsibility to protect shareholders' interests.
Isn't that just like what he's been doing in the US Senate? Instead of protecting our interests, he's doing business with questionable characters. Come to think of it, didn't Virginia get into a pile of debt on account of bad management under Governor Allen? No wonder he's a rubberstamp for GW Bush-- neither one can run government -or business- without driving it into the ground!
Xybernaut's rise, indeed, was driven by some of the financial industry's seediest bottom-feeders--questionable stock touters, offshore front groups involved in money laundering, and foreign financiers linked to short-selling, securities fraud, and, in 2005, the collapse of a major Wall Street brokerage firm. Driving Xybernaut upward as well were the determined efforts of its officers to promote and sell the company's stock to unwitting small investors, even as the company's fundamentals spiraled ever more out of control.
Does any of this sound familiar? Wasn't there a firm called Enron that cheated a bunch of shareholders and pensioners like this? Hmmmm...
Allen's affiliation with the company should now raise questions about whether he deserves to retain his other seat--the one on the best board of directors in the world.
Ok. If the smoke ever clears surrounding Allen's latent and overt racist xenophobia, we can look into his role on a board of directors that worked hard to rape investors.