When they say it's not about politics…
Arkansas Times
By Ernest Dumas
January 25, 2002
Every good Republican, television pundit and sympathetic commentator now is obliged to
repeat the mantra: Enron is a business scandal, not a political scandal. Investigators are
supposed to keep their focus on corporate and accounting practices and not let the inquiries
turn into a political witch hunt.
We do not, after all, want another weakened president trying to conduct a war against terrorism.
Remember how Republicans and the pundits howled when Bill Clinton sent the military to get
Osama bin Laden after the attacks on American embassies and upon the instance of every other
retaliation for terrorism. He was trying to distract the public from his troubles, they said, and he
deserved no support for it.
No one wants that to happen again and it needn't. But Enron is nothing if it is not a political
scandal, and a government that does not examine its own role is failing its duty. If the only
lesson to be learned is that the country needs independent auditors and stricter accounting
standards, the congressional hearings are a waste of time.
Enron became what it was, a mammoth corporate shell game, with the active complicity of
politicians and the government, which enabled it to escape regulation and disclosure and to beat
competitors to contracts across the country and around the world. Enron invested gargantuan
sums on politicians, even a little with Democrats, and the government became an arm of the
company.
Sure, there is no evidence that the Bush administration acted on the company's overtures to
help rescue it at the end, but that is not the test. Should Vice President Cheney have been
trying to twist the arm of the Indian government last fall to get it to make disputed payments to
Enron? The administration said it was routine, and the evidence is that it was in Enron's case.
This is not just George W. Bush's scandal or perhaps even primarily his scandal despite the
heavy influence and presence of Enron executives in the administration. It goes way back. The
earlier Bush administration was absolutely critical to Enron.
The Energy Policy Act, enacted the last year of Bush I, forced old utilities to carry Enron's
electricity sales on their wires.
Wendy Gramm, wife of the Texas senator and chair of the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission for the former President Bush, allowed an exemption in the trading of energy
derivatives, which became Enron's fattest business. Then she resigned and went on the Enron
board and its audit committee. An executive of Arthur Andersen, the Enron independent auditor,
said the firm had warned Gramm and other committee members of possible illegal acts in the
company. She was still being lavished with future stock options in 2000 when her husband,
recipient of $97,350 in Enron campaign gifts, was engineering legislation that exempted parts of
Enron's energy business from government oversight.
Although the current President Bush said this month that his contact with Enron was incidental
and its CEO a supporter of his enemy, former Gov. Ann Richards, his labors for Enron precede
his days as governor of Texas, when the governor's office was Enron's reception room.
The Texas Observer and The Nation reported several years ago that Bush telephoned the
Argentine minister of energy a few days after his father's election in 1988 to urge that Enron get
a contract to develop a $300 million gas pipeline. Enron had entered the bidding at the last
minute with a proposal the minister considered ridiculous. Bush reportedly said giving the
contract to Enron "would be very favorable for Argentina and its relations with the United States."
Bush aides provided a page from his daily planner that showed no planned call to Argentina that
day.
When Bush was governor of Texas, Enron supplied nominees for gubernatorial appointments
and sought the governor's help in business matters.
The chair of an Enron subsidiary sent Bush
a letter in 1998 complaining that the Texas comptroller had increased the subsidiary's taxes by
$415,233. "We need to have this handled before there is a big industry backlash," he penned
Bush in the margin. "Sorry to bother you with it. Forrest." Mother Jones magazine obtained the
letter.
Kenneth Lay, the Enron CEO, nicknamed "Kenny Boy" by Bush, was candidate Bush's energy
adviser in the 2000 campaign, and was widely expected to be named secretary of energy before
the California energy crisis and Enron's role in it made the appointment inexpedient. Lay's
advice: further deregulate the energy business and reduce taxes.
Bush's stimulus package last fall was carefully written so that it would have sent Enron a check
for $250 million to reimburse it for alternative minimum taxes that it had paid in the distant
past, although the company had escaped any tax payment whatsoever for four of the past five
years.
No political scandal? They must be kidding.
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