ENRON SAGA MAY BE ALL ABOUT BUSH
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2002
BY BRUCE S. TICKER
In their usual chorus-like mantra, right-wingers and their moderate accomplices persist in crowing that the Enron
Corp. bankruptcy is solely a business issue.
Or they claim it is a bipartisan scandal.
When the controversy first took off, chronic liar Linda Chavez wrote, Democrats on the Hill would be better off
concentrating on these important public policy issues than pointing fingers at the Bush administration.
Just on Tuesday, Oregon GOP Sen. Gordon Smith said during a session of the Senate Commerce Committee, We
should be slow to judge the Bush administration as we should be slow to judge the Clinton administration.
How can we avoid pointing fingers at President Bush? Perhaps the National Rifle Association was rewarded its
office at the White House, but for the past year our most sophisticated public housing project has amounted to a
subsidiary of Enron.
Chavez, whose lies cost her the job of Secretary of Labor under Bush, could not even frame the issue honestly.
Bush is not just president of Democrats but all 281 million citizens. This cannot be limited to a partisan conflict,
especially when one considers that many of Enron's laid-off employees could well be Republicans.
Perhaps nobody in the Bush administration broke any laws. Or at least no crimes there can be proven. Yet when
one views the developing picture, a reasonable person could easily conclude that something suspicious has been
going on here.
Republican Rep. Thomas Davis of Fairfax County, Va. (a Washington suburb), contended that the administration
only ties into this if it helped Enron before it collapsed. This is a so-called moderate talking.
Enron chairman Ken Lay's phone calls to the White House do not necessarily constitute the only episode in legal
terms. The facts are still flowing in, so it is conceivable that Bush and/or one or more White House officials
committed a crime somewhere along the line in their relationship with Enron.
What of the 35 administration officials who owned stock in Enron? Did any of them sell their stock after being
warned of the company's financial losses?
Did anything illegal occur in dealings between Enron executives and Vice President Dick Cheney and other
officials? Cheney consistently refuses to release any information.
In Oregon, a former member of the Oregon Supreme Court, Edward N. Fadeley, raised questions in a letter to the
editor in The Eugene Register-Guard as to whether any of Oregon's laws were broken. Many retirees in Oregon lost
retirement funds after Enron barred them from selling their stock last October.
Republicans also try to claim equivalency between the GOP and Democrats. Clearly, corporate contributions
inherently corrupt the system because that is a form of legalized bribery.
The counter-argument is less that Democrats received one-fourth of Enron money than the incestuous relationships
between Bush administration officials and key Republican members of Congress, particularly retiring Texas Sen.
Phil Gramm and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, whose district includes many former Enron employees who
commuted to its Houston headquarters.
As some of this is mentioned above, White House officials have owned stock in Enron and some have worked for
the corporation. Enron chairman Ken Lay and other Enron executives have had excessive access to the White
House in the last year and have influenced energy policy and appointments. Bush himself lied about his relationship
with Lay.
Mr. Lay bought the government, Senate Commerce Chairman Ernest Hollings said in response to Smith's remarks.
I don't know how you get Clinton into this.
How can the average citizen not be suspicious of the Bush administration's role? It clearly looks as if Enron has
been driving a hidden agenda through influence at the highest levels of the federal government.
That means our current White House is little more than an Enron subsidiary.
This portrait negates the Justice Department's claim that a special prosecutor is not needed because no conflict of
interest exists.
If any of the current practices of the Bush administration are illegal, the laws should be enforced. Those practices
which are legal should be closely reviewed to consider the enactment of future laws dealing with this kind of
situation.
With this crowd, we have to take the term eternal vigilance literally. 24/7, that is.
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