W: Scourge of Corporate Misbehavior
RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2002, AND THEREAFTER
By Molly Ivins
AUSTIN, Texas -- Our personal trainer the president, up and running after his colonoscopy (I
did not need to know about that), is trying out a new role -- Scourge of Corporate Misbehavior.
This has approximately the same effect as opening the refrigerator door and finding Fidel
Castro inside. Smoking a cigar. "Hard to believe" barely begins to hint at the surrealism of this
development.
The Bush people are going to force us to take this nonsense seriously. I guarantee we will
soon be hearing about the Pepster's long-cherished populist beliefs. Ever since the man told
us he was the Father of the Texas Patients' Bill of Rights (which he first vetoed and then
refused to sign), I have been resigned to the Red Queen quality of his political act. Just grab a
flamingo and get ready to play croquet here.
In the interest of lending some verisimilitude to this new pose --Dubya Does Nader -- let us
pass lightly over Bush's own business career, including insider dealing and the time he
dumped his Harken Energy stock just before the announcement that the company was going
bankrupt. In violation of SEC rules, Bush failed to report that sale to the Securities and
Exchange Commission until eight months after the fact. The SEC contented itself with a
warning letter but has specifically stated that Bush was "not exonerated."
And let's also pass over his six-year record as governor of Texas, an unbroken stretch of
kissing corporate butt, including firing an agency head for enforcing state law against one of
Bush's biggest contributors.
Instead, let us concentrate on the repairable. A few things the Pepster can do to bolster his
brand-new image as a champion against corporate malfeasance. How to Pretend to Be a
Populist in 10 easy steps:
-- Appoint someone to head the SEC who has not spent his career as a lawyer for accounting
firms, including advising them to destroy documents in case of lawsuit. Chairman Harvey Pitt
has been criticized even by The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, not a bastion of flaming
liberalism, for being too easy on his old accounting clients and for having lost all credibility
after his meeting with Xerox's auditor.
-- Stop the government loans to Enron, which is still manipulating Third World energy markets
while applying for $125 million in taxpayer money from the Inter-American Development Bank.
-- Come out in favor the Sarbanes bill, now stuck in the Senate. It's the only serious proposal
to deal with corporate chicanery -- the Republican plans are a sick joke. Call off Sen. Phil
Gramm, who is working closely with the White House to block the bill. He has already done
enough damage as the Senator from Enron.
-- Stop actively working with the business lobby to block the accounting reforms that would
prevent Enron from happening again.
-- In order to avoid the appearance that you have been bought outright by corporate
contributions, try not to make a recess appointment to the Federal Elections Commission of
someone who has long sworn to oppose every effort at campaign finance reform and who is
now destroying the McCain-Feingold bill.
-- As you stated in your hilarious radio address, "We must have rules and laws that restore
faith in the integrity of American business." So how about reinstating the Clinton policy, which
you reversed last year, against giving government contracts to corporations that have
repeatedly violated federal laws?
-- Supporting the repeal of the alternative minimum tax is probably not smart when giant
corporations are already paying less in taxes than the janitors who clean their floors.
-- It's not a good time to push for repeal of the estate tax to benefiting only the richest 2 percent of Americans.
-- Your proposal to relax New Source Review standards at the Environmental Protection
Agency stinks: It allows dirty coal-fired power plants and the nation's other biggest polluters to
operate indefinitely and to increase their pollution by massive amounts.
-- Next, do something about the other 90-odd actions taken by your administration to help
polluters since January 2001, including shifting the cost of cleaning up Superfund waste sites
from the polluters to the taxpayers and the recent EPA decision to reverse a 25-year-old
policy that flatly forbids dumping mining and other industrial solid waste into the nation's
waterways.
Your administration decided that all waters across the country are now open to industry for
waste disposal. Allowing industry to increase profits at the expense of the public's health and
the nation's natural heritage does not fit the "higher calling" to which you said business should
aspire.
-- Ix-nay on the Republican effort to block closing the Bermuda loophole in the federal tax
code. They've taken to doing things like walking out of committee meetings to keep the bill
from coming up. It would clearly pass overwhelmingly if it got to the floor. Time to call the boys
in for a chat.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and
cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Originally Published on Tuesday July 2, 2002 |
