Ray,
A few corrections, then we can agree to disagree. The Condit story wasn't a Fresno story but a DC story, a classic unfortunate blowup of these capitol liasons which no doubt take place about as frequently as a decent hotel serves buttered toast. But it wasn't a Republican plot that kept the Condit story going, it was the voracious media starving for something to report on in a very sloooooooow summer. On the menu was fried Gary Condit.
As for Cheney's position, it's something for the courts to decide. There is a point where, if government is going to function, it's going to have to, er, function. That means meet and talk with people. Not meet and receive "white papers" which have been prepared and vetted by Davis Polk & Wardwell, not meet and receive the moral equivalent of an offering circular. Government can't function if every conversation, every forum is subject to a Congressman's whim. (Nor could Congress function if every meeting a C-person ever had with anyone had to be documented and given to the public. Our government is dysfunctional enough already.) We'll see what the courts have to say about executive privilege and the separation of powers.
Now, you may have seen through ENE's seven veils 2 years ago (I expect to hear that you shorted the company at 81 and never covered, or at least bought puts) but the reality is, if you were looking at trying to formulate an energy policy pre meltdown ENE would have been at the table. You can rear-view mirror it all you like, but that's a simple fact. Despite their leveraged state (and soon to come demise), ENE could provide more information about power and power generation, energy and energy trading than anyone else. Not Exxon, not BHI, not NBR, not nobody, Ray. So, ENE's crime is that they were at meetings and prepared "input." Charged with the felony of attending meetings, preparing analyses of the energy markets and power systems. I don't expect to find that their position papers focussed on windmills and fuel cells, or the use of biomass, which will make them guilty of something in your eyes.
I can tell you're troubled because there is no extant quid pro quo, at least not disclosed, for all the campaign contributions, yada yada yada. The truth is, as opposed to Rubin and Co. rescuing the illegitimate machinations of LTCM and the bulge bracket firms, Bush and Cheney just watched ENE implode. That's capitalism.
The other thing, and I haven't researched it, is that it was not the pension plans of the ENE employees that went down in the wreckage but the 401Ks. There's a huge difference there. 401Ks were freely chosen and self directed. I feel sorry for people who've lost money, but less sorry for people who lost money of their own volition and of their own choosing. I made money on CSCO, bought at 20 and sold at about 40 and never rebought on the juggernaut to 81, but many did and many lost. They chose to invest (just like the Enronians) and took the risk. As I said, if you want a socialist state, there are several in Europe waiting.
In any event, the press has been marginalized since the grand twin events of the Vietnam War and Nixon, where they not only reported history but felt compelled to create it. When the Afghan War started, the NYT couldn't wait to declare it an unwinnable quagmire, CNN reported that Americans would not stand for a war with any American casualties, the only question was "how long before the American people turn against the war." That's creating the news, not reporting it.
Well, Ray, I fully expect the press, desperately hoping to regain some of that long lost Pentagon Papers, All The President's Men glory, will do their best to prolong this tedious and rather mundane story. King Lear, Hamlet? You've got to revisit your Shakespeare, Ray. It's no more than Much Ado About Nothing.
Finally, one thing you are absolutely wrong about and that is the wag the dog thing. You're right about Slick Willie and his antics, but after 9/11 we certainly know who perpetrated this war. Bush will prosecute it, and it won't be short, not out of politics but out of reality. We could have had a relatively easy peace with Japan, beginning on December 8, 1941. After all our casualties at that time were relatively light, all things considered. What the heck, the USS Arizona, we probably had it coming to us for the way we treated Japan and their oil policy. Mebbe we should have just called it a wash? Prosecution of that war took us all over the Pacific, Singapore, the Phillipines, the Japanese home islands and finally a couple of cities in Japan, a tremendous cost for them, but for us as well. Why didn't we just find a way to get along?
When you think about this war, don't think about Slick and the blue dress, you've got to have a better historical perspective and think back 60 years.
Kb |
