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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (228324)	2/18/2002 10:04:28 PM
From: gao seng	Respond to of 769670

She is finding out, she is not the only prima donna in town. I think there is a good chance she doesn't survive in office until the next reelection. This Enron thing is going to bite some demolibs in the rear end, big time. I don't know which Glassman article is mentioned here, but I will look for it. Sounds like a doozy. -- Green, Red Feb 18, 2002 If, as hand-wringers imply, a taint sullies everything Enron touched, then the Kyoto Protocols epitomize corporate power and greed. In a column for The Wall Street Journal, James Glassman draws attention to an aspect of Enron's lobbying efforts that has drawn scant outrage: On August 4, 1997, Kenneth L. Lay, the chairman of the Enron Corp., met with Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin to discuss the global-warming conference coming up in Kyoto. Mr. Lay was an enthusiastic advocate of the Kyoto climate-change treaty - for two reasons. First, it would set up a "cap-and-trade" system that could prove highly profitable to Enron. The treaty would restrict the greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide, a product of burning fossil fuels in car en- gines, power plants, and the like) that each country could emit. But nations and businesses could buy and sell emissions rights on an open market, and Enron, which was transforming itself into a trading company, could run that market. Second, Kyoto favored natural gas over coal, America's most abundant energy resource, and Enron owned 25,000 miles of natural-gas transmission pipelines plus nine natural-gas power plants. Demand for gas would rise, and prices would soar. According to The Washington Post, an Enron official said in an internal memo that if implemented, Kyoto "would do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative." Enron's political contributions supposedly have made it imperative that Congress pass campaign-finance reform. Meetings between Enron swanks and Bush administration officials are cited as proof the Bushies carried the company's hod. Critics of energy deregulation as policy and of energy and power companies as institutions suggest the entire industry is corrupt and not to be trusted. Enron flexed its muscle during the Clinton years. Kyoto probably would have ended up as it did without Enron's influence, but the proposal promotes Enron's interests. To demagogues caterwauling about Enron's ties to the Bush team, such evidence usually is enough not only for indictment but for conviction. Kyoto would move global energy markets in the direction Enron preferred. A Kyoto approach applied worldwide could lead to the Enronization of energy and power. Will Enron's Kyoto ploy make greenies, as well as assorted populists and pseuds, see red? timesdispatch.com