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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (14713)	6/28/2002 4:39:40 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

scott, Re: Meanwhile the revelations keep coming. Six months ago, in a widely denounced column, I suggested that in the end the Enron scandal would mark a bigger turning point for America's perception of itself than Sept. 11 did. Does that sound so implausible today? Enron was just the tip of a very rotten iceberg. This thing is only going to get worse for a while. The whole telecom industry is perched for way more devastation, and the accountancy that brought down WCOM was undoubted peddled by consultants to a lot of companies as a clever ruse. Chickens will be coming home to roost. Short America? Best investment advice of the year. -Ray

To: stockman_scott who wrote (14713)	6/28/2002 4:47:11 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

scott, Here's the Open Secrets page on WCOM. They were an equal opportunity grafter. Dems and Republicans both fed happily at the trough. opensecrets.org opensecrets.org WorldCom: A Look at the Company's Political Contributions and Lobbying Months after the collapse of Enron, President Bush, members of Congress and the Justice Department are again on the trail of what looks to be one of the biggest cases of fraudulent accounting practices yet. On June 25, WorldCom, the nation’s second largest long-distance carrier, announced that it had overstated its cash flow by nearly $4 billion during the last two years, sending its stock into a virtual freefall and leaving the company on the brink of bankruptcy. How did it happen? That’s what Congress wants to know, especially during an election year. With voters already disgruntled after what seems to be months of continuous corporate scandal, Democrats are hoping to use the issue of corporate mistrust to unseat Republicans this Election Day. One avenue they will likely use: campaign contributions from the embattled companies to the GOP. “All you have to do is follow the money,” House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) told reporters June 26. “It leads right to the Republican party.” But that argument might not be as convincing in WorldCom’s case. Over the last 10 years, the company’s political contributions have been spread evenly between the two national parties. Since 1989, the company has contributed roughly $7.5 million in soft money, PAC and individual contributions to federal candidates and parties, 54 percent to the GOP. The race for WorldCom money has been even tighter than during the current election cycle. So far in 2001-02, WorldCom has contributed just over $1 million, split equally between Democrats and Republicans. WorldCom has been most generous to lawmakers from its corporate home state of Mississippi. Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) both rank near the top of the list of contributions from WorldCom, as do dozens of members of the House and Senate Commerce Committees who deal regularly with legislation that would affect WorldCom’s bottom line. President Bush raised $39,601 from the company during the 2000 election cycle. Most recently, the company has been engaged in a battle over legislation that would essentially deregulate the long-distance telephone business, allowing the Baby Bells to compete directly with WorldCom, AT&T and Sprint. Not included in WorldCom’s political contributions are the millions of dollars the company and its fellow long-distance carriers have spent to press their case in TV, newspaper and radio ads in recent months. Some of that money likely is included in WorldCom's lobbying expenses. During the calendar year 2001, the company reported just over $3 million in lobbying expenditures, a slight increase over the company's $2.9 million in expenditures during 2000. Also not included among the company's political contributions is the support that WorldCom has given legislators off the books. In 1999, WorldCom contributed $1 million to the establishment of the Trent Lott Leadership Institute at the University of Mississippi. Weeks before, Lott had appointed a representative of the company to serve on a panel weighing whether taxes should be charged on Internet purchases—a major issue for WorldCom at the time since the company carried much of the Internet’s traffic on its fiber optic backbone. Bribed Senators: opensecrets.org Bribed Representatives: opensecrets.org