WORLDCOM:
TRENT LOTT'S ENRON
mediawhoresonline.com
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Disgraced telecommunications giant MCI-WorldCom has long been a pet firm of Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, who received more than one million dollars in favors and cash from the corporation in exchange for Lott's political clout.
The blockbuster revelations, building on years of unanswered questions about Lott and WorldCom, come just as the White House and the G.O.P. are trying to bury the exploding WorldCom scandal, much as they have tried to bury the Enron scandal, with evasive answers and stonewalling.
But the avalanche of fresh facts threatens to bury Lott and the G.O.P. instead.
As reported by the Congressional Quarterly back in 1999, WorldCom donated a whopping $1 million to the Trent Lott Leadership Institute at the University of Mississippi to underwrite a fundraising event.
As the Chicago Tribune now reports it:
Three years ago, when executives of WorldCom Corp., then a swaggering telecommunications giant, wanted to show their appreciation for their home-state lawmaker, Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, they did more than make a run-of-the-mill campaign contribution.
Instead, they pledged $1 million to a University of Mississippi center for leadership named in his honor.
Lott, in turn, named an MCI representative to a commission on Internet commerce, then a major concern of the Mississippi-based megacorporation.
Lott's office issued a boilerplate denial that the two events were linked, but CQ and other Washington political observers remained highly skeptical in the absence of any formal investigation.
Unlike the disgraced Enron Corporation, WorldCom was not chiefly a backer of Republicans. This reflects the difference between the politics of the energy industries (which in general lean heavily pro-G.O.P.) and telecommunications industries (where companies and CEOs interested in friendly legislation need to spread the money around more evenly). For WorldCom, the way to get things really done was have one big fixer on Capitol Hill. That fixer was Trent Lott.
Just as Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay took a special interest in the Bush family, and especially George W. Bush, so the corrupt executives at WorldCom, led by former CEO Bernie Eggers, took a special interest in Trent Lott . And Lott-- who has now got a lot of hard questions to answer -- took a very special interest in WorldCom.
In 1996, prior to the passage of the Telecommunications Act, Lott helped revise language in the bill that paved the way for WorldCom to acquire MCI, and moved up the time frame when WorldCom and its merger partner would be allowed to offer certain telephone services. At the time, WorldCom executives sponsored big fundraisers for Lott.
Lott has also been a tireless and crucial ally for the company in its battle to keep the regional telephone monopolies like SBC and Verizon from being freed from rules meant to promote competition in local phone service markets.
And Lott has long led the fight the G.O.P. against efforts, notably by the Clinton Administration, to toughen regulation of accounting practices, of the sort that allowed WorldCom and, it appears, Arthur Andersen, to pull off WorldCom's hidden expenses scam for as long as they did.
So far, Lott has tried to evade the latest questions raised by the WorldCom scandal.
As the Tribune reports, when asked if the $1 million contribution to Ole Miss' Trent Lott Leadership Institute raised problems for him, Lott deflected the question.
"As a matter of fact, I had nothing to do with the support that Bernie Ebbers gave to that institute," he said, referring to WorldCom's former chairman and chief executive officer.
A non-answer, the Tribune suggests.
And it looks as if the World Com CEO is well on the way to becoming Trent Lott's "Mr. Lay." Is it just a matter of time before the Bernie disappears -- "that man, Mr. Eggers"?
Lott is not the only Republican with extra special problems regarding WorldCom.
Only last week, WorldCom ponied up $100,000 for the mega-million Republic National Committee fundraising gala, featuring George W. Bush, in Washington, D.C. That was enough to get WorldCom listed in the program as a "vice chairman" of the event.
So far, the White House and the G.O.P. have indicated that they will not return the corrupt donation from the disgraced firm.
In addition, Attorney-General John Ashcroft, who recused himself from the Enron investigation because he received hefty contributions from Enron, faces the same problem with WorldCom. But neither Ashcroft nor the Justice Department has, as yet, said whether Ashcroft will in fact
step aside in this matter.
First reactions to the scandal from the Republic Party's media front men indicate the level of panic that has struck the party leadership behind the scenes -- and deepen the growing impression that the Republicans have something to hide.
Rush Limbaugh led the charge by blaming the WorldCom mess on Bill Clinton.
"Who taught us how to have his way with words and women?," Rush intoned yesterday. "Who taught us, my friends, how to lie under oath and get away with it? Who taught us that oral sex isn't sex, and now kids across the country in grade school try it out?"
Limbaugh also threw in Whitewater--"a failed attempt to get rich without any work"--adding: "The president of the United States got away with all kinds of things and inspired others to try themselves."
Never mind that, outside of Limbaughworld, Whitewater has been officially exposed as the fake scandal it always was.
This is the iron law of today's right-wing blame game: When caught -- blame Clinton!!
Even though WorldCom's Capitol Hill fixer was Trent Lott.
And even though, had Clinton's and the Democrats proposed reforms for the accounting industry had not been blocked by Lott and his special interest Republicans, Enron, WorldCom and the disasters they have caused the economy could have been prevented.
Where there's Limbaugh smoke, there's almost always G.O.P. fire.
But Rush is only a symptom. There are numerous hard questions arising from the latest revelations about WorldCom:
-- Will the White House and the RNC return the $100,000 donated just last week by WorldCom? An alternative: Will the White House and the RNC donate that cash to a fund to support WorldCom's 17,000 suddenly dismissed employees, as well as those whose 401(k) plans may now be lying in ruins, just like those of Enron's victims?
-- Will John Ashcroft recuse himself from any and all investigations of MCI-WorldCom?
And the hardest questions are for Minority Leader Lott:
-- What did Trent Lott know about WorldCom's deceptions and impending collapse, and when did he know it?
-- How much did Lott's political favors on behalf of his home-state firm open the way for this scandal?
-- How much off-the-books money, in total, has MCI, WorldCom, and its executives given to Trent Lott, the Trent Lott Leadership Institute, and other entities associated with the Minority Leader?
-- Why is Trent Lott being so evasive on these matters?
So, here's yet another test for the Media Whores. Enron, the Bush 9/11 scandal -- and now Trent Lott and WorldCom. For years, the press hyped phony-baloney "scandals" involving the Clintons, which proved utterly baseless. In their own way, the media contributed to the wasting of millions of dollars in taxpayers' money on witchhunt investigations and to the making of a partisan-driven constitutional crisis.
But now we have far more solid evidence about far graver corruption that actually affects both the lives of the American people and the health of our political system.
Will the media sustain their disgusting double-standard and their enabling of G.O.P. wrongdoing?<?b>
Will they continue to cite Bush's popularity poll numbers as a reason to do nothing (something they NEVER did with Clinton)?
Will they continue to be spooked by the snarling bullies and fake patriots of the Bush White House, who continue to manipulate the grief and horror of 9/11 to excuse their own incompetence and cover up their scandals?
Or will they do their job?
Which would begin with looking hard at, and asking tough questions about, Trent Lott's WorldCom scandal.
Sources:
Chicago Tribune
chicagotribune.com
Washington Post
washingtonpost.com
Washington Post
washingtonpost.com
ABC News
abcnews.go.com
Clarion Ledger
clarionledger.com
PRNewswire
prnewswire.com
Essential.org
lists.essential.org
Jackson Progressive
jacksonprogressive.com |
