Enron and the Bush Administration
BY MICHAEL MOORE
* George W. Bush was Ken Lay's "golden boy of politics." Ken Lay has been Bush's number one financial backer since Dubya ran for governor. No other American or Saudi has given Bush more money than Lay and his gang at Enron. When Bush needed a way to fly around to all the primaries and campaign stops in the 2000 election, "Kenny Boy," as Bush nicknamed him, gave Bush his corporate jet. Bush flew around America on the Enron company jet, and touched down on tarmac after tarmac to tell his fellow citizens that he was "going to restore dignity to the White House, the people's house." And he said this standing in front of an Enron jet.
Bush even interrupted an important campaign trip in April 2000 to fly back to Houston for the Astros' opening day at the new Enron Field -- just so he could watch Kenny Boy Lay throw out the first pitch. How sentimental.
* After Bush set up shop in the White House, Kenny Boy interviewed those who would hold high-level Energy Department positions in the new administration. Kenny Boy not only decided who would head the regulatory agency that oversaw Enron, he also hand-picked the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt -- a former lawyer for his accountant, Arthur Andersen. Kenny and the boys at Andersen also worked to make sure that accounting firms would be exempt from numerous regulations.
The rest of Kenny Boy's time was spent with his old buddy, Dick Cheney (Enron and Halliburton [Cheney's company], you may recall, got the big contracts from President Bush I to "rebuild" Kuwait after the Gulf War). Lay and Cheney formed an "energy task force" which put together the country's new "energy policy." This policy then went on to shut down every light bulb and juicer in the state of California. And guess who made out like bandits while "trading" the energy California was in desperate need of? Kenny Boy and Enron! No wonder Cheney doesn't want to turn over the files about those special meetings with Lay.
* The list of Enron people on the White House payroll is impressive. Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's chief economic advisor, is a former advisor at Enron. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is the former CEO of Alcoa, whose lobbying firm, Vinson and Elkins, was the #3 contributor to the Bush campaign. Who is Vinson and Elkins? The law firm representing Enron. Who is Alcoa? The top polluter in Texas. Thomas White, the Secretary of the Army, is a former vice-chair of Enron Energy. Robert Zoellick, Bush's Federal Trade Representative, is a former advisor at Enron. Karl Rove, Bush's main man at the White House, owned a quarter-million dollars of Enron stock. Then there's the Enron lawyer Bush has nominated to be a federal judge in Texas, the Enron lobbyist who is Bush's choice for chair of the Republican Party, the two Enron officials who now work for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and the wife of Texas Senator Phil Gramm who sits on Enron's board. And there's the aforementioned Mr. Pitt, the former Arthur Andersen attorney whose job it is now as SEC head to oversee the stock markets.
* Bush says he didn't know Enron was in trouble. However, Don Evans, the man who squeezed all that money for Bush from Enron as his campaign finance chairman (and is now collecting his reward as Commerce Secretary) has admitted that he got calls from Enron begging for help last year because they were going under. Didn't he tell Bush this? Then Paul O'Neill, the Treasury Secretary, admitted that Enron and Kenny Boy called him, too, for some special favors to save Enron. Considering Lay and Bush's relationship, it strains credulity that O'Neill wouldn't have mentioned it to the President. Evans and O'Neill claim to have called Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, and he said he didn't bother to inform Bush.
* The price of doing nothing is becoming very expensive. O'Neill and Evans say they didn't "do Enron any favors." Actually, it's more like they didn't do Enron employees and investors any favors. Enron got lots of favors. O'Neill, Evans, Cheney, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham -- all of them gave Lay and Enron special favors from day one. The New York Times last May was so concerned about how Kenny had the run of the White House, they referred to Lay as the "shadow advisor to the president."
And what advice! Who wanted Bush to deregulate the energy industry further? Kenny Boy! Who convinced Bush to explore the sick idea of privatizing our water supply and then allow private corporations to "trade" it in the future? Kenny Boy! Who wanted Social Security to be tied to the stock market? Yup, Kenny Boy! (Imagine, if you will, what would have happened to our precious Social Security funds had they been invested in Enron stocks as Bush suggested be done during his campaign.)
O'Neill's and Evans's admission that they "did nothing" when Enron told them of the company's shell game and impending collapse is an outrage. By doing nothing, millions of Americans have been swindled. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs. Thousands more have lost their savings and their retirement. Yet these cabinet secretaries gloat over what a "good job" Bush and they did by "doing nothing." Look at it this way: if someone was setting a house on fire, and they called you to help them set it on fire, and you said no you wouldn't help them -- but then you also didn't call 911 and inform the police that someone was going to burn down a house, you would have committed a crime because you had prior knowledge and hid it from the authorities -- and from the people living in the house! Who would even think of going around boasting, "Hey, look what a great guy I am -- a friend of mine told me he was going to commit an act of arson, and then I decided not to tell anyone about it!! WHOO-HOO!!"
* Bush's Republican friends are quick to point out that Enron had their claws into the Democrats as well. Yes, they did, and we thank Bush & Co. for making the case why we not only need an alternative to the current make-up of the Democratic Party, we need private money removed from our electoral process ASAP.
But let's be real -- the Democrats only got a pittance from Enron compared to the millions Bush and the Republicans received. Democrats just don't have the killer instinct to do anything right, and they certainly don't know much about making money the old-fashioned way, one off-shore tax shelter at a time. I would expect nothing less from a Party that couldn't even put their candidate in the White House after he had already won the election. * |
