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Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling was sentenced today to 24 years in prison for his role in the energy company's 2001 collapse in what become one of the nation's biggest corporate scandals. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake ordered Skilling to home confinement with an ankle bracelet to monitor his movements. He told the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to recommend when Skilling should report to prison and suggested he be sent to the federal facility in Butler, N.C. "This is not an easy decision,'' Lake said. "Sentencing is the most difficult and least pleasant part of my job Mr. Skilling has...

Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay had three severely clogged arteries and had experienced at least two heart attacks before he died, according to autopsy results released Wednesday. The report blames severe coronary artery disease for Lay's death. It also said the autopsy showed Lay had suffered at least two previous heart attacks and had two stents implanted.The Lays were vacationing near Aspen, Colo., when he died. The report, prepared by the coroner in Mesa County, Colo., said Lay was last seen alive by his wife on July 5 at 1 a.m., when he woke up and went into a bathroom.Minutes...

GARY MULGREW, David Bermingham, Giles Darby, Ken Lay, Eliot Spitzer, Hank Greenberg — the list goes on. The first three, now known as “the NatWest Three”, are awaiting extradition to the United States to face charges in connection with the collapse of Enron. Lay, of course, is — was — the founder of Enron, and a former client and friend. Found guilty of a variety of crimes, his death in Aspen last week ends the probability that he would be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in jail. Spitzer and Greenberg, the New York attorney general and the...

Lawyers likely to argue that entire case has effectively been voided BARRIE MCKENNA WASHINGTON -- Kenneth Lay's sudden death could prove to be an unexpected legal bequest to Jeffrey Skilling, his co-defendant in the landmark Enron Corp. fraud case. Mr. Skilling's legal team will almost certainly invoke Mr. Lay's demise to try to reverse his own fraud and conspiracy conviction or demand a retrial, legal experts said yesterday. That's because Mr. Lay's death Wednesday of an apparent heart attack effectively voids the entire case against the Enron founder, including the guilty verdict. Mr. Skilling, the former Enron chief executive officer...

The purveyors of revisionist political history are back at work this week, inspired by the death of Enron Corp. founder -- and convicted felon -- Kenneth Lay to revive the myth that were it not for Enron and Lay, California wouldn't have experienced its 2001 energy crisis. ... --snip-- Attorney General Bill Lockyer had the good manners to remain silent about Lay's death from heart disease three months before he was to be sentenced for lying to mask the failing company's condition. It was Lockyer who in 2001 told an interviewer that "I would love to personally escort Lay to...

Today news of Ken Lay’s heart attack and unexpected death has reached me. I did not know this Mr. KennyBoy Lay person but he seemed to be a good man and like me he knew how to treat people and make money from oil and energy markets. Damn I miss manipulating the price of crude. I have been thinking that many times well known people who are connected by celebrity and a random fact seem to die in groups of three... This is not GoodSTRENGTH IS POWER

It's not nice to speak ill of the dead, but Kenneth Lay's passing elicited little sympathy from average Americans on Wednesday. I spent much of the day trolling Internet message boards and blogs, polling Chronicle readers and talking to legal and other sources, trying to get a sense of how the public feels about Lay's death and how it will affect the legal proceedings against him. Lay was the former chairman and CEO of Enron, a name that became synonymous with corporate greed and wrongdoing, sparking a major reform movement in Congress. Enron also played a lead role ripping off...

The government's forfeiture effort ahead of the planned sentencing of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling this fall, however, has been thrown into doubt, at least in relation to Mr. Lay's assets since the death of a criminal defendant before his sentencing and the appeal process may void the criminal case against him. "Technically, he was found guilty, but that's extinguished as of today," said Joel M. Androphy, a prominent defense lawyer in Houston. ..... At issue, too, are Mr. Skilling's obligations to his lawyers. Mr. Petrocelli's law firm, O'Melveny & Myers, is awaiting more than $20 million of payments from...

I am no fan of corrupt businessmen and politicians, but I think we should cut Lay some slack. Why? He served our country. If serving the country shields Kerry and Murtha from attacks, the same should apply with Lay.

ENRON'S Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are about to trade their corporate suites for prison cells. Sometimes the system works. As prosecutors argued and jurors apparently agreed, Enron collapsed -- not because of bad press or market forces beyond executives' control -- but because of criminal choices and "outright lies." In retrospect, it boggles the mind that Lay and Skilling thought their lawyers could talk their way out of a conviction. It was smooth talk, after all, that sealed their fate. Jurors were especially incensed that Lay assured Enron employees that the company's stock was a great buy in 2001,...

HOUSTON - Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted Thursday of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud in a case born from one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history. The verdict put the blame for the demise of what was once the nation's seventh-largest company squarely on its top two executives. It came in the sixth day of deliberations following a trial that lasted nearly four months. Lay was also convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate trial related to his personal banking. The former corporate titans...

 Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were known as visionaries, hands-on executives, corporate titans directing the high-flying ship at Wall Street darling Enron Corp. Add another title: convicted felons. "Certainly we're surprised," a shaken Lay said Thursday after a jury capped a four-month-long fraud and conspiracy trial and in its sixth day of deliberations returned guilty verdicts against him and Skilling. "I think it's more appropriate to say we're shocked. This is not the outcome we expected." Besides all six counts in the main trial, Lay, Enron's founder, also was convicted of four charges of bank fraud and making false statements...

Once in prison, Lay and Skilling could be living with drug dealers and gang members The elimination of notoriously comfortable "Club Fed" lockups, along with a recent trend of handing out hard time to Enron-related convicts, could mean Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling will share prison space with drug dealers, child pornographers and gang members.White-collar criminals used to be able to count on assignment to minimum-security prisons, known as "Club Feds" because of their cushy conditions — dorm-style living, fewer guards and restrictions — particularly compared with traditional units. But the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has closed four of those...

See for example this thread first. With the conviction of Mr. Lay (of Enron fame) just let me say: He made a killing just like Jeffrey Skilling. In this case I think crime did pay!

Former Enron executives Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling were found guilty today on most counts in their landmark conspiracy and fraud case. In the end, the jury of eight women and four men embraced the testimony of a parade of former Enron executives who said Lay and Skilling lied publicly about the energy company's financial health and condoned, if not actively encouraged, the use of accounting tricks to boost reported profits and hide debt.

May 25, 2006 — The jury in the fraud and conspiracy trial of former Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling has both men guilty of all charges against them. Lay, 64, was convicted on all six counts including conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. Skilling, 52, was convicted of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. Jurors spent six days deliberating after more than three months of testimony from 54 witnesses. Lay faces up to 165 years in prison; Skilling faces up to 275 years in prison. Lay founded Enron in 1985 and was its CEO for more...

Lay, Skilling guilty on nearly all counts Former CEOs convicted of fraud, conspiracy, face lengthy.....

While bankruptcy is almost always the end of the line for common-equity shareholders, sometimes the companies themselves re-emerge with a new lease on life. Although airlines seem to habitually dip in and out of bankruptcy, other companies in fields such as telecommunications, retail, and power generation have made something of themselves on the other side of Chapter 11. On which side of the fence will independent power producer Mirant (NYSE: MIR - News) find itself? Having spent nearly three years in bankruptcy, the company emerged 70 days ago with a cleaner balance sheet and, hopefully, a better operating plan. Because...

When Ken Lay is not in the courtroom or a downtown office toiling on his defense, he mostly keeps to a quiet lifestyle, spending much of his free time with his five children and 12 grandchildren. Lay's trial on federal criminal charges stemming from Enron's collapse starts Monday and his defense, in large part, is that he wasn't aware of any wrongdoing at Enron and that the bankruptcy was caused by a "run on the bank." He has maintained that Enron was an innovative, honest company that changed industries and energy markets for the better. That sentiment captures how Lay...

NEW YORK - Bonuses at Wall Street firms climbed to a projected record of $21.5 billion last year as revenue grew, according to the New York state comptroller's office. Comptroller Alan Hevesi said Wednesday that 2005's bonus tally was $2 billion more than the old record, which was set in 2000. In 2004, Wall Street bonuses came to an estimated $18.6 billion. Last year's average bonus was pegged at $125,500, also a record, Hevesi said. Revenue at Wall Street firms rose 44.5 percent through the first three quarters of 2005, climbing to the highest level since 2000, the year when...

12/19/2005 - WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- Despite the cold, wind and snow, about 75 people gathered at Arlington National Cemetery on Dec. 15 to lay more than 5,000 wreaths on gravesites, including four at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Since 1992, members of the armed forces, civil air patrol, veterans of foreign wars and several civilians have gathered to take part in the project, a brainchild of Maine resident Morrill Worcester. Mr. Worcester owns and operates a holiday decoration company. Thirteen years ago he had a holiday wreath surplus and thought back to his youth. At age 12, he’d won...

11/16/2005 - KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Before U.S. forces return the airport terminal and tower here to Afghan control, combat communicators first installed more than a mile of copper and fiber cable. Airmen from the 451st Air Expeditionary Group communications flight here stepped up to install the critical communications cables when an engineering and installation team could not meet a short suspense. The flight took the challenge head-on and rerouted more than 6,000 feet of communication lines to ensure connectivity was not lost during the changeover. The project involved running the wiring through conduit and burying it in trenches....

In the morning of March 11, 2004, Susan Lindauer woke to find five F.B.I. agents at her front door. After reading her her rights, the agents took Lindauer from her home in Takoma Park, Md., to the F.B.I. field office in Baltimore, where she was charged with having acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and otherwise having elevated the interests of a foreign country above her allegiance to the United States. ''The only visible sign of stress is that I'm chain-smoking,'' she said when I met with her recently. Forty-one and free on bail, she wore...

Former Worldcom Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers was handed a 25-year prison term for directing the biggest accounting fraud in corporate history, leaving thousands of investors empty-handed. Ebbers, who built a small Mississippi-based long distance company into a telecommunications powerhouse, was found guilty on March 15 on all charges — one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of false regulatory filings. But he could also be a charming and folksy CEO, who preferred cowboy boots to suits, opened shareholder meetings with a prayer, ate lunch in the cafeteria and ran a company that had become a...

Ken Lay says his name is synonymous with scandal — and for good reason. When his Houston-based energy company, Enron, collapsed in 2001, there had never been anything like it. Once the seventh-largest company in America, Enron was wiped out in what seemed like a matter of days. Employees were sent out on the street, and billions of dollars were gone. Now, Lay is under federal indictment, and his long-awaited trial is scheduled for January. When Lay was subpoenaed to testify before the Senate, he refused to answer their questions. But now, Lay sits down with Correspondent Scott Pelley to...

HOUSTON - The fraud and conspiracy trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling and chief accounting officer Richard Causey will begin Jan. 17, 2006, a federal judge said Thursday. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake set the trial date for what is expected to be the premiere case to emerge from the Justice Department's investigation of the disgraced company that became the bankrupt embodiment of scandal and fraud in December 2001. Lay and Skilling had agreed to support Causey's choice of a Dec. 1 trial to accommodate the preparation needs of all the legal teams. Lay has...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Bob Dole Slams Kerry By Andrew L. Jaffee, August 23, 2004 Home   Search   Forum   Terms Nothing has really changed for Democratic hopeful John Kerry, except that real war veterans, like Bob Dole, are questioning the “superficial wounds” and resulting “medals” he received during four (4) months service in Vietnam. Kerry is still flailing, trying to cover up a career punctuated by extreme left-wing politics and flip-flopping by talking to voters about his military service. He squandered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention by trying to convince Americans that his tour of duty in Vietnam will make him a great commander...

Terasa (Terry) Heinz and Kenneth L. Lay, formerly of Enron, are both Trustees of "The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment," 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 735, Washington, DC 20004.This foudation is required to file a non-profit tax return (IRS Form 990) part of which is available to the public. Forms 990 for the years 1997 through 2001 are available on the internet at "www.Guidestar.org".These reports indicate that Terry and Ken have had a professional relationship from at least 10/1/97 through 9/30/02. In fact, after years of reporting Houston as his address, the 990 for...

  Still in the Closet — Democrats Getting LayedJuly 15, 2004  “Outing” Democrats is such child’s play.  Surrounded by shards of the smashed cookie jar, Moore-ish-faced Democrats just keep pointing fingers...as they just keep chewing.  It’s like Teddy Kennedy supporting the Anti Saloon League.  But, since John Kerry believes that “The value of truth is one of the most central values in America”, let’s serve up some truth. In a never ending Democratic mantra, Kerry (yet again) blasted the President for failing to aggressively pursue Kenneth Lay.  As we all know from such unbiased media sources as the AP, “Lay clearly favored...

Just on the Fox News Channel............. A Heinz-Kerry, Kenneth Lay, Enron connection. It seems that Kenneth Lay was not only a guest of John and Teraaazzzaaa at their Georgetown Mansion, BUT.....he was on the board of directors of the Heinz Foundation. In turn, Terrraaaazzza had over $250,000 in Enron stock. I wonder if we should tell Michael Moore ??? :-) Stay tuned. This could be interesting..........

Ken Lay of Enron Indicted and Arrested By Andrew L. Jaffee, July 8, 2004 Home   Search   Forum   Terms Enron’s ex-Chairman of the Board has been indicted and arrested on charges connected with his former company’s implosion in 2001. Corporate executives at Enron engaged in all sorts of financial manipulations to pump up the company’s stock price. They created complex “partnerships” to hide company debt from shareholders. In 1998, Enron’s share price was at about $20. By 2000, it hit $90. By 2001, the company’s stock was worthless. Enron’s collapse wiped out billions in shareholder value and employee pensions. Democratic Presidential hopeful John...

Ken Lay indicted.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Former Enron CEO and Chairman Kenneth Lay will likely be indicted this week, sources close to the investigation told CNN Monday. While a last-minute delay was still possible, federal authorities involved with the Justice Department's Enron Task Force expect a federal grand jury next week will return an indictment of Lay, these people said, speaking on condition that they not be identified. They would not discuss what charges might be brought against Lay. The Justice Department would not comment on the reports of a possible indictment. Lay, 62, guided Enron for years, shaping the once-obscure pipeline...

When a forest fire shut down a major transmission line into California, cutting power supplies and raising prices, Enron energy traders celebrated, CBS News Correspondent reports. "Burn, baby, burn. That's a beautiful thing," a trader sang about the massive fire. Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard – on audiotapes obtained by CBS News – gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis. "He just f---s California," says one Enron employee. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million."...

Two months after Kenneth Lay, then the boss of Enron, held a Texas fund-raiser for Chuck Schumer, the senator-elect asked for a review of federal power contracts that eat into utility company profits. A Schumer spokesman denied any quid pro quo, but Enron officials praised the senator's action in 1998 and said his letter asking for the review was a signal he was keeping a campaign promise to push for energy deregulation. Lay gave Schumer campaign cash during his 1998 Senate race against Alfonse D'Amato, and held a breakfast fund-raiser for the Brooklyn Democrat on Oct. 14, 1998, the Daily ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A week before filing for bankruptcy protection, energy giant Enron Corp. donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party committee that helps Senate candidates, campaign finance reports show. The company, which had given 90 percent of its money to Republicans this year before the Democratic donations, also has hired high-profile Washington lawyer Robert Bennett, whose past clients include President Clinton. "Donations of this type reflect certain political realities which are followed by all major corporations," Bennett said Wednesday in explaining Enron's $50,000 checks on Nov. 25 and Nov. 26 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Enron filed for Chapter ...

February 4, 2002 At 11th Hour, Lay Says He Won't Testify By STEPHEN LABATON and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. ASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — After a weekend of sharp criticism for his stewardship of Enron (news/quote), Kenneth L. Lay, the company's former chief executive, abruptly reversed course this evening and told Congress he would refuse to testify before two committees preparing to hear his testimony, starting on Monday. Earl J. Silbert, the lawyer for Mr. Lay, said he had decided to withdraw because "judgments have been reached and the tenor of the hearings will be prosecutorial." But Congressional aides said ...

When I was a kid, I tried to weasel out of everything I was caught doing, and I bet you did too. That's what kids do – the weasel dance. But my father always told me real men and women are supposed to stand up and take responsibility for their failures and indiscretions. My dad is gone now. He'd be outraged if he were still here. Over in Holland the incredibly heinous Slobodan Milosevic faces multiple crimes against humanity before an international tribunal. But Milosevic firmly believes he has done nothing wrong. His defense is that he is a ...

This is the second of 5 articles detailing what happened at Enron. It is extremely interesting and easy to understand for everyone (even those that don't have an advanced degree in accounting). There are links to the first article and, I suppose, the last three will come over the next couple of days. This particular report focuses on Jeff Skilling and his role in the collapse... Here's an interesting excerpt: "Skilling's most important innovation may have been in spearheading a fundamental change in the way Enron did business. In 1992, he persuaded federal regulators to permit the company to use...