50 Reasons Why the Democrats are Hypocrites when it Comes to ENRON
Quinn & Rose - WRRK-FM 97 - Pittsburgh, PA
5. In the days when Franjo Tudjman was Croatia's dictator and pretending to be both a reformed communist and best friend of America in the Balkans, poor Franjo had a problem. He and some of his very best friends were wanted as war criminals by The Hague's International Court of Justice. Enron wanted a power contract with Croatia. Enron offered a deal to Tudjman. Sign up with us and we will use our gang in Washington to make sure you and your friends don't go to jail. Tudjman signed. Enron made a heap of money. Nobody went to jail. Everyone was happy - until Tudjman died of cancer. Then the lid was off, his Croatian Democratic Union was defeated and the new boys in power in Zagreb could not believe how much of their budget went to pay the electricity bills from Enron. Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
6. In August 1993, McLarty, Clinton's former chief of staff, arranged an invitation for Lay, Enron's CEO, to play golf with Clinton in Vail, Colorado. This date irritated Oscar Wyatt, chief executive of Coastal, another natural gas company that had helped the Clinton election campaign raise funds. These connections to the Democratic administration helped Enron considerably. Source: Time Magazine
7. Clinton officials publicly helped Enron win the contract in India as well as in Indonesia. Enron had received U.S. government funds to build power plants in China, the Philippines and Turkey. Enron also won contracts in Pakistan and Russia while accompanying senior U.S. government officials on state trips. In June 1996, four days before India granted final approval to Enron's project, Lay's company gave $100,000 to the DNC. Source: Time Magazine
8. Enron got permission to build a pipeline from Mozambique to South Africa after National Security Adviser Anthony Lake threatened to withhold aid to Mozambique if it didn't approve the project. Source: Mozambique News Agency
9. The bulk of Enron's alleged chicanery had to have happened during the Clinton administration. Source: Fortune Magazine
10. Enron Corporation donated $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Six days later, Enron executives were on a trade mission with Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor to Bosnia and Croatia. With Kantor's support, Enron signed a $100 million contract to build a 150-megawatt power plant Source: The Weekly Standard
11. Kenneth Lay hired the firm of Clinton's former chief of staff Mack McLarty. Source: Fortune Magazine
12. Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer of New York, John Breaux of Louisiana, and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico--chairman of the Senate Energy Committee were among the top beneficiaries of Enron's political donations. Source: Fortune Magazine
13. Kenneth Lay retained Linda Robertson, a Democrat who worked for the Clinton Treasury Department, as his top D.C. lobbyist. Source: Fortune Magazine
14. Dynergy, an energy company which wanted to buy Enron and later sued them, donated $1,000 of dollars to Henry Waxman (D-CA) in the 2001-2002 cycle, one of the men leading the Enron investigation. Source: Center for Responsive Politics
15. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee received three checks from the Houston-based energy and trading giant totaling $100,000. Karen Denne, an Enron spokeswoman, said the company had a record of two checks written to the committee -- dated Sept. 24 and Nov. 2 Source: New York Post
16. Joe Lieberman's and Tom Daschle's largest Contributor in the 2000 election cycle was Enron's Largest Creditor, Citigroup. Source: Center for Responsive Politics
17. Enron was apparently a big backer of some parts of the Kyoto Treaty. Source: Enron.com
18. Ken Lay slept in the Clinton White House and served as an adviser to the Clinton White House on energy issues. Source: Drudge Report
19. Enron's lead Washington lawyer is Robert Bennett, who represented Clinton in the Paula Jones case. Source: NewsMax.com
20. Neil Eggleston, a former White House associate counsel under Clinton, represents Enron's outside directors. Source: New York Post
21. David Boies, Al Gore's lead lawyer in the Florida recount, is representing former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow. Source: New York Post
22. Former Democratic Texas Gov. Ann Richards appointed Ken Lay, the Enron exec, to the Governor's Business Council and received contributions from Enron. Source: The The Washington Post
23. Enron introduced the Clinton team to Lippo Industries and thence to China's People's Liberation Army (a wonderful source of political cash), to John Huang, another good provider. Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
24. Tony Lake, then Clinton's national security adviser, persuaded the impoverished, war-torn country of Mozambique to sign a $770 million electric power contract with Enron. Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
25. Al Gore and Bill Clinton introduced Enron to market managers in Russia, China, Indonesia and India. In India, Enron quickly became involved in one of that country's most massive corruption investigations, contracts were canceled and Enron was out. Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
26. Just days before Enron Corp. landed in bankruptcy court, the one-time political powerhouse may still have been funneling campaign dollars to Democratic lawmakers, federal election records indicate. Source: Houston Chronicle
27. Enron contributed some $682,000 to the DNC during the 2000 election. Source: Center for Responsive Politics
28. Ken Lay hired Betsy Moler, Clinton's deputy energy secretary, as a consultant. She was accused of stopping Energy Department counterintelligence chief Notra Trulock from briefing Congress early on about Chinese espionage and security lapses at Energy's nuclear weapons labs Source: Houston Chronicle
29. Government records show that, during the Clinton years, Lay and other Enron executives got seats on at least four Energy Department trade missions and at least seven Commerce Department trade trips. Source: WorldNet Daily
30. The congressman who received the most money from Enron in the past 12 years is Ken Bentsen (D-Texas) who received $42,750. The second largest receiver was Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) who received $38,000 Source: Center for Responsive Politics
31. The ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, John D. Dingell (D-Mich), is the 10th largest receiver of Enron contributions totaling $9,000. Source: Center for Responsive Politics
32. 71 House Democrats received $257,140 Enron Contributions. Source: Center for Responsive Politics
33. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) was the 20th member of the Senate to have received the most money from Enron. He received a total of $6,000. Source: Center for Responsive Politics
34. 29 Senate Democrats, not including those that are retired, were unseated, or died, received a total of $110,513 in the last 12 years from Enron. Source: Center for Responsive Politics
35. To help push through energy initiatives in Africa, Clinton's Energy Secretary (and Monica Lewinsky's job counselor), Bill Richardson, visited Nigeria in August 1999. "As a result of Secretary Richardson's visit to Nigeria in August, we have embarked on a bilateral cooperation program. The Department is developing an action plan with the Government of Nigeria, which will be coordinated with USAID. Cooperation could include: restructuring and privatization; rural electrification; deployment of clean energy and renewable energy technologies; promotion of energy efficiency; and development of an independent regulatory authority. This initiative, coordinated by Richardson, led to $882 million dollars in power contracts for Enron from the government of Nigeria: Enron, an oil and gas firm in Houston, has signed a power purchase agreement to supply emergency electricity to state-owned power utility Nigerian Electric Power Authority (NEPA) through 30MW power barges located on the coast of Lagos State. Enron and its Nigerian joint venture partner signed the $82 million deal with NEPA and the power ministry in the capital Abuja. Enron and the Lagos state government entered a joint venture earlier in 1999 to build an $800 million gas-powered plant with capacity for 540 Megawatt (MW) to augment supply to the city. Unfortunately for Enron, the Nigerian Government cancelled these contracts in April 2000. As a further reward for their generosity to the Democratic Party, Clinton Administration Special Envoy Thomas Pickering hustled off to Nigeria (on the taxpayer's dime) to plead Enron's case. Source: Several Sources/FreeRepublic.com
36. Texas Democrats received more Enron contributions than Texas Republicans. Source: CBS Affiliate KTVT in Texas
37. Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered the destruction of documents, which Enron is now accused of doing, of four files in 1988 from her work on the failed savings and loan that's now at the heart of the Whitewater affair. Source: NewsMax.com.
38. -During the 1991-92-election cycle, Enron gave $28,525 to the Democratic party while former Clinton Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown served as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Enron gave $42,000 to the Democratic party in the 1993-94 cycle. Source: PublicIntegrity.org
39. According to internal Enron documents and the recollections of former employees, Chairman Kenneth L. Lay had the ear of top Democrats in the 1980s and '90s. He and his colleagues used that access to promote the company's interests with the Clinton administration and key congressional Democrats. Source: The The Washington Post src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
40. According to another Enron memo, Lay met with former Clinton Energy Secretary Federico Peña to urge White House action on electricity legislation favored by Enron. Peña "suggested that President Clinton might be motivated [to act] by some key contacts from important constituents," Source: The The Washington Post
41. Ken Lay was one of 25 business executives on Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development. Source: The The Washington Post
42. Enron's political action committee gave $10,000 in 2000 to the New Democrat Network, which was co-founded by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT). Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee that year, now chairs the Senate Government Affairs Committee, which is leading an inquiry into Enron's collapse. Source: The The Washington Post
43. Several senior Enron officials spent election night at Vice President Gore's headquarters in Nashville. Source: The Washington Post
44. Enron backed Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) in his successful 1998 campaign to oust Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. Schumer's views on electricity deregulation dovetailed closely with Enron's. Source: The Washington Post
45. Two years later Schumer, who has advocated deregulation as a way of reducing New York State's high power costs, co-authored a bill to restructure electricity markets along lines favored by Enron. Source: The Washington Post
46. Enron also has supported Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), whose state is traversed by a major east-west Enron gas pipeline. Source: The Washington Post
47. Former employees say Lay's friendships with other Democrats were based as much on rapport as pragmatism. This group includes former senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE), whose brief 1992 presidential bid had Lay's backing, and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), with whom Lay served on the Eli Lilly Co. board of directors in the 1990s. Source: The Washington Post
48. In 1996, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, stocked with Clinton appointees, helped Enron with a series of orders that weakened the monopoly of nuclear and coal-burning utilities. In July of that year, Enron gave $100,000 to the Democratic Party. Source: The Washington Post
49. In 1992, a Democratic-controlled Congress approved a major energy bill that set the stage for a new wholesale electricity marketplace. Trading companies such as Enron could use the transmission lines of regulated utility companies to sell blocs of electricity to private customers. Source: The Washington Post
50. Some officials in Enron's Houston and Washington offices backed Gore and Lieberman in the 2000 election. Source: The Washington Post. ***
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