Posted on 01/10/2002 7:00:04 AM PST by brbethke
Enron is not Bush's Whitewater Commentary: It will be worse
By David Callaway, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 12:10 AM ET Jan. 10, 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - The Enron Corp. debacle won't be President Bush's Whitewater. It will be much worse.
Unlike the financial sideshow over a twenty-year-old failed land deal that dogged the Clinton administration, the collapse of the nation's largest energy trader into the nation's largest bankruptcy last month is set to go straight to the heart of exposing what is wrong with the way the Bush administration is conducting itself these days.
Once a buyer for Enron's (ENE: news, chart, profile) energy-trading business is announced Thursday in New York, this story is going to shift in dramatic fashion to Washington D.C., where there are already eight separate congressional probes into the collapse, one Justice Department investigation, and scores of unanswered questions. Many of them concern the White House.
Don't expect to see either Bush or Vice President Cheney directly linked to the financial shenanigans that brought Enron down. They won't be. This is not about finding a smoking gun, as much as some Democrats might wish it were.
What it is about, and what the public will get to hear and read about in wrenching detail over the coming months, is how business gets done down in Texas. How a small group of business leaders exert enormous clout over Bush and his team in getting the rules changed to their benefit.
It will explain why Bush has locked up presidential records, locked out any voices opposed to his pro-business agenda and rammed through an expensive economic plan that wiped out the budget surplus but to date hasn't had any positive effect on the economy.
It will explain what influence Enron Chief Executive Ken Lay and his advisers had with Cheney and his energy taskforce when they met six times last year while the Vice President was putting together the administration's energy policy.
And it will explain why Bush is now thinking about acting on a proposal from that very taskforce that seeks to roll back a key provision of the Clean Air Act that helps keep factory pollution down by requiring new controls when old plants are upgraded.
A history of seeking favor
Business leaders have always sought favors from politicians. That's nothing new. But in the case of Enron and Lay, a night in the Lincoln Bedroom was never going to be enough.
Enron cultivated Bush from the time he first decided to run for governor of Texas, with executives donating a total of $623,000 to his two gubernatorial campaigns and presidential campaign, according to The Center for Public Integrity.
The company played a major role in Bush's decision to deregulate the Texas energy markets in 1999. It played a major role in Cheney's energy taskforce last year, meeting with the Vice President's staff right up until a week before it stunned Wall Street in October by slashing its shareholder equity by $1.2 billion to cover losses in its off-balance sheet partnerships.
And Lay, who donated $100,000 to the Bush Inaugural, remains mired in a controversy about whether a curious phone conversation he had with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission head Curtis Hebert last May had anything to do with Hebert's replacement by Bush last summer with the head of the Texas Public Utility Commission.
This is just the beginning of what is going to come out once investigators do a little more digging, and once Lay and his minions are required to testify before Congress. Expect a steady diet of revelations about the extent of the energy giant's influence, at state, national and even international levels.
Enron won't bring down Bush. He remains enormously popular for his handling of the war and the rebuilding of the country's psyche after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But it will be a major thorn in his side through the rest of this presidential term, and may even play a role in the next election, depending on what comes out.
Enron the company will soon be gone. But Enron, the symbol of how big business and big politics conspire to sometimes fix the game, is just starting to dawn on the national conscious.
It's an ugly story. One that explains a lot about what's going on in our nation's capital right now. And it's only just beginning.
David Callaway is executive editor of CBS.MarketWatch.com.
I don't think so. You are wrong. This is a nothing issue.
Here is the true scoop. The dems want to stick something on Bush anything and it does not matter what. They see Clinton attacked for 8 years so they think Bush is fair game. Problem is Clinton was guilty of all he was accused of and that has the dems in a up roar. While Bush is clean, that has the dems really mad.
Just demand that the rats show what Bush did. They won't! This has been tested. They won't say what he did because they have no CLUE!
They just throw dog crap at the conservatives and hope something sticks.
The rats are NUTS!
59 posted on 1/7/02 5:28 PM Pacific by TLBSHOW
To: dogcatch
can you imagine the rats sending over here a spewer? A hit and run poster like yourself?
Hummmm......
60 posted on 1/7/02 5:38 PM Pacific by TLBSHOW
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/603364/posts?page=96#96
ps
OH BY THE WAY dogcatch HAS A NEW NAME AND IS NOW CALLED
No current Freeper by that name.
Sadly, I think that you're right. Very, very, very few people in government are pragmatic anymore. The goal of this website is to root out corruption in government, regardless of political ideology. If Phil Gramm's wife had anything to do with this mess, she should be scrutinized. For G-d's sake, she sits on the board of Enron, AND her husband is a very influential senator. It is no different than Daschle and his wife, or any other politician who has a significant other sitting on the board of any major company (Dianne Feinstein comes to mind).
We, as Americans, need to remove each and every corrupt politician, regardless of their political party. It makes no sense to selectively target people like this Callaway jerk-off has. It makes us look like hypocrites, and it accomplishes nothing because they can always say the nature of any investigation is political. It's precisely what happened with Clinton, and it's precisely why it continues with the Enron connections to Bush.
I know you're perfectly capable of fighting your own battles, TLBshow, but I really get tired of the shenanigans of these left wing, rightophobic plants.
Craig Brown created NewsCenter in May of 1997 and has served as Editor since then. He is the Executive Director of Common Dreams - a non-profit founded in 1996 to develop use of the internet as a progressive political organizing tool.
Formerly a carpenter- turned social worker - turned political consultant, Brown is a native of Massachusetts. Brown began his career in progressive politics when he served as Chair and then Executive Director of the Maine Public Interest Research Group from 1973-1977. In 1976, Brown was a co-organizer of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance - and spent time in New Hampshire jails for sitting in front of bulldozers at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant construction site.
Brown has managed dozens of state, local, Congressional and US Senate campaigns over the past 25 years. He has managed and worked for many environmental, anti-nuclear and human rights referendum campaigns. He has worked on campaigns for Common Cause, Maine Audubon Society, Freeze Voter '84, the High-Level Nuclear Waste Project and Americans for Medical Rights. Brown worked for the Citizen's Party on ecologist Barry Commoner's 1980 presidential campaign. He later served on the presidential campaign staffs of former US Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) and former US Senator Paul Simon (D-IL).
In 1990, Brown managed the successful upset primary and general Congressional campaigns of then-Democratic Maine State Senator Tom Andrews. Brown went on to serve as Chief-of-Staff to Congressman Tom Andrews in Washington for Andrews' two-terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1994, Congressional Quarterly rated Andrews as the most progressive member of Congress - a designation Andrews was proud of. Columnist Jack Anderson called Andrews 'the most courageous member of Congress'. Ralph Nader called him 'the most principled politician I have ever met'.
In the 1994 Newt Gingrich-led rightwing sweep, Andrews lost to Maine's other House member, Republican Olympia Snowe, in his bid to succeed Senator George Mitchell in the U.S. Senate.
In 1995 and 1996, as Political Advisor to the President of People for the American Way, Brown created and led PFAW's national Expose the Right! campaign which successfully exposed the powerful influence right-wing forces played in the 1996 Republican presidential nomination process. Brown recruited his friend, Lynn Reed, and together they created an innovative website which was on the cutting-edge of using the internet as a political organizing tool.
In 1999, Brown managed the successful Maine citizens initiative which legalized the medical use of marijuana in Maine - winning with a 61% - 39% margin.
Among his other claims to infamy: Brown's 'Black Bean & Lobster Chili' won 'Grand Prize' at the 1993 Voters for Choice National Congressional Chili Cook-Off in Washington, and, at age 16, Brown was one of only a handful arrested at Woodstock '69 - "It's a long story..."
When he gets some free time, he plans to help organize a much-needed "Political Consultants for Social Responsibility".
Classic.
This is something to be proud of?! < /sarcasm>
Of course, for a liberal, this is a badge of honor, which this a$$-clown clearly demonstrates.
Crawl back to Commie Gore? Lighten up man. All I'm saying is to investigate the corruption of all these little cozy deals that seemingly every senator has.
Look, Crabtree and GoreIsLove *do* have some valid points. You don't have to agree with them, but it helps to listen with a certain minimal amount of civility, if only to gather ammo for an intelligent refutation.
Good grief, I'm starting to act like a moderator. I don't need this. I'm going to lunch.
The problem for you is that the facts won't back the smear up. Innuendo will only get you so far.
While I believe that Bush has locked up the records to keep the REAL criminal behaviour of Klinton and his cronies from being made public (so that confidence in the current Government will not dissappear overnight while we are in the middlwe of a National crisis IM(not so)HO) for what he believes are good reasons...
This crap about the budget is drivel straight from Daschle's talking points! A SURPLUS, by nature, means that they TAXED US MORE than was needed...so, by giving the money BACK TO THOSE WHO WERE OVERTAXED, you will NATURALLY reduce said surplus...but even DiFi admits that the impact of the tax-cuts hasn't even BEGUN to effect the economy, so he's full of $hit here...
Now, maybe David Callaway hasn't heard, but we were ATTACKED on 9/11/01, and are now having to spend money on the pursuit of that war...including FUNDING THE MILLITARY to allow them to actually function, unlike the KLINTON administration that underfunded all services to the extent that we were back where Jimmy Carter had us in 1980...families of soldiers on FOOD STAMPS (While Dasshole and the rest of the Blame America First First crowd in Government took PAY RAISES!!!), and US Military backing the very Muslim SCUM who attack us!
Does this pantywaist realize we are in a recession..the KLINTON RECESSION...that started in Q3 of 2000? And his Fearless Leader, Dasshole, has done EVERYTHING he can to prolong and INCREASE said recession? All in the name of Partisan Politics? But I guess the nancy-boy LIKES that...
C.B.S...Clintonista Buttkissing Scum!
Are you buying? You don't think crab is a DU read this little post fron her.
To: centurion316
You wrote:
Conservative books are few and far between. Most did not carry Final Days until recently. Bias has yet to make an appearance. The opposite is true for the Liberal tomes.
If Liberals are so stupid, why do they buy more books and read more than conservatives?
42 posted on 1/3/02 11:23 AM Pacific by CrabTree
[
I'll be sure to trust his word implicitly from now on.
The fact that the guy won a chile cookoff 9 years ago just isn't enough to counter his more dubious claims to PC fame.
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