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.
Well, I work for an energy company equivalent to what Enron was, and I have for over 20 years. I'm also an attorney. If you're saying I don't know how it really works, and that you in your pathetic liberal ivory tower knows better, then I'll defer to you, because I don't need to get into an insult match with a dopehead.
However, I am quite familiar with Enron and I am quite familiar with the roles of the Directors.
You are the one without a clue.
LOL. Sure.
We're not nearly as stupid as you think we are.
The article was totally amazing! I was expecting to read some awful stuff, and all it was was supposition, inuendo, wishful thinking and nothing else. THEY DON'T HAVE ANYTHING AND THEY KNOW IT. Why do you think Lanny Davis is now telling the dems to let go of it?? The reason is x42's fingerprints, along with Ron Brown and the Clinton admin., are all over it and it will be much worse for the dems than it will be for the repubs.
Care to back that up? Whose assets will be seized?
Well then, what did she do to earn $400,000?
It is common practice for members of the Board to be paid handsomely for two or three meetings per year.
You're also ignorant about the workings of a corporation. The Board is never held legally responsible for wrongdoings by the CEO, the CFO and Operations Executives.
Under the mail fraud and wire fraud statutes it is a scheme to get paid for not doing work.
Wendy Gramm performed her duties as a Board member according to her contract.
You made the accusation, you re-post it.
I'm not going to do your work for you. Otherwise, I'll just assume you made that little tidbit up.
Directors do go to prison for conspiring with CEO's. I have seen such cases with my own eyes. It happened a lot during the S&L crisis.
Maybe you'd like to back that up too.
We don't take anybody's "word" around here, pal. You make an assertion, you back it up, or it's bogus.
Enron's BOD met nine times in 2000 with the members receiving $79,000 each in cash and stocks.... things must have been better in 1996/8.
I've seen more "mainstream" coverage of the Bush "scandal" in one day than I saw coverage of BC's rape of Juanita Broaddrick over a three-year period.
Brace yourselves...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28593-2002Jan10.html
THE SMEAR OF BUSH BY PEOPLE LIKE YOU CRAB ASS
Nuts and sluts usually doesn't work here but you never know.
Good luck.
Interesting that she sold when the stock was at $45, and just before her husband assumed the chairmanship of the Banking Committee to avoid a conflict of interest.
She could have doubled her money if she'd held on.
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