White House Was a Second Home for Enron Officials (huge gag alert)

    President Bush says he has had "no contact with Enron officials in the past six weeks."
    That's a relief. It shows he has sense enough to know when a corporation has turned radioactive and is best approached at the end of a 10-foot pole. Still, this leaves almost an entire year in which Enron officials waltzed in and out of the White House enjoying an unusual degree of access. The Washington Post reports that Vice President Dick Cheney or his aides found time to meet with Enron officials on six occasions in 2001.
    On the face of it, this may not even seem excessive for an administration in which corporate interests have been given an extraordinary degree of influence. And besides, David S. Addington, the vice president's counsel, wrote a letter insisting that "Enron did not communicate information about its financial position in any of the meetings with the vice president or with the National Energy Development Group's support staff."
    That's a relief as well. Since Enron's financial troubles weren't discussed, this presumably shows Enron wasn't looking for some squalid favor that would permit it to avoid one of the most spectacular bankruptcies in history.
    It was probably just seeking to influence some government action that would advance the general interests of Enron, perhaps relief from some obnoxious regulation promulgated in the Clinton administration that stood between Enron and its ambitions to become the world's largest corporation. And in the energy-friendly Bush administration, what more logical place to come than the White House?
    Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., can be forgiven his cynicism about these Enron meetings. He said, "It shows Enron far exceeded the access provided by the White House to other parties interested in energy policy." Certainly, it exceeds the access that would be granted to, say, a bunch of high-minded old ladies in hand-knitted sweaters pleading against a rape of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Anyway, White House officials said the Enron meetings reflected nothing more sinister than the "open and inclusive" policy of the vice president's energy task force. They made it sound like all the meetings had taken place in plain sight on the White lawn.
    Anyway, the Enron meetings continued until just days before the company started to collapse. Cheney's aides met with executives of Enron's German subsidiary on Aug. 7 and with Enron officials on Oct. 10. Six days later, Enron's troubles became news, and the shell of its assets became transparent to the world.
    A little more than a month later, Enron announced $55 million in bonuses to 500 key employees. Another 4,000 employees got pink slips and $4,500 in severance pay to console them for 401(k) balances that had become close to worthless because the bulk of it was in Enron shares.
    This gave off an odor of favoritism until it was explained that somebody had to be induced to stay around and pick over the bones of Enron's carcass for what assets could be preserved. The $55 million began to look like a small price to pay for this, considering that last year the corporation had $101 billion in sales.

Here's a little background on how it's done (the Bush Family has Particularly good past experience in these matters), the "Quid Pro Quo" that many are claiming isn't there, isn't. But that's the beauty of these deals. It works over generations. ----

From the latest MOJO ----

"After the sale of Harken Energy in 1983, Alan Quasha became a director and chairman of the board. Under Quasha, Harken suddenly absorbed Junior's struggling Spectrum 7 in 1986. The merger immediately opened a financial horn of plenty and reversed Junior's fortunes. But like his brother Jeb, Junior seemed unconcerned about the characters who were becoming his benefactors. Harken's $25 million stock offering in 1987, for example, was underwritten by a Little Rock, Arkansas, brokerage house, Stephens, Inc., which placed the Harken stock offering with the London subsidiary of Union Bank -- a bank that had surfaced in the scandal that resulted in the downfall of the Australian Labor government in 1976 and, later, in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal. (It was also Union Bank, according to congressional hearings on international money laundering, that helped the now-notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International skirt Panamanian money-laundering laws by flying cash out of the country in private jets, and that was used by Ferdinand Marcos to stash 325 tons of Philippine gold around the world.)

Stephens, Inc., also helped introduce the BCCI virus into US banking in 1978 when it arranged the sale of Bert Lance's National Bank of Georgia to BCCI front man Ghaith Pharoan. (The head of Stephens, Inc., Jackson Stephens, is a member of President Bush's exclusive "Team 100," a group of 249 wealthy individuals who have contributed at least $100,000 each to the GOP's presidential-campaign committee.)

If any of these associations raised questions in the mind of George Bush, Jr., he had little incentive to voice them. Besides getting Harken stock through the deal, Junior was paid $80,000 a year as a consultant (until 1989, when his wages were increased to $120,000; recently they were reduced to $45,000). He was also allowed to borrow $180,375 from the company at very low interest rates. In 1989 and 1990, according to the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Harken's board "forgave" $341,000 in loans to its executives. In addition, Junior took advantage of the company's ultraliberal executive stock purchase plan, which allowed him to buy Harken stock at 40 percent below market value.

Such lavish executive compensation would suggest a company doing quite well indeed. But in reality, Harken had little going for itself. One Wall Street analyst called Harken's web of insider stock deals and mounting debt "a lot of jiggery-pokery." Harken was not making money and could not have continued into 1990 without at least some means of convincing lenders and investors that the company would soon find a lot of oil.

Suddenly, in January 1990, Harken Energy became the talk of the Texas oil industry. The company with no offshore-oil-drilling experience beat out a more-established international conglomerate, Amoco, in bagging the exclusive contract to drill in a promising new offshore oil field for the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain. The deal had been arranged for Harken by two former Stephens, Inc., brokers. A company insider claims the president's son did not initiate the deal -- but feels that his presence in the firm helped with the Bahrainis. "Hell, that's why he's on the damn board," the insider says. "...You say, 'By the way, the president's son sits on our board.' You use that. There's nothing wrong with that."

See, No Laws Broken! Just bent a little. That's why we have Classes of Citizens, so Deals can be done for all of our benefit, right?

It will be interesting when the Enron Scandal finds its roots in the clintong administration. DEEPLY. Not to mention the democrapped party. It's time to squash the bugs.

We tried to get hold of energy policy nightmare scenarios going on all over the west, we called in experts, some of whom were crooks... expert sources for information none-the-less. Talking to them. Them donating money to campaigns. Meaningless.

Members of the RENO family business calling Bush's kettle black, PRICELESS.

If davis and company had not tried to create an energy crisis policy platform to run on for dems in the west, this would not have ever happened in my view.

Dirty pool is going on.

But that's the beauty of these deals. It works over generations. ----

I appreciate the time and research that went into your response and the questions you tried to raise. But, to cut to the bottom line...you speak nonsense.

If you want to go for President Bush's jugular, find a direct route, or at least stay with the democrat's current talking points.

Regarding Enron, my points are simple. There is no logical, ethical or legal claim of malfeasance to lay at the feet of our president, George W. Bush.

Enron did themselves in. I will leave it to the SEC and the Justice Department to uncover how they accomplished this.

I am not (at this point) interested in exposing the profound and certifiable influence of the former Govenor of Texas, Ann Richards, and the Clinton/Gore administration on Enron's meteoric rise.

I am not here to debate the potential value of a cooperative alliance between business & govenment.

I am simply stating that inspite of their contribution to the Bush presidential campaign, Enron did not receive a quid pro quo.

George W. Bush did not comprosmise his ethics or principles to bail out a financial contributor. As foreign as not bailing out a contributor may be to most democrats, it is, I assure you, an ethical position....and one that will return this government to the position of respect and trust that our founding fathers had in mind.

History is wonderful. Don't lose sight of it. But, please, join us in the present.

The Washington Post reports that Vice President Dick Cheney or his aides found time to meet with Enron officials on six occasions in 2001.

Yep the meetings..... Gosh you'd have thought they were like the coffees and Lincoln Bedroom things...... But the following is waltzing in and out of the Whitehouse.......

Details Cheney-Enron Meetings
Matalin disputed claims that the administration had tried to hide its meetings with Enron executives, explaining, "Dick Cheney said in May on PBS that he had met with (Enron CEO) Ken Lay and had a 20-minute meeting with him."
"I remember that meeting very well," the senior White House advisor told Imus. "(Lay) got into the specifics of electricity competition and Cheney's not an expert on that and (Lay) was deferred to the staff. The subsequent meetings were not with the (Energy) Task Force or any Cabinet members - (it was) Enron staff guys with our staff guys.".....
One of the "so-called meetings," said Matalin, "was our head staff guy was giving a presentation to 25 companies and an Enron representative was there. Another so-called meeting was two guys came to talk to the staff about the progress of the energy report and the Enron guy never said anything.
Matalin said Cheney himself had only met with Mr. Lay twice. "He met with him, as he said on PBS, once on April 17 for 20 minutes. And then in June, he and I and the chief of staff, Scooter Libby.... went to an American Enterprise Institute world forum in Beaver Creek. It was one of these think tank things and there were 600 people there and Ken Lay was there.
"So we put that down as a meeting, which I think hardly qualifies," Matalin said. "I think we over-disclosed here."
On the question on whether contacts between Enron and Bush officials in the end benefited the energy giant, Matalin noted that the Bush-Cheney energy plan contained 178 recommendations to improve U.S. energy production and "not one - nada, zip, zero - was in there for Enron or Ken Lay."

. Yep them meetings were very productive for Enron... drove them right into bankruptcy....

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