Posted on 01/11/2002 4:26:46 PM PST by Pokey78
THE White House response to the collapse of Enron, a Texas-based energy company with strong links to the Bush administration, has "shades of Bill Clinton", a conservative watchdog said yesterday.
Judicial Watch, a legal group that pressed Mr Clinton in the latter years of his presidency by investigating every aspect of his personal and professional life, called for a special counsel to investigate the Enron case.
Tom Fitton, the group's president, said: "The White House has a nice little scandal on its hands with Enron and they have only themselves to blame. Their reaction certainly has shades of Bill Clinton." The criticism is an indication of the potential risks of the Enron controversy.
Judicial Watch would normally support a conservative president such as Mr Bush. Enron applied for bankruptcy protection last November after overstating its profits by more than £400 million by hiding huge debts in the accounts of subsidiaries.
Its board is being investigated over allegations that 29 current or former members sold their shares for a total of £785 million in the months before the collapse. Thousands lost jobs and money when the Enron share price collapsed from almost £65 to only a few pence in less than a year.
The Houston-based company has close links to the Bush White House. Kenneth Lay, its chairman, is a friend of both President Bush and his father and was one of the principal fundraisers for the Bush-Cheney election campaign in 1999-2000.
Dick Cheney, the vice-president, had close contacts with Mr Lay when Halliburton, another Houston-based energy company of which he was formerly chief executive, built a baseball stadium for Enron.
Two senior members of the administration, Larry Lindsey, the President's chief economic adviser, and Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, worked as consultants with Enron before Mr Bush recruited them.
The White House said on Thursday that Mr Lay called on Paul O'Neill, the treasury secretary, and Don Evans, the commerce secretary, to help the company in the days before it collapsed, but added that they had turned him down, despite his close links to the president and his party.
But Mr Fitton yesterday called on the White House to be more open. "Conservatives are very uncomfortable about the relations between the Bush White House and Enron and I doubt you will see many coming forward to defend the conduct, at least so far."
He was particularly critical of Mr Cheney's efforts to prevent the release of the minutes of meetings he and his staff held with Mr Lay and other Enron executives in the process of formulating the administration's energy policy.
You didn't read the topic banner, did you?
The reporter is talking through his arse. JW goes after both sides. It's just that the Democrats are big crooks, hence get more attention.
But Mr Fitton yesterday called on the White House to be more open. "Conservatives are very uncomfortable about the relations between the Bush White House and Enron and I doubt you will see many coming forward to defend the conduct, at least so far."
That statement may be a bit premature. A few weeks will tell.
If the meetings with industry were primarily briefings to and from the government, without the industry members in the meetings that decide policy, then I tend to agree with Cheney.
Sheesh, the libs make a point that Enron was involved. At the time, Enron was the 800 lbs energy gorilla. Of course they'd be interested in making a presentation and of course government wanted their input.
But there also were a lot of people (individuals and businesses) who worried about the danger of a Gore Administration. If he had had the ability to implement his environmental policy, business would have been sunk. That's a big motivator.
Do you see evidence that the campaign cash has pointed Bush in any particular direction? If he were to accept money from business and implement pro-business policy, we can easily say that it is a proper pro- business/conservative stance. Now if he accepted a bunch of money from the NEA, and then churned out this education bill, that would be a much stronger position.
If I owe you $500 and instead of paying you, I give the money to a charity, is the charity dirty?
Had they been able to influence the Administration, they wouldn't have gone under, right?
Now my country is based upon how much political clout there is to screw the good guys. Sounds like communism to me.
I grant the possibility that influence may have been used, but perhaps the favors were too little or too late.
I can understand your cynicism, and I think it is warranted. However, I see no way of fixing the problem. More laws? More gov't intervention when it is the law writers which are the problem? We'll never be able to elect enough people who are willing to reduce their own power.
Power corrupts. And I'd like to think that all of us here, were we the people in power, would be less corrupt. I'm not sure that is possible.
While I agree that Klayman is off the deep end here, and should still be focusing his attention on the connection between Clinton, the DNC, Ron Brown and Enron, the suggestion that Klayman accomplished nothing is UNTRUE. We might not even know about Chinagate if not for Klayman. We certainly wouldn't know half of what we know about Filegate or Emailgate. We wouldn't know some key facts in the death of Ron Brown. Klayman investigated Clinton when virtually noone else ... certainly the GOP ... was doing so. The notion that he was working for the democRATS at that time is simply LUDICROUS. Furthermore, he knew he couldn't "prosecute" the CRIMINAL violations that he so doggedly pursued. So why did he pursue them? Perhaps in the hope that the next President, who would likely be a Republican, would do something about them. What a shame that this one (Bush) hasn't. Instead he has squandered an opportunity to blow the democRAT party out of the water by proving them criminals of the first order ... criminals who committed TREASON, MURDER, ELECTION TAMPERING and you name it.
Which leaves us with the question why? Why can't you name ONE investigation that the Bush adminstration has or is conducting into the crimes of the Clintons. Oh you can name a few that were on-going when Clinton was in power that he stopped, but name one that he started ... besides Pardongate, which was forced upon him by the media and which he turned over to a democRAT lackey to bury (see how far it has gotten?). Why hasn't he reopened the investigations of Filegate or the death of Brown or the death of Foster? Clearly there was something wrong there. Clearly the Clinton investigations into those matters were coverups. Why hasn't he investigated the Riady non-refund? Why hasn't he investigated the many allegations in Chinagate that Reno saw fit to simply ignore or bury? Something is not right in the fact that the Bush administration is letting the democRATS get away with such serious crimes ... crimes that threaten the very foundations of our Republic.
Think about it ... now the democRATS, who could be only 3 years from returning to the Whitehouse, know that a President who controls the media and the law enforcement arm of the Federal government can get away with ANYTHING. Now the democRATS know that the GOP is TOOTHLESS when it comes to keeping them from committing crimes. Now the democRATS even know that they can steal elections (they came within a hair of doing it in Florida and they succeeded in several states). Now the democRATS even know that after they commit the crimes, Republicans STILL won't do anything even when they have them dead to rights in a number of cases. The democRATS know that they can purloin the FBI files for damaging information on their opponents to use in BLACKMAILING them ... and the Republicans will do nothing. The democRATS know they can KILL high level members of the government and Republicans will do NOTHING. The democRATS know that they can abuse the IRS, FBI and MILITARY, turning them into instruments for distracting the public from stories that might damage them or harassing their enemies. The democRATS know that they can get campaign funds from ANY source (even the enemy) and Republicans will do NOTHING.
Think about THAT! Exhume and autopsy the bodies of Ron Brown and Vince Foster ... NO EXCUSES.
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