The allegations against former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay and others involved in corporate scandals, such as WorldCom, generally revolve about creative accounting - hiding liabilities, inflating revenues and assets, etc. One specific charge in the Enron trial now under way in Houston, for example, is that it cooked the books one year to add a penny to the company's per-share earnings and thus meet Wall Street analysts' expectations. What's striking about the allegedly illegal corporate accounting is its similarity to the gimmicks that California politicians have employed in two state budget crises over the past 15 years. --snip-- Here's...