By: Edwin Chen  

The growing Enron debacle is turning up the political heat on Vice President Dick Cheney, who has refused to detail his contacts with company officials while developing a national energy policy last year.

Amid Democratic charges that he granted Enron undue access - and produced in secret an industry-friendly plan - Cheney's unyielding stance has hampered the Bush administration's efforts to distance itself from the scandal.

By: Pete Hamill  

Kenny Boy was certainly not a typical hard-nose primitive from the oil patch. Born and raised in Missouri, where he took a B.A. from the University of Missouri, he moved to Texas at the end of the 1960's, and found work with Exxon. He earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Houston in 1970 and then learned the ways of Washington in the time of President Richard Nixon. He taught economics at George Washington University and worked for Nixon's Department of Interior and the Federal Power Commission. Day after day, theory was tested against actual practice.

When the Nixon administration began unraveling with the Watergate scandals, Lay chose to move on. In 1974, he started work as a vice president of the Florida Gas Co. in Winter Park and within two years, at 32, he was president. By then, Lay was certain of the fundamental truth of the gospel of deregulation. Capitalism could only work with absolute freedom, unhobbled by governmental constraint. If big businesses were to expand in a truly modern way, then most regulations must be scrapped. Only politicians stood in the way.

Evidence Indicates That O’Neill Helped Enron Hide Financial Condition; Public Citizen Calls on Treasury Secretary to Explain

From:  

Public Citizen today called on Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to explain evidence indicating that he helped Enron continue hiding information about its financial condition and took actions enabling it to funnel potentially billions of dollars belonging to shareholders and employees into offshore tax havens.

In a letter to O’Neill, Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook said she is "deeply concerned" about O’Neill’s actions. She asked the secretary to provide detailed information about his communications with Enron executives and Bush administration officials about the tax havens.

By: Arianna Huffington  

But now that Enron has bombed Tora Bora off the front pages, their language has gone all mushy. Team Bush is suddenly working from the Bill Clinton playbook on equivocation.

And the President is leading the pack. Kenneth Lay is no longer "Kenny Boy", the man behind half-a-million dollars in Bush donations, who slept at the White House when George I was in office, and has boasted of spending "quality time with George W." Now he is dismissed by the President as merely "a supporter" - just some guy wearing a Bush button at the inaugural, to which, as it happens, he and his company donated $300,000. As it also happens the President's parents had arrived courtesy of Enron's corporate jet.

By: Michael Hammerschlag  

Americans would do well to start worrying less about the handful of US fatalities and more about the dozen-odd dead in border clashes between Pakistan and India. Enraged by Pakistani separatist attacks on the Kashmiri Parliament and the Indian Congress in New Delhi, the Indians, after stewing for a month, have edged the nations towards a war that neither could probably control. Well over a million troops are mobilized on both sides, the greatest since the catastrophic Partition in 1947, when almost a million died. The difference between earlier border wars (1971) over Kashmir is that both countries now openly have not only dozens of nuclear weapons, which they proved in tit for tat detonations in 1998, but also the missiles to deliver them- missiles that can reach almost every square mile of their putative enemy.

By: Chris Ayres and Jon Ashworth  

Andersen, the accountancy firm caught in the Enron scandal, has recovered thousands of electronic files relating to the Enron audit.

The recovery of back-up files - including e-mails and duplicates of paper documents that were shredded - will help the investigation into the collapse of the Houston-based energy trading group...

By: Paul Krugman  

Mr. Lindsey and Mr. O'Neill would have us believe that all's well that ended badly; because Enron was allowed to fail, justice was done and the system worked. But Enron isn't a person; the evildoers here were Enron executives, who collectively walked off with at least $1.1 billion.

It's not just a matter of the utter unfairness of it all - employees lose their life savings while crooked executives walk away rich. It's also a matter of what it takes to make capitalism work. Investors must be reasonably sure that reported profits are real, that executives won't use their positions to enrich themselves at the expense of stockholders and employees, that when insiders do abuse their positions their actions will be discovered and punished.

Now we have seen a graphic demonstration that the system that was supposed to provide those assurances doesn't work. And nobody I know in the financial community thinks Enron was an isolated case.

By: Joe Conason  

Having just begun to examine the details of the Enron crash and the tangled financial and political strands that connect the bankrupt energy trader to almost everyone who is anyone in the Bush administration, several of the most influential scandalmongers already think it's time to "move on". They contend that since no evidence has been found that would implicate President George W. Bush or any of his appointees in a crime, this story should be relegated to the business pages.

That judgment seems premature, to say the least, and hardly consistent with the hungry attitude of the Clinton era, when putting officials under oath and demanding reams of documents became the highest priorities for nearly every newspaper and network in the nation.

By: Bill C. Davis  

"That's when I first got to know Ken and worked with Ken and he supported my candidacy for-and-but this is what-what anybody's going to find if-is that this Administration will fully investigate issues such as the Enron bankruptcy..."

Does anyone have to guess whose quote this is. Like a short circuit in a minefield of managed deceptions and covert realities George [W. Bush] tries to make a statement. If Bill [Clinton] was compartmentalized George is fragmented - fractured even. Keeping track of who should know what and what is technically troubling and what is damaging perception is a challenge for the most agile mind. For George it is close to meltdown. The choreographed events and the kid gloves with which the media and Democrats deal with this appointed military dictator is motivated by fear of meltdown. They all know he can't quite accommodate complexities and direct challenge. The linchpin of the American event is made of a questionable alloy and most are afraid of the consequences of truly testing his metal.

So what if Bush and company didn't bail out Enron? The outrage lies in what politicians did for the company on its way up, not the way down.

By: Scott Rosenberg  

The collapse of Enron, we now hear, is not a "political scandal" - it's a business story. A fine distinction! So far, no one possesses evidence that government officials lied, goofed around with interns, ran guns from the White House basement, burglarized opponents' campaign offices or accepted bags of unmarked bills. And so a growing chorus in the media now chants that the Enron affair should not be considered in the same class as Whitewater, Watergate, Iran/Contra, or any of the other previous brouhahas that have consumed Washington and brought presidencies to their knees.

"I don't think it's a political [scandal] story yet. I think it's a business scandal" - that's how the National Journal's Charlie Cook put it during a journalism panel covered in the Hotline. "Reporters try to put everything into a Whitewater/Watergate prism."

Democrats Should Put the Enron Scandal on the Backburner

By: Kentuck  

The Democrats should head them off at the pass. They should put the Enron scandal on the back burner for the time being. Let the Republicans wallow in their defensive paranoia. It is going to take a spell to hunt down all the culprits. But the important matters have been made abundantly clear by this government-enabled daylight robbery.

It is now obvious to most everyone that something needs to be done about the influence of corporate soft money in our political processes. Let the Republicans point fingers - and rant and rave about Bill Clinton - all they want. We should be very aggressive in passing Campaign Finance Reform at this important time. Let them dare to challenge the need for such legislation.

Editorial from:  

In Washington, the word "investigation" is essentially synonymous with the word "scandal". So when Congress began to investigate the collapse of Enron last week, the political establishment leaped to the hyperventilated conclusion that this constituted the first major scandal of the Bush administration. But then, when little evidence surfaced that the White House had acted to prevent Enron from imploding, the Beltway leaped to the opposite conclusion: This is not a political scandal at all.

Actually, Enron's failure is a political scandal - but in a different way than such things are conventionally defined...

By: Frederick H. Winterberg III  

While reading today's news, I wondered for the thousandth time why so many people have been unable to see through the lame facade that is George Bush. The press keeps beating the drum about what a great leader he has become, even though he has done absolutely nothing to show he deserves such praise. I began to tick off the qualities and attributes that make up a true leader, and then looked at George W. Bush to see how he measured up. And I am sure none of you reading this will be surprised at what I found...

"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, free press, freedom of worship & assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."

- Justice Robert Jackson

By: Tally Briggs - Actress at Large  

Most people (not all!), who come from money, and a wealthy family, or who have been lucky enough to never see their parents struggle working three jobs, or were blessed enough to land a great job that's in no danger of disappearing, think anyone who wants a job can just 'go get one' because they've never had a problem with finding work, or work that pays enough to make ends meet.

Lucky them.

Most have also never, ever gone without money, or had their children go without medical care, food or shelter. They've never known the humiliation of applying for unemployment, or using food stamps at the grocery store, or had anyone close to them suffer through such stressful indignities. These people have no clue what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck, much less be over 40 and have no retirement whatsoever because they're barely managing to pay the rent.

"One would like to hear from President Bush, regarding Enron's executives, the sort of anger he expressed over the possibility that the crybaby Secret Service agent whose behavior caused an American Airlines pilot to bar him from a flight might have been a victim of illegitimate profiling.

Instead, we have heard Bush's slippery - Clintonian, actually - assertion that Enron's CEO, Ken Lay, 'was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994' for governor. Well, yes, but no. Lay contributed to Richards. And he contributed much more to Bush."

- George Will

By: David Callahan  

The emerging story of Enron's collapse is about an abuse of corporate power. Top Enron executives were allowed to sell off hundreds of millions of dollars of the doomed company's stock before it turned worthless - at which point employees and most shareholders took devastating losses. Federal and state investigators are now focusing on possible criminal misconduct, yet the more interesting question is whether Enron's collapse will undermine public trust in business.

In the last century, Americans' trust in major financial and Wall Street institutions has gyrated considerably. These shifts have been accompanied by larger changes in American politics: public trust in American business tends to determine how much Americans look to the federal government to regulate corporate behavior. It may also influence young people's desire to work in the business world, as opposed to pursuing other livelihoods like education, government service or medicine.

By: Paul Krugman  

Four years ago, as Asia struggled with an economic crisis, many observers blamed "crony capitalism". Wealthy businessmen in Asia didn't bother to tell investors the truth about their assets, their liabilities or their profits; the aura of invincibility that came from their political connections was enough. Only when a financial crisis came along did people take a hard look at their businesses, which promptly collapsed.

Does this sound familiar?

By: William Rivers Pitt  

Some time just before January 7^th, 2002, an asteroid capable of pulverizing a good-sized nation flashed through the void, passing perilously close to Earth. Had it struck our planet, the impact would have had global consequences. The energy of the strike would have been equivalent to the explosion of a number of large atomic weapons. From the media perspective, it would have been the biggest story since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

At some point in the next six months, a small, darkened corner of George W. Bush's consciousness will wish the thing had hit us. The apocalypse he and his fundamentalist buddies have been waiting for would have been at hand, and a number of potentially calamitous questions about to be put to his administration would have been avoided.

"Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

- Samuel Johnson

By: Mark W. Brown  

CollegeDudeNews has recently acquired an exclusive insider document from an anonymous source at the White House who has asked to be identified only as "Token Black". It is what appears to be the first draft of White House Resident George W. Bush Jr.'s State of the Union Address. CDN has attempted to verify the authenticity of the document as it seems unlikely that Bush would take such an initiative. However, these efforts netted inconclusive results. We have transcribed the document and the attached note as accurately as possible to allow our readers to make their own judgment. Here at CollegeDudeNews, we report, you decide.

By: Marcy Gordohn  

The Big Five accounting firm said it was firing the lead Enron auditing partner, David B. Duncan, and placing Enron auditors Thomas H. Bauer, Debra A. Cash and Roger D. Willard on administrative leave.

Partners removed from the Houston office are D. Stephen Goddard Jr., Michael M. Lowther, Gary B. Goolsby and Michael C. Odom.

"I think what those of us in the administration knew [Enron] was {shrugs} public property. Everyone knew from Enron's disclosures they were struggling. Uh, we didn't know more than that. The company had a duty to inform its shareholders and employees about things that were going on inside the company. That's not a federal government responsibility..."

- Secretary of Treasury Paul H. O'Neill, appearing on Fox News Sunday (1/13/01)

By: Pete Yost  

In a pair of e-mails to his employees in August, the chairman of now-bankrupt Enron touted the company's stock and declared that the energy trader giant's growth "has never been more certain".

"Our performance has never been stronger; our business model has never been more robust... We have the finest organization in American business today", Ken Lay said in an Aug. 14 e-mail just two months before Enron's long-hidden financial problems surfaced.

In an Aug. 27 e-mail, Lay announced the details of an employee stock option program which spoke of "a significantly higher price" for Enron stock in the future. Selling for $37 a share in August, Enron stock now sells for 68¢. The stock was at $83 a share a year ago.

Site content © 2001-2002 J. Mekus - - except wherein noted.
All rights reserved.