He Lied, They Lie

By claiming Enron backed Richards in 1994, Putsch deliberately lied to the American people.

By: Bryan Zepp Jamieson

According to the Houston Chronicle, a newspaper not noted for its willingness to cross swords with the Bush clan, Putsch said in an interview last week, "He [Enron CEO Kenneth Lay] was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994, [a]nd she did name him the head of the Governor's Business Council, and I decided to leave him in place just for the sake of continuity. And that's when I first got to know Ken and worked with Ken, and he supported my candidacy"

Gosh, that's heartwarming. Just the image of Putsch welcoming a political foe who he has vanquished on the field of battle, bringing him in to the center of things in the best interests of the people, of the state of Texas, of America, just warms the old cockles of the heart. Put differences behind, stand shoulder to shoulder, march forward as brave captains of industry, uniting in the greater cause that is America! What a guy!

It's such a great story that it's rather a pity that Putsch just plain lied. The fact of the matter is that while Kenneth Lay, and Enron, did donate to Ann Richard's campaign, by a huge margin they also donated to Putsch's campaign. Lay himself said, in the same Kronk article, " I was very close to George W. and had a lot of respect for him, had watched him over the years, particularly with reference to dealing with his father when his father was in the White House and some of the things he did to work for his father, and so [I] did support him...".

In fact, Lay spent at least one night in the Lincoln bedroom while Daddy was president, and of course, they had a lot of common interests, being both big noises in the energy industry.

According to the Chronicle article, in the 1994 campaign, "Texans for Public Justice... said Richards received $12,500 from Enron sources during the 1994 election cycle. But contributions from Enron's political committee and executives totaled $146,500 for Bush, including $47,500 directly from Lay and his wife, Linda".

Again according to the Houston Chronicle, the White House stuck to this lie, claiming that some of Enron's donations occurred during the primaries, which they think apparently shouldn't count as campaign donations. Never mind that Putsch ran unopposed in the primaries.

You would give $25,000 to a candidate who was running unopposed when you were supporting his expected general election candidate, wouldn't you? You wouldn't?

It's going to be fun watching people who sent years yammering about Clinton's semi-truth about "not having sexual relations with that woman" go dead silent about a blunt, unequivocal lie about something considerably more important than a blow job. As one Usenet poster put it, he could say, "I did not have a financial relationship with Mr... with that man".

Of course, the Republicans are doing what they always do when cornered. They are lying and creating as much misdirection as they can. The fax machines have been cranking out report after report about how Democrat "A" got $1,500 for the campaign, Democrat "B" got $12,500, all the way through Democrat "Z", who got $1,000. Of course, the "press releases" never mention that this particular list of funds is dwarfed by the amount ($300,000) that Enron, Enron's president, and Lay jointly donated to the Putsch inaugural ball. Mind you, that's just the inaugural ball. They infused Republicans with over TWO MILLION DOLLARS during the 2000 election cycle. For every dollar they gave the Democrats in that campaign, they gave eight to the Republicans. They supported Republicans by a 9 to 1 margin over the past year since then.

The whore media – talk radio, and the right wing cable networks, are faithfully echoing this. The whorish and pitiable CNN is reporting the Enron catastrophe as being "as much a Democratic problem as it is a Republican one", and they keep reminding people that there is no smoking gun linking Putsch with the criminality of Enron's actions.

There is no smoking gun. (Disclaimer: it's entirely possible that I might look at this tomorrow, or a week from now, or a year from now, and go, "Hoo, BOY, if I knew THEN what I know NOW...".) Indeed, if circumstances were a bit different, I might well believe that Putsch was out of the loop. Cheney and Rove and the others might have looked over at the fool, picking his nose and poking the buttons on the telephone, and realized that there was no earthly benefit to be had by telling him what was going on, and not telling him would at least give him plausible deniability and prevent him from blurting out something really stupid, like "Uncle Kenny told me that if I asked Ashcroft to leave him alone, I would get a pony!".

But Putsch and "Kenny-boy" go way back. Lay donated to Putsch's failed congressional run in 1978, and has been the leading single contributor to Putsch over his political lifetime. Mother Jones ran a big story on the cooperative efforts of Putsch and Enron in Argentina back in 1999, when both Enron and Argentina were not major embarrassments to the laissez-faire crowd. As one of the Weasels observed, "I wonder why everyone always writes he [Lay] was a campaign contributor and never says anything about how Bush begged him to be Secretary of the Treasury and how he said he thought Enron was a model for how Social Security should be run". Putsch and Lay are old buddies who have had a lot of intertwined political and business interests. It's pretty hard to imagine that Putsch knew nothing, nothing at all.

One of the most amusing spins is the notion that if Enron had so much influence, why did they collapse? Phil Gramm pushed through legislation in December 2000 referred to in one N.Y. Times article as "one-eyed-bearded-man-with-a-limp legislation that essentially exempted Enron the rules that govern other commodity traders". The writer of that December 11, 2001 piece, Paul Krugman, went on to note that Wendy Gramm, Phil Gramm's wife, sat on the board of directors - and audit committee - of Enron. Both Senator Gramm and his wife might be facing criminal charges over that.

Why did it collapse? Because despite all the help it got from Gramm and the rest of the GOP, it was so corrupt, and had gone so far in its misrepresentation of its profits, that it had to collapse.

Their main auditing firm, Arthur Anderson, is rapidly developing a reputation for being willing to misrepresent a firm's finances to its investors, which is the opposite of its intended role. It apparently colluded in the misrepresentation of Enron's profits, and thus kept the scam going for several extra months. It's a pity that criminals in Arthur Anderson deliberately destroyed thousands of files in the recent past. I wonder whose names appeared on them. It would take enormous pressure to make an established and respected auditing firm commit professional suicide like that. Nobody's ever going to use them again. Ever. (Note: the president of the firm was a "Pioneer", ie: someone who donated over $100K to the Putsch campaign).

Another Big Spin from the GOP is that Clinton was involved, having played golf with Lay. Therefore they should leave poor little Putsch alone. That doesn't make much sense, but it follows the pattern of the GOP and their whore media to throw as much as they can, as hard as they can, and hope some of it sticks.

Nobody knows were the Enron scandal will go, and what, if any, political careers would be finished by it. At the very least, it explains the sudden decisions to retire made by several large Republicans lately, including, of course, the estimable Senator Gramm, lifelong Welfare Queen and general snake.

But the Republicans have been using the pseudo authority of smug certainty to rule since they staged their coup in December of 2000, ranging from "get over it" to the pretense that anyone who questions Putsch in any way "during wartime" is a traitor.

It's fun watching the smug certainty fall from their faces, as they realize that one of their little pet projects finally went too far, and woke up the American public.