If Senate Democrats wanted to spend all their time investigating their
opponents like another political party I could name,
the Bush administration provides a growing list of suspects. The spectacular
collapse of the Houston-based Enron Corp., whose stock was valued as high
as $63 billion last spring when California officials accused it of rigging
a phony
"energy crisis" to drain hundreds of millions from that state's electrical
ratepayers, could keep an infinite number
of congressional committees busy indefinitely.
Think of it this way: The Whitewater real estate deal involved a total
investment of about $200,000, roughly the cost
of modest Hillcrest fixer-upper. The Clintons lost $45,000, not quite
enough to buy a new SUV with all the trimmings. Whitewater itself never
cost the taxpayers a dime, but the demise of Jim McDougal's Madison Guaranty
S&L reportedly
cost the taxpayers maybe $65 million. Probing this fathomless mystery
required months of House and Senate hearings,
and kept Kenneth Starr and his sleuths busy for six years, at the end
of which poor, sick McDougal had died in prison,
and all Starr had to show for his trouble was a stained dress and a
ruined reputation.
Now Republicans are reminding us what a real financial scandal looks
like. With the value of its stock plunging from $94
a share to 26 cents, the cost of the Enron implosion is roughly ONE
THOUSAND TIMES greater than McDougal's
finagling. It'll be interesting to see if it receives ten percent of
the attention. Once the seventh largest firm in the Fortune 500,
the self-styled "World's Greatest Company" controlled about 25% of
the nation's natural gas and electrical generating
capacity. It's now filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. As
they love to remind us, they do things big in Texas.
Enron was also George W. Bush's single largest campaign contributor,
ponying up $2 million to the Texas Republican
over the years. Bush and Enron CEO Ken Lay were tight, attending
many a fundraisier and ballgame together. Lay and
his wife, who cashed in stock options worth $150 million at the peak
of the market, have given $793,110 to the GOP
since Daddy Bush was president. Both Presidents Bush, father and son,
turned up for the gala opening of the Houston
Astros' Enron Field last spring. A reader suggests they re-name the
joint "Stock Fraud Park."
That kind of money buys more than access. It also buys power. Back in
1993 when the Washington press turned
McDougal into Public Enemy #1, he was living in a mobile home on Social
Security payments. Not so the Enron crowd.
As Salon's Andrew Leonard points out, the Bush administration is packed
with Enron connections. Top White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey
was an Enron consultant. Secretary of the Army Thomas White and U.S. Trade
representative Robert Zoellick worked for the company. White House political
guru Karl Rove and Vice President
Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby owned huge chunks of the now worthless
stock.
James Baker, who masterminded Bush's post-election operations in Florida,
joined Enron after the first Bush administration.
So did Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher. It was a key 1992 regulatory
ruling by Wendy Gramm, wife of Texas
Sen. Phil Gramm and currently a member of the company's see-no-evil,
hear-no-evil board of directors, that exempted
Enron from federal scrutiny, making it easier for executives to cook
the books, hiding huge speculative debt behind
nonexistent profits-crony capitalism at its worst.
Facing a sure deluge of class action lawsuits from investors and employees-
21,000 retirement pensions have also vanished--Enron has fired its Chief
Financial Officer, its Treasurer and its top lawyer. Arthur Anderson, the
accountancy
firm which signed off on the bookeeping will have much to answer for.
Critics tell the Washington Post that Enron
executives confronted skeptics with a combination of Texas arrogance
and incomprehensible jargon of the kind taught
in the nation's finest business schools. Anybody who suspected funny
business simply didn't understand "derivative
instruments which eliminate the contingent nature of existing restricted
forward contracts."
Meanwhile, President Bush can thank two people that the whole steaming
pile isn't resting on the White House doorstep: Osama bin Laden and California
Gov. Gray Davis. The Enron collapse makes nonsense of GOP cant about deregulation
and unfettered markets. But it won't get much attention during war
time. Davis's threatened probe of Enron's California price-gouging apparently
prevented Bush from naming Enron CEO Ken Lay to the cabinet, widely predicted
at the time. Persuading Californians to conserve electricity also seems
to have precipitated the whole collapse. On a provincial note,
many Arkansans may recall that during the Clinton years, Texans enjoyed
mocking our uniquely corrupt and incestuous
political culture almost as much as certain Washington know-it-alls.
So here's my suggestion: How about if y'all do your
country cousins a great big favor and just shut up for a while?