Evildoers, Inc. (continued)

Laissez-faire everywhere

George Bush Sr.'s infamous Willie Horton commercial accused Michael Dukakis of allowing the prison furlough system to be a revolving door. These days the felons are Enron officials who walked through that revolving door of access into the halls of power and privilege. They went in with sacks of cash; they left with the energy policy written in their favor. Later, they walk back through that same door as George W. Bush's appointees.

Bush proclaimed that his administration was going to "restore dignity to the White House, the people's house." The future president made this announcement as he stood next to an Enron jet Kenneth Lay had lent him for campaign stops around the country. "Kenny Boy," as Bush called him, even supplied cash to finance the Florida recount effort which helped make obsolete the idea of the popular vote. Not only was Lay allowed to choose the new head of the regulatory agency that oversaw Enron, he was also allowed to hand-pick the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt. Pitt is a former lawyer for Arthur Andersen.

Ken Lay and Dick Cheney also go back a few years. Both Enron and Cheney's Halliburton mopped up oil, debris, and millions of dollars cleaning up Kuwait after the Gulf War. Cheney even managed to pick up Halliburton contracts in war-devastated Iraq, sworn enemy of the US. This makes Cheney a felon, of course. But who's paying attention to international law these days?

Cheney and Lay would later team up over the new Houston Astros ballpark. Halliburton got the contract to build it and Enron got its name on the ballpark, much to the chagrin of angry Houston taxpayers who paid for most of the new stadium. Texas governor George W. Bush was able to pull strings for Lay after the latter made another healthy installment in the Bush war chest. See how it all works?

Other valuable players on the Bush-Enron team include Bush top advisor Karl Rove, who had a quarter million dollars invested in Enron. Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's chief economic advisor – why, he's a former advisor at Enron. Robert Zoellick, the Federal Trade Representative, is a former advisor at Enron.

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is a former CEO at Alcoa, the top polluters in Texas and whose lobbying firm, Vinson and Elkins, is currently representing Enron. Incidentally, Vinson and Elkins is currently under investigation by the government for its role in the Enron fiasco. Thomas White, Jr., Bush's Secretary of the Army, is a former vice-chair of Enron Energy. According to Public Citizen, White held stock options worth at least $25 million by the time he signed on with the Bush team.

Finally, there's Wendy Gramm, wife of the Texas senator, who sat on Enron's board and pulled in a cool million since leaving the board last year, just before the proverbial manure hit the fan.

Access of Evil

The Enron debacle has all the makings of another classic Republican conspiracy on par with Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the sheer grandiosity of the ruinous S&L scandal. And let's not forget the shadowy and little known "October Surprise," a notorious election hijacking engineered by none other than ex-CIA spook, George Bush, Sr.

Any one of these scandals make largely manufactured "scandals" like White-water, Travelgate, and even the tawdry Monicagate look like schoolyard trespassings. The kind of economic and political damage wrought by the many faces of "Republicangate" over the last 30 years dwarfs any of the Democrats' best efforts.

Yet Sunday morning pundits and columnists and Wall Street Journal editorials assure us all that George W. Bush is safe from the fallout. He didn't do anything wrong except make friends with the wrong guy. The New York Times' Paul Krugman has managed to report on Enron fallout with a good degree of critical scrutiny and stressed how this calamity is a measure of the sickness within our system. He urges federal campaign finance reform and reminds us how we've allowed our system of checks and balances to be tossed by the wayside as corporate pirates and their political lackeys in government get rich.

Yet, here's a catch: Krugman was on Enron's payroll to the amount of $50,000. The Weekly Standard's William Kristol was on board to the tune of $100,000. National Review columnist Lawrence Kudlow and Sunday Times of London writer Irwin Stelzer were both bought with $50,000.

Why did Enron shell out $250,000 for these top opinion shapers? To serve on an Enron "advisory board" which the writers admit had "no tangible purpose." They never actually did any advising. In fact, the healthy Enron stipend was intended to persuade them to pen the proper words to the public about Enron's business dealings.

Reclamation Nation

New information comes in every day about the fall of Enron, the greatest bankruptcy case in American history. While there is no dearth of coverage in the mainstream press, particularly in business sections, what is troubling is the lack of political perspective by many influential columnists and reporters.

Ken Lay, Enron, Arthur Andersen and much of our barely legitimate White House represent everything that is wrong and broken about American governance. Instead of environmental and workplace protections, the Bush team promoted energy deregulation which caused much of California's electrical grid misery last year. Instead of demanding major corporations to be fiscally and socially responsible, the administration cut them a blank check.

The media must now hold a bright spotlight over the sorry Enron example in order to help thousands of former Enron employees who did nothing wrong see some justice and due compensation. Perhaps we could see Ken Lay and his 29 hoods pay back the hundreds of millions of dollars they robbed from employees and investors. Their profligate greed, irresponsibility, and sheer contempt for the rules of democracy must not go unchastened. And pie-in-the-sky doctrinaire such as "the self-regulating hand of the market," whereby the business world is unencumbered by nuisances like rules and regulations and even taxes, must be exposed for what it really is: a case of crafty foxes guarding the chicken coop.

If the Democrats blow this epic opportunity to strike back at the Republicans – they who spent eight years trying to tear down a Democrat presidency by any means necessary, no matter the cost, and then proceeded to gut as many environmental and business safeguards as could fill their plates – then they simply don't deserve to lead this nation. Another party may very well be standing in the wings, eager to fill in and reclaim the integrity and true potential of this nation.

But without the active input of an well-engaged American electorate and media, this scandal will simply fade away with public ignorance and apathy. If that happens, we deserve the government we have.

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James Sandrolini is a freelance writer in Chicago and a board member of Chicago Media Watch. For more coverage on Enron and deregulation, go to: www.thenation.com, www.michaelmoore.com, www.alternet.org, www.truthout.com, and read Greg Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002).