Answers

I don't agree with "The fuse that wouldn't light." While it is true that some Democrats can be mentioned in connection with Enron, (e.g. Robert Rubin), the scandal mainly involves Republicans.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2002

I disagree, Peter. From what I have heard so far, the scandal mostly involves democrats from the last administration. That's why it's so ludicrous (to me) that the democrats are pursuing this.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2002

Today i heard that , gee, I can't remember his name right now, old age I guess, the dude that ran with Gore for president. He got over 250,000 dollars last year from Enron and refuses to recluse himself from the investigation.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2002

Lieberman. Yes, that's one of the democrats.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2002

According to Newsweek (Jan. 21 issue) Lieberman received $2000 in the early 90s from the company.

Brooks, I must respectfully disagree with you.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2002

Not sure which part you disagree with. Lieberman ran with Gore. I did see that $2K reference in Newsweek this evening.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2002

Brooks, what I disagree with is that the scandal mainly involved Democrats. Certainly Enron did a lot of business with the Clinton Administration. It would have done a lot of business with any Administration from '92-2000, which happened to be the Clinton Administration. But I don't know if it was at all scandalous. Dereg in PA actually worked very well. But the absolute rape of California occurred after, the horrendous laxity in regulating was pushed through by Phil Gramm as chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and I could go on and on.

Anyone who knows my political viewpoint knows how I despise the spin of the Clinton Administration. But the Republicans are spinning this one to beat the band.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2002

Search the Net on "Enron AND India" and look at THAT little scandal that Clinton facilitated. Also, go to Lucianne.com and use the search feature there on "Enron." Should get a ton of links to media reports over the last 72 hours.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

USAToday

01/16/2002 - Updated 09:59 PM ET Vile Enron-Bush ties? Prove it

By Ben Stein

My famous very distant relation, Gertrude Stein, is famous for saying of her childhood home, Oakland, "When you get there, there's no there there."

Her words come powerfully to mind right now as the media outrage about the Enron scandal and the Bush administration mounts. The powers that be in medialand already have brought charges and found the entire administration guilty of major-league influence peddling, corruption and insider trading, and are trumpeting it in banner headlines.

The problem is, there is simply no evidence at all thus far, not any, that anyone in the Bush administration did anything wrong in the Enron matter.

To be very sure, plenty of evil took place in and around Enron. The company's executives deceived the public about the earnings and financial value of their company. They victimized their own employee-stockholders while they sold out for hundreds of millions of dollars before the company collapsed. And what is far worse, it looks as if a major national accounting firm, the once mighty Arthur Andersen, concealed from the world the true state of affairs at Enron instead of reporting it, as was its duty.

This is bad stuff, and there will and should be civil and criminal trials. But in all of the welter of charges of Bush-administration complicity, there is not one shred of a hint thus far that anyone in the Bush administration took a bribe to do anything for Enron, or that anyone on the Bush team traded stock illegally based on inside information, or was in any way guiltily involved in the fraud at Enron.

No evidence of favors

Karl Rove, a high White House official, had a small amount of Enron stock, which he sold before the company collapsed. This has raised eyebrows. Yet it was only a few months ago that critics were hounding him and other officials for not selling their stock fast enough. No one has even alleged that Rove was tipped off about the coming fall of Enron.

Larry Lindsey, a White House economics wonk, was an adviser to Enron before he entered the government. So what? People in private business hire advisers, and Lindsey is a capable man. His work was done long before the collapse, and no one has even alleged that he had any role at all in the fraud.

The head of Enron, Kenneth Lay, called two Cabinet members to ask for help staving off bankruptcy. Again, so what? Lay was head of an immense firm. Heads of big companies call officials in the government all of the time. No favors were given or even alleged.

Enron gave campaign contributions of some size to the Bush campaign and to its inaugural committee. Yet again, so what? It is not illegal to take contributions, and there has been no claim that those who got the contributions (including many Democrats) in any way facilitated what occurred.

Witch hunting again

By the way, almost all of the apparent acts of black-magic accounting and bogus-earnings claims took place while Bill Clinton was president. It was in the Bush administration's time that Enron fell apart, not when it flourished. In other words, the whole thing so far is a witch hunt as far as the Bush administration is concerned. The bad acts that took place happened at Enron headquarters in Texas and at Arthur Andersen all over the country. So far, we know of no acts by the federal government except to promise a timely investigation, which must and should happen.

To tar the Bush team with allegations of corruption, or securities fraud, when nothing at all has happened to even insinuate that such conduct happened is plain old smear tactics. It's not pretty, and it's unseemly, especially in wartime.

If something comes out to connect the Bush people with this business disaster, go after them hammer and tong. But for now, with zero evidence behind the finger-pointing, the critics should just get off Bush's back.

Ben Stein is a writer, actor and host of Comedy Central's Turn Ben Stein On and Win Ben Stein's Money. He also is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Peter, I'm unlikely to follow the Enron situation closely enough to develop a sufficient grasp of who may have been doing what in this affair, but there is too much dirt spread around for either side to deserve taking the high road. I may well have mispoke that it was mostly the democrats, but they aren't clean here.

Any better idea who you had in mind for the $250K if it wasn't Gore's running mate?

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

WashTimes

January 17, 2002

The Enron-around

Donald Lambro

House Speaker Sam Rayburn had a simple, hard-and-fast rule about taking campaign contributions from powerful special interests who demanded something in return for their money.

"Anyone who can't drink their booze, eat their food, and take their money, and then vote against them the next day doesn't belong in politics," Mr. Rayburn often lectured his colleagues. Ol' Sam colorfully added one other offering to the list of emoluments that some accepted, but decorum forbids mentioning it here.

The Enron Corp., before its meteoric collapse last year, was a major player in Washington politics and its top executives dispensed millions of dollars in campaign contributions to candidates in both parties, including the Bush campaign. But when a desperate Kenneth Lay, the energy giant's chairman, called two of Mr. Bush's top Cabinet officials to beg them for help to keep the company from plunging into bankruptcy, they turned him down cold.

The stories that have tumbled out of Washington since Mr. Lay's phone calls were first disclosed by the White House last week have focused on his calls, but not so much on the administration's response. And that response was not to intervene.

Mr. Lay, chief executive of what was once the nation's seventh-largest corporation in revenues, was certainly one of the most well-connected business moguls in America. And he made a lot of phone calls to powerful people in and out of government to help him save a company that had engaged in legally questionable practices of outside partnerships to hide its mounting debt from investors and auditors.

Last October, when a credit agency was about to give the energy giant's bonds a failing score, Mr. Lay called Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, asking for help to shore up its credit rating to keep Enron afloat. Mr. Evans was Mr. Bush's campaign chairman, his chief fund-raiser, and one of the president's closest advisers. Mr. Lay also called Peter Fisher, Treasury's undersecretary for finance, as many as six to eight times.

Mr. Lay made every argument he could muster that if Treasury did not step in to help Enron survive, then it would have a disastrous effect on the bond markets and on the big banks that held Enron's debts. With the economy already in recession, a major corporate failure would rattle the financial markets, thus hurting the prospects for an early recovery.

The bottom line in all of this, a testament to the way our free market works, is that Mr. Evans and Mr. O'Neill concluded that Enron's collapse would not result in any negative rippling effects in the economy. While it is not clear whether either of them knew about Enron's questionable practices, they certainly knew Enron was a major contributor to the president's campaign and what the news stories would say if they moved to save a company on the brink of failure.

But Mr. Lay sought out other help, calling on former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to approach Mr. O'Neill on his behalf. Mr. Rubin's calls did not get as much media attention as Mr. Lay's calls to Mr. Bush's top aides, but they should have. Mr. Rubin's bank, Citigroup, held nearly $1 billion in Enron debt. Mr. O'Neill, knowing of Citigroup's heavy exposure, was "unimpressed by Rubin's arguments," a Treasury official told me.

The Democrats, eager to tarnish the Bush administration's squeaky-clean ethical record, are jumping all over this story, trying to play both sides of the issue. First, they questioned the ethical propriety of Mr. Lay's phone calls to top Cabinet officials and raised questions about why they took the calls and did not inform President Bush about them.

It's a silly accusation because a president dealing with a war and recession, who knows how to delegate authority, does not need to be told of every call that comes into his Cabinet. "I'm a big boy. I know how to handle these things," Mr. O'Neill said.

Then, when that charge did not seem to have any traction, Democrats asked why the administration did not move to save Enron to protect its employees from losing all of their retirement savings.

"I am deeply troubled that the White House stood by and let this happen to thousands of families," said California Rep. Henry Waxman, ranking Democrat on a House panel that is investigating Enron.

If Mr. Waxman is looking for someone to pin the blame on, he can go back to the late 1990s, when Enron began hiding its debt and inflating its earnings through multiple outside partnerships. "The government's regulators in those days were Clinton appointees," a Republican strategist told me.

But Bill Clinton and his gang in those days were much too busy greasing the skids for a number of Enron deals, including a power plant in India helped by a $302 million Export-Import Bank loan and easing regulations on nuclear and coal-burning utilities at Enron's request. In one year, 1996, Enron contributed $100,000 to the Democratic Party.

What a change from the previous administration, which extorted money from big contributors in exchange for policy payoffs. The Bush campaign accepted perfectly legal campaign contributions from their supporters at Enron, and then, following Sam Rayburn's ethical dictum, flatly rejected requests for special favors when they came into power.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

From the Lambro article: "If Mr. Waxman is looking for someone to pin the blame on, he can go back to the late 1990s, when Enron began hiding its debt and inflating its earnings through multiple outside partnerships."

Absolutely true and crucial.

Lambro goes on to say " 'The government's regulators in those days were Clinton appointees', a Republican strategist told me."

Also true. but irrelevant.

When Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in December 2000, the Republicans controlled the Senate and Phil Gramm headed the Banking Committee. In a nutshell, this Act confined the purview of both the SEC and CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) so that they did not have oversight on the kinds of hybrid securities that Enron was so deeply involved in.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Looking moodily at what I posted, I see that I left out enough so that the post is an expository mess. I could say I was distracted and in a hurry when I posted, which would be true but still no valid excuse whatever.

Oh well, I can put a positive spin on the matter: I believe it needs a little more work to reach the peak of its perfection.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

Peter, LOL. Can I steal that line? (I'm tired of the Senior Moment excuse...)

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2002

I had a talk with someone who knows more about the Enron mess than I do. I was hoping there would have emerged evidence to back up some of my surmises, but at this point there is a great deal that is unclear.

So I will speculate. I predict (remember, you heard it here first) that the efforts of both political parties, to put most of the blame on the other party, will fail.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002

The investigation and disclosures and finger-pointing will take a while. Looks to me like more nasty corporate news will break during that time. Noone will be impeached over this and most of the firings may already have taken place, so IMO it's mostly a matter of how the voters will feel several months down the line. All sorts of distractions possible by then if we continue to have major bankruptcies.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2002