Ken Lay
Enron's Money Trail In Bush's Texas
Thu Jul 8, 2004 15:52
64.140.158.250

Enron's Money Trail In Bush's Texas
http://www.apfn.org/enron/enrongate.htm

Enron's Money Trail In Bush's Texas
For a healthy taste of the kind of info the best foundation money can buy, check out TPJ's report on the Enron Corp.'s political money trail, at www.tpj.org/Lobby_Watch/enron.html . The report catalogs the major Texas recipients of Enron's largesse (George W. Bush, Gov. Rick Perry, John Cornyn, the state Supreme Court, Carole Keeton Rylander, etc.) and sketches some of the main purposes of all that political generosity. Some telling excerpts:

"The chief mourners of Enron's demise -- apart from the investors and workers that it deceived -- are the legions of lobbyists and politicians whom Enron fed. Enron spent $10.2 million in the last two election cycles (1997 through 2000) influencing Washington politicians. During this period, Enron moved $1,003,273 to Texas PACs and state candidates, as well as spending up to $4.8 million on 89 Texas lobby contracts. ..." Bush's greatest gubernatorial gifts to Enron were deregulating state electric markets in 1999, indulging "grandfathered air polluters," and promoting laws that protect businesses from lawsuits.

The next-largest chunk of Enron money went to Gov. Perry, the report states. Perry appointed former Enron de Mexico President Mario Max Yzaguirre as Public Utility Commission chair in June 2001. Was it sheer coincidence, then, that, according to reports, Enron CEO Ken Lay gave Perry a $25,000 campaign contribution the very next day? Now, in the midst of controversy over Perry's choice to fill the PUC post, two Democrats on the Senate Nominations Committee have urged the governor to reconsider Yzaguirre's appointment. The committee has postponed considering his confirmation because Perry named his choice after this year's legislative session. As things stand, Yzaguirre doesn't appear to be a shoe-in for the job, especially in light of new developments regarding his and Perry's withholding of information about Yzaguirre's past.

Additionally, there are concerns that Yzaguirre's past work with a private utility would present a conflict of interest in his role as head of a state regulatory commission. Said TPJ's Craig McDonald in a statement: "Both the governor and attorney general have benefited greatly from Enron's political contributions. [Cornyn and Perry] both have a conflict of interest with respect to any Enron-Yzaguirre cover-up in the governor's office." He called on either the Travis County district attorney or the Legislature to investigate the matter. --Michael King.



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Under Cover Of War: Will Bush Skate On Enron?
by Michelangelo Signorile


Under cover of war, and with the help of a pathetically soft media, Bush and company’s slippery maneuvers continue. Caving in to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott and other Republican Neanderthals, Bush has broken his promise to give $20 billion in aid to New York, and has eluded much criticism for it. He conveniently pulled out of the ABM treaty with Russia on the same day that the White House released the newest bin Laden tape, which of course dominated the media. And as the fallout from the Enron collapse continues, the Bush administration may be teetering on the edge of a scandal that makes Whitewater look like a bake sale. But so far, you wouldn’t know it.

Much thanks for that needs to go to the Tom Brokaws of the world, so enamored with themselves, so blindly patriotic, so wrapped up in Greatest Generation propaganda, they’ve given Bush a pass on just about everything. Maybe it’s the influence of the higher-ups who own these media companies–the execs up at GE and Disney/Capital Cities and AOL Time Warner–who know what’s best for themselves as the recession comes into sharper focus and they look to the administration’s future corporate-friendly policies and corporate welfare schemes. Or maybe nobody wants to take on a president with such high poll numbers–if the pollsters are right I’m probably going to be stoned on the street, Taliban-style, just for writing this column.

Whatever it is, the war coverage seems to have strained the media’s resources to the point where much else is being left by the wayside. Last week it was announced that a staggering three-quarters of all HIV cases in the U.S. are resistant to drugs to fight the disease, a story with dire epidemiological implications and one that would have created front-page headlines in the past. The New York Times didn’t cover it at all. Even O.J. mania can’t jar the media crowd: Simpson’s house was raided in a drug-smuggling investigation, but the story was mostly relegated to the annoying ticker on the bottom of your tv screen. O.J. chase scenes are small potatoes when you’re hunting down Osama bin Laden.

The home video of bin Laden and his murderous friends sitting around talking about the terrorist attacks was played so many times that I started memorizing it–in Arabic. I can’t recall how often I heard tv pundits or read newspaper columnists opining that the tape proved just how evil bin Laden is, as if we didn’t already know how evil he is. If anything, the tape showed that these people are rank amateurs when it comes to murder and mayhem. The Mafia are professional killers–you better believe they don’t make home videos of themselves sitting around giggling about their latest hit. Bin Laden and his pals come off like a bunch of frat guys talking about some prank they pulled off that turned out to be even cooler than they thought it would be. The tape doesn’t further show how evil they are as much as it shows how absolutely stupid they are.

Though the war has wound down and the Taliban is for all practical purposes conquered, rather than give us more coverage of some of the pressing domestic concerns that have been neglected, the corporate media–who’s sunk a lot of dough into sending correspondents and news teams to the region–is intent to soak this thing dry, like addicts who can’t get enough. CNN has been focused ad nauseam on the "American Taliban," a dumb kid from the California suburbs who is being treated like he’s the next Jonathan Pollard. You get the feeling that editors and news producers are sitting around praying for the invasion of Iraq, something to really sink their teeth into during the postholiday news lull.

Meanwhile, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and other figures behind Bush are easily pushing through their shadowy agendas and covering up their shams. Right-wingers accused Clinton of using military strikes on rogue states as a way to distract from Whitewater, the Lewinsky affair and every other scandal that emerged. But there’s no question that Bush and company are doing precisely that, successfully using this war to divert attention from the Enron disaster. Thousands of Enron employees watched their retirement accounts dry up as the stock of Enron tumbled, due partially to top executives’ risky ventures, bringing on the largest corporate collapse in American history. Just before filing for Chapter 11, Enron gave $55 million in "retention incentives" to 500 high-level employees.

The Bush administration’s fingerprints have been all over this mess–and it is this aspect of the Enron collapse that the media has on the back burner. Bush’s good friend, ex-Montana Gov. Mark Racicot–just installed by Bush as Republican National Committee chairman–worked for Enron (and will continue his job as a corporate lobbyist while he is RNC chairman). White House adviser Karl Rove owned up to $250,000 in Enron stock–which he sold back when it was $50 a share (it’s now 36 cents a share). Enron’s CEO, Kenneth Lay, is a buddy of Bush’s, and he and other Enron execs donated almost $2 million to Bush’s campaigns over the last eight years. Lay and other Enron officials were also in on meetings Cheney held to map out energy policy. Rove was in on those meetings too, which occurred back when he was still a shareholder. It’s hard to believe that people high up in the Bush administration weren’t privy to indications that Enron was in trouble well before the rest of us found out–and well before it was known to the company’s employee-shareholders, many of whom even took their Christmas bonuses in company stock, now worth practically nothing.

Cheney now refuses to disclose what contact he had with Enron executives in recent months and won’t make public the transcripts of any meetings of his energy task force, which included meetings with Enron executives. Why not release the documents if there’s nothing incriminating? Wasn’t that the question that the right always threw at Bill Clinton, saying that if you have nothing to hide, then come clean? Maybe the chickens are coming home to roost. It would be nice if the media cracked this wide open in 2002, though I’m not holding my breath.


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Looking For The Bush-Enron Smoking Gun
"[Texas] Observer readers are familiar with much of the ground [Charles] Lewis covers in The Buying of the President 2000 [Avon Press], including accounts of how he:

made $15 million off the Texas Rangers deal with the help of $135 million in corporate welfare from Arlington taxpayers;
took $4.5 million from the business interests clamoring for "tort reform" and rewarded them with laws that make it harder to sue irresponsible businesses; and
invited oil industry executives to develop a do-nothing public relations response to the "grandfathered" air pollution problem in Texas.

The Observer has not yet covered the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) scandal, in which huge sums of money flow back and forth between Bush and his top donors. Tom Hicks (of the Dallas corporate takeover firm Hicks Muse Tate & Furst) made Bush a millionaire fifteen times over by buying the Texas Rangers. Hicks and his brother Steven contributed $146,000 to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns; Steven is a Bush fundraising "Pioneer," who has raised at least $100,000 for Bush's presidential race. Tom Hicks long urged U.T. to move part of its $13 billion endowment into riskier investments. In 1990, for example, he tried to get it to invest in his takeover of Healthco, a dental supply company that went bankrupt three years later. In 1995, the Texas Senate confirmed Tom Hicks as a U.T. regent, just as Bush was moving into the Governor's Mansion. Hicks hired lobbyists to push a bill -- signed into law by Bush -- that created UTIMCO. With Hicks as its first chair, UTIMCO began to dole out lucrative contracts to private investment firms to manage portions of the endowment. Many of these firms had ties to Hicks and Bush:

"The Carlyle Group. The elder George Bush reportedly has an equity stake in this firm, which is run by leading members of his presidential administration.
Maverick Capital Fund. Its investors include Bush Pioneer Charles Wyly and his brother Sam, who gave $210,273 to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns.
Bass Brothers Enterprises. Bass family interests funneled $215,000 to Bush and financed a Bahraini drilling contract won by a small oil exploration company where Bush served as a director.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. This corporate buyout firm would soon join Hicks, Muse in a $1.5 billion takeover of Regal Cinemas.
Evercore Partners. Evercore joined Hicks, Muse in a $900 million buyout of television stations soon after its UTIMCO deal.
American Securities Partners. The company won a UTIMCO contract soon after selling eleven radio stations to Hicks, Muse."



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Congressman Waxman On Enrongate

BUZZFLASH: Today, we're calling specifically to ask you why you have an Enron tipline on your website and what sort of information that you're looking for.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: We have a tipline on Enron on our website because we're asking people to give us information that they may have as we take on our own investigation of Enron; especially as we investigate Enron, not only for its financial dealings, but also for the larger political connections that this corporation and its leaders have had with the Bush administration. What has happened with Enron is quite breathtaking. This was the seventh-largest corporation in the country. And it collapsed while its executives were able to walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars. Their employees and their investors were left in the rubble.

The fact of the matter is that Enron and Ken Lay, who was the Chief Executive Officer of Enron, had an extraordinary amount of influence and access to the Bush Administration. Lay was called a close friend by both the President and the Vice President. When the Vice President chaired an Energy Task Force, Ken Lay had an opportunity to meet privately with the Vice President and to have a great deal of influence in their recommendations. We know he met one-on-one with Karl Rove. We also know that many people in this administration came right out of Enron and went to the administration. So we are seeking more information as we look at all these times that the Enron corporation had contact with the Bush Administration, how they handled their own financial affairs, how they came to the situation they are in, which I think is an outrage. Their executives had inside information about the fragile condition of this corporation, were able to bail themselves out, but left everybody else in shambles.

BUZZFLASH: You sent a letter on December 4, which is also accessible on your website, to the Vice President of the United States, a four-page letter, asking for more information about Enron and particularly, among other things, their role in the deliberation process by which the Vice President came up with an energy policy for the administration. Have you received an answer from the Vice President?

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: We have not yet received an answer from the Vice President. I'm disappointed that he hasn't responded, yet. I'm even more disappointed that when he did respond to earlier requests to make the information public about how his Energy Task Force operated, he refused to do so. We had asked the General Accounting Office, which is a non-partisan watchdog for the Congress, to do a report about this Energy Task Force. They, by the way, did a similar report on the Clinton Health Task Force in the last administration. And when they sought information from the Clinton Administration, they received everything that there was to receive. The position that the Vice President took when he was requested to furnish information about his Energy Task Force by the General Accounting Office was that he just refused to give it to them. The General Accounting Offices issued what is called a demand letter. And it's quite an extraordinary move on their part. To send it to the Vice President is the first time in their history they've ever sent such a letter to any Vice President. They had stonewalling by the Administration, continued stonewalling by the Administration. And they're contemplating filing a lawsuit to force the Administration to give them this information.

Now I think that the Vice President ought to make public or certainly give to the General Accounting Office everything that went on with the Energy Task Force. With Enron's collapse, it's even more important that we know at least what went on with Enron. Because it may well be that the Enron executives misrepresented their corporation's situation in asking for policy recommendations from the Administration. And that could also be that they told the Administration that they needed certain legislative or executive actions because they were on the brink of bankruptcy. Either way, this is not the kind of thing that ought to be kept secret, kept secret by the Bush Administration. The President has often talked about how he believes in transparency in government. I certainly believe that there is a fundamental principle of a

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