-Caveat Lector- >From WorkingForChange (URL @ Bottom)
}}}>Begin Dangerous liaisons Arianna Huffington - Arianna Online 01.15.02 - So now we know why the White House has spent the better part of a year fending off congressional efforts to find out who Vice President Cheney met with for input on his Energy Task Force. Turns out the VP and his staff had at least six meetings with representatives from Enron -- including one with Chairman Kenneth Lay -- the last of which occurred just six days before the company revealed that it had vastly overstated its earnings, signaling the beginning of the end for the energy giant. Since the Enron collapse, President Bush has been acting like Ken Lay was just some good ol' boy who also happened to hail from Texas. This new information proves otherwise: that Lay and his company's sizable political contributions had bought what Rep. Henry Waxman has termed "extensive access" to the epicenter of American political power. It's Teapot Dome, the Sequel. During his run for the White House, Bush fought long and hard to convince us that he was a new breed of conservative -- a Compassionate Conservative. But recent events make clear that he is actually the standard bearer of a far more coldhearted breed. Call them the Enron Conservatives. Enron Conservatives are people who use political money and connections as levers to free themselves of all accountability to laws, regulations and responsibility -- even to their own employees. Simply put, they are people who consistently, shamelessly and aggressively put their self-interest above the public interest. And when the lives of others are destroyed in the process, they just look the other way and hope that the law does, too. It probably is too much to expect the Federal Trade Commission to hop on the Enron investigation bandwagon and look into whether Bush violated truth-in- labeling laws during his campaign, when his pledges of compassionate conservatism were stump speech favorites. But it should. Because we've heard precious little of them since Bush took the oath of office. "While many of our citizens prosper," the freshly anointed president said in his inaugural address a year ago, "others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our own country." And those nagging doubts are only aggravated by the behavior of Enron executives who continue to prosper even as thousands watch their jobs -- and their life savings -- disappear. Candidate Bush was so eager to paint himself as a Compassionate Conservative he even dared to impugn the moral supremacy of the free market -- blasphemy in the eyes of his party's doctrinaire right wing. "The invisible hand works many miracles," said Bush during the summer of 1999, evoking Adam Smith's famous paean to market forces, "but it cannot touch the human heart." This simple truth lies at the core of the need for fair and rational government regulation of industry. All too often, after all, the human heart is filled not with goodness, but with greed, selfishness and a desire for profit-at-any-cost. Too bad Bush left this noble idea behind on the campaign trail. Since taking office, the hallmark of his administration has been an unwavering belief in the free market's invisible hand. In the last year, the president and his anti-regulatory appointees have (take a breath): abandoned a campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide; repealed workplace ergonomic rules designed to improve worker safety; propo sed reversing regulations protecting 60 million acres of national forest from logging and road building; and canceled a looming deadline for automakers to develop prototype high-mileage cars. And that's just a partial lis t. Not even the rapacious excesses of the Enron debacle have quelled the drive for deregulation -- or the ardor of Enron Conservatives who champion the cause. Pat Wood, Ken Lay's handpicked choice to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, actually insists that the collapse of Enron "doesn't seem to be tied too much to deregulated energy markets." You know that something is rotten in Washington when the top energy industry regulator i s so unabashedly anti-regulation. Rep. Joe Barton, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, is another Enron Conservative who sees the energy giant's collapse as an aberration, not a smoking gun. Indeed, he dismisses Enron's demise as "an in-house problem" and continues slaving away on a deregulation bill that would make Ken Lay proud. Then there's Lawrence Lindsey, the president's top economic adviser, and a former advisor to Enron, who went so far as to claim that the Enron disaster "is a tribute to American capitalism." And 9-11 was a tribute to Islamic ingenuity. Not that long ago, Bush was vowing to battle domestic suffering with "armies of compassion." Instead, he and his cadre of Enron Conservatives are adding to the carnage. Copyright � 1998-2002 Christabella, Inc. URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=12646 End<{{{ }}}>Begin Print Now! this page was printed from Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0848032.html Encyclopedia Teapot Dome Teapot Dome, in U.S. history, oil reserve scandal that began during the administration of President Harding. In 1921, by executive order of the President, control of naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyo., and at Elk Hills, Calif., was transferred from the Navy Dept. to the Dept. of the Interior. The oil reserves had been set aside for the navy by President Wilson. In 1922, Albert B. Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, leased, without competitive bidding, the Teapot Dome fields to Harry F. Sinclair, an oil operator, and the field at Elk Hills, Calif., to Edward L. Doheny. These transactions became (1922�23) the subject of a Senate investigation conducted by Sen. Thomas J. Walsh. It was found that in 1921, Doheny had lent Fall $100,000, interest-free, and that upon Fall's retirement as Secretary of the Interior (Mar., 1923) Sinclair also �loaned� him a large amount of money. The investigation led to criminal prosecutions. Fall was indicted for conspiracy and for accepting bribes. Convicted of the latter charge, he was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000. In another trial for bribery Doheny and Sinclair were acquitted, although Sinclair was subsequently sentenced to prison for contempt of the Senate and for employing detectives to shadow members of the jury in his case. The oil fields were restored to the U.S. government through a Supreme Court decision in 1927. See M. R. Werner and J. Starr, Teapot Dome (1959); B. Noggle, Teapot Dome (1962). The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright � 1994, 2000, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. � 2001. The Learning Network Inc. All rights reserved End<{{{ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. 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