-Caveat Lector-
http://www.truthout.com/01.27A.JVB.got.2.do.htm
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What's Bush got to do..... got to do with it?
by Jennifer Van Bergen
t r u t h o u t | January 26, 2002
"Where the offence is, let the great axe fall."
- William Shakespeare
There are many, many questions being raised by the Enron debacle.
Who was responsible? Who should be held liable? Who knew what and
when? Who did what and when?
But perhaps the most important question is: What did the White House
know?
What did the President know and to what degree was he involved?
Involved in the decisions in Enron's favor, or in those which ignored
the coming collapse. Involved in the biggest theft of american's
pocketbooks in histo
ry.
And what were the Executive's constitutional obligations in the face of that knowledge?
The question can also be asked this way: How could the White House NOT have known
what was happening with Enron? How could it NOT have been involved? After all, it
seems that Enron was very deeply involved with Bush Ad
ministration energy policy- making.
We know that Ken Lay funded several Bush family campaigns, not the least one being
G.W.'s presidential campaign. The Bush Administration has been, in return, a big
supporter of the Enron deregulation agenda.
Other facts have been surfacing which establish links between Enron's lobbying and the
current Administration's policy decisions. The minority staff of the House Committee
on Government Reform recently prepared what Robe
rt Scheer of the LA Times called a "devastating analysis of 17 major concessions made
to Enron" by the Administration.
Representative Henry A. Waxman wrote several days ago: "Because all the facts are not
yet in, congressional Democrats have carefully refrained from alleging that the White
House took specific actions because of Enron's l
obbying."
If the White House did not take specific actions in response to Enron's lobbying, it
certainly danced a nice waltz to the same tune.
If the White House did take actions at the behest of Enron, well then, wouldn't that
be a violation of the President's Constitutional duty to "take care that the laws be
faithfully executed"? Isn't the President supposed
to be working for us, the american people, not Enron?
If the Administration did not take appropriate actions to inform americans of the
impending collapse, didn't it violate the rights of all americans to know?
And if the White House did not take action to protect the american people from the
impending debacle, Bush not only violated his constitutional duty, but his
presidential oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constit
ution."
Let's take a breath.
We haven't even gotten to the question of which Administration officials -- not
excluding Bush -- might have owned and sold Enron stock prior to the company's
collapse.
None of these suggestions should surprise us. G.W.'s manner of business, after all,
is and always has been identical to Enron's.
Last year, according to the congressional testiomy of Lynn E. Turner, Former Chief
Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Enron violated SEC rules
at least four times.
In the same vein, Bush Jr. violated securities laws at least four times in the late
1980s and early 1990s, according to the Center for Public Integrity, which drew on an
internal 1991 SEC report.
Enron executives cashed out $1 billion in stocks last October while Enron employees
were in a 401(k) lock-down, raising strong questions of insider trading.
In June 1990, a week before Harken Energy stock plummeted, George W. Bush sold the
bulk of his stock in that company for $848,000. Time Magazine later reported that
insider trading was suspected.
In December 2001, Enron filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, costing taxpayers to lose
billions.
If G.W. didn't file for bankruptcy himself, his brothers did. Neil Bush was a
principal in the 1988 collapse of Silverado Banking in Denver, which cost taxpayers $1
billion. Jeb Bush and a partner defaulted on a $4.5 mi
llion loan from a Florida S & L in 1988, contributing to the default of that S & L,
costing taxpayers $285 million.
This is business as usual in the Bush group. Birds of a feather flock together.
Understand that the Bush family has done business like this for decades, reaching back
to Prescott Bush's illegal business activities durin
g World War II with the Nazi war factory, I.G. Farben.
At the least, these facts show that Bush Jr. has a high tolerance for those who flout
the law. At most, they point to something far more disturbing.
Here's a brief chronology worth thinking about.
Bush now denies knowing Ken Lay before Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994.
Well, maybe so, but Bush was lobbying for Enron years before that. As early as 1988,
Bush Jr. was trying to get Argentina to sign a natu
ral gas pipeline deal with Enron.
Bush says that Lay "was a supporter of Ann Richards" during his gubernatorial run.
But Lay gave Bush three times the amount he donated to the Democratic incumbent Bush
was trying to unseat.
Enron obtained big favors from the first Bush Administration under Bush Sr.'s energy
plan and the 1992 Energy Act, which forced utility companies to carry Enron's
electricity.
Enron was Bush Jr.'s biggest campaign contributor. Enron officials met repeatedly
with Cheney's energy task force. Enron has maintained close contacts with the Bush
administration over the past year and obtained just ab
out everything it has asked for, from no price caps during the California energy
plunder to the Lay-approved replacement of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
chairman. Enron received $254 million tax rebate from la
st year's tax bill.
The list goes on and on.
There is simply no way Bush has clean hands. The Center for Public Intregrity has
turned up fourteen executive branch officials who unloaded Enron stock. Presumably
they did so before going to Washington.
Bush is so closely intertwined with Enron personally and professionally, and has been
for so many years; Bush and Lay are both energy magnates; their sleezy business
practices, from unethical to illegal -- as well as th
eir mantra of deregulation -- mirror each other so closely, they could be clones; and
there are so many physical ties between Enron and the White House, from those secret
meetings with Cheney to Bush's calls for Enron an
d Lay's calls to the White House, that to turn a blind eye to this dark road would be
equivalent to inviting bin Laden to babysit our children.
Jennifer Van Bergen is the t r u t h o u t Managing Editor and a
contributing writer;
� : t r u t h o u t 2001
End<{{{
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