Cheryl Seal Writes: "Thanks to unbridled NeoCon power in Congress, since 1994, the banking industry has become little more than a glorified loan shark network, preying the most relentlessly on the poorest Americans. In 1993, no one would have dreamed that the cost for an overdraft would hit $35.00, that the federal government would ever allow credit card companies to charge 23% or more in interest, or that interest on a savings account would drop to BELOW 1%! Today, Americans are being eaten alive by fees and a credit system that can only be described as an extortion racket. It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration and its Congressional minions have worked hand in glove with the industry to keep it that way." PART I of a FIVE Part Series

The list of crimes perpetrated against the American people and human ethics in general by Tom Delay, one of Bush's chief Congressional thugs (er, allies) is long indeed. So long that just summarizing his primary offenses over the past four years takes up an entire lengthy article. Some examples: Sent thugs to Miami to disrupt the 2000 Presidential election recount, took thousands in bribes from Enron, Ran a racketeering operation called the Republican Majority Issues Commission; used his own daughter once to launder campaign funds; sold "favors dispensing" meetings to top Bush donors; threatened fellow congressfolk to ram through Medicare Reform ripoff; used a children's charity to launder campaign funds; ran a boiler room fundraising operation that scammed first small business owners, then doctors....and the list goes on and on.

Democrat John Edwards compared President Bush to former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay on Tuesday and predicted Bush "is going to be fired" by voters for the way he has run the country. Lay, a Bush friend and campaign contributor, resigned under pressure after the giant energy company's collapse and has pleaded innocent to charges of fraud, conspiracy and false statements to banks.."I think he believes that he's Ken Lay and America is his Enron. The truth of the matter is that what happens when a CEO runs a company the way that George Bush has run America, they get fired. "And that's exactly what's going to happen. George Bush is going to be fired by the American people." YOU GO, J.E.!!

WhiteHouseforsale.org: "Among the newly named Pioneers are five individuals who ranked among Bush's top fundraisers in 2000, including Tom Hicks, the former vice chairman of Clear Channel and who bought the Texas Rangers from Bush. Other new Pioneer notables include former Kansas Gov. Bill Graves, head of the American Trucking Association, and Stephen Sandherr, CEO of the Associated General Contractors of America, whose wife used to be Enron's top lobbyist. U.S. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) is the lone new Ranger, although another nine previously identified 2004 Pioneers have been elevated to Ranger status." How defining of all the Bush admin. stands for! Bush media minions, pork-fed contractors, and a guy who is supposed to represent truckers - but throws his support to the guy who caused gas prices to skyrocket!

Cheryl Seal writes: "The U.S. media has failed America and failed it miserably. It has systematically blocked, twisted, and slanted the truth. It is largely responsible for the fact that American soldiers are now dying at the rate of two per day in sweltering land where they are not wanted. It is responsible for the fact that the worst U.S. administration in history has a stranglehold over the nation. It is responsible for all that has followed from helping that administration into office: trashed environmental regulations, ruined international relationships, rampant greed and accelerating corruption among corporations.... If the media had told the truth over the past decade - the whole truth - and when the truth was in doubt actually sought to find what the truth was - America today would be a far different, far finer place. But the coverups and "coverage-for-cash" policy continues and has intensified..."

"George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned. The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President's mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately... Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay. 'Keep those motherf**kers away from me,' he screamed at an aide backstage. 'If you can't, I'll find someone who can.' Bush's mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing concern among White House aides over the resident's wide mood swings and obscene outbursts " Too bad the sources remain anonymous.

Tom Delay has run boiler room scams bilking doctors and small business owners out of large donations in exchange for promised - but nonexistent - positions on advisory boards. He has been a key recipient of Ken Lay's dirty Enron money. He has funneled money through every possible channel, from the blatantly illegal to the borderline-legal. He has even used a children's charity as a money funnel! Yet the House 'Ethics" committee (and we use the term loosely) says they need time to decide whether or not to address complaints about Delay. No Repugs spent time "pondering" whether or not to sic the FBI on Sandy Berger for accidentally taking some files home from the National Archive! But, of course, at the heart of the committee's "uncertainty" is that FOUR out of FIVE Ethics committee members have taken cash from one of Delay's boerderline-to-not-so-legal funds. Also, Delay is known to threaten people who cross him.

We're supposed to get all choked up that Bush is giving back $27,000 in donations received in the past year from Assad Kalasho, a businessman from West Bloomfield, Mich. because it was discovered that Kalasho did business with Saddam in 2000, while Saddam was under sanctions. But Kalasho was hardly alone - Halliburton did more business with Saddam between 1998 and 2000 than any other corporation. And, if Bush was having real pangs of conscience he'd give back the total of $1 million received from Enron, directly from Ken Lay, and from Ken Lay fundraising. Don't hold your breath, though! http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/08/bush.lay.ap/

"Fox News has been a major media force in parroting various unsubstantiated claims to buttress the Bush White House. On tax cuts, for instance, Fox News anchor Brian Wilson claimed on 3/5/04 that Americans were 'seeing the benefits of [the Bush] tax cuts that's in the system,' even though Fox News's own poll from a few months earlier showed 61% of Americans believed the tax cuts had not helped them. On energy policy, despite the White House meeting with Enron CEO Ken Lay during the energy crisis, Fox anchor Brit Hume said on 1/16/02 that Enron 'is not a scandal about the Bush energy policy.' Even though as a presidential candidate Bush said he was planning to propose private school vouchers (and has since reiterated that position), Fox correspondent Jim Angle claimed on 1/15/01 that calling it a pro-voucher plan 'is a mischaracterization, obviously, of his education plan... See a backgrounder for more Fox distortions."

"In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year. DeLay requested that the new donation come from 'a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives,' with the understanding that it would be partly spent on 'the redistricting effort in Texas,' said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson. The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts." Indict DeLay Now!

Greg Palast writes, "When the feds swoop down and cuff racketeers, they also load the vans with all the perp's ill-gotten gains: stacks of cash, BMWs, whatever. Their associates have to cough up the goodies too: lady friends must give up their diamond rocks... But there seems to be special treatment afforded those who loaded up on the 'bennies' of Ken Lay's crimes. If the G-men don't know where the tainted loot is cached, try this address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Ask for George or Dick. Ken Lay and his Enron team are the Number One political career donors to George W. Bush. Mr. Lay and his Mrs., with no money to pay back bilked creditors, still managed to personally put up $100,000 for George's inaugural Ball plus $793,110 for personal donations to Republicans. Lay's Enron team dropped $4.2 million into the party that let Enron party. OK now, Mr. President, give it back - the millions stuffed in the pockets of the Republican campaign kitty stolen from his Enron retirees."

Robert Bryce writes, "Lay could dish the dirt on several important topics: the Karl Rove-brokered push that resulted in Enron paying Christian conservative turned super-lobbyist Ralph Reed $300,000; Lay's dealings with secretary of state turned super-lobbyist James Baker; why Enron hired Ed Gillespie, the man who now heads the Republican National Committee; the reason for Lay's decision to allow the Bushes to use Enron's fleet of airplanes as their own; what happened in those meetings with Dick Cheney and his energy task force; and what really happened with the California energy crisis." Now wouldn't that be fun?

BBC: "Federal prosecutors have been trying for over two years to prove that corruption at Enron went to the top. If found guilty of the criminal charges, Mr Lay could go to jail for many years. He was also charged on Thursday with fraud and insider trading in a civil lawsuit filed by the US financial regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission The criminal charges listed in the 65-page indictment relate to the fraud at Enron, and there may be additional civil charges over Mr Lay's share dealings. Prosecutors indicted the 62-year-old former Enron chairman on Wednesday, but papers detailing the charges stayed sealed until Thursday's court appearance, at which photography was banned. The case has political significance since Mr Lay and George W Bush are known to be close friends." Wanna know Kenny Boy's lame protest? That he's only being prosecuted because he's Dubya's friend and it's all Andrew Fastow's fault anyway. LOL!

William Rivers Pitt writes: "Ken Lay gave the White House a list of his personal recommendations for key federal energy posts. Lay pushed his list of suggested members of the federal energy regulatory commission in the spring of 2001. Two of the people he suggested - Pat Wood and Nora Brownell - were appointed by Bush to positions that would directly affect the fate and fortunes of Enron... The infamous secret energy policy meetings run by Vice President Dick Cheney, the substance of which he still refuses to reveal, were riddled with Enron officials and Enron priorities. It has been speculated that one of the reasons Cheney refuses to divulge the elements of those meetings is that Enron was wielding the drafting pen as Bush's energy policy was created. It has also been speculated that the secrecy surrounding these meetings is due to the fact that the not-yet-begun Iraq war, and the resulting petroleum/pipeline profits to be reaped, played a large role in the discussions."

The timing of Lay's indictment couldn't be worse for Bush. Even if coincidental, it makes it seem like a media-attention-grabbing ploy - worse, a lame and way, way after the fact effort by the justice dept. to APPEAR to be doing something for real about corporate crime.Just as Edward's bright, fresh face appears on TV screens across the nation, the specter of Lay also appears, a devastating comparison that forces Americans to remember that Lay was one of Bush's top donors in 2000 and, some say, a top name on the secret Cheney energy task force list. To follow this Bush debacle will be Martha Stewart's sentencing - which will remind Americans how swiftly Bush justice went after a liberal $275,000 offender, and how SLOW it was to pursue a Bushie multi-BILLION-dollar scammer. Sometimes the ole karmic wheel comes around with a giant crash and merciless timing!

Reuters: "Former Enron Corp.Chairman Ken Lay is expected to be indicted next week over his role in the scandal that rocked corporate America, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. While a last-minute delay was still possible, federal authorities involved with the U.S. Justice Department's Enron Task Force expect a federal grand jury next week will return an indictment of Lay, the sources said... Lay's lawyer, Michael Ramsey, told Reuters the government lacked the evidence to win an indictment from a grand jury, and said an internal dispute at the Justice Department had triggered the recent leaks about impending charges. 'I don't think there's going to be an indictment. I think the Task Force is leaking in order to put pressure on Washington' to seek charges, he said. Ramsey said he met with Enron Task Force officials last week to discuss media reports that an indictment would be handed down soon, but he declined to comment on the specifics of the meeting."

Check out the new anti-bush video game thats a hot sensation on the internet. You play as powerful political voices such as Howard Stern, Michael Moore, John Edwards, John Kerry, Christopher Reeve, Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, and many more! You have to battle huge monsters that represent members of the Bush Cabinet and travel to exotic Enron tax escapes like bermuda, and war zones like Iraq. All the while you're entertained and fascinated by powerful information concerning the administration's bungling of domestic and foreign policy. It's an incredibly informative and hilariously entertaining critique of the current presidential administration. (Broadband connection recommended).

The list of crimes perpetrated against the American people and human ethics in general by Tom Delay is long indeed. So long that just summarizing his primary offenses over the past four years takes up an entire lengthy article. Some examples: Sent thugs to Miami to disrupt the 2000 Presidential election recount, took thousands in bribes from Enron, Ran a racketeering operation called the Republican Majority Issues Commission; used his own daughter once to launder campaign funds; sold "favors dispensing" meetings to top Bush donors; threatened fellow congressfolk to ram through Medicare Reform ripoff; used a children's charity to launder campaign funds; ran a boiler room fundraising operation that scammed first small business owners, then doctors....and the list goes on and on.

"'The brewing irritation between a judge and the lawyer for the wife of former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow flared up Wednesday,' the Associated Press reports, 'after Lea Fastow was assigned to serve time at an urban high-rise rather than the minimum-security women's prison camp she wanted.' The judge was already peeved with Lea Fastow's lawyer. Last month, the lawyer sent a confidential court report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons with a letter that noted her family hoped she would serve her year in prison at the camp in Bryan. What a shame - no posh prison terms for Enron crooks."

On audiotapes obtained by CBS News, Enron traders can be heard "gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis." Officials with the Snohomish Public Utility District near Seattle... say this is the smoking gun they've hoped for. More from the tapes: "They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron creepo. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?" "Yeah, grandma Millie, man" "Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour." The tapes link Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling to these callous manipulation schemes. The Enron creeps were rooting for Bush in the 2000 election: "It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy," says one slimebag. These worms were sure Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices. Which, of course, he did.

Once again, Bush and his corporate cronies in and out of Congress are trying to push through the despicable Bush/Cheney energy bill. This bill will not only FAIL to solve any energy problems for the US, it would increase pollution dramatically, cost taxpayers billions and lead to a steady increase in pollution-related health problems and deaths. US PIRG says, "This bill would hand out billions in taxpayer dollars to big polluters, allow more smog pollution in America's dirtiest cities, repeal laws designed to prevent future Enron-style market manipulations, and let oil companies off the hook for contaminating our groundwater with MTBE, a possible human carcinogen." PIRG has put together a fantastic one-stop resource on this bill, including info on what you can do to stop its passage.

LA Times reports, "Enron Corp. employees spoke of 'stealing' up to $2 million a day from California during the 2000-01 energy crisis and suggested that their market-gaming ploys would be presented to top management, possibly including Jeffrey K. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay, according to documents released Monday. The evidence of apparent scheming - in one recorded conversation, traders brag about taking money from 'Grandma Millie' in California - is in a filing by a utility in Snohomish County, Wash. The municipal power unit north of Seattle wants refunds for alleged overcharges made by Enron during the electricity market meltdown. The utility obtained transcripts of routinely recorded trader discussions from the Justice Department, which seized them in its Enron investigation."

Global Exchange: "Halliburton, the leading recipient of Iraq reconstruction contracts, has surpassed Enron as the most unpatriotic corporation in America, says a report to be released on May 18 by CorpWatch, Global Exchange, and several other watchdog groups. From the scandals surrounding Halliburton's contracts in Iraq to unsettled accounting fraud and bribery charges associated with Halliburton's operations under then-CEO Dick Cheney, as well as its long-standing practice of doing business with states involved in terrorism and serious human rights abuses around the world, Halliburton has a track record of violating many of the values that Americans hold dear - from our belief in human rights and democracy to our insistence on transparency and accountability. The report, 'Houston: We Have a Problem,' documents Halliburton's blatant use of high-level political connections and campaign contributions to win contracts that allow it to profit from the war on terrorism."

Greg Palast remains consistently a year or more ahead of the headlines, breaking critical stories others fear to investigate For example, how Enron swindled its way into an energy monopoly. Or how the Bush family stole the election in Florida with illegal voter purges, registrations collecting dust, millions of missing ballots, and the Bush Brothers' plan for the "Floridation" of our elections called the "Help America Vote Act." Recently, Palast got his hands on the secret State Department "Iraq Strategy" document - the blueprint for a free-market Disneyland of, by and for Washington insiders and lobbyists - outlining the real reasons our troops are putting their lives on the line in Iraq. Palast told Mike Hersh he felt compelled to release a new Expanded Election Edition of NY Times Best Seller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy because, "Sewage keeps pouring out of the pipe." It "gets newer - more urgent and topical everyday." For more info. see www.GregPalast.com.

Reuters: "Bush signed into law on Saturday a measure aimed at saving U.S. companies more than $80 billion in pension contributions over two years, days before many firms make quarterly payments." That's $3.5 BILLION per month! Bush is bound to tout this act as a show of his "concern" for US workers. But all this shell out of taxpayer billions does is bail out irresponsible CEOs, giving them the greenlight to continue to play highrollers with employees pension funds. At the same time, the payoff is designed to exclude and therefore punish companies that employ union workers. Gee, maybe if Enron had gotten such a nice fat bailout, its CEOs would never have been caught gambling with employee/stockholder funds.

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights reveals that the current spike in gas prices has nothing to do with "markets" and everything to do with industry manipulation. "The tip-off is that the increased costs to motorists are turning out to be pure profit for Big Oil, not reflective of real production costs. By strategically cutting the number of state refineries almost by half since deregulation of gasoline in 1981, the refiners have created conditions under which price spikes occur regularly. Inventories are kept low so that when there is a problem at a refinery the market anticipates a shortage and sends the speculative price of gasoline sky-high. Refiners make a killing because it doesn't cost them any more to produce the gasoline, which they can charge more for." Add to that Bush's manipulation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and you have about 250 million Americans being taken for a ride.

Unbelievable! While even the judge in the Martha Stewart case says the prosecutors are stretching for a case, the same justice dept. has so far REFUSED to seriously go after Ken Lay. "Former employees said Thursday they'd like to see prosecutors bring charges against Lay, too, But legal experts and those who worked for Lay agree it is unlikely Skilling will toss aside his innocent plea, cooperate with prosecutors and help them pursue a case against Lay. " In short, the big-time criminals - Skilling, Lay and their protector Bush- are all sticking together like fungus under a rotten log. Yet Bush has the unabashed hypocrisy to accuse Kerry of having corporate ties? Funny, we don't hear Kerry pleading Ken Lay or Halliburton's case!

"Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron chief executive who resigned months before the company shattered in scandal, surrendered Thursday and pleaded innocent to three dozen federal charges in the company's collapse. The 42-count superseding indictment unsealed Thursday accused Skilling and Richard Causey, Enron Corp.'s former chief accounting officer, of participating in widespread schemes to mislead government regulators and investors about the company's earnings. Causey was indicted a month ago and is free on $500,000 bond... Prosecutors said he faced a maximum total of 325 years in prison and over $80 million in fines if convicted of all the counts. Another court appearance for Skilling was set for March 11. Flanked by a pair of lawyers, Skilling turned himself in at the Houston FBI offices just before daybreak. About 15 minutes later, his hands behind him in cuffs, he was placed in a car for the trip to the federal courthouse in downtown Houston." Will Kenny Boy be next?

Why are we hearing only about Martha Stewart and Jeffrey Skilling when Bush friend and "science advisor" John Mendelsohn was involved in both the Imclone AND Enron debacles?! Mendelsohn, developer of the drug Erbitux, failed to inform cancer patients in the drug trials that he had a huge financial stake in the drug. While on Imclone's board, he was also on Enron's board, where he was charged with guaranteeing the integrity of the company's financial statements and partnership arrangements. "The corporate leaders he was supposed to be overseeing were dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the doctor's cancer center while they were looting hundreds of millions from the stockholders and employees. It was a good deal for the looters."

This October interview with Sam Waksal, former head of Imclone points up the injustice of the Ashcroft/Bush "justice" system. Waksal's crime was detected within weeks of the Enron debacle. Yet Waksal, a liberal, has already been tried, convicted, and sentenced to 7 years in jail for selling off $5 million in stock, while Bush buddy Ken Lay, who stole billions from tens of thousands of Enron employees and stockholders, has yet to even be charged. And, while Waksal admits his guilt without shifting blame, Lay, Skilling, et al. continue to lie and evade the truth. The contrast between these two cases says it all about Bush and his network of hardened corporate criminals.

The Financial Times reports: "US federal prosecutors plan to bring criminal charges against Jeffrey Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron, as the probe finally reaches the very top of the Houston-based energy group. Details of the charges could be revealed by next Thursday, people close to the case said, though they warned that delays are possible... Investigators have shown particular interest in Mr Skilling's involvement with Enron's broadband division, where several ex-executives have already been charged with securities fraud. They have scrutinised a conference in January 2001 when Mr Skilling made bold predictions about plans to transmit content directly to customers although - it is alleged - Enron executives knew the technology was not operational, and that a crucial partnership with the Blockbuster video chain had unravelled. Mr Skilling may also be vulnerable over financial and accounting irregularities that arose from the 2001 California energy crisis."

"Early in the Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney met secretly with Enron-type corporation moguls to draft the new national energy policy, which favors oil, gas and coal owners. Cheney hid the names of his 'task force' advisers... In December, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Three weeks later, Cheney and ultraconservative Justice Antonin Scalia flew in a government jet to Louisiana, where special government cars for them had been flown down from Washington earlier...Various newspapers and some Democrats in Congress said Scalia should recuse himself from the Cheney case. Scalia refused. He told The Los Angeles Times: 'I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.' That's laughable. Even without the duck-shooting trip, his vote in the Cheney case is fairly predictable." Not to mention that Scalia is one of the Felonious Five behind the criminally partisan Bush v. Gore decision.

From WSJ: "Federal officials are exploring whether there are grounds to bring criminal charges against former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay regarding what he knew about the energy company's festering, yet still largely secret, financial problems in the months before its collapse, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported. The critical period under examination began in August 2001, when Mr. Lay's longtime lieutenant, Jeffrey Skilling, unexpectedly quit as Enron's chief executive after only six months in the top job. Mr. Lay resumed the chief executive post that he had held for some 15 years and remained there through the company's collapse in the fall of 2001 and eventual bankruptcy-court filing that December. Federal officials are comparing what Mr. Lay knew in those final months to his upbeat public remarks about the company's condition, said people familiar with the probe." Yeah! Make Ken do the perp walk!

G. W. Bush, along with his Daddy and Ronald Reagan have enjoyed the services of their "own personal law firm": O'Melveney and Myers. The controller of the US budget, Joshua Bolten, was drawn from the O'&M pool. Michael Powell is also a former O&M man. O&M's CEO Arthur B. Culvahouse was Reagan and Bush I's chief legal advisor for everything from Iran Contra to devising ways to increase presidential war powers. Culvahouse is now part of an obscure arm of Homeland Security known as "The Working Group for Strengthening Federal Response." (http://www.homelandsec.org/WGstrength/bios/culvahouse.htm) Now O&M lawyers have gotten yet another corporate crook off the hook with a slap on the wrist: Lloyd Silverstein, of Computer Associates. O&M also represented Enron crook Jeffrey Skillings. Btw - O&M's profits have soared since 2001. What an amazing coincidence! (http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m5072/8_24/91090422/p1/article.jhtml)

Kevin Phillips has penned an earth-shaking expose' of the Bush Family, "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush." At long last, the truth about the Bush family's oily criminal history is presented in a high-profile biography that sets the record straight for the mainstream. No longer will the Bushes be able to portray themselves as America's "kinder, gentler", patriotic, Christian family. The lid has finally been ripped off, exposing the truth of how this criminal dynasty insinuated itself into the halls of power, through its corrupt partnerships with the intelligence community, the arms industry, high finance -- and the Religious Right. It's all here -- Prescott and George Herbert Walker's financing of the Nazis, Iran-Contra, Iraqgate, the October Surprise, the Bush boys' slimy dealings with Saudis and Contras, BCCI, Enron -- and so much more! A must read! Buy a copy today -- and give copies especially to your Republican "friends"!

AP: "Former Enron finance chief Andrew S. Fastow and his wife have agreed to plead guilty for their roles in a massive accounting scandal that brought down the energy giant in 2001, sources told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an impasse that erupted last week over a judge's refusal to give Lea Fastow only a five-month prison sentence had been resolved. Fastow will become the highest ranking executive to plead guilty in the federal government's criminal investigation into the Enron collapse. It wasn't immediately clear whether Fastow's negotiated plea involves an agreement to help the government develop cases against Enron's former top executives, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Neither Lay nor Skilling has been charged; both maintain their innocence." Two years later -- and still no charges against Kenny Boy and Skilling?

AP: "A federal judge in Houston has rejected a plea agreement for the wife of former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow. Ex-Enron assistant treasurer Lea Fastow is accused of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and filing false tax returns. A judge threw out the deal that would have given her a five-month prison term. Husband Andrew Fastow, the former finance chief of the energy giant, is facing 98 counts of fraud, money laundering, insider trading and related charges. He's also reportedly trying to put together a plea agreement. The Fastows had pleaded innocent. Meanwhile, Enron's former chief accounting officer is expected to surrender tomorrow to face charges over the company's collapse. A source close to the case told The Associated Press of plans for Richard Causey to turn himself in."

In a revealing look at how the US military action in Afghanistan was motivated by something other than terrorism concerns, the Enron debacle quickly exposed that the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States was only a propitious pretext to occupy the country and extract its badly needed energy resources. As late as April 2001, the United States government had ordered Enron and Unocal to begin destroying records of its negotiations with the Taliban in order to minimise the exposure of the fact that the war in Afghanistan had been planned long before the terrorist attacks.

Nomi Prins writes: "Scrounging up money for anything Iraq-related has been the Bush administration's most consistent economic policy. And it's been ridiculously easy ever since Congress blessed the first 'emergency package' defense budget addendum in April. Fast forward eight months, and the latest $87-billion injection that went predominantly into the Iraq black hole puts the total sum of 'liberation and reconstruction' funds at more than a quarter- trillion dollars, roughly the combined annual revenue of IBM and General Electric... Perhaps it's no surprise that complete financial statements on Iraq haven't been disclosed. After all, we're dealing with the same crew that hasn't indicted Enron's Ken Lay or WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers. But, by not producing comprehensive and transparent records, the Bush administration is shirking a major domestic and international oversight responsibility."

A.C. Thompson and James A. Thompson write for In These Times: "The Bush administration is quietly seeking to roll back oversight of the banking business and the scandal-riddled securities market through two pending proposals--a planned rule change for the banking industry and a house bill--that diminish the ability of states to police banks and stock brokers. The plans are worrisome because the federal government has been largely MIA when it comes to cracking down on corporate crooks in the post-Enron era. While the feds have grabbed headlines with a few high-profile indictments, state law enforcers--most notably New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer--are taking a far more active role in purging Wall Street of con artists and thieves."

Cheryl Seal cites examples of Bush "sound science": "His 'stem cell expert' was John Mendelsohn, a former Enron executive who was investigated for failing to inform patients participating in a colon cancer drug trial (ImClone) that he had a major financial stake in the outcome; his pick for head of the FDA advisory panel that review's women's reproductive health drugs is David Hager, who recommends Scripture readings and prayers for everything from headache to premenstrual syndrome...meanwhile, Michael Wetzman, chief of pediatrics at Rochester General Hospital and author of many publications on lead poisoning in children, was removed from the CDC's panel on childhood lead poisoning and replaced with a doctor with strong ties to the lead industry."

"It began when Dick Cheney refused to provide details of his energy task force meetings with energy companies, particularly top Enron officials. Then, came Bush's November 2001 executive order allowing the administration or former presidents to order executive branch documents withheld from the public. [The order] shields from public view documents from Bush's father's term in office that could be awkward now. The suspicion was that the executive order was designed to protect several current White House officials who served in the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations from embarrassment -specifically, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, and Mitch Daniels, Jr. Each official had brushes with controversial policies in earlier administrations - not the least of which was the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration. The elder Bush, then-Vice President, maintained he was 'out of the loop.' Documents in the Reagan archives might contradict that version of history."

"Indeed his new book, Roaring Nineties, sets out what he sees as the multiple policy errors that sowed the 'seeds of destruction' in the American economy... 'Dealing with the deficit will absorb the US political economy for years to come. We're back to the Reagan era. The trade deficit has the underlying problem of what will happen when foreigners decide to stop funding the US deficit. On the private side there is a huge gap in private pension funds. Any other economy would be under water.' The scandals over conflicts of interest in accounting and banking were predictable fruits of 'market fundamentalism', he says. 'The image is Adam Smith. The reality is Enron.' But the really bad news is to come, he argues. 'What is likely to happen is more of a languishing malaise, with very weak job recovery. China has joined the WTO and is now the manufacturing engine of the world. Manufacturing is now down to 14 per cent of the economy. Those last few per cent are going to be very painful.'"

"Bush unveiled his new fall line of spin tactics yesterday, designed to hide the truth from what promises to be an ugly winter for his administration. Check out his latest assessment of the escalating violence in Iraq. 'The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react... the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they can't stand the thought of a free society.' So rest easy Wolfowitz, the rocket attack that nearly claimed your life earlier this week was a sign of progress! How comforting it must be to witness first-hand the successes of your post-war rebuilding plans. Scott McClellan echoed the resident's comments: 'Our military leaders have said that some of these attacks have become more sophisticated, but what you're really seeing is that the more progress we make, the more desperate these killers become.'"

"Former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay is asserting his constitutional right against self-incrimination in a court fight against a Securities and Exchange Commission request for documents it wants for its probe of the bankrupt energy trader. Lay's lawyers said in an Oct. 21 federal court filing that they were concerned the items sought were 'personal rather than corporate' and the SEC would not guarantee Lay immunity from prosecution over the documents. Lay has been ordered to appear at a Nov. 7 hearing before U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to answer the SEC's complaint that he is withholding documents. Lawyers for Lay said their client has already produced more than 23,000 pages of documents for the SEC's probe, but was withholding 870 pages, asserting his Fifth Amendment right. The SEC said last month it was looking at whether Lay knew of, or was involved in, fraudulent activity at Enron." Hey Kenny Boy - are you protecting Bush or Schwarzenegger?

Since Bush allowed them free access to the taxpayer-filled trough, the Wall Street piggies are now circling the White House, eagerly awaiting the next swilling. Goodies in the trough have included huge tax breaks for the greediest (i.e. richest), protecting the most ruthless plunderers of Americans (Enron, Worldcom, et al) from any serious consequences of what would, in another era, be hanging crimes, and promoting the shipment of US jobs to Third World nations. The Wall Street piggies say they're just being "patriotic." Yeah, right. We hear that was Benedict Arnold's argument, too!

"At his meeting with reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett News Service, Howard Dean fired a string of zingers at Resident Bush: 'His view of life starts at about $250,000 a year and goes up.' 'I think the p/resident's philosophy is that if you're rich, you deserve it, and if you're poor, you deserve it.' 'I want repeal of the $87 billion worth of tax cuts that he gave away to Ken Lay and his friends at Enron (to finance the administration's budget request for Iraq). This is insane, what he's doing. I'm not going to let him run a war on a credit card.' 'Conducting the foreign policy of the United States (with North Korea) based on the petulance of the chief executive is not the right way to conduct foreign policy.' We are 'never going to be able to regain the credibility the United States had as a moral beacon in the world as long as this man is in the White House.'" It sounds like USA Today is in shock at Dean's truthtelling- you GO, Howard!

Jason Leopold writes: "Did bankrupt energy company Enron Corp. influence a controversial decision federal energy regulators made in November 2000, saying California wasn't entitled to more than $3 billion in refunds from power companies who allegedly gamed the state's wholesale electricity market? About two dozen of the more than one million Enron emails dealing with California's energy crisis, recently released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), appear to make a strong case that the one-time high-flying energy company had some role in influencing the FERC decision three years ago... Utilities in California lost billions of dollars buying high-cost power on the wholesale market and selling it at a loss under a state mandated rate freeze. The issue is of particular importance now because California's newly elected Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has indicated through aides that he would try to quickly settle a number of the lawsuits the state has pending."

AP: "California governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger must explain the substance of his private May 2001 meeting with Enron chief Ken Lay, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights wrote in a letter to Schwarzenegger Tuesday. FTCR, which was the state's most vocal critic of Governor Gray Davis' handling of the energy crisis, said that if the governor-elect did not recount the meeting by the time of his inauguration, the group would ask state lawmakers to open an investigation to uncover the substance of the meeting, including any information that might further the state's efforts to return billions of dollars that taxpayers and consumers overpaid for electricity during the energy crisis."

To: Ken Lay and Steve Kean
From: Enron governmental affairs executives Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson
Date: June 1, 2001
Subject: The President's Dinner, A Congressional Salute Honoring President Bush and Vice President Cheney, June 7, 2001

With the assistance of... Tom DeLay, we were able to apply our previously contributed soft money toward this dinner. Consequently, we will be credited as giving $250,000 to this event, even though we are being asked to give only $50,000 in new soft money... Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has requested that Enron give her some credit for raising the money.

...In addition, ...Tom DeLay has asked Enron to contribute $100,000 to his leadership committee, ARMPAC, through a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives. ARMPAC funds will be used to assist other House Members as well as the redistricting effort in Texas. We will be meeting this request over the course of this calendar year.

The Daily Enron: "George W. Bush has his own action figure, so isn't it time for Dick Cheney to have one as well? Doctors' orders would prohibit too much action from the Cheney doll, so maybe it could just talk when you pull its string instead. While most toys of this variety usually feature several wacky sayings, the Cheney doll would have to be sold at a discount: Lately the vice president has only been capable of parrot-like repetition of one message. The vice president was at it again this morning, delivering a speech that once again highlights the supposed link between Iraq and the events of September 11 that even Resident Bush has recently repudiated: 'Iraq has become the central front in the war on terror. Our mission in Iraq is a great undertaking and part of a larger mission that the United States accepted now more than two years ago. Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything for this country.'"

"The most shocking development within the Bush White House has been the public rise of intra-administration politics... But the reorganization of administrative duties in Iraq have cast the Bush team's former golden boy (er, old man) Rumsfeld out into the cold when it was revealed that Condoleezza Rice and the NSC will be assuming duties once handled poorly by the Defense Dept... Oh, and they excluded him from all meetings about it. So did Rumsfeld react with the dignity of a man with vast political experience who'd seen these types of power plays on countless occasions? Not at all. On Tuesday he was hit with questions about the shakeup by the European press [US reporters were busy feeding him grapes]. After parrying several questions, Rumsfeld unloaded on a German reporter who pressed the issue: 'I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?' Classy. Rumsfeld later admitted that...he was forced to learn about [the policy change] through a short memo from Rice."

"Check out what Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staffer who dealt with the crisis in Israel had to say about Bush's efforts, and see if it sounds slightly familiar: 'The administration has laid out a transformative agenda for the region, and achieving a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was supposed to be an important part of that vision. In pursuing such a solution, the administration has never been willing to do what it needed to on the ground. They always flinched when they ran into difficulties.' Hmm, announcing a huge plan with tons of political fanfare, but then never following up with the promised money or requisite attention? Why, the Bush team only pulled that strategy with No Child Left Behind, the African AIDS Initiative, AmeriCorps funding, and the Clear Skies Initiative. Five proposals ranging from foreign aid to the environment doesn't necessarily constitute a pattern, does it? (Yes, Mr. President, it does.)"

Greg Palast reports, "Thirty-four pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off. Here's the story Arnold doesn't want you to hear. The biggest single threat to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year under California's unique Civil Code provision 17200, the 'Unfair Business Practices Act.' This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California electricity and gas customers." But if Arnold becomes governor, he will sabotage the case and screw the taxpayers. Defeat ALL Republicans!

"Internal Enron e-mails confirm that Arnold Schwarzenegger was among a small group of executives who met with Lay at the posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel in May of 2001, in the midst of California's energy crisis. The meeting with Enron occurred ten days after rolling blackouts darkened California for two consecutive days; Schwarzenegger has previously said that he does not remember such a meeting. 'You don't meet with America's most well-known corporate crook in the middle of California's biggest financial disaster and not remember,' said FTCR's senior consumer advocate Douglas Heller. 'Mr. Schwarzenegger should come clean about what happened at that meeting and if he shares Ken Lay's views on energy regulation.'"

With Karl Rove under attack, the Daily Enron has compiled Rove's most insidious political work into one great column, such as: "While on assignment, Esquire reporter Ron Suskind famously overheard Rove screaming into a White House phone, 'Tell him we'll f*** him. We'll f*** him like nobody ever has." Do we need any more proof that Rove is behind the vicious attacks on Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson?

"As with Enron, [Houston's] school system has kept a set of books that has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Some high schools reported absolutely no - that's zero - dropouts. That these schools were in impoverished areas made the figures either preposterous or a miracle. The school system - not to mention George Bush - preferred to see a miracle. The so-called Texas Miracle is precisely why Rod Paige was named secretary of education. He was Houston's school superintendent before joining the Bush administration, and was chosen, the president said, because Paige knew that 'accountability is the true foundation of education reform.' Paige had the numbers. But some of the numbers were bogus. Worse, they were plain unbelievable. Schools simply concocted numbers to please headquarters. Dropout rates went down to zero; every high school student was heading off to college, even those in schools where most of the students failed to take the SATs or, when they did, scored dismally."

The Oregonian: "An emerging whodunit in Central Oregon hovers amid the smoke draping the east side of the Cascade Range. Can it be pure coincidence, locals are asking, that two wildfires sprang up in view of the spot where Resident Bush planned to promote his plan to thin forests for wildfire prevention? And that they both appeared just as his plans emerged? 'I think everyone in the community here is wondering that,' said Judy Wattier, who works at the KOA Campground just east of Sisters, where business is in the doldrums because of the blazes that have covered almost 40,000 acres in the nearby Deschutes National Forest. 'Everyone I've mentioned it to can talk about it for hours.' 'Typically the Secret Service does all kinds of aerial surveillance before the resident comes in,' said Don Ferguson, an information officer for what have become known as the B&B complex fires. 'They pretty much know the location of every tree.'" Stranger than Enron conspiring to create a phony energy crisis?

Houston Chronicle reports: "Indicted ex-Enron Treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. is negotiating a plea bargain and cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors. Glisan, one of the highest ranking Enron officials before he was fired for his involvement in a side-deal, is charged with two dozen counts of money laundering, fraud and conspiracy. His charges are part of a 109-count indictment against Glisan, former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and former Enron executive Dan Boyle. 'When Glisan flips, this could be a bloodbath,' said one lawyer familiar with the Enron investigation. Glisan was installed as Enron treasurer in 2000 and was known as a protege of both Fastow and ex-CEO Jeff Skilling."

The Daily Enron: "Halliburton shareholders...have witnessed a 50% rise in the company's stock over the past year. Halliburton also has a $300 million deal with the Navy, and a $183 million contract from military events in Afghanistan. The lucrative deals are just the most extreme examples of a trend toward privatization in government policy... The Defense Secretary who spearheaded the move toward outsourcing? Dick Cheney.... 'At the end of the day, neither these companies nor their employees are bound by military justice, and it is up to them whether to show up or not. The result is that there have been delays in setting up showers for soldiers, getting them cooked meals and so on,' said P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar. While thousands of US soldiers are taking cold showers and wondering when the next meal is coming, somewhere, a group of Halliburton executives -- and probably some Bush administration officials -- are thinking to themselves, 'Mission accomplished.'"

Jason Leopold writes: "Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't talking. The Hollywood action-film star and GOP gubernatorial candidate in the California recall election has been unusually silent about his plans for running the Golden State. He hasn't yet offered up a solution for the state's $38 billion budget deficit, an issue that largely got more than a million people to sign a petition to recall Gov. Gray Davis. More important, however, Schwarzenegger still won't respond to questions about why he was at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills two years ago where he, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and junk-bond king Michael Milken met secretly with former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, who was touting a plan for solving the state's energy crisis... While Schwarzenegger, Riordan, and Milken listened to Lay's pitch, Gov. Davis pleaded with Resident George Bush to enact much-needed price controls on electricity sold in the state, which skyrocketed to more than $200 per megawatt-hour."

Harvey Wasserman writes: "The California media has been whining that Pete Wilson, Arnold's chief press flak, won't let them ask Schwarzenegger any direct questions. But in the wake of the big northeast blackout, they're missing the boat---it's 'Blackout Pete' they should be grilling. If the policies he enacted as governor of California are any indicator, the Terminator will be destroying a lot more than just the Golden State grid... Deregulation is also the centerpiece of Schwarzenegger's campaign for Wilson's old job... policies that would mirror what Wilson did when he set the utilities free... Unfortunately, what Wilson did led directly to the staged rolling blackouts of 2000-1. As we now know, those blackouts were actually a form of blackmail used by Texas gas companies to rob California of more than $60 billion. Among the chief perpetrators were Kenny-Boy Lay of the now-bankrupt Enron... and James Baker... the man the GOP sent to Florida to finally fix the election of 2000."

BuzzFlash reports, "In June of 2001, Bush opposed and the congressional GOP voted down legislation to provide $350 million worth of loans to modernize the nation's power grid because of known weaknesses in reliability and capacity. Supporters of the amendment pointed to studies by the Energy Department showing that the grid was in desperate need of upgrades as proof that their legislation sponsored by U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) should pass. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration lobbied against it and the Republicans voted it down three separate times: First, on a straight party line in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, then on a straight party line the U.S. House Rules Committee, and finally on a party line on the floor of the full House [Roll Call Vote #169, 6/20/01]." Why did Republicans block grid improvements? Because the transmission bottlenecks let Enron & Co. manipulate supplies to rape consumers. Defeat ALL Republicans!

Oh beautiful for specious lies
And fake bin Laden tapes
For yellow-cake uranium
and evidence that's baked.
America, America
There's oil don't you see?
Though it's a sham,
I'll bomb Saddam
So there'll be more for me!

Oh beautiful for corporate crime
For Enron, Brown, and Root
For Gates and Lay and Uncle Dick
God bless the Carlyle Group!
America, America
Your pensions have been spent
On drugs and clothes
For CEOs
You'll never see a cent."

Sing along at the Fallout Shelter!

"Within 72 hours of moving into the White House... Bush the Second reversed Clinton's executive order and put the power pirates back in business in California. Enron, Reliant (aka Houston Industries), TXU (aka Texas Utilities) and the others who had economically snipped California's wires knew they could count on Dubya, who as governor of the Lone Star state cut them the richest deregulation deal in America. Meanwhile, Republican Governor George Pataki and his industry-picked utility commissioners ripped the lid off electric bills and relieved my old friends at Niagara Mohawk of the expensive obligation to properly fund the maintenance of the grid system. And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels... allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages... Is August 14-15's black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who've watched Bush's buddies flick the switches across the globe."

Daily Enron reports, "When Bush weighed in on the issue he quickly politicized the situation. He argued in favor of modernizing the grid, adding that he's 'said so all along.' This statement should immediately be filed under the long list of Bush administration falsehoods concerning energy policy. In June 2001, Democrats in the House advanced a proposal that would offer $350 million in federal loans for the express purpose of updating the outdated power grid. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) blasted the proposal, calling it 'pure demagoguery' and arguing that Democrats 'have no credibility on this issue whatsoever.' House Republicans voted it down. Then they voted it down again. And then a third time. Three straight party line votes killed the bill, while the White House worked behind the scenes to orchestrate the death blow. After the bill was scuttled, Democrats issued a supplemental report once again arguing for the need to address the situation."

Max Blumenthal writes, "The cabal includes [Howard] Kaloogian, who was a right-wing backbencher in the state Assembly, Sal Russo, who handled banker Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and David Gilliard, a veteran GOP strategist with a career steeped in scandal. They're joined by former Enron pollster and Republican tactician [and 'Hardball'-funded] Frank Luntz, who devised a strategy for the recall campaign centering around negative character attacks and avoidance of policy discussion. With the surprise announcement of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger... the movie star's high-priced uber-consultants George Gorton and Don Sipple have grabbed the baton in the recall race, eager to take it the last mile to the state capitol. Thanks to this handful of men and the millionaires who bankrolled them, what started with a petition and a few phone calls has become an election that may unseat a twice-elected governor and dramatically affect the lives of one in seven Americans."

"Amid ongoing investigations by the Justice Department and the SEC, more than a dozen former Enron employees have been indicted but none has gone to jail yet, and neither Ken Lay nor Jeff Skilling has been charged with any crime. So it seemed especially dramatic when, in late July, J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup agreed to pay a combined $286 million to settle charges with the SEC and the Manhattan district attorney over their 'facilitation of the Enron fraud,' as D.A. Robert Morgenthau put it. In truth, the banks got off easy. Neither Chase nor Citi admitted guilt, and both the firms and individual employees appear to have escaped criminal charges... The banks weren't just at the edges of the Enron deception but central to it. Without Citi and Chase, Enron wouldn't have had enough cash to keep itself going, much less dazzle Wall Street the way it did. In the decade before Enron collapsed, the two banks helped it obtain some $9 billion, which was, in substance, actually debt."

"On June 21, 2001, AP reported that '[Enron Chair Ken] Lay met secretly with California Republicans at the Beverly Hills Hotel and pushed a plan that called for ratepayers to pay the billions in debt racked up by the state's public utilities. The plan contended that federal investigations of price gouging are hindering the situation.' According to William Bradley, the L.A. Weekly's sharp political columnist, the meeting revolved around Lay's plans to 'preserve deregulation' in California. The L.A. Times noted that Lay was seeking the support of Schwarzenegger and the other GOP luminaries for even greater deregulation. Apparently Lay wanted help in saving a lousy system, squeezing the unfortunate Californians even more, and avoiding accountability for their plight... Why did Schwarzenegger go to a secret meeting with Ken Lay in the midst of the crisis? Did Schwarzenegger ever have any dealings with Enron? Did he hold Enron equities in his portfolio -- and if so, when did he sell?"

Announcing his retirement in 2004, Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC) declared, "I'm truly worried about the country's direction... I can tell you this categorically, we've got the weakest resident and weakest government in the history of my 50 years of public service. I say weak resident in that the poor boy campaigns all the time and pays no attention to what's going on in the Congress. Karl Rove tells him to do this or do that or whatever it is, but he's out campaigning... At the national level, we've got Enron accounting galore. The resident said two weeks ago on page one of his budget report that we have a $455 billion deficit at the end of next month; that's when the end of the fiscal year terminates. The truth of the matter is, you turn to page 57 of the report and you'll see it's $698 billion. And he admits to a $700 billion deficit, so you can see why the market goes down." Hollings had some choice words for apathetic voters as well. You're one of a kind - we'll miss you, Fritz!

William Greider: "The $300 million Enron 'settlement' government regulators worked out with the nation's two largest banks smells so bad that even Wall Street Journal editorial writers gagged on the rank odor. What Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase did, remember, was to design the funny-money financial deals that directly pumped up Enron's profits and stock price. When Enron's fraudulent scheme unraveled and the stock collapsed, the nation's pension funds lost somewhere between $25 billion to $50 billion. And these two famous banks each profited mightily from their role as financial architects for the great swindle. The pay-up costs will not even require an asterisk on their balance sheets."

Tom Fitton writes for Judicial Watch: "Here is the smoking gun pointing directly to Vice President [sic] Richard Cheney's secret energy company meetings held at the White House in early 2001. Some of the documents of the meetings reveal charts of 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts' and a 'map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals' ... Congress and the press should immediately and thoroughly investigate any linkage between the secret White House deals, the fake California energy crisis, the Enron collapse, and the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The question to ask is: Did the White House sell US foreign policy to the highest energy company bidder?"

Newsday reports: "More shockwaves from the collapse of Enron Corp. hit Wall Street yesterday as the nation's two largest banks agreed to pay a total of $308 million to settle federal and state charges that they helped Enron manipulate financial statements. Most of yesterday's settlement was to end investigations into $8.3 billion in disputed loans made to Enron by Citigroup Inc., the largest bank by assets in the United States, and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the second-largest bank... Yesterday's agreements ended probes by the SEC and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau of what regulators said were loans to Enron that were falsely booked as complicated commodities transactions. The disguise, they said, allowed Enron to fraudulently account for the money as cash flow from operations, and hide billions of dollars in debt from investors, regulators and credit-rating agencies."

Bill Maher writes, "Yes, in baseball when the team stinks, you fire the manager. But you don't fire him because it rains. And you don't let the opposing team choose a new manager for you. And you don't fire him between innings... Here's why the economy turned: The dot-com bubble burst. (Obviously on the orders of Gray Davis.) The airline industry collapsed. (Just as Gray Davis planned.) We fought two wars. (Playing right into Gray Davis' hands.) And Dick Cheney's friends at Enron 'gamed' the energy market and ripped off the state for billions. So you can see the problem: Gray Davis."

Daily Enron reports, "Bush recently ventured to Michigan and Pennsylvania for the dual purposes of high-dollar fundraising, and 'touting' his economic plan despite two years of backsliding economic figures. Unemployment figures are at record levels. Federal deficits are approaching $500 billion annually. What was Bush's grand solution? Patience. The effects of the tax cuts are sure to trickle down sooner or later. In a stunning political turnabout, Bush delivered strong rhetoric in support of expanding the child tax credit to the lowest-income Americans, stating, 'I want the benefits of tax relief all across the spectrum of our society.' Perhaps this statement should also be attributed to British intelligence... Six and a half million low-income families were denied the expanded child tax credit in the Republican-drafted legislation that Bush recently signed into law."

Lynn Landes writes, "Last year, while President Bush marshaled U.S. forces for the invasion of Iraq, the patriots at the Department of Defense awarded the contract for a new online voting system for the military... to an offshore company. It gets worse. Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) is the system and Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting of Enron bankruptcy fame) is the company. And although Accenture has not been officially implicated in the Enron scandal, they have created a reputation of their own that is already raising eyebrows. "

"Just as the managers of Enron were lying to investors and bond holders about their company's strength and financial position, so the administration was lying to its public and the world about Iraq's WMDs - the public rationale for the war. Just as the managers of Enron were 'cooking the books' through dubious accounting practices in order to record ever growing paper profits, so the present administration has been using the 'war on terror' and the promotion of 'democracy' in the region to justify a neo-colonial policy to reshape the Middle East to its own preferences. And just as the managers of Enron used a 'carrot & stick' to get their way with fund managers and stock analysts, so the administration is using bribery, bluster and threats to win allies and silence opposition to its policy in the community of nations."- Ahmed M. I. Egal

Robert Scheer writes: "The other day a woman asked me to sign a petition calling for the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. Why, I asked. Because he bankrupted the state, she said. When I begged to differ that it was the Bush administration and its buddies at companies like Enron that had put the state into an economic tailspin, she said she was being paid according to the number of petitions signed and didn't really care. But voters should care because Davis is being used as a fall guy for problems that are beyond his control... It is absurd to blame current difficulties on any state's governor, Republican or Democrat. It is the Bush administration that has mismanaged a successful economy inherited from Bill Clinton. It is the Bush administration that should bear responsibility for the difficulties being experienced by state governments -- and it should at least help California as much as it is helping our newest state, Iraq."

Ellen Florian writes for Fortune: "Sam Waksal recently became the first post-Enron corporate headliner to get hard time (over seven years, if you're counting). But the ImClone imbroglio made us wonder: What is happening at Enron, the company whose death spiral kicked off the corporate crime crackdown more than two years ago? Investors first raised eyebrows about the company's off-balance-sheet partnerships in October 2001; three months later the Justice Department formed the Enron Task Force to investigate. After sorting through reams of criminal complaints, indictments, plea agreements, civil complaints, and other public documents, we introduce a must-read for corporate crime voyeurs: our Scandal Cheat Sheet, a tally of which company insiders have thus far been linked to the debacle."

"After soaring in prestige under former President Clinton, the centrist 'New Democrat' movement is struggling to maintain its influence in the party as the 2004 presidential race accelerates... New Democrat leaders have engaged in escalating confrontations with more liberal party elements -- battles that could help determine whether Democrats largely follow Clinton's centrist course or tilt to the left... 'It is a matter of arithmetic: If we are going to win, we have to win not only the Democratic faithful, we have to win swing voters,' said Al From, founder and chief executive of the DLC.'" Goodness...we don't want to offend those swing voters by speaking out against our fine grandson of a Nazi Financier, son of a CIA-Iran-Contra/Iraqgate gangster, National Guard-Deserting, Harken insider trading and tax evading, Enron colluding, WMD-lying, election stealing, Constitution-shredding White House Resident! No... that wouldn't be 'patriotic' or 'moral.' Wouldn't be prudent. Na ga da...

"By appointing Ed Gillespie, a leading corporate lobbyist, to head the Republican National Committee, ...Bush has opened a conduit for Corporate America to strengthen its already formidable influence in the White House and Congress... The lobbying firm Gillespie co-founded in 2000, Quinn, Gillespie & Associates, has grown into one of the capital's most lucrative, in part because of Gillespie's strong ties to the Bush administration... Gillespie has worked to keep national energy policy in lockstep with the wishes of Enron and other energy giants. Quinn Gillespie earned $700,000 from Enron in 2001 alone to lobby the White House on the electricity crisis on the West Coast. The administration aggressively supported Enron's position against re-regulating electricity markets. Gillespie also channeled money from DaimlerChrysler and Enron to his 21st Energy Project, which bought print and television ads in July 2001 to promote the administration's energy plans." The RNC will be the ENRON-C.

Chalmers Johnson writes, "According to [George Crile's] newly released Charlie Wilson's War, the exception to CIA incompetence was the arming between 1979 and 1988 of thousands of Afghan moujahedeen [who helped bring down the Soviet Union]... However, he never mentions that the 'tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists' the CIA armed are some of the same people who in 1996 killed 19 American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; blew a hole in the side of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden harbor in 2000; and on Sept. 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Today, the world awaits what is almost certain to happen soon at some airport -- a terrorist firing a U.S. Stinger low-level surface-to-air missile into an American jumbo jet... If the CIA's activities in Afghanistan are a 'success story,' then Enron should be considered a model of corporate behavior."

"Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed. As I remarked in an earlier column, this Administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, which was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable. To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked."

From Reuters: "A former top Enron energy-trading executive was arrested by federal agents on Tuesday on charges stemming from the company's manipulation of power markets during California's energy crisis. John Forney, 41, is the third former Enron Corp.executive charged with a federal crime in connection with Enron schemes to manipulate energy prices during California's 2000-01 energy crisis, which cost the state an estimated $42 billion... Forney, freed after securing a bail bond, will go before an Ohio judge June 9 who will likely order him to face charges of wire fraud and conspiracy at San Francisco federal court, the U.S. Attorney's office said. No trial date has been set... In another scheme, know at Enron as 'Forney's Perpetual Loop,' traders would send fictitious megawatts across the grid and then accept payment from California's grid operators to relieve the artificial congestion they created on the lines."

USA Today reports: "Former Army secretary Thomas ['Enron'] White said in an interview that senior Defense officials 'are unwilling to come to grips' with the scale of the postwar U.S. obligation in Iraq. The Pentagon has about 150,000 troops in Iraq and recently announced that the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's stay there has been extended indefinitely. 'This is not what they were selling (before the war),' White said, describing how senior Defense officials downplayed the need for a large occupation force. 'It's almost a question of people not wanting to 'fess up to the notion that we will be there a long time and they might have to set up a rotation and sustain it for the long term'... [Back in February] Rumsfeld was furious with White when the Army secretary agreed with [Army Chief of Staff Eric] Shinseki" that the occupation "could require several hundred thousand troops."

From Reuters: "Brazil on Wednesday vowed to investigate allegations U.S. energy firm AES Corp. struck a deal with Enron that allowed it to snap up a top local power distributor in 1998 at a giveaway price. The Financial Times reported AES convinced Enron not to bid for Eletropaulo Metropolitana -- Latin America's biggest power distributor in revenue terms -- on the eve of its privatization auction in exchange for some lucrative contracts."

The Sacramento Bee reports: "The Enron Corp. scandal is touching, in an indirect way, a small, eco-friendly corner of the energy industry: California wind farms. The latest round of indictments against Enron insiders accuses former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and his wife Lea of participating in a scheme to mask Enron's illegal ownership in a group of California wind farms -- and then siphoning off tens of thousands of dollars in farm profits for themselves. The charges are part of a broader set of accusations filed recently in U.S. District Court in Houston against the couple and other one-time employees in connection with Enron's collapse."

"Rumsfeld announced Thursday that Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, will retire from active duty this summer... Earlier this month, Rumsfeld offered Franks, 57, the post of Army chief of staff -- the highest job in the Army. But Franks turned it down... sources said Franks' decision was less about money than a lack of enthusiasm for the internecine battles in the Pentagon bureaucracy... Officials close to Rumsfeld said he has been unhappy with the pace of transformation in the Army, and last month fired the civilian in charge, Army Secretary Thomas [Enron] White... Sources said Rumsfeld is also unhappy with [Army Chief of Staff Eric] Shinseki, who drew the Pentagon's ire before the Iraq war by suggesting it would likely take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to secure the peace." Shinseki was right -- Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz grossly underestimated the number of troops required. As a result, there has been chaos and looting in postwar Iraq.

"The Department of Defense... couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes... the House and Senate are expected to begin floor debate on a Bush administration proposal to make sweeping changes in how the Pentagon spends money, manages contracts and treats civilian employees... The administration's proposal, which would also give Rumsfeld greater authority to move money between accounts and exempt Defense from certain environmental statutes, prompted influential House Democrats to write Speaker Dennis Hastert last week complaining that the proposals would 'increase the level of waste, fraud, and abuse... by vastly reducing (Defense) accountability.' 'The Congress has increased defense spending from $300 billion to $400 billion over three years at the same time that the Pentagon has failed to address financial problems that dwarf those of Enron,' said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles."

From Business Week: "The Justice Dept.'s net is drawing in a growing cast of characters from the Enron collapse. The latest: Lea Fastow, the wife of Andy Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer. But indictments made public on May 1 only highlight the difficulties of the government's cases and the fact that prosecutors have yet to snag the biggest fish. 'Because the Justice Dept. had to reach to its superweapon -- charging the spouse -- that suggests they have made little or no progress whatsoever against charging [former CEOs] Jeff Skilling or Ken Lay,' says former federal prosecutor Jacob Frenkel. An Enron employee from May, 1991, to May, 1997, Lea Fastow was charged separately from her husband with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and filing false income-tax returns as part of schemes allegedly masterminded by her spouse."

AP reports: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fired Army Secretary Thomas White, whose tenure as civilian chief of the military's largest service was marked by tensions with his boss, a Pentagon official said Saturday... On Saturday, the official, who spoke privately with White, said Rumsfeld had asked him to resign. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said no single event or conflict precipitated the firing. Rumsfeld told White he wanted to steer the Army in a new direction... White, 59, became engaged in a public dispute with Rumsfeld last year over the defense secretary's proposal to cancel the Crusader artillery project, which White said was vital to the Army's future. Rumsfeld decided it was not suited for wars of the future and eventually canceled the program."

"Army Secretary Thomas E. White resigned yesterday after a two-year tenure marked by strains with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over support for an Army artillery system and controversy over White's former employment with Enron Corp. A brief Pentagon statement announcing the resignation gave no reason for White's decision to step down as the Army's top civilian. In the statement, Rumsfeld thanked White for his service and said a departure date had not been determined... He was vice chairman of Enron Energy Services when Bush nominated him to the Army post in April 2001... He came under investigation by the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission over whether his contacts with former Enron colleagues violated any laws or rules, including insider trading rules... he repeatedly denied assertions by some lawmakers that the corporate division of which he served as vice chairman helped manipulate California's energy market during the state's power crisis in 2001."

Just fired by Rumsfeld, former Army Secretary Thomas White was up to his eyeballs in Enron fraud. Lest we forget, here are the relevant entries from the Bush/Enron Chronology.

The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch continue their pursuit of White House energy policy papers produced by VP Dick Cheney's task force panel of oil cronies in 2001. And they may be getting somewhere. Reuters reports, "An appeals judge told lawyers for...Cheney on Thursday they had no basis to ask the court to intervene in [the lawsuit] saying 'you have no case.' Appeals Judge Harry Edwards, who dominated the questioning during oral arguments, said the Bush administration appeared to be arguing, wrongly, that it was immune from litigation." Both Cheney and Bush, of course, are "ex" oil execs, and their energy task force just happened to recommend more oil and gas drilling. Environmentalists say they were largely shut out of the policy-making process, while Cheney met GOP energy industry bigshots such as former Enron exec Ken Lay. This case deserves renewed attention.

"In 1988, Jordan was in the midst of a severe financial crisis, running chronic budget deficits and defaulting on its external loans. The value of the dinar had plunged, and as a result, banks in Jordan were asked to deposit 30% of their foreign exchange holdings with the Central Bank. Of all the banks in Jordan, according to Nabulsi, only Chalabi's Petra Bank was unable to comply. 'So Chalabi tried to buy dollars to cover himself, running around feverishly to meet the demand for foreign exchange,' says Al-Anani. 'He used to sell dollars in the market in a show of bravado.' A new government came to power in 1989, and by then, Petra Bank's difficulties were totally exposed. The bank was closed, and though the depositors were paid off, several thousand shareholders lost millions. Chalabi fled the country, allegedly in the trunk of a friend's car. 'The impact was much, much greater than the Enron case,' says Nabulsi. Half a billion dollars was lost, some 10%, he says, of Jordan's GNP."

Cheryl Seal Reports: 'Bush and his chickenhawks constantly assure the American public all is well - the war plan is 'on track' and 'progress is remarkable.' But this is the EXACT SAME SCHEME used by Bush pal Ken Lay and the other con artists at Enron.. Remember how the Enron execs, knowing full well the company was going down, claimed the co. was 'on track' and 'progress was remarkable'? They even encouraged stockholders to buy MORE soon-to-be-worthless stocks. So Bush is urging America to 'buy more stock' in the war with his phony rosy assurances. Meanwhile, when the ugly reality sets in, he and his pals, like the Lay gang, will make out like bandits, no matter what happens (troop support contracts, weapons contracts, the huge sea of petroleum products sold to fuel the tanks, ships, planes and other vehicles). And America, like the Enron stockholders, will be left holding the bag and wondering why justice is not being served."

AP reports, "Seven Enron Corp. subsidiaries and five other energy companies manipulated natural gas and electricity prices and supplies in California, federal energy regulators ruled Wednesday. As a result of the manipulation, FERC Chairman Pat Wood said California would receive more than the $1.8 billion in refunds recommended by a FERC judge in December. The exact amount is to be determined in the coming months, but FERC spokesman Kevin Cadden estimated that the total would be $3.3 billion. California is seeking $9 billion... California Gov. Gray Davis said the ruling confirms 'there was widespread market manipulation and a massive ripoff of California ratepayers. Now the question is whether the FERC commissioners will have the grit to order the remedies that are necessary.' The agency is considering placing limits on the profits of four marketers of wholesale power and banning eight gas companies from selling natural gas in California, Wood said."

Prescott's Nazi financing, Iran-Contra, Iraqgate, Enron, Funeralgate, Carlyle Group and much, much more!

NORML's Paul Armentano writes: "Numbers never lie. Or do they? With government, it's simply a matter of who's keeping the books... Last year, Congress earmarked nearly $19 billion -- nearly twice what it spent on military operations in Afghanistan -- to enforce U.S. drug laws. This year's totals, however, are remarkably different. According to the White House's 2003 'National Drug Control Strategy,' released in February, the Bush administration will now only spend some $11.2 billion fighting drugs. How can this be?... On closer inspection, it's clear that this year's supposed belt-tightening is only illusory. Thanks to new Enron-styled accounting procedures initiated by the White House, America's drug war costs a lot less than it used to -- at least on paper." The War on Drugs is a scam, with the Bush Family playing both ends against the middle. While BushDaddy's CIA collaborates with Drug Cartels, BushBuddies like George Wackenhut make out with for-profit prisons, and cheap labor.

AP reports, "In a controversy that touched White House political adviser Karl Rove, Enron Corp., signed contracts with GOP consultant Ralph Reed worth more than half a million dollars, the FEC revealed in a ruling. Enron paid Reed, the former Christian Coalition leader, about $300,000 before the energy company's collapse. The payments came to light as part of an FEC inquiry into whether Enron's hiring of GOP consultant Reed was a sham designed to disguise an in-kind contribution from Enron to Bush's presidential effort. In dismissing a complaint against Rove and the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, the FEC disclosed that the Enron-Reed ties involved far more money than has previously been reported... Nevertheless, the FEC said that on balance the evidence indicates that the retention of Reed's company 'was bona fide' and not designed to hide a contribution to Bush." Yeah, sure!

"Our soldiers are not out there right now safeguarding me, or you, from some sort of total, '50s-era Red Scare dictatorial overthrow of our nation; nor is the military guaranteeing the right to write this column any more than it is protecting your right to read it, or to protest the war, speak freely, smoke imported French cigarettes, watch porn, and drive really fast. Not anymore... Not this time. More than ever before in recent history, the otherwise worthy U.S. military is right now in service not of the people, not of the national security, but of the current regime and its corporate interests. Has it always been this way? Of course. But this time, with our smirky Enron resident and cash-hungry CEO administration, it's never been so flagrant, or insulting, or invidious. Our soldiers are not protecting our freedoms. They are not preventing more terrorism. They are not guaranteeing continued free speech. Because the only true threat to such freedoms is coming from within..."

"We're about to invade Iraq. Again. We invaded in 1917... and 1941... and 1991. This time though, we're dealing with Saddam Hussein. But then, we've been dealing with Saddam for years. Why now? The Americans see the chance to bring traditional Western values to the Middle East (aka the guys with the diapers on their heads): democracy (from the people who brought you George W Bush); freedom (from the people who brought you Guantanamo Bay) and economic prosperity (from the people who bought you Enron). Starring George W Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and a cast of...well, Rory Bremner, flanked by John Bird and John Fortune as Foreign Office mandarins, convinced that this time they have got it right, and that above all the one thing this is not about is oil." This was broadcast on Britain's Channel 4. Watch the four video segments - you'll learn some history along the way!

Salon reports, "During the past five months, Bev Harris has e-mailed to news organizations a series of reports that detail alarming problems in the high-tech voting machinery currently sweeping its way through American democracy. But almost no one is paying attention. Harris is a literary publicist and writer whose investigations into the secret world of voting equipment firms have led some to call her the Erin Brockovich of elections. Harris has discovered, for example, that Diebold, the company that supplied touch-screen voting machines to Georgia during the 2002 election, made its system's sensitive software files available on a public Internet site... And in perhaps her most eyebrow-raising coup, she found that Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, used to run the company that built most of the machines that count votes in his state -- and that he still owns a stake in the firm."

"Can you name a Texas-based multinational company that is facing a Department of Justice investigation, lawsuits for inappropriate business practices, a flurry of criticism in the mainstream press, and a bill in congress to curb its impact on the industry? Did you say Enron? Try again. This 800 lb. Texas gorilla has spent $30 billion since 1996 to buy its way into becoming the world's largest radio broadcaster, concert promoter, and outdoor advertising firm. Before passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, a company could not own more than 40 radio stations in the entire country. With the Act's sweeping relaxation of ownership limits, Clear Channel now owns approximately 1225 radio stations in 300 cities and dominates the audience share in 100 of 112 major areas..."

No charges, No wrongdoing, No comment. No jail time, No probation, No restitution. Write off the $80 Million 'settlement' on last quarter's expenses. End of story. Nothing else to see here folks, move along... Merrill Lynch and other banks had taken part in an Enron scheme helping set up fraudulent off-shore companies and participate in fraudulent loans disguised as 'energy trades'. Thereby fraudulently boosting Enron's profits and masking billions in debt. Which allowed Dubya's buddy 'Kenny Boy' to mis-represent Enron's financial condition. That ended up costing thousands of Enron employees' their pensions while the corporate executives cashed out and made gazillions. Not to mention many other thousands of investors' 401k's plus hundreds of pension and mutual funds losing billions of dollars of value as well.

Matt Bivens writes, "Americans have forgotten Enron. We're too busy duct-taping our windows shut against the possibility of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack... With no one watching, it's back to business as usual and the Bush administration is eager to do the bidding of the oligarchy - sorry wrong country, of its favorite 'campaign contributors.' Reliant traders who thought themselves so 'cool' earned their company a playful wrist slap: Their $13.8 million fine equals 0.03%of Reliant's (rape-of-California) 2001 revenues of $40.8 billion. The fine was set by FERC - and for anyone who missed the point, the White House just appointed a new FERC commissioner: Joseph Kelliher, a former aide to VP Dick Cheney. Kelliher was the Enron go-to guy - he was once handed Enron's 'dream list' of government policies and dutifully relayed it to Boss Cheney. Meanwhile, the man who used to run Enron's corrupt energy trading division is not only not in trouble, he's secretary of the U.S. Army."

"A crucial report into the collapse of disgraced energy giant Enron has discovered the firm's executives bribed tax officials. The outraged committee's chairman, Charles Grassley (R-IA), described a week-long programme of wining and dining, tennis, fishing and golf as part of Enron's strategy to get its own way. Mr Grassley also said the report called into serious doubt the ethics of tax advisers and the 'desperate' bankers, accountants and lawyers who helped Enron. 'The report reads like a conspiracy novel, with some of the nation's finest banks, accounting firms and attorneys working together to prop up the biggest corporate farce of this century,' he said."

Enron used complex transactions that served no business purpose to avoid taxes and pump up reported profits, while paying 200 executives more than $1 million a year through equity-laden pay packages, according to a congressional report released Thursday. Enron reported net income of $2.3 billion, but tax losses of $3 billion, for 1996 through 1999... the company's 200 top-paid employees received a total of $1.4 billion in compensation in 2000, with $1.2 billion coming from stock options or restricted stock. "This report may be viewed by some as a road map for abusing the tax code. Rest assured that it is not a road map. This is the end of the road," said Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT). How long's Kenny Boy been in jail now? Oh, that's right - no charges filed!

Jonathan Hutson offers a Show Me the Money! Quiz: 1. Which of the following paid the SMALLEST PERCENTAGE OF INCOME in federal income taxes from 1996 through 1999?
(a) A U.S. Army Corporal deployed overseas
(b) Enron
(c) A public high school teacher

2. Which of the following paid THE FEWEST DOLLARS in federal income taxes from 1996 through 1999?
(a) A Legal Aid lawyer
(b) Enron
(c) A homeless woman receiving minimum wage in a welfare-to-work program.

Get them all right and win dinner with Kenny Boy Lay!

"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka 'Christians,' and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or 'PPs.'...And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick."

The scandals tying the White House to the current crisis of corporate malfeasance seem to have no limits. Recent disclosures show that former Enron Vice Chair and current Bush administration Secretary of the Army, Thomas White Jr. was the likely architect for Enron's manipulation of the California Energy market. The resultant energy "shortages" left Californians struggling to cope with electric brownouts and exponential increases in the wholesale rate of electricity. White also cashed in his Enron stock before the price dropped from around $90 to a few cents per share. More recently in his new position at the Pentagon, White has been lobbying to privatize energy systems at military bases, a move which would have allowed Enron to do to the military what it did (under White's leadership) to California.

Spy novelist John LeCarre writes, "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press... Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties."

Eric Wemple reports for the Washington City Paper: "The distinction of being Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2002 fell to three persons who were unknowns in 2001: whistle-blowers Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, Coleen Rowley of the FBI, and Sherron Watkins of Enron. 'Who are these women?' the introduction to their profiles asked. 'For starters, they aren't people looking to hog the limelight.' The same apparently can't be said of a more familiar figure who'd been a leading contender for a spot on the front of that issue: President George W. Bush. According to four Time sources, the magazine had prepared a Person of the Year cover commemorating the partnership between Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. But it fell through after the White House balked at giving the magazine access for such a presentation. Bush aides reportedly preferred that their boss appear alone on the cover." Say, isn't pride/vanity one of the seven deadly sins?

Mike Ward writes, "Following are the ten most alarming theories about September 11, the 'war on terror,' and the future of the world. Feel free to accept them as gospel, study them as symptoms of a traumatized culture, or scoff at them as anti-American propaganda: I'm only the messenger. Personally, though, at this point the only person I hold above suspicion in the matter of September 11 is that poor kid with the goat." 1. Great Game in the Caspian Sea... 2. The Afghanistan/Enron Connection... 3. The Magic Passport Theory... 4. Hijacker Oddities I... 5. Hijacker Oddities II... 6. Insider Trades... 7. The New World Order Will Not Be Televised... 8. Iran/Contra Redux... 9. The Reichstag Fire and Operation Northwoods... 10. Things to Come. A pretty cogent list, all in all!

This is about as blatant an example of Republican media bias as you will ever see. "CBS originally scheduled its movie about the Enron corporate scandal for broadcast two days before the November elections, and the movie's director is questioning whether politics was behind a last-minute decision to move the air date to" 1-5-02. "''The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron' had been on CBS's schedule for Sunday, Nov. 3, just ahead of the Nov. 5 midterm elections. Director Penelope Spheeris said today that she was surprised and unhappy when she received a call two weeks ahead of the broadcast informing her that the movie had been postponed... People close to the project said they learned that CBS President Leslie Moonves and Entertainment President Nancy Tellem got cold feet as the November air date neared, growing uncomfortable at the prospect of appearing to criticize the Republican administration." Btw, the film flashed an out-of-context photo of Martha Stewart with Clinton.

Enrongate is a Republican Party scandal that goes right to the highest level - Bush and Cheney. But as soon as a prominent Democrat was linked to the scandal - former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin - Republicans and the media went on a rampage to blame everything on HIM. After a thorough investigation, a bi-partisan Senate investigation has cleared Rubin of wrongdoing. When will the investigation of Republicans begin? When will Cheney turn over the records of the Energy Task Force so Americans can see exactly how Bush and Cheney sold the entire US government - not a White House bedroom - to its biggest donors? Where is the outrage over the continuing stonewalling of Enrongate???

William Rivers Pitt writes, "I want to see the proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before we engage in a war that will send tens of thousands of civilians to their deaths, enrage the Muslim world against us, grievously wound the American economy, and guarantee more terrorism here at home. I am sure the Bush administration's incontrovertible proof that these weapons exist is a sheaf of shipping manifests from roundabout 1984, when we sent the stuff to Saddam in the first place, but I want to see it anyway... I want to know what happened on September 11th, and why, and who messed up... I want to know what was in the smallpox shot Bush got. Was it distilled water or Maker's Mark?.. I want a nationally known journalist - any journalist - to begin the process of calling the Bush administration to account for its dizzying malfeasance. Enron, Halliburton, Harken, Arthur Andersen, Eli Lilly, Carlyle and O my Lord how the money rolled in..."

Time writes, "Sherron Watkins is the Enron vice president who wrote a letter to chairman Kenneth Lay in the summer of 2001 warning him that the company's methods of accounting were improper. In January, when a congressional subcommittee investigating Enron's collapse released that letter, Watkins became a reluctant public figure, and the Year of the Whistle-Blower began. Coleen Rowley is the FBI staff attorney who caused a sensation in May with a memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller about how the bureau brushed off pleas from her Minneapolis, Minn., field office that Zacarias Moussaoui, who is now indicted as a Sept. 11 co-conspirator, was a man who must be investigated. One month later Cynthia Cooper exploded the bubble that was WorldCom when she informed its board that the company had covered up $3.8 billion in losses through the prestidigitations of phony bookkeeping." Whistleblowing is suddenly "in" - so when will the media blow the whistle on the Bush-Cheney neo-fascist regime?

In one old Buster Keaton flick, a Confederate Keaton has stolen a train and is trying to escape a pursuing engine filled with angry Union soldiers. To slow their pursuit, he keeps tossing barrels and boxes out onto the track. In the past 10 days, Bush and his operatives have been doing much the same thing, with Trent Lott, Henry Kissinger, the missile defense network, and the roundup of Muslims their "barrels." "These "crises" are very likely all designed to keep America's attention riveted on one Bush hand while the other picks the world's proverbial pocket unnoticed," writes Cheryl Seal.

'Tis the season for embarrassing political videos! Houston Chronicle reports on a newly-found tape, "made for the January 1997 going-away party for former Enron President Rich Kinder, [which] features nearly 30 minutes of absurd skits, songs and testimonials." In one skit, Jeff Skilling explains how he would reach 600% growth targets. "We're going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting. If we do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line." Later, then-Gov. George W. Bush pleads with Kinder: "Don't leave Texas. You're too good a man." Former President George Bush thanks him for helping his son reach the Governor's Mansion. "You have been fantastic to the Bush family," he says. "I don't think anybody did more than you did to support George." Click below "see it now" to watch - just more evidence of the intimate ties between Bush and Enron.

In a week of bad news it's good to get a good belly laugh. And here's one for you. Washington post columnist Michael Kelly devoted a whole column to "proving" that the mainstream media has a liberal bias. Trouble is, Kelly's chief source for this effort was the outrageously rightwing Center for Media and Public Affairs. This outfit, like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, is a rightwing-funded corporate front outfit dedicated to shameless propaganda. For Kelly to use the Center for his source is like writing a paper proving Enron execs did nothing wrong and using Ken Lay as your main source. What will Kelly's next piece be? A column proving blacks are inferior, using the KKK as his primary source?

Americans are constantly being told by the drug companies and the insurance industry - and their minions inside the Beltway - that America's healthcare system is the best in the world - a marvel that all should be grateful to pay a high price to access. But the reality is a deeply flawed system marred by fudged drug trials, media-pharmaceutical industry collusions, phony cancer cure claims and research foundations, and the worst cancer rates and infant mortality rates in the civilized world.

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth not brains
I've been around nearly two years
Won many a man's votes and faith
And I was round when supreme court
Made sure the loser won the race
Made damn sure that counting
Didn't matter in this case

Chorus:
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
Cause distracting you
Is the nature of my game

I talked responsibility
When Enron made you demand some change
Cut funding for the SEC
The Democrats screamed in vain
I had surplus
But asked for tax cuts
Didn't do the math
Now deficits' back
(chorus)

Enjoy Mark Hoolihan's latest song parody!

Writes Auset Lee: "I'm a bit cranky because I woke up to an email from an American woman who received an urgent message from her husband, an Air Force Commander in Afghanistan" who said "We're in a blood bath here!" The person who sent the email was calling for prayer.

John Kaminski writes: "In a country known around the world for the power of its democratic institutions to temper dictatorial impulses of its previous leaders, Homeland Security stands as a colossal betrayal of the peoples of the world, because it means that all of the lectures given by America over the years that democracy was the best way to govern are now exposed as cynical lies, convenient ruses used by American corporate shills to bleed other countries dry of their natural resources. President George W. Bush is remarkable among American presidents for his distinctive lack of business and life achievements prior to assuming his office in Washington. All of his business enterprises were devious shell corporations sustained by his father's superrich friends. And now we have a government of just such a nature."

NYTimes.com reports: "Some of the nation's largest energy traders appear to have reported false data about the price of natural gas to one of the industry's leading publications, according to a researcher who once tracked the data. The researcher, Michele Markey, the former director of energy research at Gas Daily, a leading trade publication, told California state lawmakers yesterday that she had long suspected that the prices she had received in the last few years were erroneous...Ms. Markey also told a state select committee investigating price manipulation during the California energy crisis that she pushed her publisher in 2001 to audit the trading books of Enron, one of the companies suspected of submitting false data. 'I was trying to show that the emperor's clothes were not there,' she said....But she testified that the effort to audit Enron's online trading operation was scrapped, two weeks after Gas Daily was acquired by Platts, a division of the McGraw-Hill Companies."

Zachary Coile writes: "The nation's chief energy watchdogs were guilty of a 'shocking absence of regulatory vigilance' in failing to police market abuses by Enron Corp., including allegations that the Houston firm manipulated prices during the California energy crisis, according to a Senate report. The report by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee faulted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for waiting nearly two years after allegations of market manipulation surfaced in California to launch a formal inquiry into Enron's practices." The 50 page report chastises the FERC for failing to investigate allegations of market manipulation in a timely manner and concludes that even now the enforcement staff is below the level necessary. "The report by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee faulted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for waiting nearly two years after allegations of market manipulation surfaced in California to launch a formal inquiry into Enron's practices."

"Power grids are inherently prone to big blackouts, and trying to make them more robust can make the problem worse," says Phillip Ball in Nature Mag: "There is a power cut every 13 days in the United States. Indeed, over the past 15 years, large-scale blackouts there have been more frequent than can be explained by random damage." Recent research shows that blackouts seem to follow the same pattern regardless of how the power network is organized. Preventive schemes could actually make things worse, says one expert: "If they are designed to eliminate small blackouts, they can hasten the build-up to the point where a big cascade of blackouts becomes inevitable." So Bush's plan to build a horrendous power meganetwork across the U.S. will solve nothing - but create a diversity of new problems for Americans, not least of which is reinforced reliance on fossil fuel and nuke plants.

Stromata, disguised as an intellectual/literary site (complete with science fiction links) is in fact a corporate propaganda front. Its creator, Tom Veal, makes his living as an ERISA toady, which lobbies Congress on behalf of corporate employers). Little wonder then that Veal's "intellectual" exercises are devoted to bashing Democrats, Bill Clinton and Tom Daschle in particular, and in pleading a case FOR those poor, misunderstood CEOs at Enron and Worldcom. Worse yet, this guy appears to have an agreement with google.com - they have flooded the search engine with SCORES of links to Stromata - the kind of link spreading google only does for a very high price, and not by chance. We bet Stromata stands for Self-righteous Tireseome Rightwing Old Man's Arrogant Tirades & Accusations.

While beating the war drum, the repug chickenhawks work hard to screw our troops. Here are some ways: Outsourcing of base-support work to the benefit of Cheney's Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root--while sidelining service personnel who could do the job cheaper and with more dedication; Army Secretary Thomas "Enron" White's proposal to greatly expand "unaccompanied tours"--meaning that spouses and children have to stay stateside ("family values"). White House undermining of "concurrent receipt", a move to deny retired disabled vets benefits for their service-related injuries, underfunded base daycare facilities, bureaucratic discouragement of the use of the VA health system, extending a soldier's enlistment involuntarily. Re-enlistment bonuses have been slashed. The list goes on and on.

Forbes.com reports: "Bankrupt Enron Corp. said it is the target of 25 governmental investigations and does not have time to dig up documents about the multimillion-dollar bonuses it paid to star traders. Enron told a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission administrative law judge that it opposed a request by the city of Tacoma for documents about the $8 million and $5.2 million bonuses paid to Enron's two top traders last year....The information could show whether Enron traders had an incentive to not cooperate with FERC's investigation, Tacoma said. The newest case...will decide whether Enron and its Portland General Electric affiliate deliberately inflated wholesale electricity prices during the California power crisis of 2000-2001. Ripple effects from the crisis affected the entire Western region....Former Enron trader Timothy Belden, who was paid a $5.2 million bonus, pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to artificially boost prices during the California power crisis."

ABCNews.com reports: "Former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow pleaded innocent Wednesday to a 78-count federal indictment...ousted a year ago as Enron spiraled toward bankruptcy, (he) was initially charged Oct. 2 and indicted on Halloween on various counts of fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and other charges. Fastow entered his plea Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Houston...Fastow's attorneys have said top Enron executives approved his work and that Fastow did not believe he committed any crimes. Former chief executive officers Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay were Fastow's immediate superior at different times....Prosecutors have said Fastow has not cooperated as the Enron Task Force further pursues the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann has publicly left the door open to a deal, noting last month the charges against Fastow 'carry significant jail time.'"

"We lost a big battle last night. Now an even more important battle is in front of us. That's the thing about politics and democracy: There are no permanent victories or defeats. If you care about what kind of country we have, you have to keep fighting. Sometimes you win, [but when you're knocked on your butt, you have no choice -- except to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and come back with more determination, creativity, and energy than ever before.] The candidates in close races who did the best yesterday tended to be those who were fighters who were unafraid to take Bush on... It's time we re-evaluated our strategy and created a message that shows voters what we stand for and why Democrats would serve them better than Republicans. In these next 2 years, [let's] show America that there is a strong and sensible alternative."

On Election night, Harvey Pitt tendered his resignation to Bush, who all too eagerly accepted it. With the heat being turned up on Cheney, Halliburton, Harken and Enron, Bush needed to give the appearance of doing something about Pitt's corrupt oversight. We expect to see all of the blame for the failure of the administration to seriously address corporate abuses - including its own - to be placed on the departing Pitt. Meanwhile, it will be business as usual for the corporate cartel in the White House.

"US corporate lawyers will be required to blow the whistle on company officials who violate securities and other laws, under a proposal expected to be unveiled today by the Securities and Exchange Commission. After cracking down on accountants and stock analysts, the SEC will target lawyers in an attempt to prevent further corporate governance problems at US corporations. The move represents a dramatic increase in federal regulation of a traditionally self-governing profession. The proposal will implement part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed by Congress in July after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, which instructs the SEC to adopt "minimum standards of professional conduct for attorneys", including a requirement that lawyers report wrongdoing up the chain of command at a company. The rule will be publicly debated for several weeks before final adoption. Many lawyers have expressed deep concern at the requirement, which they say is vague and could turn them into corporate spies."

"On behalf of Shell, Mobil, and Exxon; Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and GE; all the Enrons, Halliburtons, and Harkens; Bush, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the other CEOs of the Cabinet; and thousands of us who are working for a better life for the wealthiest Americans, we have one simple request: Could you please just stay home tomorrow? See, we have things to do. Nations to invade. Wetlands to destroy. Oil to drill. Courts to pack. Corporate taxes to cut... We don't quite get what it is about our agenda that you people don't like, but it's clear that this time, you may be upset enough to actually do something about it. That's why we're writing this message to you today. Please don't vote. Ask your friends not to vote. What could the harm be in sitting this round out? If you could just stay home on Election Day, we can get back to the important business of running the nation for you, and we won't have to bother you again. The Executive Committee Against Uppity Citizens"

Investigative repoter Roses Prichard writes, "As in 2000, the withholding of information about the whistleblower lawsuit known as Funeralgate will be a major factor in the mid-term election. During the 2000 campaign, the media failed to inform the electorate that candidate George Bush was a defendant in a lawsuit brought by Eliza May, the fired executive director of the agency that regulated Texas's funeral homes. It accused him of lying under oath to conceal influence-peddling and obstruction of justice by the governor's office on behalf of a major contributor, funeral giant SCI, allegations germane to his promise to restore honor and integrity to the White House. This year the media has failed to inform Texans that one of Bush's co-defendants in the case, Attorney General John Cornyn, the GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, used taxpayers' money to settle the case last fall - imposing an extraordinary provision that all records from the 2 1/2 year old lawsuit be kept secret forever."

John Kaminski writes, "What really determines elections is who counts the votes, and who counts the votes is somebody you probably didn't know, and if you did know them, you surely wouldn't trust them to count the votes. No government agency counts the votes. And the people who count the votes, who tell you who your next president is, have no government oversight, no audit, no official you have elected watching over them. The people who really count the votes are the media, more specifically a politically influenced cabal of minions bought and paid for by corporate tycoons who own the nation's major media outlets. These are the same people who don't think peace demonstrations are worthy of coverage, and who in the year 2000 got together and reviewed the data from Florida and then really wouldn't tell us what they found out. They'd only say ... 'Bush won,' just like the Supreme Court."

Don't you wish you had a dollar for every time someone in the Shrub administration claimed they "didn't know" that the corporations they were either running or serving on the board of were engaging in crooked accounting practices? Cheney and Halliburton...Bush and Harken...Thomas White and Enron...the list of obfuscators and deniers goes on and on, and now we can add Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. Despite the fact that he served on the audit committee of Lucent and it was his job to be aware of these things (!), he claims he had no knowledge of a federal probe into accounting irregularities at the company. This has got to be either the crookedest administration in recent history or the laziest. Maybe both...

"Former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow was indicted Thursday on 78 federal counts alleging he masterminded a scheme to artificially inflate the energy company's profits. He is the highest-ranking Enron official to be charged in the federal probe. Enron, No. 7 on the Fortune 500 list two years ago, filed for bankruptcy last year after revealing a $618 million loss and eliminating $1.2 billion of shareholder equity. Fastow is the most prominent Enron figure targeted so far by the Justice Department. Prosecutors are expected to pressure him to find out what he might say about his former colleagues, including former Enron chairman [Kenny Boy] Lay and former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling."

"Oh what tangled webs! And, oh how they spin within them as they get tangled in earlier 'obfuscations.' The Iraqis? No. The Bush/Cheney team....bad day(s) for the two former corporate homeboys....while a director and paid consultant for Harken Energy Bush had actively participated in the creation of off-the-books accounting gimmicks to hide company debt and raise the company's stock price....Shouldn't the SEC be just a bit curious to see if the Harken/Harvard partnership wasn't simply a smoke and mirrors contrivance, solely designed to create a profit for Harvard on what otherwise would have surely proven to be a very bad investment?....Like Harvard Management, the CEO of Alliance sat on Enron board. And, like Harvard Management, Alliance became the largest institutional shareholder in Enron. And, when Enron started going down the tubes, like Harvard Management, Alliance tired to help out, in that case selling over $300 million in Enron shares to Florida public pension funds."

Boston.com reports: "One week before George W. Bush's now-famous sale of stock in Harken Energy Corp. in 1990, Harken was warned by its lawyers that Bush and other members of the troubled oil company's board faced possible insider trading risks if they unloaded their shares. The warning from Harken's lawyers came in a legal memorandum whose existence has been little noted until now, despite the many years of scrutiny of the Bush transaction. The memo was not received by the Securities and Exchange Commission until the day after the agency decided not to bring insider-trading charges against Bush, documents show. The memo...lay(s) out the potential for insider-trading violations by Bush and other members of the Harken board, and its existence raises questions about how thoroughly the SEC investigated Bush's unloading of $848,000 of his Harken stake to a buyer whose name has not been made public." Appoint a Special Prosecutor for Harken-Enron-Halliburton!

On 10/24, Boston.com reported: "Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota today became the first Member of Congress to support a pledge to work for top to bottom reform of corporations and to provide new tools for federal regulators to protect taxpayers, consumers and investors...in the wake of the corporate fraud exposed at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphi, Arthur Andersen and many other businesses. The pledge calls for (1) reining in excessive executive pay; (2) strengthening corporate governance; (3) repealing the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995; (4) banning corporate criminals from receiving government contracts; (5) strengthened reforms; (6) stopping corporate tax dodgers; (7) regulating derivatives; (8) ending conflicts of interest on Wall Street; (9) expanding disclosure; (10) tracking the extent and cost of corporate crime; (11) protecting financial consumers; and (12) fostering a national discussion and public inquiry on corporate power."

David Hilzenrath reports: "The Securities and Exchange Commission appeared headed toward a partisan split today on the selection of the chairman of a new board to clean up the accounting industry, with William H. Webster, who has headed both the FBI and the CIA, likely to be appointed over Democratic objections, sources close to the process said. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card called Webster this week and asked him to accept the job, sources said. The SEC's two Democratic commissioners, backed by investor advocates and Democratic congressional leaders, plan to vote for retirement fund executive John H. Biggs, who has advocated stricter regulation of corporate auditors, sources said...appointment of the board is central to the government's efforts to restore investors' confidence in the stock markets after a series of corporate accounting scandals at companies such as Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. helped erase billions of dollars of shareholders' funds." Spooky, eh?

Thwarted at every turn by the facts, Donald Rumsfeld is (we are told on good authority) becoming increasingly pushy, sullen, and punitive amongst coworkers at the Pentagon. Like a spoiled, overentitled adolescent denied to keys to Daddy's car, he is determined to have his own way no matter what. Now he has pulled an intelligence unit off other, more critical duties to have them pore over info on Iraq for the sixty-zillionth time in the hope that they will find something - ANYTHING - he can use as a pretext to attack Iraq. Members of the five-person "intelligence" unit were hand-picked by Rumsfeld and stacked with pro-war folks. It's like bringing in Ken Lay and Arthur Andersen to review the evidence in the Enron case. We will not buy Rumsfeld's manufactured Bushit!

Citigroup is the NUMBER ONE financial broker to oil industry, the 7th largest donor to GOP, one of the top Bush patrons, and is condemned by environmental groups for its wanton disregard for the environment and native cultures. (see http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5613) We can't think of a "nicer" company to be the target of a massive investigation! Just like Enron, it now appears that Citigroup used "creative accounting" and flimflam to sucker investors, convincing them that WorldCom, Global Crossings, and other failed operations had rosy futures when they knew they were on the way down. Hooray for NY attorney Eliot Spitzer, who is going after the REAL VILLAINS - the very ones the Bush administration works overtime to protect.

The Center for Public Integrity's mission "is to provide the American people with the findings of our investigations and analyses of public service, government accountability and ethics related issues." In that spirit and as a public service, the Center posted a number of documents related to a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of Bush for insider trading. Now, new documents are available, including: A partnership agreement between Aeneas Venture Corp., a subsidiary of Harvard Management, and Harken; losses at Harken Marketing, and its partnership with Enron in commodities trading; company proxy statements, showing among other things, that GWB was paid $80K in '87-'88 and that Bush the Elder's campaign was reimbursed by Harken for Bush the Lesser's attendance at board meetings. A full report is also available from this link.

Reuters.com reports: "While...(Mr.) Bush served on Harken Energy Corp.'s board more than 10 years ago, it engaged in complex trades with Enron Corp., a watchdog group said on Tuesday. Enron's relationship with Bush has become a political issue since its collapse in December amid a widening financial scandal. The company was one of Bush's biggest campaign contributors....The documents, released by the Center for Public Integrity, showed that one of Harken's partners in commodities trading was Enron. A June 1990 memo from Harken Marketing, a Harken subsidiary, listed a $363,000 letter of credit with the now bankrupt energy trader....The nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity said other documents showed that Bush was paid $80,000 in 1987-88 to consult for Harken even though he was working full time for his father's presidential campaign....Former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay was a longtime Bush ally and a generous donor to his political campaigns."

Jackson Thoreau's phone rang this morning, and he isn't happy about the message Senator Phil Gramm of Texas left him urging him to vote Republican on November 5th. Jackson writes: "You urged me to vote for the 'great' Republican candidates who are running for U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and Texas and local offices. Here is the 'great' job Republicans like you and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and U.S. Rep. Dick Armey and Bush and Cheney and others have done since y'all - as we say in Texas - stole the White House in late 2000..."

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes, "The smug spirit of Enron pervades the Bush administration. When it learned that North Korea had a secret nuclear arms program, it moved the disclosure off the books lest it complicate the confrontation with Iraq. The information that Congress needed as it held another one of its self-proclaimed 'historic' debates was withheld -- a footnote known to only a few key members who, as with Enron's board, passively kept their mouths shut." He adds that this is by no means the only instance of self-serving, unjustifiable secrecy. Cohen concludes that the Busheviks think they, and not the American people, own the country. What took him so long to figure this out?

SFGate's David Lazarus writes, "Sources close to the matter say Timothy Belden, who previously ran Enron's trading office in Portland, Ore., is prepared to implicate a number of other industry players in what could shape up to be one of the biggest conspiracies in U.S. corporate history" - the $30 billion ripoff of California energy consumers. "I'm told that last week's resignation of Dynegy President Steve Bergstrom was directly related to the looming prospect of Belden naming names. Dynegy also said it will exit the energy-trading business. Dynegy is being investigated by the Justice Department and already has agreed to pay $3 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle fraud charges...ChevronTexaco owns about 26.5 percent of Dynegy and is the Houston firm's largest shareholder." Is it time for a Special Prosecutor for former ChevronTexaco director Condi Rice? Stay tuned!

Daily Enron writes, "Which of these two parties, if they control the House and Senate for the next two years, can deliver a truly strong nation? A nation that is capable of not only defending us from those abroad who would do us harm, but from those right here at home - like the folks at Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing. The record is about as clear on this as it can be. After Republicans took control of the House in 1994 they did what Republicans always do when they get into power - they began dismantling the federal regulatory apparatus. There are two forces driving this compulsion. First, corporate contributors made it a condition of support. One of the results of the Republicans' 1994 'Contract With America' was regulatory changes that directly led to the current round of corporate scandals. The problem goes beyond just catering to corporate contributors. Republicans really believe that government regulation stifles business [and] businesses will always do the right thing."

The Toledo Blade editorial board clearly sees the problem with having a "CEO pResident." "It now turns out that Mr. Bush's tenure as a director of Harken Energy Corp. from 1986 to 1993 included an Enron-like deal to bail the company out of financial trouble with assistance from the investment arm of Harvard University....The arrangement apparently was legal under lax accounting rules, but was "transparent" to the point that only Harvard Management and Harken insiders knew what was going on. Outside investors would't have a clue, which is precisely the problem with the illegal deals companies like Enron used to artificially inflate their value to drive up the stock price." Bush's past behavior is indeed an indication of what we should expect from him today; he's slashing budgets for SEC enforcement of anti-corruption regulations so they can't be enforced.

Daily Enron reports that despite 7 deaths linked to Pilgrim's Pride meats, Ann Veneman's "USDA failed to warn schools that it had purchased and shipped to them nearly 2 million pounds of the ready-to-eat lunchmeats in question under the federal lunch program. That was not done until Sunday, October 13, eleven days after the outbreak was confirmed. 'Isn't it amazing that they didn't look for that (in schools) before now?' said Donna Rosenbaum [of] Safe Tables Our Priority. 'I find it unconscionable that they would not jump on that immediately after issuing the recall.' STOP said the situation was a national emergency and should have been treated as such by the administration. They point out that more than 20 people, including three pregnant women, have died in the past few weeks from this and other listeria outbreaks in theUS and that over 120 others have suffered serious illnesses...'We demand the administration take immediate steps to protect the American people,' said Rosenbaum."

Judy Fitzgerald writes: "Could it perhaps be that a lot of people do not trust Bush because he has told one cynical lie after another? From his claims of having been the environmental and education governor of Texas (even though his record indicates the opposite) to not touching Social Security to being a 'compassionate conservative'...In short, his walk simply does not match his talk....Could it be that people don't trust Bush or his vice president because they both have been up to their necks in Enron and Enron-style scandals? Could this administration's insistence on absolute secrecy for all its activities - including the domestic energy agenda - be a part of the lack of trust that so many feel? Could it perhaps be the close ties Bush and...Dick Cheney and others in the administration have with the oil industry? Daddy Bush's Carlyle Group profits handsomely from war and from controlling energy supplies."

Once again, our man inside the GOP has supplied us with the latest pleas to the party faithful from RNC HQ - hot off the press, with "helpful" annotations by Cheryl Seal.

"Polls and pundits keep predicting a GOP sweep to control of the House and Senate. Despite media support and their enormous cash advantage, Republicans are extremely nervous. With very good reason. Although the media is loath to report it, top Republican strategists realize their candidates are in trouble all across America for several reasons. What a difference 10 months make! Less than a year ago, Bush was riding 90% approval polls and his party was openly planning to privatize Social Security. The Republicans put a $250,000,000.00 gift to Enron in their 'stimulus package' along with $billions more for the biggest corporations and wealthiest Americans. These political paybacks to Republican contributors sailed through the Republican controlled House. When Senate Democrats removed these boondoggles from the bill, Bush struck back. He accused Democrats of 'obstructionism' and blamed them for his own failed economic policies." So writes Mike Hersh.

The Washington Post offers a pictorial documentary of the Enron scandal and the impact on its employees. See Bush, who received more than $290,000 in contributions from former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, stroll with Karl Rove. Read the suicide note left by former Enron Vice Chairman John Clifford Baxter. See Former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow take the 5th Amendment and refuse to testify before a House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Watch as Bush buddy "Kenny Boy" Lay refuses to answer lawmakers' questions about his role in the collapse of Enron. See US Army Secretary Thomas White listen to a reporter's question about his relationship with Enron during a Pentagon briefing; he doesn't look to eager to talk, does he? But where is that Special Prosecutor for the Harken-Enron-Halliburton scandals, eh?

Karen Hughes, Bush's nursemaid and chief Valkyrie, has proven that when the going gets tough, the nasty get nastier. Jackson Thoreau reports that Hughes is now trying to shore up her sagging boy by strongarming several key Texas campaigns, including those of John Cornyn (Senate), Rick Perry (governor) and David Dewhurst (Lt. Gov). "Karl Rove is also heavily involved in advising these campaigns," says Thoreau. "Bush & Co. do not want to lose a top Texas position to the Democrats, which would be seen as a huge SLAAAAPPPPP!! to Bush's face. Bush himself has wasted more public taxpayers' dollars by flying several times recently on Air Force One to Texas to campaign for Cornyn, Perry, and Dewhurst, rather than actually work on issues like the economy and national security." He leaves that to Dick Cheney and the Carlyle Group.

Says Ralph Nader: "Iraq is a distraction strategy by the Bush administration to avoid being implicated in some of these scandals. The president [sic] still goes to various election-funding events with the people of the corporate world, and he doesn't want a judicial witch hunt to be unleashed against his corporate friends." The evidence certainly supports this: despite supposedly being so concerned about the dangers of terrorism and the should-be heavy mantle of a "war time" president, Bush has spent a large proportion of his time lately attending corporate-sponsored $1,000 (and up) per plate fund raisers. Doesn't sound very worried about anything but his campaign bank account, does he?

David Teather reports: "George Bush was yesterday laid open to further allegations of hypocrisy in his condemnation of the aggressive business practices of the 1990s when more details of his own dealings were published. Harken Energy, the oil and gas company behind the US president's wealth, used an off balance sheet entity to move poorly performing assets and debts off its books, according to a report which draws comparisons with Enron. The off balance sheet entity, a partnership with the investment arm of Harvard University, was formed in 1990 at a critical time for the company's finances. HarvardWatch, an alumni and student group which monitors the university's investments, likened the venture to those used at the disgraced energy firm Enron to disguise debts before it collapsed. Mr Bush was a director at Harken from 1986 to 1993 and at the time in question was a $100,000 a year consultant. Minutes show that he personally approved the deal."

HarvardWatch.org did the investigative journalism, the heavy lifting that the guys making the big bucks didn't. Drop by and see the actual meeting minutes showing Bush motioned to advance the Harken-Harvard partnership which would briefly keep Harken Energy afloat in an Enron-type, off-the-books, $30 million deal. Find links to coverage by Paul Krugman, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Reuters, AP, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.

"How stupid are Americans not to see that all this war talk is a diversionary tactic, a red herring meant to cover up crimes of the American government: widespread corruption that robbed Americans of billions of dollars in scandals named Harken, Enron and Halliburton, a meaningless genocidal attack on Afghanistan that failed to achieve its stated objective yet killed 5,000 innocent people and now has been conveniently forgotten, and an attack on American soil that killed another 3,000 Americans that also has been largely forgotten, as the highest levels of the U.S. government work diligently to cover up the brutal facts that highly placed officials KNEW this atrocity was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. In fact, they wanted it to happen because it served their purposes." So writes John Kaminski.

WashingtonPost.com reports: "When...Bush served as a director of an energy company 12 years ago, he approved the creation of an off-balance-sheet partnership that reduced the company's debts and improved earnings in a transaction similar to those that led to the collapse of Enron Corp....According to the (Wall Street) Journal, Harvard's support of Harken influenced A. Robert Abboud, then head of First City Bancorp, to take over another bank's loans to Harken in 1990 and rescue Harken from default. Abboud had been a prominent supporter of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq before the Persian Gulf War. Abboud also had ties to President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father."

Molly Ivins writes: "We just lost the whole ballgame on corporate reform -- without the news even making it to the front page. The sick, sad tidings were tucked away discreetly on the business pages: "SEC Chief Hedges on Accounting Regulator." Now there's a sexy headline. All of you who were shafted by Enron, shucked by Worldcom, jived by Global Crossing, everyone whose 401(k) is now a 201(k) (I think that's Paul Begala's line), you just got screwed again. They're not going to fix it. They've already called off the reform effort; it's over. Corporate muscle showed up and shut it down. Forget expensing options, independent directors, going after offshore shams, derivatives regulation. For that matter, forget even basic reforms like separating the auditing and consulting functions of accounting firms and rotating accounting firms every few years. Bottom line: It's all going to happen again. We learned zip from the entire financial collapse. Our political system is too bought-off..."

Last night Bush said he wouldn't risk a single American life by trusting Saddam Hussein. We don't have to. We have Saddam under our thumb now, and need not fear him unless we behave stupidly. Saddam did not use his worst weapons during the Gulf War, because he was not endangered. Bush's rash, reckless policies will threaten Saddam with utter destruction, undermine deterrence, and encourage him to do his worst. Bush's policy as stated is madness. It makes sense only as a distraction to make us vote our fears rather than our hopes. Even Bush understands Iraq is no threat. Otherwise why would he spend day after day raising money for Republicans and attacking Democrat's patriotism? Bush desperately talks about attacking Iraq to keep us from talking about other things. Such as: Bush's corporate scandals with Enron and Harken; Dick Cheney's double dealing with Enron when he should have been leading the anti-terror task force which never met even once.

The Daily Enron writes, "Have corporate evildoers placed a mole at the head of the SEC?... When a new oversight board was created to oversee the accounting profession Pitt gained a good deal of credibility by his choice to head it. He suggested respected pension-fund executive John H. Biggs [who] was known for his tough, no nonsense approach to accounting reforms... But, as the October 28 deadline approached to formally name someone to that post, Pitt suddenly reversed himself... Instead, Pitt will try to place accounting industry-friendly Donald J. Kirk in the post... 'The accounting profession is still engaged in sort of a rear-guard action to see if they can try to weaken the ultimate oversight board that's appointed... including derailing Biggs's nomination,' a congressional source told the Washington Post... If Harvey Pitt is not a mole at the top of the SEC for the accounting and investment banking professions, he is sure doing a good imitation of one."

Michael Hammerschlag writes, "Psychopath Saddam isn't right about many things, but he may be about the primary motivation behind Bush's push for war: vengeance - for Saddam's plot to kill his father in Kuwait in '93. Attempting to murder a President may in fact be justification for removal with extreme prejudice, but the results and reaction to a general attack on the devastated Iraqi people and economy might be far more costly than any temporary increase in security. Punishing one's enemies is a central tenet of the Bush family philosophy - GW's first political job was as an enforcer against administration officials. In his first act, Bush cancelled the Clinton cap on exploding California energy prices - as a result Enron's revenues ballooned from $25 billion in first half 2000 to $100 billion in the same period 2001, with $30-40 billion in criminal windfall profits ripped from the pockets of voters who had given his opponent a 12 point victory and handed to his biggest contributor."

CBSMarketwatch.com organized a nifty table of both the charges and the investigations that are rocking corporate boardrooms, including those with ties to the Bush administration, such as Enron. Also profiled: Adelphia, Arthur Andersen, Critical Path, Global Crossing, Homestore.com, ImClone Systems, Martha Stewart Living, Salomon Smith Barney, Tyco, and WorldCom. It includes the company, persons, positions, allegations, status and their 2001 reported compensation. Unfortunately, a few key folks are missing - Thomas White (Enron), Dick Cheney (Halliburton), and George W. Bush (Harken). Hey CBS - they ALL belong in the pokey!

Rightwingers like to claim that Clinton bombed Iraq for political gain. But the 1993 bombing was in response to an alleged assassination attempt on Bush Sr. while in Kuwait. In fact, this report may have been engineered in large part by Bush pal Frank Wisner (a CIA and Enron bigwig) and former CIA director James Woolsey. "A senior White House official recently told me that one of the seemingly most persuasive elements of the report had been overstated and was essentially incorrect," said Seymour Hersh in a 1993 article. "And none of the Clinton Administration officials have claimed that there was any empirical evidence - a 'smoking gun' -directly linking Saddam or any of his senior advisers to the alleged assassination attempt. The case against Iraq was, and remains, circumstantial." Hey, BushDaddy's CIA provided the wrong map coordinates that led to the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, as well as the faulty evidence that led to the bombing of the Sudanese aspirin factory!

It must be clear to anybody with even a meager capacity to reason that the Bush war drums are orchestrated to divert attention from domestic issues as the election approaches even as Bush is unable to build a case for an immediate war. The one thing you can be sure of about Republicans is that they are loath to reveal their motivations. Their reasoning is simple: people would not support them if they knew their true intentions. They'd probably be run out of town. This has been a Republican tendency at least since Ronald Reagan. For example, instead of admitting they want to give tax cuts to the wealthy, they say, a tax cut will help spark economic recovery, and they invent an economic theory called "trickle down."

MSNBC.com reports: "In 2000, 15 of Enron's 17 board members were outside directors. A report commissioned by the company itself found that directors 'failed, in our judgment, in...oversight duties.'...the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said directors 'witnessed numerous indications of questionable practices by Enron management over several years, but chose to ignore them,' instead approving 'high-risk accounting, inappropriate conflict-of-interest transactions, extensive undisclosed off-the-books activities and excessive executive compensation.'...The Senate report on Enron noted that its outside directors were seasoned executives and accountants unlikely to be easily misled. Enron had a number of prominent outside directors, including...Wendy L. Gramm, the wife of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and a former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,...(who was) a member of Enron' audit committee...SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt's (has) close ties to Sen. Gramm."

MSNBC.com reports: "Federal prosecutors are expected to announce an indictment of former Enron Corp. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow as early as next week, USA Today reported Wednesday, citing two legal sources close to the investigation. One of the sources was quoted as saying the government had already secured a sealed grand jury indictment with fraud charges and other allegations against Fastow and subordinates who allegedly enriched themselves through Enron's questionable partnership deals.... Fastow's one-time protege, former Enron executive Michael Kopper, pleaded guilty on Aug. 21 to money-laundering and fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with authorities, helping prosecutors to close in on higher-ranking executives."

Not everybody is distracted from the real issues by the constant pounding of war drums. Rep. John LaFalce (D-NY) is demanding that Army Secretary Thomas White respond to evidence that he helped cook the books at Enron. The smoking gun (first reported in a Salon Premium article, http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/08/29/white/index.html) is a terse memo responding to news that White's division was losing money: "Close a bigger deal to hide the loss."

"Close a bigger deal. Hide the loss before the 1Q." -- Thomas White, now Secretary of the Army (in a February 2001 e-mail, while Vice President to Enron Energy Services). Bridget Gibson writes, "Since November 7, 2000, the losses have been piling up" - from the Stolen Election, to the Bush Administration's failures before and after 9-11, to the massive increase in our national debt. "I'm sure that Kenny Boy and Dick and George and Tom could arrange with some of the creative accountants from Arthur Anderson that have been laid off to find a way to hide some of their nefarious dealings, but there will be no way to hide losses like these."

"Mr. Cheney supposedly chose Thomas White for his business expertise. But when it became apparent that the Enron division he ran was a money-losing fraud, the story changed. We were told that Mr. White was an amiable guy who had no idea what was actually going on, that his colleagues referred to him behind his back as 'Mr. Magoo'... But he was no Magoo [and was] fully aware of what his division was up to... The biggest of several deals that allowed Mr. White to 'hide the loss' - a deal in which the documents show him intimately involved - was a 15-year contract to supply electricity and natural gas to the Indiana pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Any future returns from the deal were purely hypothetical. Indeed, the contract assumed a deregulated electricity market, which didn't yet exist in Indiana. Yet without delivering a single watt of power - and having paid cash up front to Lilly, not the other way around - Mr. White's division immediately booked a multimillion-dollar profit."

The polls say two-thirds of the American people support Bush's war plans. Who are those people? A New York Times reporter went looking for them, but discovered they're harder to find than an honest Enron executive.

While ChevronTexaco was perpetrating a tax-evasion scheme that Enron would envy, Condoleeza Rice was on its board of directors and even had an oil tanker named after her. Will the IRS pursue this new evidence of ChevronTexaco's fraud? Will Condi join the Bush Administration Perp Walk Parade?

Bridget Gibson writes, "A few years ago there was quite a stink about a Clinton policy that basically said "we won't ask and you won't have to tell" about your personal life. With all of the fuss surrounding this policy, it was amazing that the sky just did not cave in. Today we have an administration that has a similar policy with much more far reaching effects. It's called "Don't Ask Because We Tell Nothing." If you have the audacity to ask, you will be labeled as unpatriotic and they don't have to tell anything about any subject because they have their magic shield of "executive privilege." This privilege applies to any communication that has ever been had from the cradle to current regarding any and all subjects that may be of particular interest to anyone with a brain."

"Mr. Bush, let me quote some words of your own. These are not words from a distant past, or even before 9-11. These are the words you spoke just last night, looking straight into the camera, speaking to the people of America and the world, pretending to tell the truth: 'Our deepest national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift of a creator who intended us to live in liberty and equality. More than anything else, this separates us from the enemy we fight. We value every life; our enemies value none - not even the innocent; not even their own.' Mr. Bush, we know you did not write those words. But you read them. And their meaning is so utterly clear that even you can understand what they mean: Mr. Bush, your words mean killing is wrong. And since war is nothing but organized killing, war is wrong." So declared Bob Fertik in his speech at the United Nations on September 12.

Mark Crispin Miller writes, "Although the press was always marvelously soft on Bush - reveling in his ignorance, saying not a word about his many scandals past, approving his bald theft of the election - after 9/11 such mere protectiveness mutated swiftly into a demented Caesarism, such as one would once have found among the Soviets, or as one finds today in places like Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba (and Iraq). At first, this sort of thing was understandable, if nauseating, the fearful pundits and reporters... exalting Bush into the leader that a stricken nation dearly wished it had. Thus Bush was hailed as 'eloquent,' 'commanding' and 'astute,' 'Churchillian' and 'another Roosevelt,' etc., although he clearly wasn't ever any of those things... The fact that they ... kept on treating this Bush as a god - ... notwithstanding the abundant evidence that he was not at all divine but barely human - makes it quite clear that the press was transformed big-time by the shock of 9/11."

"The corporate crashes of Enron, Worldcom and others did not start in the year 2002. They had ended there. It all got started much earlier, in 1980 when President Reagan came to power. Some critics may say that it’s a shame to pick on a seriously ill, old gentleman. Relax, my dear critics. I am not picking on President Reagan personally. It would have been utterly unfair to blame one man for the disastrous economical shenanigans of the entire Republican establishment. Mr. Reagan was just a front man for the Republican politicians, lobbyists and the special interest groups of the richest Americans and Corporations." So writes Stan Newton.

"DONAHUE: We also have a lot of Enron money going to Florida... PALAST: First of all, it’s another twofer. No. 1, Enron goes bust. The Florida state pension fund has lost 1/3 of a billion dollars. That’s more than any other state threw onto the Enron roulette wheel. A third of a billion dollars... DONAHUE: Because of its extraordinarily large investment in Enron stock. PALAST: Unbelievable investment in Enron stock. DONAHUE: 330 million, gone. PALAST: That’s right, 1/3 of a billion dollars. So what’s happened is the state of Florida is hunting for every Enron asset and for all the assets of Enron executives, to try to get back some of the money which is basically stolen from the pensioners of Florida. What happens 45 days after the money disappears into a hole in Houston? The governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, goes to the home of the ex-president of Enron and picks up a check for $2 million, a campaign contribution from a fund raiser held at the house of the ex-president of Enron."

Molly Ivins writes, "Nothing like a lot of distracting saber-rattling to get you to take your eyes off the shell with the pea under it... Listening to Bush at his Economic Forum in Waco, one would have thought that the Sarbanes bill was his very own pet project. [The] corporations that use offshore mail-drops to evade taxes use our air, our water and our roads, they are protected by our laws, our police and our military, and they can damn well help pay the taxes. Is anyone ready to admit yet that permitting banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies to merge was a rancid idea? We can thank Phil Gramm, the senator from Enron, for that one. Anyone ready to tackle derivatives yet? Because I guarantee you, if we don't regulate derivatives, we're going to see a mess that will make Enron look like patty-cake. Whichever party gets out in front on these issues is going to have an overwhelming advantage in the fall." Are you listening, Democrats?

Since Senator Jim Jeffords jumped and removed Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader, Senate Democrats have earned an A+ report card. They've kept busy, and supported the Administration in the fight against terrorism. They've also stood up to Mr. Bush when necessary. They passed into law campaign finance reform and accounting reform over Bush's strong objections. This will help clean up our elections and our economy. They bottled up Bush's unqualified judicial nominees, including Judge Pickering who actually intervened in a criminal case trying to protect cross burning domestic terrorists in gross violation of judicial ethics, morality and human decency. Pickering - who opposes enforcement of civil rights laws and other laws to protect citizens - should be under investigation for his attempts to subvert justice in the cross burning case, not nominates to sit in judgment of others.

The Daily Enron reports: "In private Dick Cheney might think of what he did to the shareholders of Highlands Insurance as 'collateral damage.' Because, in business, as in war, a leader has to do what it takes to win. Highlands Insurance had been a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton since 1958 when it was formed to provide health insurance to the company's many workers. When Cheney took the helm at Halliburton in 1995 company lawyers were fretting that Highlands might soon become one big asbestos insurance liability. It seems Halliburton's former workers were beginning to show up with serious asbestos-related maladies. Highlands Insurance had to go…. Within three years of the sale Highlands found itself saddled with 23,000 claims worth about $80 million from workers at Halliburton's Brown & Root construction subsidiary. Highland's attorneys have argued successfully that Cheney withheld 'material information' about Brown & Root's insurance issues."

Even right-wing robot Robert Novak is appalled by the soaring cost of oil, which is the completely predictable result of Bush's incessant war-drum banging over Iraq. Everyone assumes Bush is serious about bombing Baghdad back to the Stone Age, but what if he's just running a massive scam to SCARE Americans, drive oil prices through the roof, and thus make the gargantuan oil companies even richer? That's preposterous, you say? Then you have already forgotten the great California Electricity Scam of 2001, when BushCheney conspired openly with energy "traitors" like Kenny Lay's Enron to steal $30 BILLION from California consumers and business. The California scam proved that Bush is a Texas energy gangster on such a breathtaking scale that Americans can't believe their own eyes. There's only one way to stop Bush - defeat ALL Republicans!

"To Tim Russert: Last Sunday on your 'Meet The Press,' you allowed Tom Davis R-VA, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee to lie through his teeth without so much as a hint of rebuttal, correction or factual follow up. Davis said privatizing Social Security was '...not the Republican position.' Lie. It was specifically worded in the 2000 Republican Party Platform. He said, 'President Clinton embraced it at one point as you recall. Lie. You know the truth about this. He said '205 Democrats voted to praise it (privatizing)...Lie. You know it. He specifically MIS-QUOTED several Democrats as supporting privatization. If you don't have the factual statements from those Democrats, I'll be happy to refer you to the public documents Mr. Davis was lying about..." So writes Steven Warren.

Robert Scheer writes that in Dick Cheney's nightmares, "he is led off in handcuffs, accused of crimes committed while CEO of Halliburton, securing that company's place in the ever-growing pantheon of post-boom corporate fraudsters... A typical American POW these days is a captain of industry who played loose with his company's books, and both Cheney and his alleged boss ran with that crowd. [A poll shows only 11% of Americans believe Cheney is telling the truth about Halliburton.] Imagine what a field day a Democrat-controlled Congress would have looking into how Cheney [cashed out of Halliburton, and Enron's role in Cheney's energy policy.] Maybe the elusive Cheney has a bunch of good explanations for all of this bad-smelling stuff. Until he decides to publicly share them, however, his passion on Iraq will remind many of us of the old saying that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."

If you want to know the truth about 9-11, start here. Paul Thompson has compiled an amazing 9-11 timeline, drawing from every conceivable source. The timeline has 5 sections: 1979-2000... Jan. 2001-9/11... Day of 9/11.. 9/11-Dec. 2001... Jan. 2002-present. And it goes into depth on many key issues: Central Asian oil, Enron and the Afghanistan pipelines... Information that should have shown what kind of attack al-Qaeda would make... US preparing for a war with Afghanistan before 9/11, tightening control of Central Asia since... Incompetence, bad luck, and/or obstruction of justice... Suggestions of advanced knowledge that an attack would take place on 9/11... Cover-up, lies, contradictions and obscure facts... Israeli "art student" spy ring, Israeli foreknowledge evidence... Anthrax attacks and microbiologist deaths... Pakistani ISI and/or opium drug connections... Bin Laden family, Saudi Arabia corruption and support of terrorists, connections to Bush. Check it out!

The NY Times reports: "In June, while the public was focused on corporate scandals... Bush quietly signed legislation to double the scope of the [Export-Import] bank's operations and allow it to provide up to $100 billion in international trade assistance at any one time. Even before this increase, Export-Import was already by far the largest federal agency providing international credit aid, outpacing international food and disaster aid programs... The bulk of Export-Import's benefits go to a small number of large companies that are sophisticated enough to get financing on their own: Boeing, Halliburton, General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Lucent Technologies, ChevronTexaco, Caterpillar and Dell Computer, among others... Money has always flowed from the bank to the politically savvy. In its heyday, Enron was one of the bank's biggest beneficiaries, receiving a total of $675 million in aid since 1994."

The Cadiz project is an Enron-like scheme that will suck water out of a desert aquifer and sell it to a desperate California water district for a major profit, making a single man a multimillionaire. This NY Times article doesn't mention that Keith Brackpool stands to make $500 million off water he doesn't own, that the aquifer lies under one third of the Mojave National Preserve, that a similar pumping project near Owens Lake has caused chronic air pollution from dust, nor that Enron was poised to go into the water business out west just before getting busted. But Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) knows these nasty facts and is fighting the project - an uphill battle now that Gale Norton and Bush have stepped in. If they win, the Cadiz project will be just the start of a nightmare come true: water, the stuff of life, turned into a commodity folks like Lay and Brackpool can use like poker chips.

The Cadiz Project in California is set to become the next Enron. Only this time, the commodity being wheeled and dealed is not California's heat, AC, and lights – it's the state's drinking water! Unlike the Bush- Lay relationship, (corporate criminals in cahoots), Cadiz baron Keith Brackpool deceived Gov. Gray Davis, manipulatively misrepresenting the project. Now Bush has stepped in to help Brackpool- a British investment banker, no less! Californians, now hip to the real scheme, are protesting big time. As Public Citizen reports: "This project has lots of environmental problems...like destruction of desert tortoise habitat and creation of dust bowls." Equally appalling, "It is ripping off the U.S. taxpayer by permitting private profits selling resources on and under public lands." Do Bush or Brackpool care? About like Ken Lay and Cheney care! We will be investigating rumored ties between Bush, Lay and Brackpool. Stay tuned!

The Daily Enron reports that the cozy relationship between Harvard Management and Harken mirrors the relationship between Alliance Management Capital and Enron." Alliance was the largest single institutional holder of Enron stock. Alliance's CEO at the time, Frank Savage, also held a seat on Enron's board. When Enron insiders wanted to bail out of doomed Enron stock in late 2001, it was Alliance that arranged the sale of $300 million in Enron shares to the Florida public employees retirement fund which it managed for the state. [We mention this] because curiosity about these two facilitating investment funds seems to have all but disappeared. Harvard Management has clamed up and federal investigators seem to have no desire to disturb the ivy. Same goes for Alliance Capital Management and its role devastating Florida's public pension fund."

The Daily Enron reports: "Since Enron was [the scandal] that blew the lid off the corporate cesspool in the first place, one has to wonder why things are moving at such a glacial pace. 'People forget that within the ranks of the Bush administration there are no fewer than 50 [Enron connected officials]' said Mike Lux... 'it goes to reason that any Justice Department probe of Enron has to be conducted in such a way that it does not cause collateral damage to the administration. The last thing they need is for witnesses before a grand jury to start spouting stuff off under oath that's going to embarrass the administration or get one of its officials indicted'... while other high profile corporate crime cases are moving swiftly to indictments of top executives, the Justice Department's Enron probe has yet to show such prosecutorial vigor. [Experts say it's] because the Justice Department has been timid in its use of its most powerful weapon - the grand jury."

The Bush Administration is spending our taxpayer money to teach religious centers how to beat & cheat the system to get federal funding. To make matters worse, Bush is going ahead with this, even without full congressional support (i.e. Bush dictatorship) and ignoring the separation of church and state laws. "If you're 'John's Shelter,' you can go after the money but if you're 'St. John's Shelter,' you can't" said James Townney. Now we are breaking down the Wall Separating Church and State, including teaching organizations how to cheat. Is this the Faith-Based Enron Program?

Salon's Jason Leopold writes: "Three months before he was nominated as secretary of the Army by President [sic] Bush, Thomas White faced what surely was the most difficult task in his 10-year career as an Enron executive: Helping hide the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from Enron Energy Services, the retail division he had headed since 1998. It was February 2001 and it was imperative that EES find ways to inflate its first-quarter earnings and hide what was becoming a black hole of losses. But after White had left to pursue his Army post, the company was boasting a record quarter for EES, with a remarkable 18-percent increase in earnings over the previous year... Presiding over and even encouraging EES's accounting was Tom White." We Demand a Special Prosecutor!

Mike Hersh writes, "In some ways, I am awestruck by their audacity and aplomb. Bush ran promising to 'trust the people,' but when the people elected Al Gore, Bush's people sued the people. He lost, because we have laws that say votes not judges decide elections. [But] because Sandra O'Connor wants to retire while a Republican occupies the Oval Office and Anthony Kennedy wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, Bush won in the courts what he lost at the ballot box in Florida and nationwide. It didn't matter that five 'Justices' shamelessly violated their oath to uphold the Constitution - which makes no provision for a court blocking a vote count. They embraced Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas' extreme right wing partisan view... No less authority than Vincent Bugliosi called this treason. It clearly repudiated everything Bush said he stood for, but Bush got away with it. Presto! Chango! Counting votes is 'bad' for our republic - or is that bad for Republicans?"

"Despite a 75% markdown from $1000 to $250 per seat at a Bush fundraiser for Simon, Republicans had a hard time filling seats. But outside in an exclusive area of Dana Point in Orange County, generally considered the most conservative county in California, there was no difficulty seeing well over 500 demonstrators at the peak of the event. With questions about Resident Bush's apparent insider trading while at Harken Energy, land swindling in connection with the Texas Rangers stadium and the fraud judgment against Simon's company casting a shadow on both men, the crowd was asking for real investigations into corporate fraud. The prominent chants were 'Eyeballs deep in corporate crime, Dubya should be doing time,' '1,2,3,4; Dubya is a corporate whore. 5,6,7,8; Enron is his Watergate,' and 'F-R-A-U-D Spells Bush.'" So writes Natasha, age 11.

The Daily Enron: "'Apparently George Bush's plan for getting corporate crooks out of the boardroom is to get them elected to public office.' [Said one California voter when she learned that Bush] was coming to California to raise money for Republican gubernatorial candidate, William Simon Jr. [This is exactly what White House strategists fear most from this weekend's fundraising appearances with Simon. So Bush & Cheney avoid being photographed with Simon]. 'They're going to try to do this under the radar as best as possible,' a GOP strategist [said]. 'You will not get the pResident standing up and declaring Simon's innocence,' But putting Simon and Bush in the same room together brings with it the risk of comparison. The two men are veritable clones. While each man made millions of dollars in the private sector, an examination of their business affairs shows both their fortunes linked more to their famous fathers than their own efforts." Simon Sr. was an architect of the New Right.

"On November 2, 2000, four days before the most disputed election in American history, military veterans in the US Senate lashed out at candidate George W Bush for his failure to explain a six-month lapse in his National Guard service. 'At the least, I would have been court-martialed. At the least, I would have been placed in prison,' Senator Daniel Inouye said. Bush would offer no explanation for his absence and, as he had throughout the campaign, refused to discuss his military service during the Vietnam War. Why would a man who was running for the office of Commander and Chief of the US Armed Forces refuse to discuss his service in the military? Why didn't the public and press take notice? Their attention that day was focused on something else." Is Bush's chestpounding about an Iraqi W-ar to divert scrutiny from Harken, Enron, Carlyle Group conflicts and the rest of his corrupt cronies? Want to bet your kid's life on it?

Bush and his Federalist Society/Freemarket (better known as "Freeper") cronies want to run the U.S. like one big private megacorporation. It's more efficient, they say, and will benefit everyone in the long run. But this bit of propaganda is nothing but a bald-faced, Enron-style scam. The best way to turn the U.S. into an extinct nation, in fact, is to run it like a megacorporation. Why? Because megacorporations in general may soon be extinct - victims of their own bloated size, greed, and failure to take into account what the true ramifications of a global market really mean to the consumer (why should we spend half of every shopping dollar on marketing and executive salaries?). Michael Shuman of Utne Reader offers five trends that may spell the end of multinationals.

Practicing psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank writes: "Word on the street says Tony Soprano and his gang are back - 'finally,' announces TV Guide. So is Tony's psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi who thinks Tony talks openly to her about who he is. In fact, Tony keeps an entire part of his life off limits. His boyish charm and emotional vulnerability help him preserve his mafia secrets. There is no honest discourse. And Dr. Melfi, an ordinarily sophisticated person, doesn't get it. Or does she get it and then disavow her perceptions? While waiting for the Sopranos we have had the Bush Administration to entertain us. It is led by an affable, earnest and boyish looking man whose struggles with language and whose mania for exercise help us forgive and even ignore his darker behavior – just as we do with Tony Soprano. And a few protesters aside, we have become a nation of Dr. Melfis – ignoring or evading what we see...."

Jim Hightower writes: "If you had bought $1,000 worth of Enron stock a year ago, you'd now be down to $16.50. If you'd bought $1,000 worth of WorldCom stock, you'd only have $5 left from your investment. But . . . if you'd bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock), drank all the beer, and cashed in the cans for the 10-cent deposit, you would have $214. So, the prudent investment strategy is clear: Drink heavily and recycle. Yet, George W Bush continues to put on his 'What, me worry?' face and insist that the prudent strategy for us Americans is to privatize our Social Security funds. [Bush's Social Security privatization scheme would let Enron's bankers bilk] workers and investors out of billions of dollars. George might [still believe] in laissez-faire fantasies, but these fund managers are cold-eyed opportunists who know that they would reap huge annual fees if only they can get their hands on our Social Security funds."

Norman Solomon writes, "Some people are suspicious that Bush will go for a 'wag the dog' strategy -- boosting Republican prospects with a military assault on Iraq shortly before Election Day. But a modified approach now seems to be underway. Let's call it 'wag the puppy'... Before initiating vast new carnage abroad, the White House wants its propaganda siege to take hold at home. Countless hours of airtime and huge vats of ink are needed to do the trick... The more that Iraq dominates [the news, the less space there is for] stories about entanglements that link Bush or Dick Cheney with malodorous corporate firms like Enron, Harken and Halliburton. In August, the 'healthy debate' over Iraq has displaced a range of negative economic stories from the top of the news. Bush's advisers would hardly mind if a similar pattern held through early November."

We all know how Bush and Cheney manipulated US policies to benefit Enron and Halliburton. But what about Condi and Chevron? Sean Gonsalves writes, "U.S. and UK companies had a 3/4 share in Iraq's oil production before the 1972 nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Co., when the Iraqi government began to make steps to gain greater control of its oil resources. In a 1998 speech... Chevron CEO Kenneth Derr candidly remarked: 'Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas -- reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to'... Condoleezza Rice, perhaps the president's most influential national security adviser, was a board member of Chevron before going to work in the White House. Chevron even named one of its supertankers in her honor... Given all these corporate scandals and the close ties that the Bush administration has with big oil, don't you think we owe it to ourselves, and especially to the young men and women in our armed services, to thoroughly investigate this stuff?"

The Daily Enron reports on Halliburton's wholly owned health insurance subsidiary: "When Cheney took the helm at Halliburton in 1995 company lawyers were fretting that Highlands [Insurance] might soon become one big asbestos insurance liability... Court documents show that Cheney devised a plan to sell Highlands to unsuspecting shareholders by not disclosing the company's potential asbestos claim liabilities... Within three years of the sale Highlands found itself saddled with 23,000 claims worth about $80 million from workers at Halliburton's Brown & Root construction subsidiary. Highland's attorneys have argued - successfully - that Cheney withheld 'material information' about Brown & Root's insurance issues. Last month the Delaware Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling in favor of Highlands. The Highlands case becomes the third instance in which Cheney's 5-year reign as Halliburton's CEO has come under scrutiny."

Enron's Michael "Kopper will surrender $12 million of illegally obtained money and plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering... The SEC is expected to file a civil fraud complaint against Mr. Kopper, a former managing director in the company's global finance unit... [Kopper] was a primary participant in establishing and running the off-the-books partnerships that investigators have said Enron used to hide debt and improperly increase earnings... Because of the potential significance of Mr. Kopper in the continuing investigation, enormous pressure will now be brought to bear on other potential defendants to negotiate their own deals." Are you listening, Kenny Boy?

The Webguild Sentinel keeps an eye on Washington - and it is a sharp eye indeed! From land mines to church politics to prescription drugs to Enron to terrorism, this site covers the full landscape of Bush/Republican disasters. Check it out!

"A tax cut for everyone across the board, fair and square. It sounds terrific, doesn't it? That's why the Republicans are so cocky and the Democrats keep their mouth shut. All politicians are afraid to stand up against the 'tax cut' in fear of loosing their seats. It seems that the majority of Americans like the idea of a tax cut without giving it another thought. Yet, there is a secret behind the Republican 'tax cut', which had never been spelled out to the people.... About 80% of Republican tax cut money are going into the pockets of less then 5% of the wealthiest individuals; and only about 20% - to the rest of the working Americans." So writes Stan Newton

Molly Ivins writes "Some days, you have to believe right-wing ideologues have lost touch with reality completely. Their latest proposal to prevent future Enrons is--ta-da!--cut the capital-gains tax. [Enrons] are not the consequence of a few greedy executives cutting corners--they are the result of a series of deregulatory measures and other changes in the law that set up the opportunity for theft on a staggering scale, making it not only possible but inevitable... If Bush has his way, we are going to fight an unprovoked war with Iraq without the financial aid of any allies. The health-care system is falling apart in front of our eyes, school teachers should be paid at least twice what they make now, lack of low-income housing is making life hell for the working class and now the right wing wants to cut taxes for the rich yet again? That's class warfare."

The AP reports: "A senator leading an investigation of Enron asked the Justice Department on Friday to explain why it hasn't prosecuted executives of the energy company that collapsed in December. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-ND. [asked] Ashcroft in a letter 'why no action has been taken against those who were responsible for illegal activities at the Enron Corp.' Dorgan noted that in recent weeks, the Justice Department has filed criminal charges against top executives of several big companies, some of whom have been led away in handcuffs. 'These arrests have been arranged to allow the American public to see corporate executives taken away in handcuffs,' Dorgan wrote Ashcroft. 'The Enron scandal was the corporate scandal first to be uncovered. Yet the investors, the employees and the American public have seen no action taken against those who were involved,' Dorgan said."

Gene Lyons writes: "The real dilemma facing Democrats...in 2004 isn't the over-hyped popularity of George W. Bush...the single biggest obstacle facing Democratic hopefuls isn't Al Gore vs. Joe Lieberman, or Populism vs. Progressivism…Rather, it's the adolescent groupthink and malignant dishonesty of the Washington press clique itself. All it took to bring out the worst in the vapid crowd of 'Heathers' that treats our national political discourse as a high school popularity contest was a New York Times op-ed by Gore pointing out that much of what he'd warned us about during the 2000 presidential campaign has come to pass--growing budget deficits and Enron-style accounting, raiding the Social Security trust fund 'to finance massive tax cuts that primarily benefit the very rich,' little hope of a genuine Medicare prescription drug benefit, the abandonment of sane environmental policies, and unrestrained greed that has 'put at risk...nothing less than the future of democratic capitalism.'"

DynCorp is virtually a CIA and Pentagon subsidiary. Its government contracts include operations for Bush's Plan Colombia. Enron's Pug Winokur is on DynCorp's board, and former CIA Director James Woolsey is a shareholder. "A year ago, Kathryn Bolkovac brought a lawsuit against Virginia-based DynCorp...claiming she had been fired by the multibillion-dollar company for blowing the whistle on sexual misconduct, including sex-trafficking, by her fellow DynCorp employees in the Balkans...company officials took the moral low ground -- acting swiftly and decisively to fire the two whistle-blowers...[After a] tribunal further found that DynCorp's dismissal of Bolkovac was an act in 'complete defiance'...the company is considering an appeal...Is this denial or yet another indication of where this company stands on human slavery?" It is bizarrely ironic that this report is from Rev. Moon's Insight Magazine. After all, Moon is the messianic leader of a cult that enslaves people.

Scroll down to "America's Leadership": "Sacrifices of military members and their families should be rewarded with fair treatment and honesty from their leaders. Now their safety, job security, and retirement benefits are in jeopardy because top leaders are using deployment decisions as mere profit-making vehicles..."[National Guard Deserter] "George W. Bush has made certain that former Enron and energy executives profit from defense and homeland security contracts. His own fortune was made through Enron/WorldCom-type accounting tricks and insider trading that have bankrupted companies and robbed people of their retirement savings. The Bush administration planned to invade Afghanistan even without the tragic events of Sept. 11 because Unocal had found the Taliban too uncooperative in its attempts to build an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Karachi...Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and White are a gang of four who have ordered U.S. military members to be put in harm's way for oil profits."

The Daily Enron reports, "You can almost smell the fear emanating from the White House strategy sessions leading up to [the] economic forum in Waco, Texas. Administration strategists - some of whom also worked in Bush's father's administration - were experiencing disturbing flashbacks this week. They remembered those sweet days of high poll ratings in the wake of the Gulf War. And, then they recalled the cold shower they got from voters just two years later when the domestic economy tanked. Poppy Bush was seen as out of touch and voters sent him to an early retirement. Now his son is trying to figure out how to avoid a similar fate."

Since the first anthrax attack, one story has been notably absent from the mainstream press — a story that should be pushed front and center onto the public stage along with Enron, WorldCom and the rest of the "glowing examples" of corporate greed and extortion. It is the story of BioPort, a modest-sized maker of vaccines in Lansing, Michigan that is owned in large part by the Carlyle Group. As we all know, the Carlyle Group is a haven for ex-government powermongers like George H. W. Bush, James Baker III, and Frank Carlucci, who use their Bush family ties to channel billions of dollars into their own coffers in the name of "government contracts." What it really amounts to is a slick money laundering operation: the Group's contacts in the Pentagon (right now their best friend is Donald Rumsfeld) steal money from the tax paper and funnel it into Carlyle's various operations and call it a "contract." We demand a Special Prosecutor for Carlyle!

"The real questions about Enron's relationship with the administration involve what happened before the energy trader hit the skids. [CBS MarketWatch's executive editor] warned that 'a small group of business leaders exert enormous clout over Bush and his team in getting the rules changed to their benefit.' [The secretive Carlyle Group] specializes in buying down-and-out defense contractors, then reselling them when their fortunes miraculously improve after they receive new government business. Among the company's employees is... George H.W. Bush. Among the group's investors, until late October, was the bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia. Another administration would have regarded the elder Bush's role at Carlyle as unseemly; this administration apparently does not... Sad to say, none of this is clearly illegal -- it just stinks to high heaven."

Stephen Pizzo writes that the GOP Contract with America "proved to be nothing more than a Trojan horse filled with corporate lobbyists - whose handiwork is now reflected in scandal and crashing markets. [If Democrats are going to win, they need to pursue] true progressive reforms for both government and corporations... Voters are looking for anything but politics as usual... Between now and November, voters will learn a whole lot more about the nexus between corporate contributions, Republican deregulation and corporate malfeasance. That nexus was the real axis of evil that created the economic mess we now face. By the time voters make their choices this fall, they will be plenty angry and looking for hope and change. Therefore, November races offer Democrats a historic opportunity of a kind that comes around only once in generation - an opportunity to make a difference."

Joshua Micah Marshall writes: "The confidence man is a stock figure in American culture, originating--perhaps not coincidentally--in the boomtowns of the Old Southwest. He's the snake-oil salesman, the wildcat land speculator who mixes boundless optimism with quick talk, bluff, and bluster. The administration is led by such men... Karl Rove sold the campaign on a pet theory of his: [It was a bandwagon strategy.] The stunt almost cost Bush the presidency [He wouldn't have "won" if not for the Supreme, Jeb and Cruella DeHarris stealing the election]... When you look past the promises and the tough talk and the spin, you see an administration whose major policy initiatives are stalled or postponed to some unspecified point in the future... But that leaves them in the position of a company that borrows against future profits (Enron, for instance) or an overextended investor who is buying stock on margin. When the bubble bursts, they will have a long way to fall."

According to Francis Schor in Counterpunch -- Frank Carlucci, head of The Carlyle Group and Nixon-Reagan-Bush retread, "insists that he does not importune or lobby his old buddy Don Rumsfeld. [They were college wrestling buddies.] Nonetheless, the money trail from Carlyle's portfolio to Rumsfeld's office at the Pentagon is pretty evident. In one major decision by Rumsfeld, revealed by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, United Defense's 70-ton Crusader artillery system was saved from a potential budget cut [long enough for Carlyle to cash in with an IPO]... Similar to the Enron situation, the Bush family and others have enriched their careers and political fortunes with their ties to the Carlyle Group. However, this is a scandal that still hasn't gained the attention and measures necessary to prevent its scandalous continuance."

NY Times reports, "Desperate to meet a year-end profit target, the Enron Corporation struck a sham energy deal with Merrill Lynch that let Enron book a $60 million profit in the final days of December 1999... the energy deal, a complex set of gas and power trades, was intended to inflate Enron's profits and drive up its stock price. Enron and Merrill Lynch, they said, agreed that the deal would be canceled after Enron booked the profits; it later was. By allowing the company to meet its internal profit targets, the power deal unleashed the payment of millions of dollars in bonuses and restricted stock to high-ranking executives, including Kenneth Lay, then CEO, and Jeffrey Skilling, then Enron's president... The deal was five times as big as Enron's sale of a Nigerian power barge to Merrill Lynch the same month, a transaction that a Senate panel denounced last week as evidence that the Wall Street bank helped Enron inflate its profits and cook its books." Who will go to the pokey?

Reuters reports, "Federal investigators appear to have widened an inquiry into U.S. energy trader Enron Corp, probing whether the company or its executives committed accounting fraud by borrowing $1 billion in a last-minute bid to stave off bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The paper cited lawyers close to the case in its report on Wednesday that the Justice Department and the SEC are investigating the transactions around the unsuccessful attempt. Enron could not immediately be contacted for comment. The paper said the investigators were trying to determine if Enron improperly used two of its publicly-regulated pipeline subsidiaries to secure the loans and then transfer the money to Enron's accounts, with no plans to repay the companies. An Enron spokesman defended the transactions to the Journal as 'common' and 'an acceptable practice,' and said they were fully disclosed at the time. He declined to discuss the loans or their accounting treatment in detail."

Robert Scheer writes, "What the heck, let's bomb Baghdad. Sure, it's one of the more historically important cities in the world, and many of its more than 3 million inhabitants will probably end up as 'collateral damage,' but if George the Younger is determined to avenge his father and keep his standings in the polls, that's the price to be paid. [W] will stop at nothing in his drive to win foreign victories that distract from his startling domestic failures. If nothing else, a nightly CNN fireworks display will take our minds off pervasive corporate corruption and the Incredible Shrinking Stock Market. Unfortunately for those determined to wage war in Iraq, there is no logical connection between Saddam Hussein and the big political problems facing George W. domestically. In a very real way, Bush's key corporate contributors, beginning with Enron's likable 'Kenny Boy' Lay, have savaged the US economy--and even Teflon politicians pay during recessions."

"In a sweeping condemnation of the link between the current corporate crime wave and the political agenda of right wing conservatives, United Steelworkers of America (USWA) President Leo W. Gerard exhorted union delegates to 'seize this moment in history to challenge the corporate domination of political decision making'... Citing the loss of more than two million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and Canada in recent years, Gerard asserted that globalization [is] 'the unconditional surrender of our jobs! It's designed to enrich the Enron capitalists and their rich and powerful financiers on Bay Street and Wall Street at the expense of our jobs, our families, our safety, our dignity -- everything that's near and dear to us... I've got news for those Gucci-shoed, coupon-clipping, cafe latte-drinking bastards,' Gerard thundered. 'We'll never stop fighting for a clean environment, for social justice, for economic fairness, and for workers' rights."

In a letter to Bush, Biff Baker writes: "On March 7th, 2002 you stated that 'Reform should begin with accountability, and reform should start at the top. The chief executive officer has a daily duty to oversee the entire enterprise, the entire firm, and therefore, bears a unique responsibility for serving shareholder interests.' Furthermore, you stated that the government must 'punish corporate leaders who clearly abuse their powers'... On that same day, as a member of the Independent Assessment Team (IAT) for the Missile Defense program... I determined beyond a reasonable doubt that fraudulent contracts were being issued by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC)... As you begin to investigate and prosecute CEO's from private corporations, you should clean your own house first in the Department of Defense. On behalf of all constituents and taxpayers, we do not want any more cover-ups or false promises!"

"Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Enron Corp. for years bribed foreign government officials to win contracts for its far-flung operations abroad, underscoring the sweep of the U.S. government's probe into Enron's collapse. The U.S. Justice Department's Enron Task Force is examining the energy company's overseas operations for possible criminal violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to government officials and lawyers close to the case. The previously undisclosed inquiry is examining Enron's efforts to win foreign pipeline, power and water-privatization projects, some reaching as far back as the mid-1990s, they said. In some countries, projects were awarded to Enron without competitive bidding, or assets were acquired at below-market values, amid allegations by the World Bank and others of government favoritism." What about Enron's bribes to US officials - like Bush and Cheney??? We demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

"Yes, there is a huge, mountainous, unmistakable difference between the parties in the way they vote on the issues. 107 different ratings have been listed on Vote-Smart.org, providing 107 different cuts across the legislative record according to various special interest slants. Of those, fully 93 found the parties on opposite sides of their particular issues-- 93 of those 107 had the parties stratified on either side of the fifty percent mark, one voting with the group while the other voted against. Furthermore, not only did an overwhelming majority of groups find the parties to be on opposite sides of their issues, but the magnitude of difference between their positions is considerable. The average spread between the ratings that any group assigned to the parties was 55 percentage points. The parties do not simply differ on the issues-- they are widely disparate in how they vote." So write Benjamin Iglar-Mobley and Valerie Iglar-Mobley.

TheDailyEnron reports: "A longtime Ashcroft friend and adviser had sold his connections to victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The Attorney General's friend, Charles Polk, is well known in Missouri Republican circles as a close friend of Ashcroft. He was prominent at Ashcroft's side during his contentious Senate confirmation hearings. Justice officials admitted to Associated Press that Polk has had contact with senior Justice officials, including Ashcroft and Ashcroft adviser David Israelite and September 11 fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg. Victims of Polk's scheme say that the St. Louis attorney suggested to them that Ashcroft's department supported the idea of extending the compensation Congress set up for Sept. 11 victims to the Oklahoma City families... James Helenthal, who partnered with Polk on the venture but later had a falling out with him, alleged in a lawsuit that Polk told him in March that Ashcroft had encouraged the venture."

Why would Bush gut a Clinton rule to cut tax evasion by foreigners living aboard? "On the surface, the move appears to be a favor to Florida and Texas bankers who profit greatly from Latin American expatriates. [Jeb Bush lobbied the administration for the change. But this] sop to the Bush Brothers' home states has deeper - more Machiavellian - implications going to the very heart of the offshore tax haven debate currently underway... The IRS estimates that the US Treasury loses at least $70 billion a year to offshore corporate tax havens... Others put the cost much higher, at around $200 billion a year. [Clinton supported a treaty to close the offshore tax havens.] Conservative Republicans stymied those efforts... and hope to kill them entirely now, though they can no longer do so openly." And -- Bill Simon lost the lawsuit to a former partner -- who is a convicted drug smuggler. GOP family values at work.

Jackson Thoreau of Fight the Right writes: "In an obvious intimidation ploy, the Bush administration's FBI is trying to get members of Congress to submit to lie-detector tests related to whether they leaked information about what certain officials might have known before Sept. 11...Contact your representatives and tell them to only agree to take a lie-detector test if Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft themselves submit to such tests about what exactly they knew before Sept. 11. And while they're at it, Bush should answer questions about Harken Energy's scams, (and more)...Cheney should answer questions under a polygraph test about fraud committed while head of Halliburton Co., who he met with to develop the energy policy, why he tried to get India to pay off a multimillion-dollar loan to Enron last year, (and more)...And Ashcroft should answer to why he only flew on private planes in the months before Sept. 11 (and more)..."

Bloomberg.com reports: "Enron Corp., Halliburton Co. and Reliant Energy Inc. -- three companies whose finances are being examined by U.S. regulators -- were among the corporations reimbursed for the use of their corporate jets by the Bush committee during the 36-day recount...The Bush committee paid the 10 companies $140,365 for use of the planes, according to the documents, which listed total spending of $13.8 million on legal, transportation and other expenses during the recount...Several other executive jets rented by Bush's recount committee belonged to oil industry companies, including Houston- based Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., and Tom Brown Inc., a Denver-based oil- exploration company." The filing also shows that Bush spent about $1 million to house the Bush recount staff, about $40,000 per person, for the 36 day period.

Gene Lyons writes, "According to [Joe] Lieberman, Gore's 'people versus the powerful' rhetoric cost Democrats the election... that Gore's populist rhetoric obscured his 'pro-growth' voting record and alienated voters 'who don't see America as us versus them' ... Meanwhile, The Economist, hardly a Marxist publication, points out that in hindsight, Gore's rhetoric sounds like prophecy. During the campaign, Gore warned that Bush was being bankrolled by 'a new generation of special-interest power-brokers who would like nothing better than a pliant president who would bend public policy to suit their purposes and profits.' Boys and girls, can you spell Enron?... Fact is, the only 'class warfare' fought in the USA since 1980 was declared by free market fundamentalists in right-wing 'think tanks,' politicians like Newt Gingrich, and their media allies who persuaded millions of gullible voters that... vast wealth absolves its possessors of what old fashioned theologians called 'Original Sin.'"

"Nearly $14 million magically poured into the Bush/Cheney Florida recount effort - four times the amount raised by the Gore/Lieberman camp. The money flowed in so fast... that Bush campaign officials... were dumbfounded... The Bush campaign took in $13.8 million, most in large contributions. Listed among those large contributors were Bush and Cheney's two most reliable genies - Enron and Halliburton... As soon as a recount was announced, Bush forces moved quickly. Money was no object. They dispatched over 100 lawyers to Florida and Texas, booking hundreds of plane tickets, rental cars and hotel rooms. Among the expenditures listed was a payment of $13,000 to Enron Corp. and $2,400 to Halliburton Co. for the use of their corporate jets and other unspecified services. 'Eighteen months after the election, we find that the (Bush) administration literally flew into office on the Enron corporate jet,'" said the DNC. All the Bush scandals are coming together - Impeach Bush Now!

NY Daily News reports, "Harken Energy Corp. set up an offshore subsidiary in the Cayman Islands tax haven while Bush sat on Harken's board of directors in 1989... The revelation comes as Republican lawmakers are roundly criticizing the practice of U.S. companies setting up offshore subsidiaries, usually to skirt American disclosure laws or corporate income taxes on foreign income. Even White House spokesman Ari Fleischer condemned the tactic yesterday, saying, 'The President is concerned about corporations in America who take advantage, set up operations outside of America, in an effort to lower their taxes'... 'It is reminiscent of Enron,' said Chuck Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity. 'Here is a controversial, on-the-edge company investigated by the feds, sham transactions where they have to restate their earnings and - oh, yeah - they have a Caymans account. What's wrong with this picture? ... What else don't we know?'" We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"Against all odds a strong corporate responsibility law pushed by Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD)...landed on the President's [sic]desk...a month ago the measure was given no chance of passage as...Republicans worked feverishly to bottle the Sarbanes measure in committee. But, with corporate America looking a bit like Pearl Harbor the day after, and public anger at the boiling point, Republicans deserted the White House and rushed to support the Sarbanes bill. Now the President [sic] had to sign the thing...Cheney preferred to attend a fundraiser in Ohio rather than be photographed standing next to a block-letter sign reading 'Corporate Responsibility.'...The new law comes at a particularly inopportune time...Cheney faces an SEC inquiry into accounting changes made by Halliburton Co. when he was chief executive. While Cheney was absent from the signing, he was not entirely forgotten. He was spoofed by a protester dressed as Hallibacon, 'the corporate crime-fighting pig.'"

"More than 1,000 activists and workers--including laid-off Enron, Arthur Andersen and WorldCom employees--joined AFL-CIO President John Sweeney... outside the NY Stock Exchange on Wall Street July 30 to demand government and business leaders curb crippling greed and corruption. 'When corporate criminals invade our workplaces and our markets to steal our jobs and our savings, we must react every bit as decisively as when thieves enter our homes and try to bring harm to our loved ones,' Sweeney said. Sweeney outlined a five-point action plan to correct corporate corruption," including using its $6 trillion power of workers' pension funds to demand corporate accountability through shareholder, cyber and street actions. The AFL-CIO will also mount an aggressive voter information and mobilization campaign based on candidates' corporate accountability records. On Oct. 19 union members will convene a national 'No More Business As Usual' day of action to educate and energize voters."

Reps. John Conyers (D-MI), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Melvin L. Watt (D-NC) sent a letter to Bush with 9 pages documenting scandals involving Bush/Harken, Cheney/Halliburton, and White/Enron. "It is now well recognized that the lack of credibility of this Administration caused by these unanswered allegations has seriously hampered your ability to calm recent market upheavals. Indeed, much of the malaise in the economy has been attributed to suspicion among American investors that, like the CEOs of Enron and WorldCom, you and other officials in your Administration fell far short of the highest ethical standards and may have violated criminal laws in your business dealings. There is only one way to put these suspicions behinds us: full disclosure." The letter is great - so where are all of the other Democrats?

"Dick Cheney conceded Monday that corporate scandals have shaken confidence in the economy but said reforms will 'bring out the best of the free enterprise system... 'When there are reports of corporate fraud the American people can be certain that the government will fully investigate and prosecute any wrongdoers,' Cheney said. 'That system will be stronger and better'... Cheney did not refer to questions that have been raised about his tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co. The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into accounting issues at Halliburton during that period, and investor lawsuits have accused Halliburton of accounting gimmicks similar to those used by the failed energy trader Enron Corp. Scandals at Enron, WorldCom and others have been blamed for shaking investor confidence and causing the plunge in the stock market." And BushCheney have done NOTHING to stop these scandals, because their cronies are getting rich!

Ed Vulliamy writes: "Open warfare has broken out between the White House and Capitol Hill over George Bush's most controversial nomination to date to the bench of American high courts... Bush has intervened to back Owen, and her campaign is being managed - as they all have since her Texas days - by Karl Rove... The Democrat-controlled Senate, however, is fighting her nomination to the powerful fifth circuit Appeals Court, the tier beneath the US Supreme Court. Senators and a host of organisations petitioning their judiciary committee say Owen has used the bench to advance a zealous right-wing ideology, contesting the right to abortion and favouring big oil and energy companies, including the disgraced Enron, which has been one of her - and [Bush's] - biggest financial backers."

Andrew Osterland writes that: "a swarm of reporters also turned up to ask questions about special-purpose entities (SPEs) and other means of moving risk off corporate balance sheets. The media, of course, were looking for the next Enron. 'How do we help the market distinguish between what we do and what Enron did?' one association member asked Pitt. He had no ready answer. The off-balance-sheet genie is out of the bottle, and for the time being there's no easy way to put it back in... Even if regulators don't curb the activities, the hue and cry from investors is likely to keep it [in the spotlight. Given] that more than a trillion dollars of assets were taken off corporate balance sheets last year and put into SPEs and vehicles known as commercial-paper conduits, the issue may extend beyond comparisons to Enron."

"Did Enron deliberately create and manipulate the California 'energy crisis' of 2001, giving the oil industry an excuse to draft the Bush Energy Plan? Definitely. Did...Bush violate the law when he failed to report that he made $848,000 by selling shares in a money-losing company called Harken, of which he was a director. Definitely, according to a memo from the SEC. Did...Cheney engage in illegal activities at the Halliburton...? Highly likely, though not yet proven, and the DOJ does not seem anxious to find out. Did Bush and Cheney conspire to have jets crash into the WTC, the Pentagon and a field in PA on 911? Not likely. But if they keep shredding the Constitution while feeding our billions to their corporate buddies, it'll be hard to argue otherwise, at least in those countries where historians still have the right to say such things. Maybe it would help if Bush, Cheney and their known co-conspirators were actually indicted for what they did at Harken, Halliburton and Enron."

Thomas L. Friedman writes: "we have all the same excesses that other capitalist nations have, because fear and greed are built into capitalism. What distinguishes America is our system's ability to consistently expose, punish, regulate and ultimately reform those excesses — better than any other[?]...After his own E.P.A. issued a report in June linking fossil-fuel use to global warming, Mr. Bush dismissed the study by saying that he 'read the report put out by the bureaucracy,' as if that explained why it couldn't be credible... the real George Bush…trusts his C.E.O. cronies more than the bureaucratic regulators who oversee them...count me among those naïve fools with a fundamental belief in the federal government — not because I have no faith in ordinary Americans, but because I have no trust in ordinary Big Oil, ordinary Enron or ordinary Harken Energy to do the right thing without proper oversight."

Bridget Gibson writes: "Running the country like Enron must be obliterated from the conscience of the voting public before the first week of November and the best way to do that is to embroil our service men and women in a deadly conflict. Nothing gets the public stirred into support like the strong threat of the death of Americans…. The three-pronged attack on the nemesis of George Herbert Walker Bush must be put into action! The evil Saddam must be toppled before the truth comes out that the coming war is a farce. A political game of chess is being played with the lives of our fellow Americans. The votes must be counted before they are cast… If the current administration's reason for pounding the war drums is to distract the public from the greed and corruption of the highest officials, it should not be heeded. Questions should be raised and answers must be demanded."

Thanks to the relentless and aggressive efforts of the GOP-led Congress to block serious corporate accounting reform, the U.S. is going to pay - and pay through the nose. A new report from the Brookings Institution estimates that the Enron and WorldCom scandals alone will gobble up approximately $37 to $42 billion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first year - assuming the market does not recover from its July 19 level or drop substantially below it. The impact of blatant corporate greed and arrogance will be staggeringly far-reaching, says the Institute and will drive up unemployment and inflation, discourage foreign investment in the United States and spill well beyond US borders. Between March 19 and July 19, for starters, the trade-weighted value of the dollar fell by 5.2%. Is this what the Bush folks mean by "trickle down economics?"

"The Alliance for Democracy calls for the formation of a 911 Coalition for America launched in local meetings across the country on the first anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. These gatherings will commemorate the loss of those who died on 911 and give meaning to the cause for which America stands: the cause of Freedom and Democracy. We believe Freedom and Democracy are threatened not only by small networks of terrorists, but also by unparalleled concentrations of power in the hands of global corporations and the un-democratic governments they support... When [Bush] and [Cheney] cannot seriously address the greatest wave of systemic corporate fraud and bankruptcy in history because both men have [committed] the same deceits, Freedom and Democracy are undercut. We urge people to come together in community and neighborhood meetings to discuss and debate four broad themes: 1) War and Peace; 2) Post-Enron Economics; 3) Civil Liberties, and: 4) the National Agenda."

Reuters reports, "According to a June 15, 1989 letter from Harken President Mikel Faulkner, obtained by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, Bush frequently advised Harken management on 'organizational and strategic matters.' In the letter, Faulkner praised Bush for '... operating decisions at the board level and the personal suggestions and ideas you have shared with me over the past two years on a CEO to CEO basis'... Documents show the two met just two weeks before Harken's controversial sale in 1989 of its Aloha Petroleum subsidiary, a transaction which critics have compared to the accounting irregularities at bankrupt energy trader Enron Corp. The company's initial treatment of the Aloha sale significantly understated the losses Harken first reported for 1989... Bush has denied wrongdoing, saying... 'All I can tell you is, that in the corporate world, sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures,' he said earlier this month."

"Al Gore visited Capitol Hill for the first time in 18 months on Thursday, blasting the Bush administration for mismanaging the economy, cozying up to corporate interests and [lying about] its centerpiece tax cut...Gore said this year's midterm election was a referendum on whether the government would be run for the benefit of a wealthy few. 'The Republican Party today is at the hands of an elite that embodies wealth and power,' Gore told 500 young Democratic activists... He likened Bush's economic stewardship to the actions of the directors of collapsed energy trader Enron Corp. 'Everything Enron did, to mislead people about the extent of that company's future liability in order to grab the money for the benefit of those at the top of the corporation, that is pretty much the same formula that this administration has taken on the national budget,' Gore said." (See Gore's speech at C-SPAN's site, http://www.c-span.org/americanpolitics)

"Al Gore accused the Bush administration...of lying to Americans about the nation's economy...The Bush administration has 'lied about the future liabilities they have put on our shoulders as taxpayers,' Gore said. The former vice president prompted a cheer when he said: 'I don't care what anybody says. I think Bill Clinton and I did a damn good job.' The recent spate of corporate corruption cases reflects the administration's policies and its appointees, who are supposed to police big business, Gore said. He compared the administration's handling of the economy to business decisions that led to the collapse of Enron, saying Bush is creating a huge deficit. 'It's going to lead to bigger deficits than when the first Bush was there,' Gore said. He said the administration should 'completely scrap its economic plan and its team on...start over from scratch and start rebuilding this economy.'"

The Daily Enron reports that Bush and Cheney's former companies have joined the "list of corporate scofflaws whose behavior is now dragging down the entire economy...The SEC is currently investigating Halliburton for booking questionable revenues during Cheney's tenure as its CEO. [On August 14] a new SEC rule requires that Halliburton's current CEO swear to the accuracy of the company's second-quarter financials. With that deadline looming, Halliburton dropped some not-so-subtle hints yesterday that its books still contain hot air from accounting changes instituted during Cheney's reign. [Halliburton officials] said it would have to take 'substantial' charges when it reports it's second-quarter earnings tomorrow. Analysts say the charge will not be in the millions of dollars, but the billions... Harken officials said any suggestion the company somehow had ties to [alleged CIA money launderer] BCCI were circumstantial and purely random and that they were 'shocked' to learn of them."

The Daily Enron writes "Despite all the recent tough talk and chest thumping from the Bush administration and its Department of Justice, even the highest profile examples of corporate malfeasance remain unmolested by federal asset seizure. We need only look to the people who started all this to see what I mean: [Ken Lay -- Jeff Skilling -- Andy Fastow] Today's arrest of former Alephia CEO John Rigas was a rare but welcome change of pace. But let's not stop there. Enron's Gang of Three remains loose. Each is in a known location. Between them they have more money than al-Qaeda; they are living well and are 'reviewing new opportunities.' We understand it is harder to arrest friends and seize their assets. But, they'll understand it's nothing personal -- it's just business."

Rick Fulton writes, "As a nation facing challenges we have vast and untouched, untapped personnel resources to deal with the world's Bin Ladins, beginning with military veterans who are already trained to handle sentry "observe and report" duties. First responders can't do it all. First responders can't police and fight fire and patch up the injured and still be able to guard the local water supply. There needs to be a common understanding that the issues of Homeland Security are, at bedrock, most of all, a need of grassroots involvement, and not pie in the sky for those who believe they can be all things to all people while in truth only caring for the regards of the few. Propaganda and windiness only go so far. Like crime, homeland security needs are always with us, and for that matter always have been."

Robert Scheer writes: "The public's love affair with the Bush administration is souring. Polls show that voters are deeply worried about its handling of the economy, although they still claim to like George W Bush as a person. [The Bushes lack] the seriousness of purpose required to manage daily life in the real world. And should we really expect more from men who never had to take out the garbage, let alone worry about paying the mortgage? Men for whom the making of money was a game without real risk or purpose? Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing? Heck, what's the big deal?... If a Bush loses liquidity, friends will come running, checkbooks open, as they did for George W. to pay for his string of failed Texas investments. Besides, the family trust fund is where the 'real' money is kept. The Bushes are, as a matter of breeding, terminally irresponsible. And while being a loose cannon can sometimes be useful in making war, it is stability and pragmatism that breed prosperity."

Bill Black and James Galbraith write "From 1981 to 1988, the Reagan-Bush administration covered up the S&L debacle. It forced reductions in S&L examiners and fought against the top federal regulator, Ed Gray, who sounded the alarm... Meanwhile, Neil Bush, private citizen, was getting a 'loan' from a business partner... Neil knew that this business partner was not creditworthy and yet was borrowing over $100 million from Silverado S&L... George W. Bush, private citizen, emulated his brother Neil... Why was he able to sell his Harken shares for a profit? Because Harken committed a financial fraud that hid real losses and created fictional income [which was] a variant on the Enron and Lincoln Savings frauds... George W. Bush is a wealthy man today because his business friends were willing to stoop to fraud to make him rich. George W. Bush is in trouble, in part, because of his clumsy coverups of this fraud."

CNN.com reports: "Three months after rejecting one of Bush's nominees for the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Senate Judiciary Committee is hearing from another one just as controversial. Priscilla Owen...Owen's rulings in cases involving a Texas law requiring young girls to notify parents when having abortions have been a catalyst for opposition. One of those opinions even drew criticism from Bush's own general counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who served with Owen on the Texas high court. 'Her rulings on choice vividly exemplify her judicial activism,' said Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director for the National Abortion Rights Action League...Opponents have pointed to the $8,600 in campaign contributions she accepted from Enron Corp. and a majority opinion that she wrote two years later reducing Enron's taxes by $15 million. 'Owen has demonstrated a commitment to money over morality,' National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy said in a statement."

Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism and Sociology at Columbia writes: "At the heart there is a pattern. The big, unacknowledged picture is this: The people in power represent an economic clique whose interests are only superficially tied to the well-being of the country as a whole. In collusion with their delighted big-money supporters, Bush, Cheney and their Cabinet-level entourage spent years lining their pockets with sweetheart loans, option deals and golden parachutes from oil companies and other related industries. They built political careers thundering against regulation, fueled by a cozy camaraderie with Enron and like companies that grew fat on--surprise!--deregulation. In office, these men make energy policy in cahoots with their ultra-wealthy sponsors, a club of very special Americans whose membership list they still keep secret. They consistently fight to secure America's energy dependency on oil and related fuels."

Gary Weiss writes in a Business Week Special Report: "Controversy rages over Pitt's history of legal work for Big Five accounting firms, including Enron auditor Arthur Andersen, which threatens to undermine his leadership in formulating accounting reforms. And Pitt's conflict-of-interest nightmare may only be just beginning...The heart of his future difficulties can be found in a single-spaced, six-page document that Pitt filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on May 24, 2001, after he was nominated to the SEC." Read this list of clients from whom Pitt received $5,000 or more since Jan. 1, 1999 by clicking n the link, 'Table: Potential Minefields (extended)' "Virtually all could be affected by SEC work in the coming years...Pitt has dealt with potential conflicts by hewing strictly to the law...But potential conflicts won't go away just because Pitt is following the rules...His credibility is open to serious question on many other subjects vital to the markets."

Frank Rich writes "Wagging the dog no longer cuts it. If the Bush administration wants to distract Americans from watching their 401(k)'s go down the toilet, it will have to unleash the whole kennel. Maybe only unilateral annihilation of the entire axis of evil will do. [What's riveted Americans is] the spectacle of numbers tumbling as the president [sic] gave two speeches telling us help was on the way. [First up was 'Corporate Responsibility' -- Next came 'Strengthening Our Economy'] What will be strike three -- black-and-white stripes and 'Dick Cheney Is Not a Crook'?.. In the real world, everything connects. What is most revealing about Mr. Bush's much-touted antidote to the bad apples... is how closely it mimics Enron's Cayman Island shell subsidiaries... The SWAT team's main purpose is to bolster the administration's poll numbers as the Enron off-the-books partnerships did its corporate parent's stock price. And like its prototypes, it may already be going south."

"Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who was one of the earliest members to begin investigating the collapse of the Enron Corp., said yesterday that he has directed his staff to begin investigating Cheney's involvement with Halliburton. Waxman called on Cheney and Bush to serve as 'role models' and to donate substantial amounts of the money they received while serving as executives to workers who were displaced when their companies foundered after accounting irregularities were discovered. The vice president [sic], Waxman said, 'has a moral responsibility to step forward and - as the president [sic] says he would like corporate executives to do - take some personal responsibility.' Cheney has not spoken publicly about Halliburton. Nor has he joined Bush in calling for aggressive measures to crack down on corporate executives who engage in deceitful accounting. A White House official said that Cheney was not commenting publicly...because the SEC is investigating the matter."

David Callaway of CBS Market Watch writes: "But while the Whitewater scandal was never more than a sideshow for the Clinton team, the corporate calamity and ensuring plunge in confidence that has resulted from the Enron scandal is now the major issue of the Bush presidency [sic], overshadowing even the war on terrorism and threatening the Republican's grip on the House in November...Bush remains unable to fix it. His tax cut was a disaster, enriching a few and giving the rest of us just enough to take a family of four to a baseball game (if they're not on strike). But it was no help to the economy at all...First, fire Harvey Pitt. The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission has become a liability, no matter how hard he is working. Then, fire Army Secretary Tom White, clearing out any scent of scandal from Enron. Then, he should silence Cheney -- or put him back in a bunker or something -- and follow his own gut about how to clean up corporate America."

Joe Conason writes "Enron is like a dead rat whose bad smell gradually infiltrates every room in the house. The smell in the White House keeps getting worse. Now even one of the president's [sic] judicial nominees carries a whiff of that malodorous corporate corpse. The nominee in question is Priscilla Owen, sent up by her old friend George W. for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals... Lawyers familiar with her work on the Texas high court consider her a mediocrity who slices up the law to suit her ideological disposition... her heart almost always goes out to major corporations, notably those that helped finance her election campaigns. Her political consultant of choice just happens to have been good ole Karl Rove... The only [Texas] Supreme Court justice who took more money from business interests than Owen was Alberto Gonzales, now the Bush White House counsel."

Ellen Goodman writes "even less credible than Bush's economic analysis is his moral analysis. 'America,' he said, 'must get rid of the hangover that we now have as a result of the binge, the economic binge we just went through.' Binge? This was America's binge? We dunnit? Is it possible that the head of Bush Inc. seems to believe that we lost our way in what he now describes as the make-believe land of 'endless profit' and 'no tomorrow'? ... Whose binge? The White House cast of corporate characters wants to put some of your Social Security into the same tank as your 401(k). And just moments after he warned of a 'hangover,' the president [sic] was promoting an end to the estate tax, a windfall for the heirs of Enron, etc... Into this morass comes Bush with his binge politics expecting our trust. The same core group that got us into this fix now says they'll get us out. Bush Inc.? The cure for this hangover is going to be the hair of a very different dog."

David Callaway of CBS.MarketWatch.com writes: "The groundwork for a mass panic in the market later this summer or early this fall is already being laid... Such a disaster will take us well beyond the bursting of the telecom, energy and Internet bubbles and into the realm of a systemic threat to the world's financial system... I wrote seven months ago that the Enron scandal would be President [sic] Bush's Whitewater, and worse, arguing that it would expose in a series of bombshells how the Texas business elite work together to secretly rig the game... to increase their own power and profits. But while the Whitewater scandal was never more than a sideshow for the Clinton team, the corporate calamity and ensuring plunge in confidence that has resulted from the Enron scandal is now the major issue of the Bush presidency [sic], overshadowing even the war on terrorism and threatening the Republican's grip on the House in November."

The WP writes "People say that Harvey Pitt... damages the president's [sic] post-Enron credibility. On Wednesday, however, it was the president who damaged Mr. Pitt's credibility. At a news conference with Poland's president, Mr. Bush was asked whether he was confident that the SEC's current investigation into Halliburton Co. would exonerate Vice President Cheney, who used to run that company. 'Yes, I am,' the president replied. This sort of comment is almost enough to kindle nostalgia for the old days when independent counsels investigated top government officials." Why be nostalgic? Let's demand a Special Prosecutor for Halliburton - and Harken too!

"Dear W: Please hire a new Attorney General. Immediately. John Ashcroft is too extreme. Worse, his ideology has affected his job performance. There are no convictions in the Enron case and a brewing mess at the FBI. Mr. Ashcroft has needlessly meddled in states' rights cases in Oregon and California, proposed sharp assaults on our civil rights, trampled on the Constitution of Thomas Jefferson and our founders while cutting $58 million in counter-terrorism funding designed to protect our security. For a guy who comes from Missouri, the 'show me' state, the General hasn't shown much. There was another real leader from Missouri, President Harry S. Truman, who coined the expression: 'the buck stops here.' Leadership is about accountability. And it's time to take account. It's time for him to go." Sign the letter.

Remember when Bush tacked course from "Kenny Boy" to "Mr. Lay?" TheSmokingGun.com obtained a variety of Kenny-Georgie correspondence showing that they were indeed good friends. Whether George was wishing Kenny a happy 55th birthday ("Wow! That is really old!"), or Kenny was lobbying support for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank, the cordiality of their relationship is apparent. The collection includes a note about Enron's joint venture to develop Uzebekistan's natural gas and transport it to European markets. See the redacted draft for a legislative gathering at "Enron Field" changed to "Houston's new major league ballpark." Read Kenny's note of appreciation to George for calling Governor Tom Ridge on Enron's behalf as a potential power supplier to Philadelphia "to make it possible for open and fair competition."

"The culture of scandal that dominated political Washington in the 1980s and 1990s has undergone a swift and radical shift. Under George W. Bush, acts that not long ago would have constituted firing offenses can now be ridden out... What has changed isn't so much the conduct of officials, but the standards by which they're judged. The 'new tone' that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness...Besides being Army secretary, ['Tommy Boy'] White is the Defense Department's point man on homeland security programs ['securing' the Power Grid, eh?]...One reason for the recent criticism of White is that EES had a practice of booking the profits from these multi-year deals up front, allowing executives like White, whose bonuses were tied to performance, to collect millions of dollars before the company had realized any actual profit."

Dan Ackman of Forbes.com writes: "But still there are no charges against Enron principals. If the president [sic] wants to make the case that his administration will not tolerate corporate wrongdoing, what better way than to indict his old friend and former Enron CEO, Kenneth Lay? Indicting Lay and other Enron executives may have a few pitfalls. First, one of Enron's main tricks--boosting its revenue by reporting its energy trades at their gross value--was mimicked by the entire energy-trading sector. Second, putting Lay or Jeffrey Skilling, Enron's former president and briefly its CEO, on trial would bring back into the headlines Enron's ties with Bush, Congress and the government of Texas. But the cost of not doing it seems even higher… there are existing laws about the fraudulent sale of securities waiting to be enforced... The laws are there. The question is who will use them."

CNN reports that a spokeswoman for Dick Cheney characterized Andersen's identification of him as 'vice president' in its 4-minute promotional video as 'inappropriate.' We agree - it IS inappropriate to call the judically-selected, rather than constitutionally-elected, Cheney 'vice president'! Andersen was later convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents to shield its client, the now-bankrupt Enron. The article contains another interesting snippet: David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group admitted that Andersen "carried" the fledgling business by not collecting its fees for "'quite a while."' The $16 billion private equity investment firm is exempt from SEC oversight. It lists George H.W. Bush and James Baker among its associates. It is heavily invested in defense industries, raising the question of a conflict of interest if the Commander in Thief stands to profit as a beneficiary of his father's estate by making war rather than peace.

The Daily Enron reports, "Since 1998 no fewer than 86 US companies have violated the Trading With The Enemy Act, a US law that bars companies from doing business with declared enemy nations Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and North Korea. The companies were fined a combined total of $5.8 million. Conspicuous by its absence was any mention in the Treasury documents of Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based oil-services company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton opened an office in Tehran in 2000, while Cheney was chief executive officer. As has been the case with other potentially embarrassing public documents, the Treasury Department settlements were released only after a fight. The documents were released as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act filed by Public Citizen and the Corporate Crime Reporter, a newsletter."

Stephen Pizzo writes, "As the world's largest capitalist economy staggers under a cascade of corporate fraud, its two top leaders find themselves rendered ineffectual by of reports of their own alleged corporate malfeasance. The allegations now facing former executives of Enron, WorldCom, Quest, Xerox, et al, bear more than a passing similarity to the behavior of both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during their days as corporate executives. The recent blizzard of corporate revelations has left investor's minds (and guts) churning. What is it exactly that Bush and Cheney did that makes them part of the problem rather than part of a solution? Here's a cheat-sheet you can bring to your next game of Not-So-Trivial Pursuits."

In 1990, "Bush wanted to pay off the loan he had taken to finance his stake in the Rangers, and the Harken stock was his biggest asset. But Harken stock was thinly traded;" and no one wanted it. Yet, just like magic (!), an anonymous buyer offered to buy Bush's stock. "A dozen years later, it is still not known who bought Mr. Bush's shares, or why the buyer made the offer at that time. Mr. Smith said he would not disclose the buyer's identity except to say that it was an institutional investor... The White House said today that Mr. Bush never knew the identity of the buyer. Mr. Bartlett said it was 'very far fetched' to assume that the buyer was knowingly helping Mr. Bush at a financially convenient moment for him." Yeah right, Dan. So who was the "institutional investor" who turned Bush from an utter business failure to a "success"? Enron? Carlyle? Saudi Arabia? The Bin Laden Group? A Moonie holding? (Rev. Moon paid the Bushparents up to $10 million). We demand an investigation!

Oreilly-sucks.com writes, "Have you noticed that the right wing has suddenly grown almost silent over how Bill Clinton and the Democrats were the real cause behind the Enron scandal? How come? Simple. Clinton and the Democrats did not cause the Enron disaster. The Clinton Administration tried to PREVENT disasters like Enron from occurring -- and were stopped by the deregulation-crazed, corporate shill Republicans. Here's a handy guide on the subject, with half-a-dozen of the bigger reasons why the right wing has suddenly gone missing on this matter. Download it and send it to your friends -- and to anyone out there who still thinks it's possible to fob this Republican scandal off onto Bill Clinton and the Democrats."

The New Republic's Peter Beinart writes, "The right's suggestion that Bill Clinton is to blame for today's corporate scandals [is absurdly wrong]. 'If you're looking for someone who set the moral tone for the decade of the '90s, I don't think you have to look any further than the former president's behavior,' explained House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas on CNN late last month. 'It's impossible to understand Enron,' editorialized The Wall Street Journal, 'outside the moral climate in which it flourished ... the Clinton years, when we learned that 'everybody does it.'' Or, as Steve Forbes put it recently, 'If you want to look at the tone of the '90s, it started right at the top, at the White House, where the attitude was anything goes.' Yes, that's right: Respected conservatives are actually suggesting that Enron and WorldCom cooked their books because Bill Clinton lied about a blow job. It's not an argument that takes a lot of deep thinking to rebut."

"Judicial Watch, the group that investigates and prosecutes corruption by government officials, announced today that it is filing a shareholders suit in Dallas, Texas, against Vice President Dick Cheney and the other involved directors of Halliburton, as well as Halliburton itself, for alleged fraudulent accounting practices which resulted in the overvaluation of the company’s shares, thereby deceiving investors and others... 'Judicial Watch has already sued Democrat and Republican officials in the Enron and Global Crossing scandals. To look the other way for the Vice President would be to set a precedent that the Washington elite are above the law. This cannot be permitted if our democracy is to survive,' stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman." In the Paula Jones case, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that President Clinton could be sued for actions taken BEFORE he became President. Could Larry Klayman become Cheney's Paula Jones? Stay tuned!

Ralph Nader is in Cuba smoking something, and it ain't a cigar. Responding to Bush's Wall Street speech, Nader said: "Coming out of the corporate world, having done some of these things, having associated with people like Kenny Boy -- Ken Lay of Enron -- he is in the best position possible to enact very fundamental structural systemic corporate reform, and unleash major prosecution against these companies and their bosses through the Justice Department and the SEC." C'mon Ralph, that's like expecting Bob Guccione to end pornography. Bush is the most corrupt Resident in history - the only way to change the system is to impeach him!

Robert Kuttner writes, "Bush's New York speech on corporate accountability was one of the weakest of his presidency. It was long on platitudes, short on structural reforms. The Dow Jones responded to his call for restored confidence in America's financial markets by plunging 189 points. Ever since he took office, Bush's short run political strategy has been to blur differences with Democrats... But America's corporate meltdown is real, and Bush is way behind the curve. It's more than a little ironic that Bush's mandateless presidency was rescued by a foreign policy crisis that is now being upstaged by what could be the most serious economic threat since the Great Depression. For Bush's own rise to fame and fortune in Texas was a small-bore version of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. There is no way that Bush can do a Nixon-to-China on this issue and get back ahead of the curve because Bush's closest cronies epitomize precisely the kind of capitalism that is imploding."

stirling s newberry writes, "If it had lasted 15 seconds, Bush's speech would have been a great speech. Filled with moral outrage about corporate wrong doing and demands that business schools teach ethics and 'right from wrong.' But the Wall Street types who listened to it applauded weakly, the stock market continued to tread water, and even the cable networks had only modest praise, even Fox had trouble putting lipstick on this pig. This speech failed, in other words, even by the standards of a corporate Republican agenda for fixing the problems with the markets and corporate accountability, and instead is another Potomac blizzard. Washington and Buffalo New York are the only two cities where most of the snow flies horizontally - but the difference is that in Washington it can happen during July."

Truthouth's Marc Ash writes, "It is difficult to imagine what it would take to make the case to the American center that Mr. Bush and his associates are up to no good. The information in the public record to date is so damning that it should have toppled this regime five times over. Enron alone should have been the end of the road for Bush & Co. It is a criminal scandal of unparalleled scope. Hundreds of millions of dollars stolen, entire states economies impacted and thousands of workers pensions destroyed. George W. Bush was in bed with Ken Lay and did his bidding, on cue open-and-shut. Yet for some inexplicable reason we as a nation have decided that we do not want to see. September 11th. : Did Gorge W. Bush Know? Every major news source in the country has presented enough evidence of the Bush administration's foreknowledge of the attacks that killed three thousand Americans to indict Mr. Bush and his top aids... Outrage, public outcry? No, fear and silence."

The two former WorldCom officials who were most responsible for the company's $4 billion accounting fraud - CEO Bernie Ebbers and CFO Scott Sullivan - pled the 5th amendment in refusing to testify before Congress. This is exactly what happened with Enron's Ken Lay and Andrew Fastow. But this time, some Democrats got angry. Rep. Max Sandlin (D-TX) "said Mr. Ebbers should be held in contempt of Congress. Mr. Sandlin argued that Mr. Ebbers waived his Fifth Amendment protection by giving a brief statement defending himself." When will the Bushcroft Justice Department start prosecuting these corporate fraud kingpins?

This week, Bush plans to address Wall Street, pledging to "crack down" on corporate American. But American Family Voices isn't fooled by this empty posturing. Bush's phony concern is little more than the fox pledging to watch the chickens better. On July 9, American Family Voices will launch a television advertisement in Washington, D.C. and New York, N.Y., that exposes Bush's insider trading at Harken Energy, Vice President Cheney's shady dealings while CEO at Halliburton, and the fact that Harvey Pitt was the accounting industry's top lawyer before taking the helm at the SEC. Here's a special sneak preview of the video.

David Lazarus writes, 'Let's focus on five little words Bush uttered when running for governor of Texas in 1994 -- his defense against charges of insider trading: 'I absolutely had no idea.' Sound familiar? The know-nothing defense has been getting plenty of exercise of late, cited variously by officials of Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom and other companies implicated in the current rash of corporate fraud... 'The know-nothing defense is a public statement of incompetence,' observed Ben Hermalin, acting dean of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. 'What you're saying is that you're incompetent as a corporate officer...' Asked later if his stock sale had been related to the company's impending setback, Bush replied, 'I absolutely had no idea and would not have sold it had I known.' In fact, SEC records show that Harken's president had warned board members two months before Bush's sell-off that the company had liquidity problems that would 'drastically affect' operations."

Salon's Damien Cave writes, "Joseph Stiglitz began explaining why markets fail long before Enron and WorldCom rose, exploded and crashed. But not many people wanted to listen during the boom-boom '90s; Stiglitz was even fired from his position as chief economist at the World Bank after he repeatedly criticized the organization's free-market obsessions. Today, Stiglitz's lifetime of work is suddenly all too relevant. Consider, for example, his theory of 'asymmetric information.' Stiglitz spent years demonstrating that one party in a transaction -- say, the owner of a factory -- often possesses more information than the other about that transaction, and thus has an advantage that allows for market inefficiencies, and potentially, human suffering. His work... handily explains why Enron and other companies successfully hid their accounting tricks for so long."

Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje writes that the recent ruling by a federal appeals court wasn't nearly as interesting as the public's reaction to it. "Children grow into decent, law-abiding, compassionate human beings if they are raised with love, respect and discipline, not because they recite a rote reference to God every morning. And the bedrock principles of this country -- justice, fairness, dignity -- don't depend on third-graders making references to monotheism... My grandfather used to say, 'The Devil likes to get dressed up and go to church on Sunday.' Embedded in that old saying is a cautionary tale about the dangers inherent in public piety, in the easy oaths and proclamations that too often masquerade as true faith, true charity... Corporate mandarins at places such as WorldCom and Enron steal millions in a country where wealth is increasingly becoming concentrated in the hands of the few... Too bad folks can't work up a head of outrage over that."

Joshua Green writes that Enron staffers openly referred to Tom White as 'Mr. Magoo.' "Bush, Cheney, and White are all part of a culture of 'crony capitalism' whose resurgence has been quietly accepted in Washington... To dump White would risk raising questions about this entire way of life. [Even without independent-counsel inquiries, something fundamental has changed. The GOP House has no incentive to pursue the Bush Administration, and the Democratic Senate appears to lack the nerve]. The Bush administration also enjoys broader leeway because it is free of the 'vast right-wing conspiracy' -- the subsidized scandal-mongering, talk radio, and attack journalism that has no equivalent on the left. [Bush recently told White that] 'As long as they're hitting you on Enron, they're not hitting me -- that's your job. You're the lightning rod for this administration.' Bush may benefit from keeping White in the job," but the American People suffer the consequences. Impeach Bush Now!

"A Senate subcommittee released a report Sunday holding Enron's board of directors directly accountable for the energy giant's collapse… The report cites numerous failures by the board, including the failure to stop Enron from using misleading accounting, the failure to ensure the independence of the company's auditor, Arthur Andersen, and the failure to protect shareholders from unfair dealings in an outside partnership run by the company's chief financial officer… The board knew Enron engaged in high-risk accounting, inappropriate conflict-of-interest transactions, extensive undisclosed off-the-books activities, and excessive executive compensation, but chose to ignore the practices. The board's independence was compromised by financial ties between the company and certain board members. The board also failed to ensure the independence of Andersen, which provided internal services while serving as Enron's outside auditor." So when will Bush put Ken Lay in jail???

"Bush is so peeved about corporate America's 'wrongdoers'… that last week he spoke out about them four times in four days. By the time he took a breather, the markets had hit their worst half-year finish since 1970, the Nasdaq was at a five-year low, the dollar was on the skids and, despite much evidence to the contrary, a majority of Americans had told CNN/USA Today pollsters that the country was in a recession… At least five members of that theoretically tiny club [of corporate culprits] have direct ties to the Bush administration: Enron, Halliburton, Andersen, KMPG and Merrill Lynch - the last three all former clients of the president's choice as Wall Street's top cop, the S.E.C. chairman Harvey Pitt. Five for 15: Mr. Bush could have used a batting average that high when he ran the Texas Rangers… Thomas White, who was vice chairman of Enron Energy Services when it allegedly hid $500 million in losses and manipulated the California energy crisis, is still secretary of the Army."

As Wall Street totters on the brink of a credibility gap with a magnitude unequalled since the Great Depression, the Enron debacle is being scrutinized. As well it should be, for a wide variety of reasons, including the fact that since 1993 Enron and its employees gave G. W. Bush more than $736,000 in contributions. And all that cash sure did buy access, as just one document prepared for Rep. Waxman shows: over 40 contacts arranged chronologically between Enron and White House officials including Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Lawrence Lindsey and energy task force director Andrew Lunduist. Researchers, legislators, legal scholars and journalists will find a wealth of Enron-related resources at Stephanie J. Burke's "The Collapse of Enron: A Bibliography of Online Legal, Government and Legislative Resources," but so will concerned, inquisitive citizens. Regularly updated, this is a resource to revisit as the "pie grows higher!"

Greg Palast brilliantly compares the failed CIA-oil company coup in Venezeula with the successful IMF coup in Argentina, where the nation has been decimated and Enronesque privatization has ensured that the poor no longer have clean water to drink.

Frank Rich writes, "Mr. Bush keeps saying all the right things. He is 'deeply concerned.' He will 'hold people accountable.' But words, like stocks, lose value when nothing backs them up. It is now more than six months since the president [sic] promised 'a lot of government inquiry into Enron'... Mr. Bush says that only 'a few bad actors' are at fault. Why is the administration so lax about bringing them to justice? That may have something to do with who those 'few bad actors' are. [The chairman] of the New York Stock Exchange, tossed out a range of 1 to 15 as the rough count of corporate culprits. [So far, at least five members of that] tiny club have direct ties to the Bush administration: Enron, Halliburton, Andersen, KMPG and Merrill Lynch - the last three all former clients... SEC chairman Harvey Pitt. Five for 15: Mr. Bush could have used a batting average that high when he ran the Texas Rangers."

Ex-Republican Kevin Phillips writes, "Market extremism doesn't wear hoods, white sheets, or armbands. Skinheads in its ranks are few. Suicide bombers in its cause are even fewer. But the essence of extremism, as opposed to other specific 'isms,' is to extend - harshly, rigidly, and dangerously - a commitment and ideology that in softer and milder forms can be acceptable or useful. Worship of an unfettered, self-justifying marketplace developed in exactly this harsh, rigid form during the 1980s and 1990s. The infamous practices of Enron - where market mania turned abusive, with the help of the Bush family - are only the tip of one berg in an ice field that continues to threaten national political and economic navigation." For the roots of this extremism look no further than the cults surrounding Ayn Rand and libertarian guru Friedrich von Hayek.

Marie Cocco writes "It's the workers, stupid. Not the accountants. Not the corrupt corporate chieftains. Not even Martha Stewart. You can lock them all up and the bottom line - the bottom line you can trust, now and forever - is that the political fix will not trickle down. The workers of WorldCom, of Enron, of Xerox, of whatever company is next up in headline news, cannot be made whole. No paycheck will arrive for laid-off workers because some congressional committee tinkers with accounting regulations. Nobody's retirement account is replenished with tough talk about corporate crooks."

Robert Kuttner asks, "Could there be an economic perfect storm brewing? Consider the elements. When Enron imploded, defenders of unregulated capitalism rushed to condemn it... This is how capitalism works. Eventually the market cleans up its act because investors demand it. [However,] the cleanup invariably involves government intervention, not market self-correction. It was, of course, deregulation that invited this mess. Here is the potential perfect storm: [1] Investor panic. If corporate reporting of profits cannot be trusted, investors flee. [2] The Dollar... The flow of foreign capital to the United States has begun slowing, and the dollar has begun falling. [3] Inflation and Recession... If the dollar decline worsens, the Fed will have to raise rates. Higher rates would slow economic growth. They would also drive investors from stocks into bonds, which would accelerate the stock market decline... Hence the perfect storm: recession, inflation, and a plunging stock market."

[Aired June 28, 2002] This episode is called "What Will Bu$h Do About Corporate Corruption?" Cute...the answer is not a damn thing, unfortunately. That's because Bu$h profited from it when he was a director of Harken Energy and other times in his biz past. Paul Begala points out that documents show Bush received memos in the spring of 1990 that referred in stark terms to his company's cash-strapped condition, as banks demanded it pay down its debt. One document said the company was in the midst of a liquidity crisis. Another told Bush the company was in a state of non-compliance with its lenders. After learning these things, GW sold stock. A few weeks later, the bad news about Harken's finances came out and the stock collapsed. Bush walked away with a fortune. Sound familiar? Enron and WorldCom (well, maybe, with training wheels)!

Gene Lyons writes: "President Junior has kept at least one campaign promise. He said he'd run the country like a business, and that he has surely done. The Bush administration looks more like Enron or WorldCom everyday: all smoke and mirrors economic projections, make-believe accounting, bigshots cashing in while everybody else's savings vanish, and zero accountability... Anyway, it's the story of George W. Bush's life. Last week, with the stock market closing its worst two quarters in 30 years, and the dollar sinking on currency markets, nervous traders were starting to wonder if what billionaire investor George Soros called the 'Bush factor' -- part dogma, part sheer incompetence -- could throw the world economy into crisis... Back before Bill and Monica discovered sex and invented sin, see, nobody ever heard of insider trading or cooking the books. Well, OK, nobody except George W. Bush."

"A settlement has been reached in the legal fight preventing the release of the complete police report on the suicide of former Enron executive J. Clifford Baxter. The report, nearly 900 pages long, was released earlier this month, but photographs of the scene, including those of Baxter's body, were withheld. The proposed settlement, between Baxter's widow, the Texas attorney general, the city of Sugar Land, and the Houston Chronicle, would allow the release of most of the photographs and video. 'The only ones to be withheld are the ones the family considers to be the most disturbing,' Deputy Attorney General Jeff Boyd said Saturday...The dispute over the release of the report began almost immediately after his body was found on Jan. 25, in his car with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head." Dark questions still remain about the autopsy and its findings. (Enter 'baxter' in our website's search engine).

With every major US corporation apparently now in the crosshairs of investors suspicious about accounting practices, the spotlight is now on US industrial and financial icon General Electric. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, for one, has said that GE, General Motors, Exxon and other heroes of USA Inc are basing their pension fund profit contributions on "pretty heroic assumptions" about future performance. As the company that gave political birth to Ronald Reagan, no company deserves the chopping block more. G.E. They bring bad things to light.

"It's time for Democrats to declare that being tough on white collar crime is not being 'anti-business', it is time for Democrats to reaffirm our basic belief that only when there is, in FDR's words, 'a sensible system, sensibly trusted by sensible people' will there be real, sustainable economic growth. The Republicans will try and blame everyone but themselves and the criminals who use corporations as their weapon of choice for robbing the public. We haven't had sense in the financial markets, the financial press, the financial system and the financial culture for years now, and we have to get it back, or they will be talking about the Crash of '03 for generations to come. And it may be too late for that already..." So writes stirling s newberry.

"As business scandals seem to fill the headlines every day and while the media may keep trying to sweep the attention span-impaired public onto a bright new recovery predicated on deeper middle-class debt, perhaps it behooves the rest of us to examine closer this peculiar moment of American triumphalism in crisis. For it really is all of a piece; this era of Wall Street hubris, this era of smug conservatism, and, not coincidentally, this era of George W. Bush's 'nukular' strutting. A corollary principle was that unlike the decadent Europeans and their soft socialism, the moral righteousness of our business titans displayed itself in diligent hard work as well as sexual probity; (thus was Bill Clinton an unnatural blight to be cast out.) This, of course, was mere hypocrisy on all counts." So writes Kent Southard.

"Criminal investigators examining the Enron debacle have expanded their inquiry to focus on activities at the commercial banks that provided billions of dollars in loans and other financial services to the company [including hidden loans from Barclays and J P Morgan Chase. Enron] used natural gas trades with a series of offshore companies linked to Morgan to move hundreds of millions of dollars in loans off its books. [Enron and Morgan intentionally misrepresented the deals to obtain insurance]. The transactions involved a web of corporations... that at first blush seem independent but whose records show are linked companies with ties to Morgan. The companies traded gas in a circle, with Enron both being required to deliver the commodity on a future date and being owed the same amount of gas for delivery on the same date at the same price." Citigroup is implicated in similar illegal transactions that were not disclosed on Enron's books.

Robert Scheer writes, "Has the war on terrorism become the modern equivalent of the Roman Circus, drawing the people's attention away from the failures of those who rule them? Corporate America is a shambles because deregulation [has become a license to steal. Is there any doubt that Enron executives and other CEOs have] done more long-term damage to the U.S. economy than the efforts of anti-American terrorists? [It's time to return to the wisdom of FDR, who saved capitalism from itself]. FDR had a healthy awareness of the tendency of the upper classes to destabilize society and even destroy themselves with their greed and hubris... Thus was born the idea of government regulation as the vital support structure for the powerful, fertile but unstable free market. [Unfortunately, since the] Reagan Revolution, powerful corporate interests have succeeded in profoundly damaging the foundation of a properly regulated economy."

Salon's Damien Cave writes, "Does anyone in the current administration even remember Enron? Judging by President [sic] Bush's two nominees to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), who appeared at Senate hearings on Tuesday, the answer is no. If there was one thing that could legitimately be hoped for after the biggest corporate bankruptcy of all time, it was that accounting rules would be tightened, and the rush to dismantle regulatory oversight over the kind of complicated financial games that Enron specialized in would be reversed. But instead, the people most responsible for loosening the rules are being put in charge... Bush's nominees boast what critics call a laughable regulatory record."

The Daily Brew offers a simple yet bold strategy for Democrats in the coming campaign. "Point out that the 'GOP government' is a failure. Instead of tripping all over yourself trying to prove your patriotism by promising your undying loyalty to Bush's war on terror, take that as a given. Then point out that for the average taxpaying American... the policies of the GOP controlled government have made things worse... By virtually every measure available, ever since Bush moved into the White House, things have deteriorated. OK, you might have to admit that for the millionaires in the audience, taxes are lower. But other than that, the facts are on your side. The stock market? Down. Job growth? Down. Income growth? Down. Crime? Up. Unemployment? Up. The deficit and national debt? Up. Sure, the GOP will squeal that none of it is there fault, but come November, when the swing voters get in that booth, the buck is going to stop somewhere."

"Since Enron Corp. plunged into bankruptcy six months ago, George Bush's defenders have said the administration's refusal to bail out the sinking energy trader is proof of Bush's integrity... Growing evidence, however, shows that this Bush-can't-be-bought story line isn't true. It is now clear that prior to Nov. 8, when the SEC delivered subpoenas to Enron, the Bush administration did what it could to help Enron... Ken Lay got Bush's help in three principal ways: [1] Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the soaring price of electricity in California [while Enron was gouging] hundreds of millions of dollars from California's consumers. [2] Bush granted Lay broad influence over the administration's energy policies. [3] Bush had his National Security Council staff organize an administration-wide campaign to pressure the Indian government to accommodate Enron. [The threats] against India on Enron's behalf didn't stop until Nov. 8."

"1. Do not be intimidated by Bush's high approval ratings-they are a mile wide and an inch deep. In spite of brainwashing by the media, there is no great affection of Americans for the White House bum-George W. Bush." Read the rest of the 12-step program by Reba Shimansky.

"Dear Georgie: I thought I was the only guy facing a political/ethical firing squad. But you have topped me, my lad. The 'I' word is beginning to be brought out of mothballs. Unless something major happens (another terrorist attack would help out a lot), you're about to join Bubba in the impeachment well." So writes Bernard Weiner.

During the Bush-Cheney supported energy shakedown in California, Enron and other energy traders stole $30 billion - and denied it, of course. Still, those stolen funds should have appeared on the books of the energy traitors. But Enron hid its stolen money in "reserves." We have tens of thousands of Americans in jail for stealing comparatively tiny sums - when will the Bush administration put Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andrew Fastow in jail???

Frank Rich writes that on the 30th anniversary of Watergate, the energy expended searching for Deep Throat "might be better spent trying to crack the Watergate under way right now. This time the cancer is [on the economy, where the malignancy is a flood of corporate scams that exceed anything since the years preceding the Great Depression. The New York Post praised Mafia don John Gotti] by saying that at least the mob didn't come near 'your wallets,' as 'the Enron sissies did.' The new Watergate [is still early in its timeline - even though some] reassure us that the story is almost over. [Dick Cheney] achieved a trifecta through his official dealings with Enron, his stewardship of Halliburton during alleged accounting irregularities, and his on-camera appearance in a 1997 Andersen promotional video touting the firm's 'good advice.' It's too late to find a Rosemary Woods who might erase it."

E J Dionne writes, "Just two years ago, the rise of Shareholder Nation was taken as a great boon to the long-term prospects of the Republican Party and conservative policies. [Grover Norquist argues that this] was why George W Bush was able to campaign for the partial privatization of Social Security... But then a funny thing happened on the way to Dow 36,000 (to borrow from the title of a popular book), and shrewd Republican strategists are nervous. When new expectations are created by rising stock values, it is no comfort to those whose portfolios are underwater to hear that they have suffered only 'paper losses'... David Winston, a Republican pollster, argues that losses of this sort are common across the investing middle class -- and they have political ramifications... In other words, Stockholder Nation may have created the first mass constituency for the sort of financial reforms that once were debated in back rooms and were easily derailed by lobbyists."

TomPaine.com writes, "There was much tittering in Washington after a Democratic Senate staffer found a computer disk in Lafayette Park containing two PowerPoint presentations outlining a confidential analysis of the upcoming election by Karl Rove, President [sic] Bush's political brain... the real news was elsewhere. In Rove/Mehlman's analysis of public opinion and the issue environment as the election approaches, a very confident view emerges. 'No evidence that Enron attacks, POTUS political activity or economy has significantly impacted the President's rating,' they write. And they're right. It's quite telling that they identify [the issues that are] their greatest worries. The Enron scandal goes to the heart of the administration's fealty to corporate donors. [But Democratic efforts to raise concerns about these issues] have all been easily deflected."

The Frontline documentary -- "Bigger Than Enron" -- exposes the ways the accounting industry, the CEO lobbyists, and their political allies gamed the system and stacked the deck against ordinary investors. The ENTIRE Wall Street establishment did its damn'dest to hamstring the Regulatory Agencies, and even persuaded Chris Dodd to lead the charge to override President Clinton's veto of the "No Accountablity for Accountants" bill -- all of which led to the current mess we're in. All of the big Five Accounting firms are implicated in the same shady deals that brought down Arthur Andersen. Many publicly traded corporations have engaged in some of the scams that brought down Enron. And now, George Bush has installed Harvey Pitt -- the # 1 lawyer that created this mess -- as Chairman of the SEC. Don't you feel better now?

Paul Krugman writes, "To make sense of what passes for debate over Social Security reform, one must realize that advocates of privatization... are determined not to understand basic arithmetic... George W Bush was able to get away with the nonsensical claim that private accounts would not only yield high, low-risk returns, but save Social Security at the same time. For whatever reason, few reporters pointed out that he was claiming that 2-1=4... Sure enough, the plans laid out by Mr Bush... involve both severe benefit cuts and huge 'magic asterisks,' infusions of trillions of dollars from an undisclosed location... Republicans are now being told to deny that personal accounts... constitute 'privatization'... So it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, but it isn't a duck -- not until after the next election. But whatever they say, it is a duck. And the administration economists... are, more than ever, revealed as quacks."

Salon's Jason Leopold writes, "Now that federal prosecutors have secured a guilty verdict against accounting firm Arthur Andersen for shredding crucial documents related to Enron's finances, the Department of Justice is expected to turn its attention to Enron, with possible indictments against former executives coming soon for violating federal fraud statutes. According to sources close to the Justice Department's probe, former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling is facing particular scrutiny. And Exhibit A against him could be testimony he gave before Congress in February, when he claimed he knew little about one of Enron's byzantine partnerships."

Robert Kuttner writes "Republicans and the Bush administration may have painted themselves into a serious political corner on the hot-button issue of Social Security. Last December a Social Security Commission appointed by [Bush] reported three possible plans to privatize part of Social Security accounts. At the time the commission was appointed, conservative think tanks... had persuaded leading Republicans that voters liked the idea of 'choice' in their retirement planning and that private accounts invested in stocks had great appeal with younger voters. But after a swooning stock market and the Enron scandal, Republican congressmen who have to run in swing districts know better. The GOP's rank and file is refusing to walk this plank... Clay Shaw of Florida, a leading advocate of Social Security privatization, denied that he supports Social Security privatization."

"The regrettable but observable fact is that the Bush Administration's foreign policy has been a disaster of unprecedented proportions, making the world far more dangerous than it was just two years ago. Bush has turned the diplomatic corps and the military into branches of the Foreign Commercial Service, the part of the State Department charged with helping American businesses secure opportunities overseas. In a cynical twist on the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, the word went out to friend and foe alike that the United States would bear any burden to ensure that the interests of American multinationals were aggressively protected. The escalation of the all out war in the Middle East is nothing less than presidentially-assisted suicide." So writes Democrats.com's David Lytel.

"As of this past weekend, we are at war with Iraq. There has been no declaration of war, nor have troops clashed, but this is beside the point. To declare that one's spy service (the CIA) is actively pursuing the overthrow of another regime 'by any means necessary' is an act of war under any relevant definition of the word... The reasons this now is the season to prepare for war, are three fold: pure political economics, evasion of responsibility, and demographics." So writes Stirling S Newberry.

Hey Oregonians, here is your chance to meet Greg Palast and hear him talk about his new book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." Palast is the reporter who exposed the illegal Florida voter purge. He also has uncovered key documents and interviewed insiders about the pernicious methods of the World Bank, IMF and WTO. He reported that the Bush Administration told the FBI to back off on their investigations of the bin Laden family in the months before 911. Palast has also exposed chicanery and corruption by Pat Robertson, the Wackenhut Corp. and Enron. Don't miss this opportunity to see Palast! Today June 18, Palast signs books in Portland at 3:30 PM PT at Powell's Bookstore, 1005 W. Burnside Portland, OR. Then, you can hear Greg speak at 7:00 PM PT at the First Unitarian Church, 1211 SW Main Corner of 12th & Main in downtown Portland (Suggested donation $5-$10). On Wednesday, see Palast in Eugene: Book signing at Tsunami Books (6 PM) and lecture at McDonald Theater (7:30 PM).

Federal prosecutors believe Enron could have survived the losses racked up by its Raptor subsidiaries, if proper accounting was followed. But Enron's chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, personally owned the Raptors - thanks to an arrangement approved by Enron's Board of Directors. Proper accounting would have cost Fastow millions of dolllars, so Fastow insisted on fraudulent accounting, which he created with the help of Andersen's local accountants. Fastow may be the first Enron executive to be prosecuted - but his conflict-of-interest was approved by the Board - led by Ken Lay. Everyone involved shares in the blame - and deserves time behind bars.

A federal jury convicted Arthur Andersen of obstruction of justice for altering a smoking gun memo before turning it over to the SEC. Enron wanted to lie to the public by claiming its 3rd quarter 2001 losses were a one-time exception ("nonrecurring"). But Andersen's David Duncan told Enron that this lie was so egregious that the SEC would punish Enron. This dispute was documented in the smoking gun memo, but Andersen lawyer Nancy Temple scrubbed that section from the memo so the SEC would never see it. As a result of its conviction, Andersen "informed the government that it would cease auditing public companies as soon as the end of August, effectively ending the life of the 89-year-old firm." Will the remaining Big 4 accounting firms learn that crime doesn't pay? Don't hold your breath - the Republican Congress is blocking the only serious accounting reform bill, proposed by Paul Sarbanes (D-MD).

Jeff Bliss from Bloomberg.com writes "The U.S. government's budget deficit may as high as $150 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 because of lower tax revenue, more spending and higher interest, according to the Congressional Budget Office." Of course we could add to this higher unemployment, higher interest rates, a collapsing stock market and what do you get? The Bush Economy!!! He always said he wanted to run the country like a business... too bad his models are Halliburton and Enron!

Holly Rosenkrantz from Bloomberg.com writes, "Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, sold between $50,000 and $225,000 worth of energy company shares last year as the Bush administration drafted a plan to expand U.S. energy production, White House records show. Libby sold the shares in Enron Corp., Exelon Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Calpine Corp. between February and July, 2001, the records showed." We demand an investigation!

The Washington Post writes, "Two years ago Arthur Levitt, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, fought to curb the auditing conflicts of interest that facilitate fictitious financial statements. He was beaten back by legislators who had received money from the audit companies. Then, after Enron's implosion, many of those same legislators put on new reformist clothes, explaining that they had never really opposed the Levitt reforms but had merely pleaded against rushing them. We look forward to this coming week's vote in the Senate banking committee, when some of these claims will be tested... Auditors are supposed to be independent of company managers, but they can't be when they depend on managers for more than half their income. Messrs [Wayne] Allard [R-CO], [Richard] Shelby [R-AL] and [Jim] Bunning [R-KY] seemed to understand this in February and March." But odds are they will pimp for the Big 5 on the key vote this week in the Senate Banking Committee.

According to investigator John Loftus, Dick Cheney in January 2001 blocked any US investigations "whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O'Neill resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaeda connections because of the Enron pipeline deal... Loftus asserts that the Enron block, which remained in force from January 2001 until August 2001 when the pipeline deal collapsed, is the reason that none of FBI agent Rowley's requests for investigations were ever approved... It is time for Congress to face the truth: In order to give Enron one last desperate chance to complete the Taliban pipeline and save itself from bankruptcy, senior levels of US intelligence were ordered to keep their eyes shut and their subordinates ignorant... If Congress ever combines its Enron investigation with 9/11, Cheney's whole house of cards will collapse." Impeach Bush and Cheney now!

"Al Gore sure got the crowd's attention, urging them to remember 'how you felt the morning after the Supreme Court decision in December,' Gore said as the crowd moaned and hissed. 'Take that feeling you have inside and use it.' Encouraging people to be actively involved, he said 'Don't wait - 2004 is a long way off. 2002 is here now.'" So writes ~Chip Yost.

Arianna writes, "Back in March, it looked like the [GOP-run] House Energy and Commerce Committee, fresh off its public flogging of Enron execs, had set its investigative sights on Wall Street, sending letters out to the big securities firms seeking information about their involvement with Enron's shadier practices. Some of them responded by threatening to turn off the campaign contribution spigot unless reformers on the Hill cooled their jets. The Chairman of the NRCC Tom Davis confirmed the donor uprising: 'They were very free with their complaints.' As one House GOP staffer admitted: 'We're getting questions about why the NRCC is calling us up for money while the other guys are investigating us.' The bankers' blackmail had the desired effect: the Energy and Commerce Committee has yet to hold hearings on Wall Street, and the CEOs of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros., and J.P. Morgan have been spared their time in the Congressional hot seat." Where is the outrage?

Numerous proposals have been floated in Congress to fix the many problems exposed by the collapse of Enron. But George Bush and his fellow Texan, Senator Phil Gramm, have worked hand in glove to quietly kill each of these proposals. Senate Democrats, led by Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), continue to fight to clean up corporate corruption. But with Republicans saying "over our dead bodies," there is only one solution - defeat ALL Republicans!

"The pattern here should be politically explosive. A firm's stock price is supposed to go up when it has produced something people want, not because its accounts are fraudulent... Put this together with other corporate scams, and you've got a campaign message. Companies are fleeing to offshore havens, forcing you to pay more tax. They lobby for useless weapons, farm subsidies and other corporate welfare, so that your tax dollars get wasted. And look at Enron and Adelphia and those pharmaceutical firms: They are wrecking your retirement funds with accounting tricks, jeopardizing your job security by siphoning cash out of your firm and bankrupting your grandma with sky-high drug prices. Forget the dumb attacks on globalization and free markets. The real injustice is that firms are rewarded for lies and lobbying clout, rather than for producing honest goods and services. The scandal isn't capitalism, in other words. It's that capitalism has been corrupted." So writes Sebastian Mallaby.

Only the Arthur Andersen-Enron style of accounting can justify the numbers that the GOP regularly trots out - that cutting taxes actually increases revenue. But let's face it, from now until November, the GOP will say they are for prescription drugs, they are for protecting Social Security and Medicare, that they are for increased spending on terrorism, defense, and education. But come December, after the election, we will find them saying they have more compassion than wallet. Under Dubya the GOP campaigns left to get elected, but then they govern from the extreme right.

Al Gore spoke to an "adoring crowd of more than 1,600" at the Wisconsin Democratic convention and said the nation's war on terrorism is "not a Republican or a Democratic fight," and said Bush must "start putting politics aside" and stop "using the war as a political wedge." During his speech, Gore waded through a sampler of those issues - health care, global warming, energy industry and other corporate executives dictating federal policies, and Enron-style federal budgeting. "A lot of our most precious values are being overturned, ignored and trashed," he warned. And like our precious values, Gore himself was ignored once again by the national media.

Remember Enron? Bush obviously doesn't. Bush is pushing to privatize Air Traffic Control, so one of his rich buddies can milk the system for all it's worth. "We're absolutely flabbergasted that the administration thinks that aviation security and safety aren't a government function," said Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association President Phil Boyer. "We must never forget that the primary function of air traffic control is public safety. And ATC's role in security was never more evident than on September 11. The administration's position is particularly incomprehensible at a time when the government is taking airport security functions away from private industry and consolidating homeland security into a huge new department."

"John Ashcroft, likely inspired while rolling around on the plush carpet of the Attorney General's office during a sudden onset of speaking in tongues, has given the FBI new powers for domestic spying. FBI Director Robert Mueller, ever-vigilant for the rights of Americans, assured the public that the Bureau's agents had been 'hampered' by bureaucratic restrictions, his tone and substance closely resembling an American executive grumbling about the Environmental Protection Agency's having hampered sluicing operations of toxic sludge into wetlands. The FBI is now free, in the great, 'no damn fed'rah regulation' tradition of Enron or Silverado savings and loan, to pursue its goals. Only this is not just another crooked corporation chiseling people's savings, but a secret police force with vast powers and an unwholesome history. Needless to say, Mr. Bush warmly welcomed the changes." So writes John Chuckman in YellowTimes.org.

Bernard Weiner writes: "With all the complicated scandals and maneuverings in the White House, it was time to seek out 'Shallow Throat' again. The disenchanted Republican mole, located high in the Bush Administration, previously had supplied us with the transcript of an inner-Cabinet meeting, which revealed how Bush&Co. had decided in the Summer of 2001 to take advantage of the terrorist attacks they knew were coming, and which did arrive on 9/11."

"Naturally, this reticence by the Japanese to face up to their past crimes is viewed as anathema to Americans, especially to the soldiers who suffered at the hands of their vicious enemy. The idea of censoring huge tracts of history seems foreign to our citizens. Yet, now it seems as though a movement is underfoot in the United States to censor our own history, stifle dissent and suppress the first amendment right to free speech." Check out Christian Dewar's sweeping overview of crimes by the CIA and the Bushes.

"Oh, well I feel a heck of a lot more secure now, don't you? Okay, so not only is the world community laughing at us, but now we have our prisoners having a bit of fun at our expense. They've obviously caught on to the level of stupidity and gullibility that seems to permeate in the current American regime and they are utilizing it to the maximum. Geez, whatever you do, don't let 'em see any of the 'Die Hard' flicks. And, in case the gang in charge hasn't thought about it, all James Bond movies are definitely off limits! In fact, maybe you guys should just sit and watch videos for a few months. We know how much you all hate to read books, (especially Tom Clancy novels) so just plug in the VCR and kick back so you all can keep us safe and free from embarrassment. Scuba diver terrorists indeed! You know it won't stop people from asking questions about 9/11. All you people are doing is prolonging the inevitable. The questions are still going to keep coming, George."

Molly Ivins writes that the SEC is investigating Halliburton "for accounting irregularities. What took so long? Dick Cheney's record at Halliburton is one of the most under-covered stories of the past three years. When you consider all the time and ink spent on Whitewater, the neglect of the Cheney-Halliburton story is unfathomable. The proximate cause of the SEC investigation is an 'aggressive accounting practice' - [counting $100 million of phony revenue to cover up losses. Cheney wanted restrictions lifted on American corporations in countries that sponsor terrorism. Hey, that was then, this is now]. Cheney led Halliburton into the top ranks of corporate welfare hogs, benefiting from almost $2 billion in taxpayer-insured loans [and $2.3 billion in government contracts. Most of the work was done by Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root], thus reinstating a fine old Texas tradition. Brown & Root was Lyndon Johnson's major money source: It was to LBJ what Enron was to George W."

Frank Rich writes, "No one seems to remember anymore that President [sic] Bush put Mr. Cheney in charge of not one but two task forces last year... On May 8, 2001, the president charged Mr. Cheney with overseeing a 'national effort' to coordinate all federal programs for responding to domestic attacks... Did Mr. Cheney take on that responsibility with the same urgency with which he met with Enron executives to develop energy policy? [After 9/11, The Washington Post reported] that the government-wide review that Mr. Bush had entrusted to Mr. Cheney had never taken place... Were the vice president to be quizzed about his pre-Sept.-11 efforts at preparedness, he'd likely either invoke secrecy or impugn the questioner's patriotism. [The cure Mr. Bush now proposes for such ailments is still another avoidance of accountability that reshuffles the same deck of lightweights we have now]. These days that's a sure sign that the buck-passing will never stop."

Salon's Jason Leopold reports that the Bush administration was tipped off "last August about [Enron's] impending financial problems. Enron lobbyist Pat Shortridge met with White House economic advisor Robert McNally Aug. 15, the day after Enron president Jeff Skilling resigned, to alert the White House that Enron could face a financial meltdown that could possibly cripple the country's energy markets... If McNally was tipped off to Enron's troubles it would mean that the White House had been warned several months earlier than it has previously acknowledged... It would also mean the White House received such a warning even before Sharon Watkins delivered her famous memo to then Enron chairman Kenneth Lay... It also fuels the most common question plaguing the administration these days: What did Bush know, and when did he know it?"

Proving that Bush doesn't care how patently transparent his political motives were in buying back Florida's offshore oil leases, Gale Norton told a laughably huge whopper to explain why the administration is refusing to do the same for California. She claims that "Florida opposes coastal drilling and California does not." Considering that California's opposition to drilling goes back about 40 years, that reasoning is as ridiculous and insulting as Cheney's statements blaming California for the Bush-Enron-engineered California Enronegy crisis. Norton is obviously grasping at straws to obfuscate the real reason Bush won't protect the coast of California: there's no fellow Bush running the state, facing re-election.

Arianna Huffington writes, "Unlike other eras of corporate corruption, our own hasn't spawned much of a political movement for reform. We can't expect the Bush administration to act -- Bush, Cheney Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America, and President [sic] Bush likes to be known as 'the MBA president.' While his do-nothing anti-regulation approach to business might have gotten him more criticism when Enron imploded in scandal, he was able to use the Sept. 11 attacks and the war on terror to hide from blame. On Thursday Bush acted belatedly to reorganize his messed-up homeland security apparatus; don't hold your breath to see him take on the SEC and other agencies that are botching their regulatory responsibilities."

Anita Hill asks, "Is it a coincidence that the whistle-blowers in what may turn out to be the most significant examples of government incompetence and corporate wrongdoing in our time are women? I don't think so. I think the increase in the number of women in positions of prominence, coupled with the tension that can develop between insider status and outsider values, brings us to this point... Like those who have had to challenge workplace bias, Ms. Rowley and Ms. Watkins differed from their superiors in their notions of appropriate institutional conduct. Similarly, Ms. Rowley and Ms. Watkins ultimately found that their chances for bringing change to their workplaces existed only outside those workplaces. Coincidence or not, the fact is that in the public and private sectors the number of women in positions of authority is growing. As their numbers increase, so will their opportunities, not only to be whistle-blowers but, more important, to shape institutional standards from the top."

"The FBI has selected 'investigative data warehousing' as a key technology to use in the war against terrorism. The technique uses data mining and analytical software to comb vast amounts of digital information to discover patterns and relationships that indicate criminal activity… The FBI plans to build a data warehouse that receives information from multiple FBI databases... Eventually, the warehouse might receive data from other law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Data mining and data warehousing are part of a much larger FBI plan to acquire and employ modern information technology to thwart future terrorist attacks… Other top priorities for the FBI will be disrupting foreign intelligence and espionage and protecting against cybercrime, Mueller said. Investigating bank robberies, fraud and other white-collar crimes - FBI specialties in an earlier era - will be given lower priority." To find a handful of terrorists, the FBI is giving a green light to future Enrons!

The U.S. has had recessions and rising unemployment in four of the last five midterm election years in which a Republican was in the White House: 1970, 1974, 1982, and 1990. '86 was weak in comparison to that decade. The Democrats, by contrast, did well for America. Their midterm years — 1962, 1966, 1978, 1994, and 1998 — all had strong economic growth and declining unemployment. This is a consistent historical trend. Time and again Democrats hand a thriving economy over to Republicans, who then wreck it by allowing unchecked theft, greed, and criminality. And once again the current Enron Administration proves this true. Although the cited article in the National Review tries to make a lot of excuses for this, it is clear that Democrats are good for business, and Republicans suck for business. And for working Americans the equation is simple: Republican President = Poverty; Democratic President = Prosperity.

Mike Hersh writes "In some ways, I am awestruck by their audacity and aplomb. Bush ran promising to 'trust the people,' but when the people elected Al Gore, Bush's people sued the people... At a stroke, the highest court in the land [blew up the Equal Protection doctrine] like a party balloon -- a Republican Party balloon. These 'conservatives' legislated from the bench, threw out the well-established law, and wove new, unfounded 'doctrine' from whole cloth. Everything conservatives ever complained about regarding 'liberal' judges -- and worse... Bush stole the election in a crooked lawsuit, defiling the US Supreme Court to do so. He unleashed his pal 'Kenny Boy' and Enron who looted California and their own investors and employees. Bush got away with all this. If Bush's magicians get away with blaming 9/11 on the FBI -- which did its job and warned them about the terrorists -- I can't imagine anything they can't get away with. Can you?"

"In his campaign for VP, Cheney touted his leadership of the 85,000-employee Halliburton Corp. But since then, the firm's fortunes have faltered dramatically... The company's stock valuation today might be as high as $18 billion -- instead of the current $8 billion -- were it not for the potential liability shouldered after the Cheney-engineered 1998 merger between Halliburton and Dresser Industries. The asbestos liability is not the only concern. Last week, the company revealed that the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a preliminary investigation into an accounting practice -- adopted when Cheney was CEO -- in which unapproved billings were counted as revenue... The [Dresser] merger 'was probably one of the most foolish decisions Halliburton ever made,' said lawyer John Wall of Houston... 'Cheney would have had to know' about the potential asbestos liability. 'That would be part of his due diligence. If he didn't know, that would be total incompetence.'"

"An Alabama pension fund won a victory Friday when a federal judge ruled its Enron-related lawsuit should be tried in state court there. Blocking a request to move the case to Texas is significant because several lawyers have attempted to gain a leg up in negotiating with Enron-related plaintiffs by trying to stay out of the conglomeration of cases in U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon's court in Houston… Alabama laws...unlike the federal law, include cases of those who aid and abet in a securities fraud. That would make it easier to make a case against accountants, lawyers and financial institutions that worked with Enron… Retirement Systems of Alabama sued in state court in March over the $65 million it said it lost in the "death spiral" of Enron Corp… The defendants include Arthur Andersen; Enron executives Kenneth Lay, Andrew Fastow and Jeff Skilling; and Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston and Bank of America."

The former chairman of an institutional investment firm, Alliance Capital, that continued to buy Enron stock as it tanked last year, and which oversees the Florida state pension fund, resigned from the Enron Board of Directors last week. Alliance Capital was recently sued for $280 million in losses by the Florida state agency responsible for administering the state employee pension fund. The Enron Director who resigned, Frank Savage, began his board tenure in October, 1999. Even if the state is successful in the suit, it can only expect to recover 30 to 50 cents on the pensioners' dollar. Alliance Capital maintains that it was holding on to the Enron stock expecting a merger to bolster the stock value.

"Investigators recovered more than 29,000 electronic files and e-mails deleted from Arthur Andersen computers before a federal probe was launched, a FBI agent testified Friday. Paula Schanzle, an FBI white-collar crime specialist who is believed to be the last prosecution witness in the obstruction of justice trial against the audit firm, said the documents filled 26 boxes after being recovered and printed...Schanzle also testified that Andersen partner Thomas Bauer was uncooperative during questioning by authorities, but that other employees at the Andersen offices in Houston interpreted his remarks as an order to destroy Enron documents. She testified that two other Andersen staffers had asked Bauer about their priorities in the jobs and that Bauer 'said that is was very apparent that they needed to get into compliance with the firm's document retention policy.' Andersen's defense is based on the assumption that documents were routinely destroyed under this policy."

Michael Kinsley writes: "Halliburton is a special case, because its CEO during most of those Accounting-a-Go-Go years that climaxed with the Enron scandal was Dick Cheney. Cheney now runs the country, they say, adopting the role of mild-mannered vice president to disguise his superpowers…Halliburton revealed that its accounting practices beginning in the Cheney era are under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission… [In] 1998,…Halliburton… began guessing how much of a disputed surcharge would ultimately get paid, and crediting itself in advance… And where was Arthur Andersen while its client Halliburton was sautéing the spreadsheets?… And where was the future vice president while this was going on? The company insists, graciously, that a mere $100 million flyspeck on the company accounts (1999 income: $438 million) was beneath the notice of a busy CEO such as Dick Cheney… " Who will stop these career white collar criminals???

Matier & Ross report, "Enron's 'Death Star' and 'Fat Boy' schemes to fleece California got a lot of press, but they're going to seem positively G-rated compared with the sex and anti-Semitic revelations that may come out as the Enron investigations go deeper, says [CA] Attorney General Bill Lockyer... 'There was this whole Texas macho corporate mentality at work here - one that included a lot of sex and anti-Semitism.' The 'Animal House'-style sex antics were recreational - seems one Enron exec had quite the reputation for after-hours parties. The anti-Semitism, believe it or not, was business. 'Apparently, there was this one energy trading group that Enron worked with that was predominantly Jewish,' Lockyer said. 'When the group didn't sell enough, they would get slammed with anti-Semitic jabs. 'You haven't heard any of this yet,' Lockyer said. 'But when you do, there won't be any doubts that the Enron higher-ups were truly evil people'" - including 51 in the Bush administration...

"Prior to Nov. 8, when the SEC delivered subpoenas to Enron, the Bush administration did what it could to help Enron replenish its coffers with billions of dollars. Enron desperately needed that money to prevent the exposure of mounting losses hidden in off-the-books partnerships... Ken Lay got Bush’s help in three principal ways: (1) Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the soaring price of electricity in California at a time when Enron was artificially driving up the price of electricity by manipulating supply... (2) Bush granted Lay broad influence over the administration’s energy policies, including the choice of key regulators to oversee Enron’s businesses... (3) Bush had his National Security Council staff organize an administration-wide campaign to pressure the Indian government to accommodate Enron, which wanted to sell its generating plant in Dabhol, India, for $2.3 billion." So writes Sam Parry in Consortiumnews.com. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

The Democracy Corps, a Washington-based progressive think-tank, recently conducted a study which "revealed a shift away from foreign policy concerns and towards a growing focus on domestic issues. Driving those concerns were Enron, the future of Social Security, healthcare and the environment...recent scandals surrounding Enron, Wall Street and the accounting industry have begun taking a toll on GOP support...issues...important to voters were accountability, health care, Social Security, protection of 401K retirement plans and the environment - all strong Democratic policy areas... Another bone of contention among voters, the study found, was the Republican-backed 'stimulus' bill that contained a 15-year retroactive tax cut for corporations. Enron - which paid no taxes during most of that period - was in line for a $254 million tax refund. The measure was defeated by House Democrats. But, the effort by House Republicans to pass such a measure did not go unnoticed by voters."

Larry Chin writes in Online Journal, "For years, Enron (along with Unocal, BP Amoco, Exxon, Mobil, Pennzoil, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Texaco, and other oil companies) has been involved in a multi-billion dollar frenzy to extract the reserves of the three former Soviet republics, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan... Enron signed a contract in 1996, giving it rights to explore 11 gas fields in Uzbekistan, a project costing $1.3 billion. The goal was to sell gas to the Russian markets, and link to Unocal's southern export pipeline crossing Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan... Enron recently conducted feasibility studies for a $2.5 billion trans-Caspian gas pipeline to be built jointly with General Electric and Bechtel. Enron's goal was to link this pipeline to another line through Afghanistan." Is the Enron-911 connection the deep dark secret of Cheney's Energy Task Force? Does anyone dare to ask?

"When the government is under-funding veterans' needs, education, health care, housing...over 80% of the subsidies distributed by the Export-Import Bank goes to Fortune 500 corporations... Companies that receive taxpayer support from the Ex-Im are Enron, Boeing, Halliburton, Mobil Oil, IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, FedEx, General Motors, Raytheon, and United Technologies...Many...receiving taxpayer support pay exorbitant salaries and benefits to their CEOs...The great irony of Ex-Im policy is...American workers are providing funding to companies that are shutting down the plants in which they work, and are moving them to China, Mexico, Vietnam and wherever...they can find cheap labor... According to Time Magazine, the top five recipients of Ex-Im subsidies over the past decade have reduced their workforce by 38% -- more than a third of a million jobs down the drain. These same five companies have received more than 60% of all Export-Import Bank subsidies."

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) produced a fact sheet comparing the policy recommendations made by Enron Chairman Ken Lay for national energy policy and the White House Energy Plan. "The analysis below describes Enron's positions outlined in Mr. Lay's memo. Contrary to the White House claim, the White House energy plan incorporates the vast majority of Mr. Lay's policy recommendations… to increase federal control over transmission lines, to exercise federal eminent domain authority to override state decisions on siting of transmission lines, to reject price controls on electricity as a way to mitigate the California energy crises, and to speed permitting of new energy facilities… The White House energy plan adopts all or significant portions of Enron's recommendations in seven… (of eight) areas. Enron representatives had six meetings with the White House energy task force, including four meetings that occurred before release of the final report." We demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

"Enron and Global Crossing used a complex deal brokered by a third company to sidestep accounting rules in a March 2001 transaction that was designed to help Global Crossing disguise a loan and allow each company to book revenue, according to executives and traders involved in the transaction... A swap of fiber optic network capacity and services, was brokered by Reliant Resources, one of the nation's biggest traders of energy contracts, which had expanded into the network-capacity trading market. The transaction helped disguise what was essentially an exchange of long-term services and a $17 million loan to Global Crossing by Enron." Earlier, the GOP tried to tar Clinton and Terry McAuliffe for getting contributions from Global Crossing. But it turned out that in '89 the BushDaddy gave GC Chairman Gary Winnick immunity for testifying against Michael Milken. After leaving office, Bush I received GC stocks apparently as speaking fees -- that he ultimately cashed in for $4.5 million.

"Add to your Cheney scorecard his decree that there will be no broad congressional access to the complete Aug. 6 memorandum suggesting that agents with ties to Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack... aircraft, and no independent investigation. That's on top of the Cheney decree that Tom Ridge needn't testify before Congress on the specific work of the Office of Homeland Security. Which is on top of the Cheney decree that the [GAO], the investigating arm of Congress, will not get information it requested on the particulars of Cheney's energy task force... On top of the Cheney decree that the Senate will not be made privy to particulars about administration information about Enron... Congress, in the name of the American people, should insist on an independent investigation of intelligence failures in this administration... And yet there is more at stake. We might have a dictator in America, Dicktator Cheney, but we don't have a Dictatorship. Yet." Impeach Cheney and Bush!

References to Secretary of the Army Thomas White's Enron tenure in his official biography have been minimized, but that hasn't affected his bottom line. "Research by the Nader-affiliated Public Citizen shows that during the first three months of 2001, Enron Energy Services traded millions of megawatts of electricity with other divisions of Enron, artificially jacking up the prices to as much as $2500 per megawatt hour (compared to the average price of $340 at the time). 'As vice chairman,' the nonprofit watchdog notes, 'White was in charge of running day-to-day operations, including managing and signing retail energy contracts.' The results for California were rolling blackouts and sky-high prices. The results for White were much better. 'As a direct result of his division's fraud, White is a multimillionaire,' says Public Citizen." Why hasn't Bush fired White yet???

"When Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland became chairman of the Republican Governors Association (RGA) last fall, he knew it would be a tough assignment. In 2002, Republicans would be defending 27 governorships, the Democrats only seven... The board of the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, an autonomous agency whose directors are appointed by the governor and legislature, unanimously approved a contract in which the CRRA advanced $220 million to Enron and in return Enron committed to buying energy from the CRRA's trash-to-energy facility for about $2 million a month over the next 11 years. When Enron collapsed, the $220 million in public funds was lost, and the CRRA was forced to raise the rates it charges towns for trash disposal to make up the loss... Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) ruled that the CRRA deal with Enron was not an investment but an illegal, unsecured loan... It turned out that Enron had made an $80,000 soft-money commitment to the RGA."

"As Enron Corp. slid toward a bankruptcy filing, the White House's top economic, policy and communications officials mobilized to minimize the damage to financial markets and to the Bush administration... In the days before Enron filed the largest bankruptcy case in history, Karen P. Hughes, Bush's counselor, talked to press secretaries throughout the executive branch about how to handle news media calls about the company. Weeks before that, Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten had spoken to an assistant treasury secretary about how Enron's failure could affect the energy and financial markets.. When White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked about Enron on Nov. 28, four days before the bankruptcy filing, he brushed off the question... In fact, eyes throughout the White House had focused on Enron since President [sic] Bush's inauguration. [Enron] pursued a broad agenda with the administration that ended only after its huge losses and accounting irregularities became public."

"Four hours after the subpoenas were delivered, the White House faxed Lieberman a 6-page letter showing that Enron executives were granted numerous previously undisclosed meetings and phone calls with White House officials, including three phone calls between former chairman Kenneth L. Lay and Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove… The issue of contacts between Enron and the White House is sensitive because the company's executives were among Bush's most generous backers… The letter…detailed a meeting that Bush held in the Oval Office on Feb. 7, 2001, with Lay and 19 other business leaders… Lay held a 30-minute meeting with… Cheney and a private meeting with his energy task force director, …spoke a few times with chief economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey, 'most likely about the California energy shortage.' Lay recommended 21 people for White House appointments and three of them were appointed… Lieberman asserted that the committee was 'being slow-walked at least and stonewalled at worst.'"

Molly Ivins writes, "The financial industry has always been anathema to populists... So I thought it was just me when reading the financial pages caused me to wonder, 'Is there anybody in this business who is not a crook?' I don't think it's just me. [Phil Gramm's wife] served on the board of Enron, but a spokeswoman for Gramm announced the reform bill [that Gramm is trying to kill] has nothing to do with Enron and is therefore not a conflict of interest... This cheerful effort to scuttle mild financial reforms comes amid regular updates on Enron's frauds and felonies. [On another note, there has been much twittering amongst liberals since David Brock's book] came out as to whether there actually is a vast right-wing conspiracy. As Izzy Stone noted years ago, they don't need a conspiracy -- they do it all right out in the open. It's on the front pages. But the country seems to have lost its gag reflex."

Mark Weisbrot writes, "Back in January, when the Enron scandal threatened to ensnare the Bush Administration, [Ari Fleischer bragged] 'Did you notice all the Enron stuff that everybody was asking about? Look what made it on the air --the business-scandal side of it.' Fleischer had succeeded in burying the political-scandal side of the story, and it was a remarkable professional achievement in the world of spin. Here was an Administration that was locked in 'a carnal embrace' with Enron... But the political fallout was barely registering. Now Fleischer's magic, and President [sic] Bush's teflon coating, may finally be fading. The discovery that there were numerous warning signs leading up to the massacre of Sept. 11, that went unheeded, could mark the beginning of a Great Unraveling."

Paul Rogat Loeb is dismayed by George W. Bush's embrace of volunteerism, like his co-chairing of the recent National Youth Service Day. As Loeb writes, community service should draw support across political lines. He is delighted that AmeriCorps has been so spectacularly successful that it now draws bi-partisan support. So men like Republican Senator Rick Santorum no longer dismiss it as taxpayers paying "a bunch of hippie kids to sit around the campfire, holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya.'" But it's the height of duplicity for an administration that's the most hostile toward the poor and powerless in twenty years to imply that everything will be fine if we all just voluntarily pick up the slack.

Salon swings the big timber! Damien Cave writes of the two French authors, who say "that the FBI bungled more than the Phoenix memo. In 'Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth," [Brisard and Dasquie] alleged that the Clinton and Bush administrations went easy on al-Qaida before Sept. 11 to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia and to continue to bargain with the Taliban over a Central Asian oil pipeline. They also assert that then negotiations broke off after the U.S. threatened to attack the Taliban unless it agreed to U.S. demands, perhaps precipitating the 9/11 attacks. [The U.S. edition will come] out in July, with an explosive new chapter... In it, Brisard asserts that French intelligence officials warned their U.S. counterparts in considerable detail about al-Qaida's ties to Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker, but the U.S. failed to act on the information." Impeach Bush NOW!!!

Joke time! "What do you call a gathering of 3,000 people, a self-aggrandizing lecture by Dr. Laura Schlessinger and an hour-long sermon from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon? The Washington Times 20th-anniversary bash." (Washington Post) "What do Dr. Laura, the Washington Times, Enron, the Republican Party, and George Bush have in common? They've have all been keep artificially alive by regular huge infusions of corporate cash!" (Dems.com) "What does the Washington Times call a speech entitled 'The Life of Jesus as Seen From God's Will, and God's Warning to the Present Age, the Period of the Last Days'? A nonreligious editorial stance." (Unknown News). Biggest joke of the year: "The Washington Times" self-description as a "successful, unbiased" newspaper when it has only survived through billions in "religious aid."

Here is another wonderful example of Republican Family Values. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (known to all loyal Molly Ivins fans as "Goodhair") obtained a special "hardship" driver's license for his 15-year-old daughter. That means Ms. Perry is either in vocational school - a fact not mentioned in the article - or she is supporting her family, despite her dad's $115,345 annual salary. Is that because Enron's bankruptcy left Gov. Perry without a source of bribes? Or does Gov. Perry have some very expensive "habits" that his conservative supporters might not find as appealing as his hair?

"The difference in behavior of the Democrats and Republicans during the hearing was incredibly clear - and that difference will not be lost on the public. While the Democrats stayed focused on the ISSUE AT HAND, which is Enron, and upon their reponsibility to the American taxpayers/voters, who lost BILLIONS at the hand of Enron, the Republicans focused on irrelevancies, fanning their smokescreen, while serving up a tedious litany of shopworn GOP spin lines. Not one Republican made a real statement on the impact that ENRON had on the people of their home states or expressed concern for the thousands of elderly people now without retirement money. Their sole focus was, in true drone-ant style, to protect 'queen bee Bush,' the American public be damned." So writes Cheryl Seal.

Reuters reports, "A Senate committee Wednesday authorized the first congressional subpoenas to the Bush White House [about] government contacts with now-bankrupt energy giant Enron Corp. In a 9-8 vote along party lines, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee approved a request for subpoenas by its chairman, Sen. Joseph Lieberman... Lieberman's committee first requested the White House contact information in March, saying it wanted to determine the federal government's role in the chain of events that led to the collapse of Enron, a major Bush campaign donor. But starting early this month, Lieberman has expressed increasing concern that the White House is dragging its feet in gathering the information despite an exchange of letters and meetings with White House officials. 'This back and forth has continued, which has ultimately frustrated the committee's work and exhausted my patience,': Lieberman said. Joe - you've been WAY too patient with these CROOKS. Make them lie under oath!!

Writes Stephen Pizzo in the fourth part of a series on Tom DeLay: "The U.S. protectorate of the Northern Mariana Islands -- have become something of a free-enterprise petting zoo for DeLay and those he wishes to convert to his way of thinking... For Asian sweatshop operators, the Marianas became the Promised Land incarnate... No rules, no regulators, no inspectors, no health and safety laws. What more could a sweatshop operator ask for? ... Although far from Texas, the Marianas provided DeLay with yet another opportunity to help Enron. When the Marianas [called for bids for a new power plant, Enron complained to DeLay, who] demanded that the power plant bidding be re-opened and... Enron was declared the winner. Apparently, free-market mechanisms like open bidding are only good when they favor the right player. Islanders say the bidding was rigged in Enron's favor." Tom DeLay is the most corrupt Republican in Congress - that's why the right wing loves him so much.

AP reports: "Democrats are accusing House Republicans of protecting U.S. corporations that avoid paying taxes by setting up small offices off the coast. In the Democratic radio address aired Saturday morning, Rep. Jim Maloney, D-Conn., said the number of corporations seeking tax havens is growing. 'For little more than the cost of a post office box in an offshore tax haven like Bermuda, U.S. companies are avoiding many millions of dollars in federal taxes -- Corporations that engage in this practice want the benefits of being an American company, but are not willing to pay their fair share. They leave that to taxpayers like you and your neighbor.'" You go, Jim!

"What money has done. It's produced the fusion of money and government. And that is plutocracy," says Kevin Phillips, author of the new book 'Wealth and Democracy' … The entrenchment of money in ways you can't even begin to count. It used to be that when a… new wave politically came to Washington they swept it out… Keep fighting. I think there are signs that it's turning now. To me one of the most important milestones will be if people, and I include the media here, have the courage to document and put on the front page what they won't really touch now, which is... All the examples of the Bush family's role in the rise of Enron. Here, we're running around… tricksters that were in Enron, but George W. and George H.W., his father, were very much involved in the whole rise of Enron's influence and power… But you... you don't see that. People in the press have a lot of trouble touching these issues right where the rubber hits the road." Phillips told Bill Moyers in a PBS interview.

The "Enron Family Bush" exposes lesser known facts about their symbiotic relationship, including: Ken Lay's $50K donation to Poppy Bush's Presidential Library, where Kenny Boy is a trustee; Wendy Gramm's 6 month tenure as head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during which she pushed through a measure that allowed Enron to trade risky energy derivatives, after which she became an Enron board member; James Baker's retention by Enron as an overseas mergers and acquisitions advisor; and much more. See for yourself how the Enron Family Bush grows!

John Stanton and Wayne Madsen write in Online Journal, "Since [9/11] the Bush Regime, the US Congress and senior personnel in the U.S. military have been busy planning their escape routes from Washington, DC, and surrounding communities in the event that [we are] attacked by another 19 global insurgents possessing little more than wit, dedication, an unrepentant animosity towards America, and an ample dose of radioactive material... Corporate executives have ensured that they too will find a place in the bunker... These are America's leaders who -- through sheer arrogance and stunning stupidity -- ignored reports from tireless FBI field agents that involved suspicious flight school activities"... These leaders stood by and watched "the state of California get raped by Enron -- the Bush family's fund raising Ponzi scheme contrivance."

Ellen Nakashima writes in the Washington Post, "A Senate Commerce panel yesterday called on Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a former Enron Corp. executive, to testify within the next two weeks on Enron's role in the California energy crisis... Memos written by Enron lawyers... described how Enron traders manipulated California's energy market during the state's power crisis last year, boosting company sales and profits. One memo referred specifically to Enron Energy Services, a division of which White was vice chairman, and which provided energy and energy services to California customers. [White said] last week that his firm was not involved in any manipulation of the California power market. He suggested that if there was any intervention, EES was an unwitting pawn." Indict Thomas White! Impeach Bush Now!

CBS Marketwatch reports, "Two days of rolling blackouts in June 2000 that marked the beginning of California's energy crisis were directly caused by manipulative energy trading, according to a dozen former traders for Enron and its rivals. The blackouts left more than 100,000 businesses and residential customers in the dark for parts of two days, trapped people in elevators and shut down some offices of high-tech companies such as Cisco Systems and Apple Computer, as well as chipmaking plants, costing millions of dollars in lost revenue. The traders said that Enron's former president, Jeff Skilling, pushed them to 'trade aggressively' in California and to do whatever was necessary to take advantage of the state's wholesale market to boost the price of Enron's stock." And we urge prosecutors and legislators to do "whatever is necessary" to put Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay away for life, and to put energy "traitors" - and their Republican sponsors - out of business!

Here's an alert on the latest doings in the "Bull Pen" (as in Bushit that comes from the pens of rightwing politicians). As the Bush administrations and its wasp's nest of drone-like minions in the GOP begin to feel cornered, they have come out stinging, fighting back with their most creative efforts. Fortunately for us, their most creative efforts are pretty darn sorry, and as transparent as Ari Fleischer's horn-rims. Here's this week's Bull Pen round up, from Cheryl Seal.

Joe Conason writes of "Mr. Energy himself, Vice President Dick Cheney, who sternly lectured the California Democrats as they pleaded for relief from the federal government. 'We get politicians who want to go out and blame somebody and allege there is some kind of conspiracy, whether it's the oil companies or whoever it might be, instead of dealing with the real issues,' he groused. (To Mr. Cheney the 'real issues' were not Enron’s market-rigging, of course, but the industry’s demands for more tax breaks, further deregulation and permission to drill wherever they please.) A more cheerful dismissal was heard from Kenneth Lay, then still revered in the Oval Office as 'Kenny Boy.' Brimming with hubris, the Enron chairman patronized his [victims] -- 'Every time there’s a shortage or a little bit of a price spike, it’s always collusion or conspiracy or something. I mean, it always makes people feel better that way.' "

"Bush received hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions from Enron interests in recent years...[he has] resisted calls to contribute the money to charity, to Enron employees or back to the bankrupt company. 'The president [sic] is looking forward and not backward,' White House spokesman Taylor Gross said. He added that Bush supports 'tough enforcement laws to protect consumers' but declined to say whether returning the money was possible. Bush received more than $400,000 in Enron donations for his gubernatorial and presidential bids, the most of any candidate by far, records show… 'To me, from day one, it' (giving their contributions to charities helping Enron employees) 'was just common sense,' Rylander said. 'There are Enron employees who are hurting out there.'" So why doesn't Bush contribute his Enron takings to their employees? Has he no compassion? Or, common sense? Isn't it the right thing to do? Doesn't he know right from wrong?

"In light of a memo indicating that Army Secretary Thomas White's former Enron division was involved in market manipulation and price-gouging during the California electricity crisis, Public Citizen… called for White to resign immediately and the Justice Department to initiate a criminal probe. The internal company memo describes how White's division, Enron Energy Services, lied to California officials, enabling the company to charge prices far higher than should have been allowed. As a direct result of his division's fraud, White's a multimillionaire and California consumers still are paying far too much for their electricity... Enron Energy Services, which was colluding with other Enron divisions, deceived the state into thinking that transmission capacity was full, enabling Enron to charge prices far higher than if capacity was not full."

One by one, Enron's fellow "energy traders" - Reliant, Dynegy, CMS Energy, Xcel Energy, EnCana, and the Merchant Energy Group of the Americas, are revealing that they engaged in the same kind of price manipulation as Enron. How do they get away with it? Because thanks to Republicans like Phil and Wendy Lee Gramm, these practices are NOT ILLEGAL. What will it take to outlaw energy price manipulation? A filibuster-proof Democratic Senate (60 Democrats), a Democratic House, and a Democratic President. Defeat ALL Republicans!

Robert Scheer writes, "Now that the Enron culprits have been caught red-handed, might not the media inquire of the president [sic] whether he takes any responsibility for nearly bankrupting California by refusing to come to the state's aid in a timely fashion? Forgotten in all the excitement of the damning revelations of [Enron memos] is the apparent stupidity, if not complicity, of the Bush administration that made Enron's chicanery possible. [Could] Bush himself not have guessed that his Texas buddies were gaming the market?... During its first year, the younger Bush's administration catered to every whim of Enron chief and Bush family sponsor Kenneth Lay. [Enron] deliberately denied Californians energy needed to sustain life while Bush blithely covered for them... When the mob does things like this, we call it blackmail and extortion. Now that a glossy corporate giant cozy with the president [sic] has done such things, what does the Justice Department propose we call them?"

The NUMBER ONE reason the GOP and a handful of their poser pals, the so-called Blue Dog Dems, are against having an international court that would handle war crimes cases is because they KNOW their leaders - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Reich, Kissinger, et al. - are themselves war criminals. The line about protecting U.S. soldiers is total bull - the only butts they are trying to save are those sitting in the White House. Meanwhile, we find it hysterically funny (in a dark sort of way!) that leading the fight against the court is one of the nation's biggest crooks - Tom "Boiler Room Scam" DeLay, who has bilked doctors and other professionals out of millions! He also aided and abetted Enron as they ripped off DeLay's own consituents back in TX! We guess birds of a feather - in this case buzzards - stick together!

In the first of a 5 part series, Stephen Pizzo writes in AlterNet, "By the time Enron collapsed, its tentacles had penetrated deep into our federal government... Tom DeLay's deep and personal involvement with Enron was not an exception but part of a pattern of controversial relationships that reach back to DeLay's earliest days in Congress. All of these relationships were consistent with a far-right, free-market, anti-regulatory philosophy that DeLay has raised to nearly religious status and upon which he has created a lucrative and ruthless power base. Among other discoveries, we found a startling contrast between the wholesome, born-again, pro-family image DeLay portrays to voters back home in Sugarland, Texas, and the controversial causes and companies he backs in Washington... Tom DeLay has become the Teflon Don of the radical-right of his party."

"We have all seen the Wal-Mart commercials on our television sets where they show senior citizens working in their stores. From looking at these commercials, these seniors look like a happy bunch. They seem happy to be interacting with the younger generation, feeling productive, and getting out of their homes. That is because for the most part across America, many of our seniors are truly isolated. But through these commercials is Wal-Mart deceiving the American consumer on the true state of affairs facing our senior citizens? Are these seniors truly happy after a lifetime of working hard, to be doing so in their golden years?" So writes Mary MacElveen.

Bush is the little boy who cried "Wolf!" one too many times. The general public and even the mainstream news folks have become pretty darn skeptical when each new "terror alert" seems to coincide with dropping Bush polls, embarrassing revelations (remember all the '"warnings" that coincided with the first flood of Enron revelations!), and efforts to find new "evil ones" to attack. Now Bush's people are reduced to spouting their vague threats through rightwing propaganda outfits like the Heritage Foundation, where John Bolton revealed Cuban "bioterrorism" - which is already discredited. This week, we have "intelligence sources" and "U.S. officials" (doesn't say WHO!) using the Washington (Moonie) Times to warn of attacks on nuke plants, scheduled for long about July... which of course is when the Congressional races will really be heating up. Is the mainstream media starting to rebel against Bush's propaganda? Stay tuned...

Ever wonder how the Enron's of the world game the system? Anne Mulkern of the Denver Post Washington Bureau offers a glimpse behind the curtain: "The business community needed a miracle. A key congressional vote on expanded free trade was days away, and supporters were desperate to find more allies. They somehow had to sway three North Carolina lawmakers, but that state's textile industry would be devastated. It seemed impossible to pull off. Until a garrulous Colorado lobbyist intervened. Sean Callinicos, the sole Washington, D.C., employee of Louisville-based Storage Technology Corp., once worked for a North Carolina senator. Armed with that connection -- and evidence showing how other workers would benefit -- he charmed, cajoled and persuaded the North Carolina members of Congress. The measure passed by one vote."

Molly Ivins writes, "less than staggering is the news Enron execs were 'gaming the system' (isn't that a lovely euphemism?) during the California 'energy crisis' last summer. I like the con they named 'Death Star,' where they started by deliberately overscheduling the state's power grid, threatening to overload it, so they could charge the state for delivering the 'excess capacity' out of state, where the Californians couldn't keep track of it. They got so good at this they finally never even bought the 'excess energy' they were charging California NOT to deliver. Isn't that a great scam?"

Following the revelation of the now-famous "Fat Boy" memos, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) didn't mince words. "These Enron memos makes it clear that California consumers were robbed last year by the big energy companies... It is obvious to me that what we had was a premeditated, deliberate crisis, and to add insult to injury the energy companies used their political influence to keep the Bush administration and the congressional Republicans from protecting California families." But GOP collusion with the electricity thieves has not ended. Asked about a House investigation, Rep. Billy Tauzin's (R-LA) spokesman said, "What are you going to accomplish? Enron for all practical purposes is dead. Unfortunately, for political reasons, some people want to drag the bodies through the streets." That DOES have its appeal, but we'll settle for much less: the whole truth, prison time for those who stole $30 billion, a refund to CA consumers, and the impeachment of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Listen George, we are getting sick of your abuses of power. Once again, your thugs (aka The Justice Dept) are blocking Andrew Lundquist, the director of Cheney's Energy Task Force, from testifying about missing records from the energy task force. "The administration continues to deny the public information about what their government is doing... Lundquist holds a critical missing piece of the puzzle about how the Bush energy plan was developed," said NRDC attorney Sharon Buccino. Did we also mention no documents from this person were turned over? The documents probably ended up like Enron's... SHREDDED.

The AP reports: "Tom Daschle said Thursday he believes Enron Corp. broke laws while manipulating electricity supply and prices during the California energy crisis. 'I don't think there's any doubt that somebody ought to go to jail and that we ought to find a way through public policy to fix a system that needs to be addressed,' said Daschle, D-S.D... 'The Bush administration and congressional Republicans sided with the energy companies and did nothing to help,' said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. At a news conference, Democrats from California, Washington state and Oregon also criticized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, saying it waited months to impose price caps to address the California crisis. 'We told them Enron and others were gaming the system. So my question to FERC is, 'What took you so long?' said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif."

Paul Krugman writes "there is powerful circumstantial evidence that market manipulation played a key role in [California's electricity crisis]. Energy companies had the motive, the means and the opportunity to drive prices sky-high... Yet federal officials, from George W. Bush on down, offered California nothing but sermons on the virtues of the free market... The great risk now is that this will be treated purely as an Enron story [which] shows just how easy it is for companies to cover their tracks, especially when the regulators are in their corner... And I'm sure that there will be a determined effort to ignore even these latest revelations. After all, why let facts get in the way of a beautiful, and politically convenient, theory?"

Following the discovery of internal Enron memos documenting price-gouging schemes with names like Fat Boy, Death Star, and Get Shorty, Senate Democrats want to know WHO IS RESPONSIBLE. Senate Commerce Subcommittee chair Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) said, "We want to have these witnesses appear before the committee so we can learn who in the company knew of these strategies, who in the company approved of these strategies, and we'll take it from there." Will this lead to Bush's Army Secretary Thomas White? To Bush's single biggest career donor, "Kenny-boy" Lay? Once again, we demand a Special Prosecutor to get to the very bottom of Enrongate!

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) recently released an in-depth report on gasoline price manipulation by the dwindling number of gasoline distributors. "Due to a series of refinery closures and mergers within the oil industry, the wholesale supply market is now more concentrated than ever... In areas of high concentration where a few refiners control most of the retail sales by keeping supplies tight, refiners can raise the price of gasoline without great fear of competition. One way to maintain a tight supply is keeping only a minimal amount of gasoline in inventory. One effect of doing that is that any supply disruption will cause a shortage of gasoline because there is no reserve capacity to bring to market. This invariably leads to price increases, and, because gasoline is such an essential commodity in our lives today, most Americans have no choice but to pay more and more when prices rise." All of America is getting Enroned - we demand anti-trust enforcement by the Justice Department!

The NY Times reports, "Democrats in Congress and around the country are promoting legislation that would prevent American companies from avoiding taxes by reincorporating in offshore tax havens. The legislation is driven by public anger over the collapse of the Enron Corporation, which escaped millions of dollars in taxes by creating subsidiaries in countries that are tax havens, and has gained so much momentum that it stands a chance of becoming law this year, despite the opposition of Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and the lack of enthusiasm in the Bush administration." The issue is hot in Connecticut, where Rep. Jim Maloney (D) is pounding Rep. Nancy Johnson (R) for failing to push loophole-closing legislation through her House committee. And in California, Gov. Gray Davis (D) is hammering millionaire Bill Simon (R) "for founding a company in the 1990's that set up a tax shelter in the Cayman Islands." You go, Democrats!

Anthony York writes in Salon, "Former Vice President Al Gore widened his criticism of President [sic] Bush Wednesday to include the administration's handling of the crisis in the Middle East, and linking the administration to the latest revelations that Enron may have manipulated power markets in California. [Gore said] that he would continue to publicly challenge and criticize the administration as the election season gets underway. He also accused the administration of manipulating post-Sept. 11 patriotism for political purposes. 'Patriotism does not mean being silent about the course our country should take for the future, and we're going to express our disagreements when we believe we have better ideas about how to help the people of this country,' he said to thunderous applause. 'The President of the United States should not take that kind of unity and patriotism and attempt to misuse it as a way of getting support on the cheap for some right-wing agenda item.'"

Jason Leopold writes in The Nation, "Army Secretary Thomas White appears to be inching closer to becoming the first Bush Administration casualty of the Enron scandal. California Senator Dianne Feinstein has asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to launch a criminal probe into Enron's role in manipulating California's electricity market, after Enron memos released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission showed how Enron boosted electricity prices in California and created shortages. People close to Feinstein and California Congressman Henry Waxman said the lawmakers will ask Ashcroft to direct that the criminal investigation include White and whether the unit he helped lead, Enron Energy Services, played a part in California's two-year energy crisis." But this investigation must also include Ken Lay and Dick Cheney, who conspired in April 2001 to block wholesale price controls in the midst of the California crisis. Once again, we demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

Richard Oppel writes in the New York Times, "Fat Boy. Death Star. Get Shorty. These were the cocky nicknames that Enron traders gave the complex trading strategies they employed in 2000 and 2001 to maximize gains in California's wholesale electricity market. Enron is no longer in the trading business, and today its interim chairman, Norman P. Blake Jr., condemned the company's old tactics as 'seemingly gaming the system' and 'very offensive,' in testimony before a Senate panel. But documents released this week by federal regulators and interviews with California officials indicate that when Enron was flying high, its trading tactics exploited weaknesses in the state's energy markets to the hilt." This leads to another question -- did Dubya's Oil Bid'ness Buddies create the Fall 2000 Oil Price Spike to keep the Smirk from tanking?

"George W. Bush is absorbing the Afghanistan interests of the now-bankrupt Enron and making them his own - while claiming to advance the national interests of the United States. For a number of years, Enron sought U.S. Government support for projects involving the harvesting of oil and gas from the Caspian Sea region near Afghanistan... If Bush can control Uzbekistan, he can control all of Central Asia and all the oil and gas that comes with it. And if Bush can control one of the world's largest supplies of untapped energy--energy from Central Asian gas and oil-- he can control the world's energy." So writes Harry Neville.

Michael Berube writes, "Imagine the 43rd Presidency without... September 11. It's January 2002, one year after Bush's controversial inauguration, and the White House is a shambles [and] George W. Bush is in deep doo-doo... Enron's spectacular collapse has [led to numerous investigations, including] corruption and influence-peddling in the new administration. [All] have been denounced by Rush Limbaugh, William Kristol, and the Wall Street Journal... but nobody is listening to these toadies anymore. [The] review of the Florida election returns... indicated beyond all doubt that more Floridians intended to vote for Gore than for Bush in November 2000--and that Florida Republicans... deliberately struck thousands of black voters from the rolls while filling out fraudulent absentee and military ballots months before the election. And since more Americans voted for Gore than for Bush nationwide in the first place, the new President's legitimacy hangs by a thread."

"Employees of Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the Dallas-based Halliburton Corp. (once run by Dick Cheney), are scheduled to arrive at the Bagram air base in southern Afghanistan to take over the day-to-day support services at the Force Provider camp starting in late April or early May... 'The Bush-Cheney team have turned the US into a family business,' says Harvey Wasserman, author of The Last Energy War... 'That's why we haven't seen Cheney – he's cutting deals with his old buddies who gave him a multimillion-dollar golden handshake. Have they no grace, no shame, no common sense? Why don't they just have Enron run America?'… 'This is a company that has more experience with insider dealing and corruption than with efficiency,' The World Policy Institute's Hartung said. 'During the Second World War, there was a Senate committee on war profiteering. Personally I think we should set it up again and investigate Brown and Root,' he says." So writes Pratap Chatterjee.

Glenn Somerville of Reuters writes "The U.S. unemployment rate shot up to its highest level in more than 7-1/2 years in April, the government said on Friday... The unemployment rate climbed to 6 percent in April -- its highest since a matching 6 percent in August 1994 -- from 5.7 percent in March." While George's buddies at Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, and other large campaign contributors (and in some cases Enron) are raking in the cash, the rest of America is suffering. Hey George, your economic policies are clearly not working. If you cared at all about the average American, you would return to the economic policies of Bill Clinton.

Corpwatch writes, "The US Government and other public agencies continued to advocate for Enron, threatening poor countries like Mozambique with an end to aid if they did not accept Enron's bid on a natural gas field… Only when Enron's scandals began to affect Americans did these same government officials and institutions hold the corporation at arm's length. And only when Enron leadership revealed their greed on home turf did it became the biggest corporate scandal in recent US history… Although Enron-related projects obtained more than $7 billion in public financing from all over the world from 1992 to 2001, US Government agencies (the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Export-Import Bank, the US Maritime Administration Trade and Development Agency) lead the way with $3.4 billion in support of Enron-related projects abroad… Enron's collapse calls into question the policy of energy deregulation that Enron, together with its partners…have advocated domestically and worldwide."

In this CNN Crossfire, Paul Begala points out that the Republicans in Congress used their power to force all sorts of Clinton aides to testify before Congress. It became almost a sport for the Republicans to try to trip them up to ruin either their careers or just do some damage to the Clinton Administration. But when Democrats want Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge to tell us precisely what he's going to do with the HSO's $38 BILLION budget, suddenly he is exempt from having to answer questions from the people's representatives. Begala names this phenomenon the Novak Rule.

"White House Counsel Al Gonzales has asked dozens of staff members to complete a questionnaire on communications between the administration and Enron Corp. in the months leading up to the company's collapse. The White House undertook the survey Monday at the request of Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee... 'This is an obvious delaying tactic,' Lieberman spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said of the White House action, and 'unacceptable' to omit two subjects from the questionnaire: national energy policy and presidential appointments… Phillips said using yes-or-no answers is 'totally insufficient' and an inefficient way of doing it and the administration is continuing a pattern 'of refusing to provide any information to the American public.' Gonzales set a May 10 deadline for returning the completed forms. Lieberman had sought a response from Card by April 12." Once again, we demand a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate!

Writes Toby Rogers: "While the Enron scandal currently unfolds, another Bush family business scandal lurks beneath the shadows of history that may dwarf it... According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the holocaust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush... A case can be made that the inheritors of the Prescott Bush estate could be sued by survivors of the Holocaust and slave labor communities... A portion of the slave labor force in Poland was 'managed by Prescott Bush,' according to a Dutch intelligence agent... There is no question that the Bush family needs to donate at least $1.5 million [approx. $10 million in today's dollars] to the proper holocaust reparation fund."

"Bush and congressional Republicans have again pushed for raids on Social Security to finance tax breaks for large corporations, including - incredibly - a $250 million tax break for Enron. As you might imagine, these raids would jeopardize the long-term financial security of hard working American families. But there's a second danger. The Republicans also want to privatize Social Security, taking trillions of dollars from the Trust Fund to finance private accounts, and forcing deep cuts in guaranteed benefits. But they won't say that now… Bush's own Social Security commission has developed privatization plans that would require drastic reductions in future Social Security benefits. For some seniors, these cuts would exceed 25 percent. In the future, seniors could face far deeper cuts in benefits - up to 45 percent. And these cuts would apply to everyone, even those who don't invest in private accounts." So declared Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ) in the weekly Democratic Radio Address.

According to the Daily Enron, "Tom Ridge's '93-'98 campaign chairman is set to profit in the hundreds of millions $$ via the sale of municipal water systems in 23 states, with the purchaser being a German corporation called RWE AG. RWE AG already wholly-owns the US's largest construction firm, Turner Construction based in Dallas, as well as the US's largest bitumous coal producer, Consol Energy based in Pennsylvania. Follow the path, with 'mainstream' links... Enron owned Azurix, a corporation that aggressively pursued municipal water contracts around the US. Azurix was sold to American Water Works, which has agreed to be acquired by German utility giant RWE, is the largest investor-owned water company in the US, with more than 22.6 million customers in 23 states.. American Water Works Chairman of the Board Marilyn Ware served as chairman of Tom Ridge's PA gubernatorial campaign from '93 to '98." Is our Homeland Security being SOLD to Germany? We demand a Congressional investigation!

Writes Bridget Gibson: "Each day my television delivers my dose of pornography. It comes unbidden into my home, filling the air with all the lurid details of someone's misdeeds and twisted perversions. It weaves its dirty little stories into the breakfast, lunch and dinner table of the American public. It tosses its nasty blanket over the news. It is presented by the well-groomed men and the sassy blonde women with their painted faces. The hard sell of sex and the hard shell of distraction are the mighty obfuscation of anything that may truly affect the viewer. The thin veil that would normally separate the public from sexually explicit material, the censorship ratings that prevent the viewing of the underage or innocent, does not apply to the news."

"This is so demeaning, Kenneth Lay said, as his pal, Dick Cheney, led him through a dark, slightly damp, tunnel. "Ow," he yelped, bumping his head on the low ceiling. "And it smells in here. Do I really have to wear a blindfold?" "Sshh," Dick poked him in the back, "If you weren't so damned arrogant, you could have been lying low on your own yacht in the Mediterranean, not hunkering down here in this undisclosed secure location." So writes Green Dog Democrat Dotty LeMieux.

In the wake of the collapse of Enron and Arthur Andersen, House Democrats tried to pass tougher regulation of accountants, but their efforts were defeated 219-202. Instead, House Republicans pushed through a bill that "was largely supported by the accounting profession but assailed by consumer groups." Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) described it as "a sad, sorry and repugnant joke" and "a gift to the accounting industry." "Critics of the auditing industry said they would press their case once [Democratic Senator Paul] Sarbanes introduces his version of accounting reform. 'Now the whole ballgame's in the Senate,' said Frank Torres, legislative counsel for Consumers Union."

Enron revised the estimated value of its assets downward by $24 billion, placing it at $38 billion in a Security and Exchange Commission filing. The devaluation means that stockholders will receive nothing out of the bankruptcy case. "Andrew Entwistle, a lawyer who represents one creditor, the Florida State Pension Fund, said the filing was further proof that Enron executives could not have acted alone. 'It would be absolutely impossible to perpetrate a fraud of this magnitude without the assistance of analysts, lawyers and accountants,' he said, referring to some creditors' efforts to go after a broad range of others for liability in the Enron collapse."

Tamara Baker writes in American Politics Journal, "It turns out that the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority, the entity responsible for regulating Caymans monetary matters, is in fact more than willing to assist any official US group or individual who makes, in an official capacity, a request to examine any and all financial matters pertaining to the Enron partnerships that were set up in the Caymans. They've said so, in very clear terms, as this February 8, 2002 press release shows. Call the Majority (meaning Democratic) phone number for the Senate Finance Committee at (202) 224-4515 and tell them you want the truth about Enron's Cayman partnerships!

Sen. Phil Gramm (R- TX) blocked an amendment introduced by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein that would have closed the loophole that allowed Enron to hide wholesale prices from buyers and control markets. "Just because Enron is bankrupt doesn't mean the party's over for these energy traders. The regulatory framework that allowed Enron to do what it did is still intact," said Tyson Slocum, a senior researcher with Public Citizen. "This is a modest attempt at regaining accountability over our electricity markets, and the Senate couldn't even muster the votes. The fact that Phil Gramm played a key role in blocking these reforms illustrates that Enron's legacy is still strong in the U.S. Congress."

In NH's gubernatorial race, Bush is campaigning for multimillionaire businessman Craig Benson. But "Benson, who is running on his record as a businessman who 'created thousands of jobs,' may be in throes of a financial scandal involving a New Hampshire company called Enterasys. Until 1999, Benson was the CEO of Cabletron, which in 2001 morphed into Enterasys. He stepped down when the firm began losing business, but has remained a director of Enterasys and a member of its Audit Committee. This year, the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating Enterasys. It's not clear why, but three of its top officers have resigned, while its stock value has plummeted. Its future is now in doubt, and so is Benson's as the candidate who, in his ad's words, "will use his real world experience to keep New Hampshire strong." So writes John B. Judis in the New Republic.

Roll Call reports, "Several Democratic candidates in competitive House races have begun to evoke Enron in their advertising in an attempt to link the collapse of the energy giant to lingering concerns over retirement security. The effort to connect the Enron employees who lost their retirement savings with potential Republican plans for privatization of Social Security signals a larger Democratic effort to use Enron's demise as a campaign issue in November. 'This is going to be a key issue for us,' said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Howard Wolfson on Friday. Democrats believe that they can use Enron not only to symbolize the potential pitfalls in privatizing Social Security but also on a variety of issues ranging from tax cuts to alleged Republican coziness with special interests."

Those God-fearin' Republicans sure are leading the nation toward a "new morality," aren't they? Let's see, we have the Mayor of Waterbury jailed on child molestation charges, the third-ranking Congressional GOPer Delay running a boiler room scam to bilk doctors out of "donations," and all those good Republican guys who headed Enron and Anderson caught red-handed stealing from employees, clients and consumers. Now, to add to this growing list of the "morally uplifting," we have James Treffinger, the GOP favorite (at least until this weekend!) for the U.S. Senate race in NJ. Treffinger, who has loudly accused Senator Bob Torricelli of corruption, had his office raided by the feds, who confiscated documents and computer files after Treffinger became closely implicated in a corruption case. Loyalty, of course, being another great GOP character trait, the party's response was to dump JT's butt overnight and disavow any support.

"With oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge blocked by [last week's] 54-46 Senate vote, the Bush administration is on the prowl for other sources of fossil-fuel riches. According to [the] Washington Post, the administration is loosening various impediments to drilling for oil and natural gas in stretches of land in the Rocky Mountains, from Wyoming to New Mexico. Administration oilmen apparently think they may find fresh reserves of crude under those hills, but others wonder if they are going to uncork a gusher of self-parody instead. Come visit the new Yellowstone National Wells! Or maybe the new Enron Field, now relocated to the Canyonlands!" So writes Joshua Micah Marshall in Salon.

In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Bush wrote, "In the wake of the failed attempt to overthrow President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, I too have taken time to reflect on my actions in office. In the course of my Presidential campaign, I made many promises that I have failed to keep. These included preserving the Social Security Trust Fund and giving seniors a prescription drug benefit. I also promised to restore honor and integrity to the White House, by imposing the strictest ethical standards on my appointees, including those from Enron. I promised the world a 'humble' foreign policy, and peace in the Middle East. By these standards, I believe I have presided over a failed Presidency, and have therefore decided the only way I can honor my promises to the American people is to resign."

The NY Times today called for Army Secretary Thomas White to resign. A former Enron executive, he is embroiled in suspected insider-trading violations of $12 million while the company. He was rebuked by the chairman and ranking Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee for disregarding an ethics agreement requiring him to fully divest himself of Enron stock in a timely fashion. White's claim that he was hoodwinked by CEO Skilling and CFO Fastow is " undermined by his own unit's aggressive accounting, the number of Enron executives who did express concern about the company's ways and Mr. White's ethical lapses since he entered government."

Oh, these guys are too damn funny. I first heard about the "trifecta" remark a long while ago. And to be honest, I wasn't sure if it was really true or just a wishful rumor started by some disgruntled Democrat. The story goes, Bush made this remark to someone in the White House days after 9/11. I figured that it sounded like something the Brat-in-Chief would say but because I hadn't heard him say it, well, it just sounded like another justified but malicious rumor. He wouldn't really say that, would he?

"Well, well, well. I guess it's official now. After years of right wing pundits and other forms of silliness making fun of Hillary's claim of a 'right wing conspiracy' we all finally find out what most of us already knew. Hillary and the rest of us were right. Oh, I know that the conservatives are practically wetting themselves over Bernard Goldberg's book (which shall remain nameless here). They're also wetting themselves over David Brock's book, 'Blinded By the Right' as well. And they're tripping over themselves between the two books. Once again, their hypocrisy is getting in the way. See, in order for them to hail one book, they also have to hail the other. And that is causing them quite a bit of anguish. And their squirming dilemma is delicious!"

This is a triple barf bag story - if these elected Republicans really care about this Country, why are they still Republicans? They should follow Jim Jeffords, who left the GOP in part over Bu$h's environmental sellouts. This letter to THEIR reckless and fearless leader - Bu$h - will hit the Enron shredder without even being read. Why? Because Bu$h is doing EXACTLY what he planned to do, when he stole the Election - destroy the Government, and give EVERYTHING to his Robber Baron Buddies. Wake up and smell the manure! Oh wait - that's not manure - thats the smell of rotting corpses, filling the Church of the Nativity - as Bush awakens from his nap, and slouches towards Bethlehem.

In February, the Government of the Cayman Islands confirmed "its ability to respond to requests for assistance from the United States government in its ongoing Enron investigation… To date, no formal request has been made by U.S. authorities for information on the Enron matter." Why is that? In a speech last November, U.S. Treasury Secretary remarked, "The Cayman Islands has a long-standing relationship with the United States, including partnering with the United States in a mutual legal assistance treaty effective since 1990 under which we've already been cooperating in the hunt for terrorist assets." Secretary O'Neill added, "We commend the Cayman Islands for emphatically demonstrating that those who seek to engage in tax evasion or other financial crimes are not welcome within its jurisdiction." So, the Caymans are able to provide information, and Mr. O'Neill commends them for not welcoming criminal funds, but no one has asked for Enron related info? Don't you want to know?

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has once again written to Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson demanding a Special Prosecutor for Enrongate. Conyers cited conflicts he raised previously, including Bush's receipt of $2 million from Enron, plus another $145,650 from Arthur Andersen. He cited White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez's former partnership in Vinson & Elkins, Karl Rove's criminal consulting arrangement with Ralph Reed, and Thompson's own ties to Enron through his partnership in King & Spaulding. Finally, Conyers added new revelations that "Secretary of the Army Thomas White, a former high ranking Enron executive, was under federal investigation for insider trading involving the sale of more than $12 million in Enron stock." All of this adds up to a MASSIVE conflict of interest, and we join Rep. Conyers in once again DEMANDING A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR!

Do you believe in the tooth fairy? You might as well! Enron maintains there is no evidence "to show the company manipulated prices" of California energy, despite charging prices that ranged from 63%-185% higher than competitors. Enron also maintains it "was not a significant player in CA," while controlling about 30% of the electricity traded at 4 Western electricity clearinghouses with contracted megawatt amounts more than 10 times larger than their competitors; that amounted to roughly 80% of Enron's overall power sales during that time! By trading contracts with its competitors and itself, investigators believe Enron was able to drive prices up, and each trade gave them a cut; large amounts traded = large cuts. How large? Sales prices per megawatt hour rocketed from $37.93 in the first quarter to $264.59 in the fourth quarter! THAT sure beats a buck under the pillow!

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ranking Minority Member of the House's Committee on Government Reform, is questioning J. P. Morgan Chase's "close relationship to Enron," noting that it is "named as a co-defendant in two consolidated class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of Enron employees and shareholders." The lawsuits allege that Enron spin-offs, termed "special purpose entities" (SPE's) allowed Enron to inflate its reported earnings by more than $1 Billion, enriching CFO Andrew Fastow and his (unknown) co-investors by tens of millions of dollars at Enron's expense. But Rep. Waxman didn't stop there! He continued "(Sequoia) transactions do not appear to have served a legitimate economic purpose." Instead, to avoid reporting the transactions as debts, they flip-flopped their appearance on the balance sheets of loans and repayments on the last and first days of the month. Waxman concludes by asking "a number of troubling questions." Quite troubling, indeed!

"We are all now part of a great drama in human history, a crucial historical struggle between a rising tide of peaceful but sweeping democratic change around the world driven from below, by the diverse peoples of the planet earth; and a motley assortment of reactionary patriarchs and crony capitalists who are bent on sowing disinformation, war, repression, and fear of terrorism and economic insecurity in order to salvage their ill-gotten gains and undemocratic powers... The time has come to say "NO" in as loud a fashion as possible and to mobilize the citizens of these United States in a great, non-ideological movement to reform and revitalize our endangered democracy and halt the slide toward war, fascism and environmental catastrophe brought about the dance of death between the unelected leadership of the United States and the fundamentalist-fascists of the Middle East and South Asia." So writes Marc Garcelon.

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) recently upset Republicans by charging, "Most have already figured it out that the reason the president and the Republicans don't want to get tough with white-collar criminals is because they are their friends, they work together and they go to the same country clubs." Two days later, the NY Times reports that the FBI and SEC are investigating an aspect of the Enron debacle called "Grayhawk," named after the Grayhawk Gold Club in AZ, where the scheme was hatched. "Grayhawk was a concerted effort by senior managers to increase profits by funneling inside information about the company to an affiliated partnership" which used the information to profit. It sounds like John knows the course, doesn't it?

CNN reports on the Democratic Weekly Radio Address by John Conyers (D-Spine), who "accused the Bush administration of looking the other way regarding white-collar crime. 'The (Enron pension looting 401-K loophole) amendment that the Republicans rejected in Congress this week in a straight party-line vote would have closed the loopholes that exist in current law,' he said. 'Most have already figured it out that the reason the president and the Republicans don't want to get tough with white-collar criminals is because they are their friends, they work together and they go to the same country clubs.'" You got that right, John!

It's "like blaming the steaming pile in the living room on the previous owner's Labrador," writes David Turnley in a scathing critique of Bu$h's Middle East intervention. Whether criticizing Bill Clinton's peacemaking efforts, later "sorta kinda" retracting that, to Bu$h's own unilateral neglectful disregard for the region's plight, Turnley nails Bu$h's real angst: that the Middle East intervened in the momentum to remove Saddam Hussein. Enron? Energy? Waggin' the pooch?

Michael Moore's #1 bestseller "Stupid White Men" was written before September 11. Now Moore is asking some of the unasked questions about 9-11. 1. "Why was it in the days after September 11, when no plane could fly anywhere in the country, the Bush administration allowed one plane to fly" - the plane evacuating the Bin Laden family. 2. "What are the financial connections between the bin Ladens and the Bushs?" 3. "What was Bush's involvement in the 1997 Texas meeting between the Taliban and oil executives?" 4. "Why was it the Bush administration gave $43 million of our tax money to the Taliban last May? In what form did they give the money?" 5. "Is Bin Laden back in Saudi Arabia?"

A number of Democrats.com readers have written to Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin complaining about her distortion of Rep. Cynthia McKinney's entirely legitimate demand for answers about September 11. Here are a few of these outstanding letters.

Much has been said about Army Secretary Thomas White's scandalous behavior in office. But Paul Krugman says, "The really important information about Mr. White is that the enterprise he ran, Enron Energy Services, was a fraud - a money-losing operation dressed up to appear highly profitable through deceptive accounting. It is possible though implausible that Mr. White was duped by his subordinates... But that only makes him a fool rather than a knave... So why does this administration, which is waving the flag so hard its arms must hurt, leave the Army - the Army! - in the hands of a man who is, at best, a poseur? One theory I've heard is that Mr. White can't be fired: that there are facts about the administration's relationship with Enron that it doesn't want to come out, and that Mr. White knows where the bodies are buried. My preferred explanation, however, is that Mr. White has been protected by the administration's infallibility complex" - in other words, BLACKMAIL or ARROGANCE.

During the Clinton administration, Congressional Republicans viciously attacked Clinton over anything resembling "public lobbying" by administration officials - even giving speeches or going on talk shows. But now Interior Secretary Gale Norton has been caught using OUR MONEY to promote industry propaganda on ANWR. Fortunately, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) is not going to let Norton get away with it. Markey told the NY Times that the Interior Department was becoming "a cinema house for lobbyists. The Interior Department should not be spreading oil company propaganda any more than the Department of Energy should be promoting Enron stock. It's not their job." Norton is KNOWINGLY and INTENTIONALLY breaking the law - and she should be prosecuted!

"The Republican-led House passed a [GOP pension reform] measure Thursday, rejecting a more far-reaching Democratic bill in favor of one based on President [sic] Bush's response to the Enron debacle. The Republican bill, which Democratic leaders said would offer workers few new protections and open loopholes for executives, would give employees somewhat more control over assets in their 401(k) retirement accounts than they have now. After a five-year phase-in period, workers could sell stock in their 401(k) accounts that came from company-matching contributions after holding it for up to three years. Under current law, employers can prevent workers from cashing out their stock until they retire...Earlier in the day, the House rejected a Democratic alternative by 232 to 187. Key features included employee representation on boards that oversee 401(k) accounts and the ability to convert their company-contributed stock into cash after participating in the plan for three years."

The Sugarland, Texas, Police Department, has released the suicide note of former Enron executive, John Clifford Baxter. The note, addressed to Cliff Baxter's wife, stated: "I am so sorry for this. I feel I just can't go on. I have always tried to do the right thing but where there was once great pride now it's gone. I love you and the children so much. I just can't be any good to you or myself. The pain is overwhelming. Please try to forgive me." It was signed, "Cliff." The note was handwritten in all capital letters on a blank sheet of paper. An attorney for the family stated the note was found in Carol Baxter's car in the garage of the family home. Baxter's alleged "suicide" has been the subject of controversy and still remains an open case. How strange that Baxter would write a suicide note to his family in all capital letters (which just happens to be the most difficult type of handwriting to do an analysis of!)

Just before his death, Enron Executive Cliff Baxter had agreed to testify before Congress to provide evidence against others. Two months after police were criticized for calling the death a suicide before investigating, the case remains open. And for good reason: irregularities and unanswered questions abound. Among them: Did a last note contain mention of Enron? Why was peculiar ammunition, "rat-shot" used? What caused mysterious wounds on one hand? Why weren't his hands protected for further examination? What about the glass shards on his shirt? Was the body removed and returned to the vehicle? Why won't the police say who handled and saw the body before its arrival at the coroner's? Though legally required, why wasn't an autopsy ordered? What was Cliff Baxter about to divulge to Congress about history's biggest corporate scandal?

Paul O'Neill, of the Treasury Department, announced to key members of Congress on Tuesday, that daily investments of billions of federal employees' retirement funds will be suspended for two weeks to avoid breaking the federal debt ceiling. Money in the G Fund, the portion of the federal 401k-style Thrift Savings Plan that is normally invested in Treasury securities, will not be invested from April 4 to April 18. According to a Treasury Department fact sheet without tapping into the G fund, Cash on hand and tax receipts wouldn't have been sufficient to cover Social Security, pay for federal employees, tax refunds and other expenditures, and the government would have had to exceed the debt limit. O'Neill states that when the government is no longer in danger of exceeding the debt limit, Treasury will restore the lost interest to the G Fund. Critics of the G Fund maneuver say the Bush administration was not forthcoming with federal employees about the Treasury Department's plans.

The Institute for Policy Studies has issued a report called "Enron's Pawns: How Public Institutions Bankrolled Enron's Globalization Game." "Researchers from the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN), a project of IPS, have discovered that over the past decade, 21 agencies representing the U.S. government, multilateral development banks, and other national governments helped leverage Enron's global reach with $7.2 billion in public financing approved for 38 projects in 29 countries... The global strategy of privatizing these countries' energy sectors has its origins in the Reagan Administration, and became a major priority of international financial institutions in the 1990s. The end results were not reliable energy at an affordable price, but rather, price hikes, blackouts, shady deals cut by government officials, and street riots in which people died. Enron's infamous partner in crime, accounting firm Arthur Andersen, also played a role in this global drama."

"His Middle East policy (a charitable description) is feckless: While violence raged on the West Bank and in Israel last Saturday, the President appeared clueless. U.S. goals in Afghanistan and Iraq are under siege. It's only a little better domestically. The self-styled apostle of free trade turned craven and protectionist when confronted by the potent steel and lumber industries. In signing a campaign finance reform bill - in the dead of the morning with few around - Mr. Bush was graceless. After terrorism, what is the Bush message? To be sure, George Bush's poll ratings have slipped only slightly from the stratospheric post-Sept. 11 levels. But conventional Washington wisdom underrates his vulnerabilities. 'We may be seeing a reprise of Bush One,' ventures independent pollster John Zogby. Six months after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, that President Bush was still riding high, but a collapse was on the horizon." So writes Al Hunt in the Wall Street Journal.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington D.C.-based environmental group, accused Bush of acting on the behalf of Exxon Mobil by trying to remove global warming expert Robert Watson as the head of the International Panel of Climate Change. The NRDC acquired a February memo from Exxon Mobil, to the White House's Council on Environmental quality, that states: "Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S?" The memo also urged that the administration "restructure the U.S. attendance at the upcoming IPCC meetings to assure none of the Clinton/Gore proponents are involved in any decisional activities." The State Department, apparently taking the advice of their cohorts at Exxon Mobil, announced on Wednesday that it would support Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian government's nominee to become the next chair of the IPCC. This is eerily similar to how Enron's Ken Lay pressured FERC Chair Curtis Hebert to resign.

An L.A. Times editorial points out that -- as if it wasn't bad enough that Army Secretary Thomas White was part of an elaborate, deceptive plot to deceive Wall Street analysts while working at Enron - his post-Enron conduct has also been a scandal. He has lied about the nature of and the number of contacts he had with Enron officials since joining the administration, and he even had the nerve to apply for retirement benefits after Enron tanked! The editorial sums it all up: "The secretary of the Army needs to be like Caesar's wife--beyond suspicion. White's conduct during and after his tenure at Enron does not meet that standard. He should resign." Meanwhile, Arthur Andersen shredder-in-chief David Duncan will plead guilty to obstruction of justice.

CBS Marketwatch's David Galloway wonders what the administration is hiding in its heavily edited energy task force papers but recognizes that the administration's secretiveness is "part of a pattern of holding back information that not only taints the administration with Enron, but leads to skepticism about any of its other motives, such as its messing with the Clean Air Act or its developing a shadow government in case of attacks on Washington." Unlike much of the mainstream media, which prefers to position the Enron debacle as a "business scandal" to protect Bush, Gallaway tells it like it is: "From the very beginning, the Enron story has been much more than a business story about a failed company. It has been a story of greed and corruption on such a scale that both Washington and Wall Street have had to make changes to the way they operate that would have been unthinkable a year ago." Yeah, but unfortunately, there haven't been enough changes: Shrub hasn't been impeached yet!

One week ago, two judges overseeing lawsuits against Arthur Andersen by Enron's investors appointed a mediator. But "Andersen sent only one lawyer to the talks, and the lawyer was unable to answer questions about the firm's finances." So the mediator went to Andersen's HQ in Chicago, and apparently discovered Andersen is pretty much broke (although the NY Times won't quite say it). That means Enron's investors have no reason to settle, and will soon turn their fire to the pockets that appear to be deeper - Enron's law firm, Vinson & Elkins, and its banks.

"George W. Bush has been keeping quite a few things secret in the name of homeland security. After all, we need to stop terrorists from harming Americans on American soil, don't we? Of course, I like to feel secure. And, if I felt Bush were drafting energy legislation to help oil companies exploit Afghanistan, then I'd have to say he allowed 9/11 to happen. 9/11 essentially cleared the way for Halliburton, Unocal, Enron, and other oil and gas entities to make the Afghanistan pipeline possible. And, 9/11 enabled Bush to send U.S. troops to Afghanistan to clear away militant Taliban forces that are hostile to this pipeline project." So writes Harry Neville.

PoliticalAmazon.com has extensive information about the unethical behavior of "Enron Whore Army Secretary Thomas White", including recent news about his dozens of phone calls to Enron. Political Amazon neatly documents his "little White lies" and hammers home the hypocrisy of the right-wing, who pushed for Clinton's impeachment on the flimsiest of charges yet now let Shrub's corrupt cabal get away with murder!

In response to a second request by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), Army Secretary Thomas White (who was one of the architects of Enron's sleaziest off-the-books partnership before joining Shrub's crew) on March 22nd revealed significantly more contacts with Enron than his January response to Waxman's original request had indicated. ("Uh, you mean you wanted details about ALL my calls, not just the ones I made from the Pentagon?" D-uh. Perhaps White doesn't understand the meaning of the word EVERY.) Bush administration officials sure are an arrogant bunch. Despite the fact that most of them are drenched in Enron mud, they refuse to apologize or even admit any wrongdoing - heaven forbid they should go so far as to do the right thing and resign, upholding Bush's promise to run the "most ethical government in history" (ROTFL!).

Stockbroker "Chung Wu, of PaineWebber's Houston office, sent a message to clients early on Aug. 21 warning that Enron's 'financial situation is deteriorating' and that they should 'take some money off the table.' That afternoon, an Enron executive in charge of its stock option program sent a stern message to PaineWebber executives, including the Houston branch office manager. 'Please handle this situation,' the newly released message stated. 'This is extremely disturbing to me.' PaineWebber fired Mr. Wu less than three hours later. That evening, the firm retracted Mr. Wu's assessment of Enron's stock — then about $36 — by sending his clients an optimistic report that Enron was 'likely heading higher than lower from here on out.' A few months later, the stock was worthless, and the company was in bankruptcy court." So reports the NY Times.

CNN reports, "Joseph Berardino, the leader of Arthur Andersen, stepped down Tuesday, a casualty of the Justice Department's indictment of his firm in the aftermath of the Enron Corp. collapse... 'While my nature is to keep fighting to protect our people and our clients, the fact is that the improper shredding of documents took place on my watch -- and I believe it is now in the best interests of the firm for me to step down from the CEO position,' Berardino said... But some think that Berardino's resignation comes too late for Andersen. One accounting industry source said Berardino should have left months ago, when the investigation against Andersen was just gearing up." With Berardino gone, can Paul Volcker prevent Andersen's inevitable collapse? Don't bet on it...

"It's time to take a moment and do something to help Kenny's Kids, the forgotten victims of Enron... We're talking, of course, about Members of Congress-the once-proud politicians who have lost the steady support of one of their best friends in politics. Rep. Tom DeLay got $28,900 from Ken Lay and his associates. Senator John Breaux got $11,100. Senator Phil Gramm got a whopping $101,350. Recognizing the sacrifice of these and other politicians, who have been forced to do without a steady source of their mother's milk, we at Public Campaign have launched a charitable project to raise public attention to the troubles of 'Kenny's Kids.' So we're calling on the public to appropriately honor their sacrifice, by coming to www.KennysKids.org and sending them a thank-you note for their contribution to the greater good. For every message sent, we will donate one penny towards the cause of comprehensive campaign finance reform." Check it out!

Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima writes, "Last October, Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a former Enron Corp. executive, met or phoned former colleagues at the energy company as many as 13 times prior to his decision to sell more than 200,000 Enron shares at the end of that month, according to information he has provided a House committee. A letter hand-delivered Friday to the office of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Government Reform Committee, lists 44 calls White made from his home to former Enron colleagues since taking office last May. They do not include calls he may have received on that phone. These calls are in addition to 29 calls to and meetings with Enron colleagues that White disclosed in January. Those calls, he specified in the letter Friday, were made or received in his Pentagon office... One former Enron employee who White called said the FBI has inquired about the nature of the calls." We demand a Special Prosecutor for Enron!

Bill Press is the co-host of CNN's Crossfire and the author of the newly published book 'Spin This.' Press examines the hypothesis offered by Bernard Goldberg, formerly of CBS News, whose book alleges that the press is biased against conservatives. As Press shows, the allegation of media bias against conservatives is an ancient artifact. It may have been true during the era of the Vietnam War but no longer has any grounding in fact.

"Our anger at Bush and Co. is genuine, deep and well deserved. The writing of articles about Bush's dangerous military adventurism and the Enron influence-peddling scandal -- along with the dispatching of petitions and letters to our newspapers and elected officials on these and other topics -- should proceed. But if we stop there, limiting our responses to simply detailing the alleged crimes and misguided policies of the Bush Administration, we're playing in their court." So writes Bernard Weiner.

"Over a hundred people protested a fundraiser for Republican Senator Jim Talent at the St. Louis Convention Center on March 18. The guest of dis-honor, President George W. Bush, was met with chants of 'Jail to the Thief!' and 'Have Another Pretzel!' ... A central theme of the protest was the Enron debacle. 'These guys are stealing millions of dollars,' said Black. Between 1993 and 2001 Enron contributed $736,800 directly to George W. Bush. Enron also donated $888,265 to the RNC during the 2000 election. Four members of Bush's Administration used to work for Enron and Vice President Cheney has refused to release details of his secret meeting with Enron officials... Mark Fraley, Organizer for Missouri Pro-Vote, said 'we want to draw attention to Bushes ties to Enron. This is a political scandal, not just a business scandal. Thirty-two million in Missouri state pension funds were lost because of the Enron scandal.'" So reports the St. Louis Independent Media Center.

"Bush was greeted with catcalls, protest signs and 'carols of dissent' during his appearance at Chicago's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade on Saturday, March 16, sparking glares from political officials on the parade reviewing stand and outrage among Republican Party loyalists who had gathered to greet 'Dubya'. Saturday's anti-shrub actions included caroling by a group of activists assembled under the moniker the 'Chorus of Dissent', as well as a contingent of anti-war cyclists and pockets of protesters waving anti-administration and anti-war signs and banners along the Columbus Drive parade route... Protesters came armed with a sweeping array of banners and signs that denounced Bush's ties to the Enron debacle, called on the Bush regime to free hundreds of mostly Arab and East Asian detainees, condemned the administration's 'war on terrorism', and - in a nod to the St. Patrick's day holiday spirit - derided the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft 'Axis o' Evil'." So reports Independent Media Center.

"The Enron scandal is the result of a profound and malignant mutation that has taken place in American capitalism during recent decades, affecting the capitalist model everywhere. The scandal has revealed the predatory and corrupting side to the new corporate system, its social irresponsibility and exploitative nature, which affect the lives of every American who works for a large business, every corporate stockholder and every regulatory official and political officeholder in the national government... The public... has grasped that the rules of deregulated market capitalism licensed a system of organized swindle. The anxiety in the U.S. Congress over Enron shows that legislators sense the public outrage, even if the Bush administration seems completely deaf to what has happened. The drunken party is over. Some of the party-givers and party-goers are now on their way to jail. We need a return to responsible capitalism." So writes William Pfaff in the International Herald Tribune.

Bu$h's conflict-ridden Injustice Department was willing to let Arrogant Andersen set the terms of its surrender, but even THAT wasn't good enough. So now Andersen has been criminally indicted for shredding, and clients are abandoning the swiftly sinking ship. "If you were sitting on the board of a public company, how could you justify either keeping Andersen as an auditor or taking them on as your new one?" asked law professor Kenneth N. Klee. The answer is simple - you couldn't. Andersen has already lost 6 of its 20 largest clients, and we predict most of the rest will quit within 2 weeks. And by then, Andersen will file for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, CT and NY may revoke Andersen's accounting license, FL has issued subpoenas, and the SEC may bar Andersen. Andersen's lawyers are screaming about prosecutorial misconduct - but if they had advised their client not to facilitate fraud and shred documents, they might have had a prayer of surviving Enron. Hasta luega, baby!

Jeb's administration has been rocked by one scandal after another - but none of them ever appear in the state's news media, thanks to incestuous business relations between the media owners and the Bush organized crime family. Here's a quick review of several of Jeb's scandals - Jeb's affair with Cynthia Henderson, Noelle Bush's repeated drug offenses, and Enron's theft of $334 million from Florida's pension fund. But that's just the tip of the iceberg - Jeb's lies about his relations with Ken Lay, his giving the finger to Clearwater protesters, Florida's criminal purge of LEGAL voters, the Menorah Gardens Funeralgate scandal, and on and on - just type "Jeb" into our .compass search engine for Jeb's complete criminal record.

According to Hugh Kaufman, an in-house watchdog and longtime EPA critic, Christie Whitman is letting her family's financial ties to Citigroup influence EPA decisions. "Kaufman said Whitman falsely assured New Yorkers that the air around the World Trade Center was safe in the days after the structures were leveled by the Sept. 11 attacks. That, he said, saved Travelers Insurance -- owned by Citigroup -- millions of dollars. And he said Whitman tried to dissolve the EPA national ombudsman's office, where he works, so it wouldn't interfere with a court settlement with Citigroup about Shattuck." Whitman's husband worked for Citigroup and still owns stock in the company. The probe is being conducted by the Justice Department, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Enron.

"I firmly believe the entire case against Clinton was trumped up to promote the NeoNazi party (that currently call itself the 'Reformed Republicans'). The endless investigations and prosecution efforts were planned well in advance with cold malice aforethought to induce 'investigation fatigue' in the American public. By doing so, the rightwingnuts hoped not only get rid of Clinton, but to render Americans so burnt out on investigations and impeachment that they would be extremely reluctant to investigate or impeach another president. 'Investigation fatigue' in short would make it possible for these slime molds to get away with ANYTHING later! And, now that their boy is in office, it's working! Even with Enron, Congress is tiptoeing around like a bunch of ballerinas in pink tutus, while the public is willing to condone any outrage their new make-believe president perpetrates on the world just to avoid the hassle of a new impeachment process." So writes Cheryl Seal of Unknown News.

In an interview with William Greider of The Nation, Senator Jon Corzine discussed his efforts to restore meaningful financial regulation. "The recurring financial crises and breakdowns during the past two decades--from junk bonds and the savings and loan collapse and major bank bailouts of the 1980s to the failure of Long Term Capital Management in 1998 and the current explosion--demonstrate the long-neglected need to rehabilitate government supervision and regulation, Corzine believes. Among other things, he wants to regulate hedge funds, reform pension protections, reconfigure the SEC with stronger enforcement powers over auditors and impose tougher limits on corporate SPEs--'special-purpose entities,' like Enron's off-the- books partnerships... 'Probably the most egregious was the savings and loan crisis--they used a lot of the same techniques you see in the Enron case. The fact is, it is too easy to cook the books if there is no regulatory structure to check it,' he said."

Online Journal's Larry Chin writes, "In portraying Enron as a 'scandal,' and as an isolated case of overheated capitalism and 'unusual political influence,' the American corporate media and congressional investigators are studiously avoiding the truth: Enron, like many multinational corporations, has functioned as an operational arm of the US government, and as a weapon of economic, political, and territorial hegemony. The case exposes an almost unspeakable and terminal malignancy at the heart of world politics, and global capitalism itself." Not only is Bush destroying our constitution in terms of civil liberties, the powers of the president, and secrecy, we also have an administration that is selling out our government to a select few corporations and individuals. Abraham Lincoln said, "Government for the people, by the people and of the people", which no longer applies to this administration. It is now "government for the corporations, by the corporations and of the corporations."

NY Times columnist Floyd Norris wrote Arthur Andersen's obituary, reflecting the obvious fact that Andersen is dead - the victim of three major scandals, culminating in David Duncan's Enron shredding spree. "Arthur Andersen's decision to seek a merger partner... signals that it knows it is no longer viable as an independent company. With an indictment on the horizon and, perhaps as important, its having become a butt of jokes on late-night television, Andersen discovered it could not keep clients... After it became clear that the Enron scandal was serious, Andersen tried to change. It retained Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, and gave him carte blanche to change both the way the firm operated and the people who were running it. But with the scandal growing and clients fleeing, Andersen could not remain viable long enough for Mr. Volcker to present his reforms." Will corporate America crack down on criminal activity by its executives? Don't bet your 401(k) on it!

"The nation doesn't need to keep Vice President Dick Cheney and a bunch of bureaucrat gnomes holed up in expensive caves to run things if a terrorist attack destroys Washington. When G.W. Jr. moved into the White House, a shadow government moved in with him. The National Rifle Association became the shadow Justice Department, Enron took over the Energy Department, Exxon and Shell pull the strings of the Department of Interior, International Paper became the director of the Forest Service, Lockheed Northrop took control of Defense Department procurement, and Microsoft became head of Anti-Trust. If a terrorist sneaks a bomb into Washington it won't make much difference. Our government is pretty much controlled by corporate executives scattered around the country." So writes John David Rose in Truthout.com.

When former Enron executive Thomas White became Army Secretary, he promised to bring private-sector "efficiency" to the Army. He sure did - ENRON style. White rigged a $25 million contract to provide power to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, NY, so that only Enron would bid. This contract is under investigation by Rumsfeld's Defense Department - but WE DEMAND A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR!

Citing Bush's absurd wave to Stevie Wonder, The Observer's Lawrence Donegan writes: "Suddenly, it's cool to be rude about Dubya again. At the forefront of the new Zeitgeist is comedienne Sandra Bernhard, who delivered a hitherto unthinkable anti-Bush tirade... 'Bush is amateurish and self-serving and, frankly, it's disgusting,' she told her audience. 'Everybody is covering their asses with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that September 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened at the [presidential] election was completely corrupt.'... The White House [finds it] difficult to dismiss is the publication of two books and... a documentary which all... present a devastating portrait of a man promoted way beyond his abilities... [Most] damaging is 'Journeys With George,' a documentary about Bush made by film-maker Alexandra Pelosi... "

The Bush administration's investigation of Enron's crimes was further tainted by the revelation that FBI Director Robert Mueller worked for Enron in 1993. Mueller was hired by Enron to investigate an extortionate payment of $603,680 by an Enron subsidiary for a small property in Massachusetts assessed at $41,200. Mueller gave the deal a green light, causing a private investigator also examining the deal to resign in protest. Nevertheless, "Mueller decided after consulting with the FBI's general counsel that his prior legal work was not large or long enough to cause him to step down." Say what??? And who