John Montgomery  Presents This Week's Creep Logo by Lynn Kauczka

Enron America Gets Layed

It doesn't take a crystal ball (or a set of crystal balls) to predict that George W Bush is going to have some trouble in 2002. He became a 90% approved presidential superstar through the courtesy of Osama bin Laden The Evildoer, but that act is already starting to wear thin. Osama is either going to get killed, in which case there's no more bogeyman, or continue to stay hidden, which makes George look incompetent after all his promises to "smoke him out." Once the American public and their notoriously short attention span get bored with the war, it's back to those other prickly subjects, like the economy, which George has yet to master.

But there's another prickly subject out there that's about to land in George's hapless lap. Enron. Never heard of it? You will. Six months ago, Enron was a $60 billion company, seventh on the Fortune 500 list, with a stock price of about $90. Today, it's bankrupt and a share of its stock is worth 26 cents. Thousands of shareholders and employees were left holding the empty bag while the company's top executives walked away with millions. The story of how that happened reeks with the rotten odor of greedy corruption from the corporate office to every skunk, weasel and pig in the federal government.

Let's start at the top. Enron's chairman is a character straight from Dickens, Kenneth Lay. Ken and our Esteemed Leader have had their hands in each other's pants for years. Ken and his top honchos at Enron donated $2 million to George's campaigns for Texas governor and president. He also personally donated $326,000 in soft money to the Republican Party and he was one of the "Bush Pioneers" who raised $100,000 in smaller contributions. Not worn out from all that action, Ken coerced his management employees into donating personal funds ($500 for low-level managers, $5000 for senior executives) through the company's political action committee, a practice which is unethical and probably illegal.

What did Ken get for all that cash? In both Texas and Washington, George returned the favors with lower taxes, deregulation of utilities and most importantly, access. In 1997, while Texas governor, George called Tom Ridge, then the governor of Pennsylvania, to pressure him into letting Enron into the tightly regulated electricity market in Pennsylvania. This year, when Dick Cheney took over responsibility for the administration's energy policy, who was the first person he consulted? Ken Lay, of course. Would you like to know what they talked about? So would the House Government Reform Committee. Meetings of that sort are supposed to be public. Dick, who's never even pretended to be anything but a high priced whore for the energy industry, responded to the committee in his usual no-nonsense style: "Bite me. Big time."

If you live in California, you certainly paid the price for George and Ken's arrangement. The electricity blackouts last spring were caused by Enron's sudden price gouging. George refused to help, telling those in-the-dark Gore voters in California to fix their own problems.

At this point, you might be wondering what business Enron was in. What product or service did they provide? Keep wondering. In the 21st century, companies don't have to provide any products or services, just money for their executives and their bought-and-paid-for politicians. On its web site, Enron says, "we make commodity markets so that we can deliver physical commodities to our customers at a predictable price." What the hell does that mean? Blackouts in California.

Enron used the freedom of deregulation to cook the books sufficiently to seal the company's doom. They set up partnerships with bogus energy trading companies that were made up of their own executives. That allowed them to make millions in profits for themselves while keeping half a billion dollars in debt from the shareholder's knowledge, publicly overstating profits for four years.

When these turgid turds finally hit the fan, Enron's quick death spiral began. The big boys dumped all their stock (Ken collected a hefty $25 million) but at the same time, they froze their employees' 401(k) retirement plans, not allowing them to get out of investments in Enron stock. As a result, thousands of low level workers lost their entire life savings. Right before declaring bankruptcy and laying of 4,000 workers, Enron paid out $55 million in bonuses to about 500 executives. But just to show everyone that they're not totally gluttonous porkers, they told the laid off workers they could petition the bankruptcy court to cash in unused vacation days.

It's only fair to point out that it's not just George and Dick who were on the take from these devious bastards. Karl Rove, the advisor who tells George what to do all day, owned as much as $250,000 in Enron stock before cashing it in earlier this year. Economic advisor Larry Lindsay, Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Army Secretary Thomas White Jr., and Republican National Chairman Marc Racicot were all employed by Enron before they took their current jobs. The Enron stench is going to be very difficult to remove from George's White House locker room.

It gets worse. One of Enron's board members is Wendy Gramm, wife of Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, a guy whose entire persona oozes with slime. Before Wendy went to Enron, she was the chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency that oversees that kind of trading to protect markets from fraud and manipulation. Her key initiative while at the Commission? Exempting energy traders from its anti-fraud regulations. Five weeks later, she joined Enron.

As of now, the Enron debacle is being investigated by the Justice Department, the Labor Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and two congressional committees. Looks like we finally have a good use for John Ashcroft's secret military tribunals.