GIVING AMERICA THE ENRON-AROUND

The governor of a Southern state accepts $623,000.00 from a major corporation. As governor, he takes cuts back on regulations that affect that corporation’s business. Contributions continue as the Governor marches to the White House. After the inauguration (to which the corporation’s CEO committed another hundred grand), the same campaign contributors hold secret closed-door meetings in the White House to help write major policy initiatives.

Suddenly, everything goes wrong. The contributor/corporation suddenly goes bust, largely due to losses that somehow failed to make it into the official audit reports. The CEO of the corporate contributor calls the Administration for help. And, when questions are raised about who knew what and when, documents relating the collapse are reported as "destroyed or deleted" by the people responsible for them.

Are these tales from the days of Clinton, supposedly "the most corrupt President in American History"? Nope. The governor was George W. Bush, now our President. The company was Enron, which recently went belly-up in what is looking like the largest bankruptcy in American history. Prior to the collapse, Enron executives unloaded the soon-to-be- worthless stocks in their portfolios, between panicked phone calls to the Secretaries of Commerce and of the Treasury begging for help. Meanwhile, employees of the company were prohibited from selling the Enron stocks in their retirement plans. Many of the employees saw their entire retirement funds wiped out along with their jobs. It’s doubtful that the Secretaries in question would have taken the employees’ calls, even if they’d thought of it.

It’s enough to make you yearn for the days when the big issue was campaign contributors sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom. In this administration, they’re all over the West Wing, dictating energy policy. Enron executives met with Vice President Dick Cheney no fewer than six times while Cheney was drawing up the Administration’s new energy policy. Perhaps if they’d spent more time back at their own offices, their company might not be in this fix. That energy policy, by the way, involves deregulating companies like Enron. Imagine my surprise.

George Dubbya, for his part, has tried to distance himself and his cronies from Enron, claiming that the company actually gave more money in Texas to his opponent, Democrat Ann Richards. It took the press about ten minutes to shred this claim (they would have done it quicker, but they stepped out back for a cigarette). Turns out that Enron gave three times more money to Governor Dubbya than it did to Richards. However, I’m sure there was no attempt at evasion on the President’s part. This is after all, the man who referred to any arithmetic at all during the campaign as "fuzzy math". He probably just made an honest error in multiplication. At least he didn’t shake his finger at the press and say "I did not have financial relations with that company."

Does the Administration show any signs of learning from this? Are they cooling the hot-and-heavy relationship between big-money contributors and national policy? If you believe that, I have some very attractive Enron stock to sell you. The Bush Administration plowed ahead last week and announced that it plans to roll back some Clinton-era regulations on use of wetlands for the purpose of "simplifying some administrative burdens for the regulated public." The word "public" here is used in its lesser known definition of "developers and mining companies."

Congressional investigations have begun, as well as one by the Justice Department, but it’s entirely possible that the whole thing will get shuffled quickly under the rug. For one thing, it’s highly doubtful that anyone in any branch government wants to go pointing fingers about special treatment of big campaign contributors. For instance, Enron was also a major contributor to the failed Senate campaign of now-Attorney- General John Ashcroft, who has had to recuse himself from the probe. As for our legislators—well, let’s just look at one example, retiring Texas Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm is going to have serious trouble throwing his considerable influence behind any probe of skullduggery by Enron, considering that his wife Wendy used to be on Enron’s Board of directors (and made a tidy sum doing so). Phil his ownself has reportedly received over $100,000 in contributions from Enron, and he’s sponsored legislation that—yep, you guessed it, removed Enron’s business from Federal regulation.

It may very well be, in the final analysis, that Enron and the Bush Administration broke no rules. But that, I submit, would be cold comfort. The depressing truth is that, in the modern political environment, these ARE the rules. Whether the man at the top is a Republican or Democrat, campaign contributions buy access. It’s all been just business as usual in America.

"Companies come and go," Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill shrugged in one interview. "It's part of the genius of capitalism….People get to make good decisions or bad decisions, and they get to pay the consequences or to enjoy the fruits of their decisions." Which I’m sure will be reassuring to the thousands of Enron employees and stockholders who got blindsided by tricky audits before losing their jobs, their life savings, or both. This Administration doesn’t care about those people. It’s been paid not to.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.