ENRON AND THE DEMOCRATS


The Enron bankruptcy has been being portrayed in the media as a Bush
scandal, when in fact it is anything but that. Efforts by Enron leaders to get help
from the government to stave off their demise were received with courtesy and
rejection. It isn't clear what help they were seeking. Perhaps, if we listen to Waxman
and Lieberman, Mr. Bush should have gone on national television and warned the
employees of Enron  to sell their stock in the company! That certainly would have
helped stop the huge sell-off that made Enron's stock plummet, and cost pension
plans billions.

But it is not a Bush Administration scandal. In fact, it is a Democrat scandal of the
highest magnitude. And the connection is much more widespread that simply flowing
from the Clinton Administration. It goes there. Clinton is responsible on his changing
of the rules for pension investment which left especially small investors exposed to
the kind of huge losses that came out of the Enron debacle. But that administration
is also liable on its attacks on Microsoft (which by the way were a conscious policy
that resulted in multi-billion dollar losses in stock - and therefore pension - values)
which also directly fed the economic downturn which helped ondo Enron.

At the heart of the Enron Democrat scandal are Robert Rueben, Clinton's Secretary
of Treasury, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, however. Mr. Rueben helped
intercede for Enron while Clinton was President. On a $100,000 contribution to Clinton by Lay,
he got to spend the night in the Lincoln bedroom and recieved help
in being able to build a huge Indian power plant. But now, Mr. Rueben is head of
City Group, which happens to be Enron's largest creditor. In that position, he helped
arrange a $145 million loan to Enron last year, and has made repeated attempts to
get help from the government to do something about Enron's crisis, including
unsuccessful attempts to get the Commerce Department and other agencies to
intercede against Moody to change its downgrade of Enron's bond credit rating last
year. That in itself is scandalous, and criminal.

But Robert Rueben is also the major economic advisor to Tom Daschle, who has
been squealing about Enron, too. Of course, Linda Daschle, the Senator's wife,
is a high paid lobbyist for City Group, which also turns out to be the major contributor
to Daschle's campaign coffers for years.

The Democrat connection runs even deeper still. Enron has been trying to get help
wherever it could, including from John Dingell. They sought his help in deregulating
gas and oil prices, but, in true Dingell intransigence, he has always stonewalled on
this issue. With that, Enron might well have been in a much better financial situation.

There have been outrageous acts by some corporate managers at Enron since
October, but prior to that, they suffered huge losses as well on  stock prices falling,
but Kenneth Lay's wealth fell from several billions to about 100 million during that time.
The Justice Department is undertaking a criminal investigation of all that, as it
should, but that investigation needs to extend to the Democrat connections to this
travesty.

And yet, why weren't the Democrats eager to do anything about the huge losses
suffered because of their war against Microsoft? Moreover, we know of Mr. Waxman
in good part on his personal vendetta against Phillip Morris. What did that do to
PM stock values, and the pensions invested in it? Then, too, the Clinton administration
was clearly a leader in such attacks, as well.

Perhaps what the Democrats and liberal media want is a bail-out of Enron like has
been done for Boeing and others, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Or, this could
be a Democrat struggle aimed at Daschle's potential run for the Presidency. Who
would benefit from his demise? In all likelihood, that list might include Gore,
Lieberman, or Hillary Clinton.

What Enron is not is what it has been being trumpeted to be by the left. It is not
anything they can pin on George W. Bush. Given that, it is likely that the life of this
story is going to be relatively short.