Bush ties to Enron: big business back in spotlight

[JoFerret]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040708/ts_nm/campaign_enron_dc_4

[Manix]

1. ..I hope everyone keeps the heat on over this.

[JoFerret]

2. Another story

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/08/MNGHK7HVO317.DTL

The indictment of former Enron chief Ken Lay represents an election year windfall for Democrats -- who say the man President Bush nicknamed "Kenny Boy'' is a poster boy for corporate greed and malfeasance.

....

"What it does is raise the specter of corporate chicanery by someone who is a longtime, close ally of the president of the United States," .... Let's put it this way: You'd rather have Mother Teresa on your side."

Bush was asked about the indictment Wednesday at an appearance in Waterford, Mich., but he walked away without answering.

It won't be easy for the president to ignore his ties to Lay, who has been a friend and supporter of the Bush family for years. Lay was co-chairman of President George H.W. Bush's 1992 re-election campaign and was a leading fund-raiser for the current president's 2000 campaign. Enron and its executives contributed more than $3 million to GOP causes between 1998 and 2002.

Lay also reportedly had a hand in putting together the administration's energy policy, which worked out to Enron's benefit.
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[Wickerman]

3. Read AND Rated - don't forget

[olddem43]

4. I won't forget -

My company's pension system lost 7 million when the crooked E folded up. After he has all his assets confiscated and gets out of jail, he needs to work to pay back every remaining cent owed. Anything less would be unacceptable.

[Wickerman]

5. geeeez, sorry to hear that

You save all your life, and you bank on a pension - which used to be a given, then some greedy asswipes come and take it all away - with the complicity of the PotUS. Inasane.

[Spinzonner]

6. It would be unwise to overdo hanging Enron's failure on Bush

because there's no evidence that the administration knew what was going on until the calls near the time of the failure.

What needs to be hammered is his part in formulating energy policies and trying to pack the FERC. This needs to be used to ask Dick Cheney what he's hiding and what he's too embarassed to reveal about who was at those meetings. This needs to be played over and over: image of Ken Lay, Enron failure, stories about Ken Lay's influence in the energy policy fiasco.

[xchrom]

7. maybe -- and i mean maybe

the world youare talking about is a very small world.
to mr and mrs main street, no one knew, but on g w bush's block -- lots of people knew. you don't keep stuff like that a secret.
it would not take much for kerry/edwards to link bush to that sleazy world of the over priveleged. and they should.

[MasonJar]

8. Bush has his very own black hole at Harken. While on the board

and on the accounting committee, he made money just weeks before the bottom fell out and quite some time after the board was warned not to use inside info to make money, Of course his old man was President and his own lawyer was in the firm doing the SEC investigation.

[struggle4progress]

11. Yep. The Administration let Enron write national energy policy ...

and shielded the company from Western consumers irate about rate ripoffs associated with brazen market manipulation. Really poor judgement ...

[Mountainman]

9. Didn't Lay pay for the inauguration?

[catzies]

13. He paid for the campaign, and the Florida Fiasco.

When eminence grise James Baker flew to Florida to fix things, didn't he fly there on an Enron jet?

[Blackaxe]

10. Shocker of the century, I tell ya

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

12. And that's why Tom Ridge announced the terrorist warnings today.

To get the media's attention off the association between G DUHbya and Kenny boy. By the way check out the following link to The Smoking Gun which shows some correspondence between the two.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0708042lay1.html