ENRON’S GOOD FIGHT

[Paul Rogat Loeb]

“We fought the good fight,” Jeff Skilling said, standing strong after he and “Kenny Boy” Lay were convicted of defrauding Enron stockholders. But what an odd choice of words. I suppose Joachim von Ribbentrop and Attila the Hun could say the same thing, but fighting to stay out of jail is a small imperial dream. Skilling and Lay did authorize blitzkrieg-worthy raids on West Coast utilities, where Enron traders bragged about stealing from “grandma Millie,” and jamming their $250 a megawatt hour power “right up her ass.” And Enron did conquer the venerable Portland General utility, then leave it a hollow shell—I met a woman who’d lost her entire retirement. So maybe those were the fights Skilling referred to. But these opponents barely put up a struggle.

Maybe Skilling was talking about political battles. Enron lobbied through the laws that opened California up to utility deregulation, then gouged the state’s utilities for every possible cent, and sent them to edge of bankruptcy. If low-income rate-payers couldn’t afford the costs or social needs went unmet because of the need for bailouts, that was someone else’s problem. Enron also served as George W. Bush’s single largest donor, even lending him their private plane to campaign in, and their accounting firm, Arthur Andersen and their law firm, Vinson & Elkins, were close behind. In return, Bush appoint the man Ken Lay recommended to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, replacing an earlier chairman who’d begun to question Enron’s financing schemes. When California officials pleaded for price caps in the face of skyrocketing manipulated prices, the FERC and Bush enabled Enron to make hundreds of millions of dollars more by refusing to help.

Enron also fought the good fight internationally. As described by Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, Enron overcame massive popular opposition to build a power plant in the State of Maharashtra, contributing endless dollars to local officials until they finally agreed, and locking the province into a $30 billion contract. When the plant went on line, the electricity, as predicted by the critics, was so costly that the government decided it was cheaper not to buy it, but to pay the mandatory fixed charges of $220 million a year to produce nothing.

I don’t claim to know the soul of Skilling or Lay, or to understand how as America was still mourning 9/11, these men who had more money then most of us could ever imagine, rationalized pulling their stock out of the company while destroying the futures of tens of thousands of employees and stockholders. Enron was strong, Lay told his employees, at the time. If they all persisted and stood together, he said, they’d prevail. So he advised them not to sell what they had, but in fact to buy more, even as he dumped millions of dollars of his own stock. Enron’s employees then watched helplessly as their future melted away.

“We fought the good fight,” gives us a clue to how Skilling and Lay could do this, as does Lay’s sanctimonious talk of how “God, in fact, is in control and indeed he does work all things for good for those who love the Lord.” It was all a grand game, like the games played by all those who wheel and deal in the destiny of other people’s lives. Lay and Skilling needed no heroes. They made themselves their own Gods and worshipped their own soaring ascent. The actual people whose worlds were shattered by Enron’s legacy were invisible and expendable.






Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, winner of the 2005 Nautilus Award for best social change book. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org. To get his articles directly email [e-mail] with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles

[panader0]

1. Great post1 Welcome to DU!

[Kurovski]

2. Welcome to DU, Paul Rogat Loeb!

I curse Enron every time I pay my electric bill. Or rather, I should.

[freesqueeze]

8. should what?

a: should curse every time you pay it?
b: should pay it?

I vote a. Skilling and Lay are the lowest of the low.



And by the way, neither of these creeps are in jail yet!

[Kurovski]

12. Curse Enron.

I'm one of those geeks who generally feels satisfaction in paying my bills. :-)

[karlrschneider]

3. Excellent, and Welcome to DU! (1 post, already a contributor!!!)

:toast:

[datadiva]

4. Welcome to DU!

Great post. I remember getting my bills and almost fainting away wondering how in the hell I was going to pay them. I hope they rot in jail forever. Fight the Good fight indeed. I sincerely hope you continue to post at DU. :bounce:

[wain]

5. Pigs get slaughtered

One reason, among many, that Enron and World com executives were able to fight the good fight was greed over rising stock prices. Particularly sad is how the company's employees got caught up in the get rich quick scheme by buying more company stock instead of diversifying their winnings. The competitive pressures on institutional money managers to retain customers most likely also helped contribute to ever rising Enron and WorldCom stock prices.

This is not to downplay the illegal accounting practices involved, but I have more sympathy for retirees that could not reasonably exercise control over mutual funds' stock selections as Enron and WorldCom employees could.

And it's not as if this all happened overnight. The deceitful practices had been going on since the nineties. Where were the government watchdogs? Where were our legislators (doing impeachment to divert our attention)? Isn't that one of the purposes of our votes and taxes?

[eviltwin2525]

6. ongoing chutzpah

And they're STILL not stopped! The Enron pigs are STILL trying to make my electric Co, the Snohomish County Public Utility District (directly north of Seattle, WA) fork over something like $120 MILLION because we cut off payment when it became clear they were defrauding everybody. Seems that constitutes breach-of-contract in their bizarro world view. We say having defrauded us for millions constitutes breach on their part. Guess whose side Bushco's FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is siding with? FERC says the (legally established) fact Lay and Skilling were just CONVICTED AND SENTENCED for defrauding basically the whole human race -- in instances occurring the same week they negotiated the very bad-faith contract with Snohomish PUD -- is irrelevant to whether we owe them mega-millions.
NOT A BLOODY FARTHING, Kenny-boy! Pad your prison love-nest with my shredded electric bill!

[leveymg]

7. Maybe they really do think they're doing God's work.

There are some very interesting money, political and personal ties between Lay and Skilling (Enron), Jack Abramoff, and extreme religious Right-wingers who see their mission as harkening the end of world so as to fulfill a prophecy about the imminent coming of a messiah.

The man who introduced Jack Abramoff to Cong. Tom DeLay is Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a South African-born leader of a messianic Orthodox sect with close ties to neocons and the Christian Fundamentalists. Lapin is a three-way bridge between Rightists in the Bush Administration, Jewish end-timers in America and Israel, and the so-called Biblical Literacy movement, part of Ralph Reed's Coalition before Reed was implicated in Abramoff influence-peddling schemes. Richard Silverstein, who blogs at Tikun, reports: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2006/01/09/lapin-and-toward-tradition-under-scrutiny-in-abramoff-probe/

But apparently, Lapin must’ve missed the part of his South African rabbinic training related to Jewish ethics. Because the New York Times reveals today that among the Abramoff transactions being investigated by the Justice Department is a $25,000 “donation” he directed the Magazine Publisher’s Association (this is the name the Times reporter uses but the group’s actual name is Magazine Publishers of America according to its website) to make to Toward Tradition. While the publishers no doubt thought they were supporting Abramoff’s favorite charity (in a sense they were because the money went to his “rov”), in reality the funds went directly to the wife of a former top Tom Delay staffer:

In 2000, the association made a $25,000 contribution to a nonprofit group called Toward Tradition, an alliance of Jews and evangelical Christians, based on what Mr. Rubenstein called a directive from Preston Gates. People involved in the investigation have said that Mr. Abramoff funneled money through Toward Tradition to the wife of his associate, Tony C. Rudy, a former top aide to Representative Tom Delay, Republican of Texas.

Also, see, Daily Kos: Abramoff's NSA and Domestic Spying ScandalFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
... his associates manueuvered his clients -- including now bankrupt Enron, Global ... COPYRIGHT 2006, Mark G. Levey. Tags: Jack Abramoff, Michael Hayden, ...
www.nogw.com/download/2006_abramoff_nsa.pdf

The FBI Busts the GOP Domestic Spy Industry - www.ezboard.comAbramoff's NSA and Domestic Spying Scandal by leveymg ... his associates manueuvered his clients -- including now bankrupt Enron, ...
http://p087.ezboard.com/ffijiboardexilesfrm3.showMessage?topicID=23772.topic&index=1

Welcome to DU, Paul! Thanks for your interesting article, and this opportunity to respond to it. - Mark

[undergroundpanther]

10. These dominionist assholes

use religion to justify their own sickness and power seeking ,underneath it all there lurks the old mental illness called the divine right of kings ,it's wrapped up in a sick belief, their christianized dark ages control game filled authoritarian feudalism.It's all about freedom for these self declared masters and exploitation and service from the slaves to these oh so appropriate thugs. Masters and slaves. Guess who's making them self 'master"
This is the kind of social world they want to turn this country into ,it's all for the sociopath 's reign so he can act out on others,this their divine order,where the'elites' exploit and the rest just obey and sacrifice so the evil ones can feel secure have a posse never suffer never hear no,never be vulnerable,be accountable to anyone with a sense of ethics and human rights for thier compulsive sadism,greed and predation. Sociopaths authoritariansd and thier ilk don't want to have to deal with social changes they don't control or understand,they are stunted people.Personality disordered fuckups,and conduct disordered shitheads...People like this are a threat to humanity's well being.A sociopath that is reasonably intellegent can look very respectable,get into positions of authority or power and with that 'normalcy ' mask they deliberately will seek out people scared of change who feel powerless and sell these people on evil cons that make the sociopath get the 'authority'and thier own souless kind get ahead,it's an invisible bully club,beating good hearted people down,and these thugs model what is approriate looking for leaders,the people in ignorance buy it,It;s a bully club designed by bullies to exclude the poor,the different,the unattractive what have you,cliques , so the good people cannot reach the levers of power.. Sadly the obedient loyal posse's of believers and suckups to bullies the enablers and bystanders who are too overwhelmed and scared to think to disobey make sure bullies are free to abuse free people and exploit them . Is it human nature or ethical cowardice at work in the milgram experaments or in Enron??

[leveymg]

11. It may be something even more primative - ritual sacrifice.

PreChristian, preJudaic, perhaps pre-human in origin. As instinctive as the pecking to death of a baby bird by a Wren seeking to colonize a nest to lay her own eggs.

I thought that civilization was an effort to get past such things. The Lays, Skillings, Abramoffs, Bushes and Cheneys keep on proving the fragility of civilization.

[undergroundpanther]

14. Milgram

He showed the horrors of obedience with his experiments.

We let the predatory consume us by our failure to be responsible for each other's well being.WE don't empathize with victims enough to risk being victimized ourselves,so we get picked off slowly instead of destroying the predatory..We are locked in a world with a serial killer(many of them) what do we do about it,standing by,talking about it, and following leaders has not helped us.
Human behavior studies show when many people gather and someone is in trouble,the responsibility to help is diffused and nobody helps. There have been murders where many people stood by as someone died failing to help.

Our human brains are apparently wired to make the majority suffer for the few and exploiting sadistic assholes.
The sociopaths know this is true and exploit it..

The rest of us,go along with our own suffering and DENY IT.

We need to learn to lead ourselves and stop by standing IF we empathize with others really.

If we don't learn to step up regardless of the environment,the cancer in a human suit called sociopath /conduct disorders/authoritarianism will destroy us all.

[undergroundpanther]

9. Sociopaths,all of 'em

I wish we could execute these thieves. they ruin lives Ceos should NEVER be trusted with power and companies should be FORCED out of politics.
I want to see an IMPENETRABLE WALL of Separation of profit makers Churches,corporate lobbyists , Ceos and State.

Anyone who does what Lay and all his buddies up the various chains of command and networks of con men he is associated with did to people to the public trust,to the social safety net,all of them need to be shunned,mistrusted,despised,humiliated hated everywhere they . For real justice besides loooong jail terms I'd like to see the fuckers get it where it hurts them the most..bankrupted and all their wealth confiscated ,their'
private' books opened,all their 'secret deals' exposed publicly,all those so called 'company secrets' laid bare as their companies are liquidated, away and used in the social safety net to help the poor they so haughtily snub and exploit.I want their profits given to the people they robbed . These sociopaths greedy evil assholes need to be forced to be homeless and poor forever . They must be barred from business so they may NEVER open up a business or run any business or be any sort of manager or person who handles money ever again..They should be treated like the sociopaths low life scumbags they are when they show their evil faces in public. Ken Lay let him be despised and when he walks the street let him be spat upon and treated like scum,let him be treated like a social disease cause that's what Ken Lay and all his cronies are ..

[silvertip]

18. Sociopaths!

      These people should never again see the light of day and
everything that is owned by them and their families should be
auctioned off and the proceeds used to compensate their
victims.Of course thats a pipe dream they steal billions and
only get a few years of which they might serve half in some
min. security country club with conjugal visits allowed, but
if your kids get hungry don't even think about shoplifting a
loaf of bread you will probably get life without parole in
Marion, Ill. max. security prison.                            
                                            Also religion has
no place in our govt. in ant way shape or form.

[Jubal Harshaw]

13. Burn in hell, bastards! n/t

[Uncle Joe]

15. Welcome to D.U. Paul, most excellent post!

Kicked and recommended!

:kick:

[Turn CO Blue]

16. I think he was referring to a Scripture, about fighting the good fight

They both seem to have gotten very religious lately...or were always that way. There's a lot of that in Texas. He's trying to turn this into his being martyred for Christ's sake just like Ken Lay did. Lay had recently quoted a Scripture about "all good things working together for good to them that love the Lord". His meaning, that the court battle and then the conviction amounts to some troubled times that God or the Devil has thrown his way.

Since they've both quoted Scripture, I'm thinking that they've been spending a lot of time with some preacher. I'd like to know just who. I'd bet dollars to donuts it turns out to be some whackjob preacher whose main line of teaching is "God wants you to prosper, so send in your $1000 check", and one who headlines at "Justice Sunday" or similar.

I grew up in Texas and always attended one of those charismatic, fundamentalist churches, and trust me, those kinds of wingnuts are deeply indoctrinated to always take everything as a "test from the Lord" as one of God's chosen children. (I've since been enlightened!) No matter to Lay and Skilling that they were unethical, unChristian, or committing crimes - they won't see it that way, or feel remorse. They will try to think that they're being martyred for the Lord's sake or for Christianity's sake. They're woefully misunderstood, don't you know?

Ugh.

[Canuckistanian]

17. Welcome to DU!

Cool, we got another writer on board!
:toast:
:hi: