Kenneth Lay says his underlings did bad things, but he was ignorant of them. The media frenzy sparked by Enron’s collapse is why the Justice Department is after his scalp. California’s power woes? California’s deregulation scheme caused them. Not Enron.
Coincidentally, Duke Energy, another utility that bilked California, is paying off a $207.5 million settlement with that state and Washington and Oregon.
In my next incarnation, I want to be CEO of a major corporation. They get megabucks no matter how the company fares. fawning portraits in Fortune, Forbes and Business Week write fawning portraits of them as swashbuckling leaders. They are winded and dined at the White House, no matter what party occupies the Oval Office.
And - this is the best part - when things go wrong, they explain they were ... ahem ... poorly informed.
A couple of days ago, I ranted about the Albuquerque Journal editorial reassuring us that free enterprise will survive the bad deeds of a few corporate CEOs. The recent scandals, I said, are systemic, not about personal morality.
The Justice Department’s Corporate Fraud Task Force, yesterday’s Journal reported, has prosecuted more than 700 people and won guilty pleas or convictions from 300 of them in its two years of existence. Plus, 300 more investigations are afoot.
Personal morality? If so crookedness sure is widespread, though the Journal editorial writer told us the contrary.
I’m off to China, to teach English and tour for a month. I may be able to post entries here from Nanjing. Or not. In any case, here’s to adventure!
I do not mean to pick on the Albuquerque Journal. Nor do I have any desire to single out Michael Coleman of the paper’s Washington bureau. But his column Thursday was impressive for its naivete.
According to Coleman, who talked with Jim Johnson, a Kerry pal who helped pick a candidate for VP, Bill Richardson was not jockeying to be Sen. Kerry’s running mate, nor was he working to be considered.
Kerry was considering him seriously, though, because others recommended him.
Further, Johnson explained, Kerry thought very highly of Richardson. And never rejected him. No, it was just that Edwards was "too good" a choice.
Coleman tells us that Johnson called him to make these points.
Amazing.
How much real world experience do you need to understand that Bill Richardson wanted to run for Vice President. Why else would he make so many denials of that ambition, none of them of the "I will not run" type?
How can you fail to see that Johnson’s call was good politics - praise Richardson, bless his story that he never wanted the VP nomination and thereby guarantee that neither Bill nor his Hispanic supporters will abandon Kerry, who needs them.
More skepticism, please.
It is nice to have knowledgeable folks like Allan Sloan of Newsweek write along similar lines. His column in the current Newsweek lays out (pun intended) the former Enron boss’s record and concludes:
"At best, Ken lay was incompetent. At worst, he was a crook. Neither of which is an admirable trait in a CEO."
Today, the Albuquerque Journal offers us the wisdom of William F. Buckley again, yes the very distinguished fellow who just gave up his responsibilities at the National Review, the conservative magazine he founded years ago. (The Journal regularly offers the views of the current National Review editor, too. Must be a great magazine!)
Buckley is no hack. Recently, for example, he made the argument for legalizing marijuana. He also threw light on the differences between GOP conservatives and neo-conservatives.
But today's column - ridiculing Senator John Edward's speech and views, is a low blow.
Now Buckley is a likeable fellow, rarely if ever vicious, often generous to opponents, as befits a son of the (oil wealth) aristocracy.
But here he is, tearing down a guy who made his own pile by representing individuals against major corporations, Noblesse doesn't oblige that. Buckley just diminishes himself in the process.
The Journal also sees fit to write another one of those editorials saying, as the headline puts it, that "Free Enterprise Will Survive the Scandals."
Yes, once again, we hear that the morality of a few CEOs produced the scandals. Again, we are reassured that most complanies "play fair and are headed by scrupulous and industrious CEOs."
I'm happy to hear it.
But the scandals came about because the regulations were weak and the regulators cowed by Senators and Congressmen who - coincidentally, I'm sure - get their money from the regulated firms. Thus, business has for years cut every corner possible, including a few corners supported by laws dating to the New Deal, laws not yet repealed by the corporate class.
It's not morality. It's the system, stupid.
Heather Wilson has diverged and will diverge again, I suspect, from the GOP House leadership as we approach November. She wants an image like Steve Schiff's - the "moderate" Republican.
But she is no moderate. When the chips are down, she will cast her vote with her increasingly far right party. So whem the House was given a chance this past week to "exempt libary and bookstore records from the reach of the USA Patriot Act," she voted "No." (So did Steve Pearce. Tom Udall voted "Yes.")
The exemption was defeated on a tie vote, 210-210. (That's according to Roll Call, whose description of the measure I have quoted above.)
Will Richard Romero attack her on that vote? Or will he persevere in his effort to persuade the voters he is a reasonable fellow? Stay tuned.
PS Roll Call's syndicated report on how legislators voted the previous week is published Sundays by the Albuquerque Journal - a fine public service.
What's the first thing you would do if you ran the country, they asked Confucius.
"Rectify the names," he replied.
They suggested he was joking. Confucius said he wasn't. There is no way to provide good government, he explained, if we do not all agree on what words mean.
That is paraphrased from the Analects of Confucius, translated by Simon Leys. It jumped out at me because it's so (George) Orwellian.
And so true.
Consider yesterday's Albuquerque Journal editorial page. William F. Buckley's column is all about the conservative (or paleo-conservative, as they now say) critique of the Bush war in Iraq.
Near Buckley's column is a Journal editorial on Sen. Kerry's choice of John Edwards for VP. Near the end, it says:
"The Kerry/Edwards ticket draws a clear distinction betweren the decidedly liberal leanings of the Democrats and the conservative course set by the Bush Administration."
Oh, the Bush Administration is "conservative"? How so?
As Buckley points out, its foreign policy certainly isn't.
Domestic policy? Since when did wildly unbalanced budgets become "conservative"? Huge deficits? The centralization of police power in Washington, so egregious that the (conservative) Supreme Court just told the White House to quit it.
The Journal editorialists are intelligent folk, but oh-so-careless with language.
We really do need to rectify the names.
PS (Buckley's column is another proof of the big split on the Right between the old conservatives and the neo-conservatives who foisted the Iraq war on the nation. But the press has been very slow to write story.)
A Bush Administration probe into its own tactics when it was trying to pass its prescription drug bill concluded
1) that John Scully, then head of Medicare, did keep the lid on accurate estimates of the bill's cost. leaving the Congress to vote on bad numbers, and
2) that this was not criminal.
Today's New York Times led with point number one.
The AP led with point number 2.
The Albuquerque Journal's headline writer, working off the lead (point number 2, remember), wrote:
"Drug Benefit Probe Clears Bush Administration"
Whoa! I would not object to that lead if it said who the probers were. Something like "Administration Drug Bill Probe Clears Administration."
This way, however, an unsuspecting reader might believe...well, that an independent investigation reached that conclusion.
But there is another problem. Do you believe, with the headline writer, that "clears" is synonymous with "broke no laws?"
I don't. Though I do sympathize with the headline writer; writing them is hard.
Incidentally, the Journal AP story includes, lower down, the fact that the (non-partisan) Congressional Research Service concluded otherwise, arguing that Scully probably did violate the law.
(Hey, it's all academic now. The White House successfully misled conservative Republicans, got the bill and Scully - he's pulling down big bucks as a lobbyist.)
But our subject was the sins of the liberal media, wasn't it? I am sure those lefty pinkos are distorting the news. Unfortunately, all I can find are (many) instances of journalistic incompetence and not a few...sorry to say this...of rightist bias.
The other day, I paraphrased Judge Learned Hand's words. Here is the exact quotation:
"The spirit of liberty is the spirit whch is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women...."
Turns out this was easily available by searching the Net for Learned+Hand.
Who says there's no progress?
In the past week, Ellen Goodman and Matthew Miller, both considered liberals, have made it clear in their syndicated columns they do not approve of Michael Moore’s approach in "Fahrenheit 911."
I don’t find many on the right disassociating themselves from Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and others like them.
How come?
The answer, I think, is blowin’ in the….Sorry.
I suspect the answer lies in the nature of the political philosophies.
Contemporary conservatives, once they have made up their minds, "know" the truth. Liberals tend to think of themselves as un-ideological and open-minded to new realities.
That would explain their discomfort with Moore, whose movie is not notable for uncertainties or doubts.
It also explains the power of the Right. We have all run into people who back George W. Bush’s policies, for example, because, they say, "He is a Christian." Belief is more persuasive than doubt.
Incidentally, Judge Learned Hand once said – this is a paraphrase - that democracy depends on each citizen believing he or she might be wrong.
(If anybody has the exact quote, please share it. Thanks.)
For days now, we have been reading stories about Michael; Moore's screed against President Bush - too partisan, too extreme, to simplistic. And about the "transfer of sovereignty" to the Iraqis - which was "a step forward," "good news," "progress," "a last chance to make the policy work."
Well, Michael Moore may not be an advertisement for good journalism, but he says up front that journalism was not his intention. He was editorializing.
The press has no such excuse. We did not transfer sovereignty, except in a most abstract sense. We bugged out. (Give Paul Bremer credit for that quick, symbolic flight out of Baghdad. The obvious symbolism - my job here is done, Hi Yo, Silver. Away! - almost obscured the reality, which is that our job there is not done.)
The whole theatrical performance is part of the White House's strategy to reelect the President. And thanks to the credulous press, it's already working.
First, we have had TV and newspaper headlines proclaiming a transfer of power. Wrong! We retain the power in Iraq, if not control.
Secondly, this drama has already relegated to the back pages:
One, that American soldiers keep dying in Iraq. (That they are dying in Afghanistan, too, at the hands of the Taliban, has long been on page 12.)
Two, that we the taxpayers are continuing to subsidize the military effort and the reconstruction. And, according to an older and wiser Paul Wolfowitz, will do so for years to come.
Three, there was no Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration in 9/11, according to the investigating Commission of Democrats and Republicans.
Yeah, that Michael Moore should be ashamed of himself. Why can't he do what the professional journalists do?