As anyone who follows the news knows, the Enron Corporation failed recently. This failure is a debacle for several reasons.
OK, Enron goes belly-up. That put many people out of work. What is truly sick is that the Enron executives knew about the financial situation for quite some time and never said anything about it. They inflated the stock's value thereby increasing their own holdings. They got the price way up there and then started to sell out all their stock. At the same time they didn't allow any of the rank and file to sell their stocks. So, all those poor people lost anything that they had invested in the company. Some of these execs made small fortunes in those transactions.
Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, sprung right to action and started to shred incriminating files.
So, you have a company whose execs falsified records in order to inflate stock prices and forbade employees to try and save themselves and their accounting firm destroyed records.
Guess who was in secret meetings with Enron discussing the country's energy plan? Our dear VP, Dick Cheney (who was a high ranking executive in Halliburton, a big oil company).
Mr Cheney, now that the shit has hit the fan, is refusing to give any evidence to the Government investigators. He, as does Bush, is siting national security concerns. He says that if he gives evidence it will prevent future government officials from having any private meetings (because they will have to make the meeting public). Why are they having these private meetings on my behalf? And if they're so important for us then why can't we know about them? This isn't Army or CIA stuff, he's just meeting with energy concerns. Maybe he doesn't want the public to know how the government is in cohoots to fatten the big energy companies at our expense.
I am working on a scoresheet of how much money Kenneth Lay & Enron gave to Bush and other Republicans that I'll post later this month.
Now, let's move to Bush's Cabinet. When I would express concern that Bush has zero experience people would say that he has advisors who know what's up. Well, let's take a look at his advisors, shall we?
Out of the top 100 cabinet members:
Some people highlights:
- Previously was a Lobbyist for big timber companies.
- He supports expanded logging on public lands.
- Environmentalists call him "Darth Vader Lite"
- He previously was a rep for mining, grazing interests.
- He is a critic of the Endangered Species Act and Clinton's Environmental Policies.
- Previously was a lobbyist for National Mining Corporations and the American Petroleum Institute.
- Supports oil and gas developing on public lands.
Gee, do you reckon he'll be in favor of electric cars??
- challenged the Endangered Species Act, the Surface Mining Act, and other federal environmental statutes
- failed to enforce laws designed to protect Colorado's land and people from pollution caused by mining, timber and development interests
- Norton was a protegee of Reagan Interior Secretary James Watt, a notorious anti-environmentalist.
- She was hired by the Mountain States Legal Foundation in 1979, a right-wing legal group founded by Watt and funded by the Coors Foundation.
- In 1983 Norton moved to the conservative Hoover Institution, where she urged a market-based approach to controlling air pollution.
- In 1998, she founded a group called the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) to counter the image that Democrats are the party that protects the environment. But Martha Marks, the head of a rival GOP group called Republicans for Environmental Protection, said the group was a front to obscure the records of Republicans with bad environmental records.
- the sponsors for CREA's kickoff gala included the Chlorine Chemical Council, National Coal Council, Chemical Manufacturers Association, and the National Mining Association.
- voted to roll back clean water protections and prevent the EPA from enforcing arsenic standards for drinking water.
- voted to allow chemical manufacturers to avoid compliance with community "right to know" laws so they would not have to report on emissions of some toxic pollution.
- voted to allow mining companies to dump cyanide and other mining waste on large areas of public lands next to mining sites.
- voted to make it easier for developers to seek to overturn local zoning laws in federal court.
- voted against additional funding for environmental programs including the Clean Water Action Plan and toxic waste cleanups at Superfund sites.
- In 2000, Ashcroft voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which would have amended federal law to recognize hate crimes based on sexual orientation, gender and disability, and would have strengthened federal jurisdiction over hate crimes.
- Ashcroft supported a 1995 amendment to the reauthorization of the Ryan White Act introduced by Senator Jesse Helms to cut off funding to local gay community health centers that provide care to men, women and children with HIV/AIDS.
- Ashcroft has voted to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Right-wing opposition to the NEA is often grounded in hostility to gay artists and gay-themed art.
- As Missouri attorney general, Ashcroft opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1982, he said part of his opposition to ERA had to do with his religious conviction that "homosexuality is abnormal and should be viewed as such and that it is a condition from which relief should be sought and not a condition that should be fostered by the society or -- I think that is good."
- More recently Ashcroft endorsed Senator Trent Lott's assertion that homosexuality is a sin.
Some more terrifying numbers:
(out of the top 100)
Pro-corporate appointees want to:
All this courtesy of the man currently enjoying an 86% approval rating.