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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Jan 24, 2002 | Read the story
"They made capitalism look bad," writes Andrew Leonard of Enron's stewards. To whom? The thing I find most disturbing about the Enron scandal -- and it is a scandal by every quantitative and qualitative measure except the following -- is the apparent total absence of public outrage. The news media, at least the print and online news media, are covering the heck out of it, unearthing a disturbing new angle almost every day, and good for them -- we haven't seen this kind of conscientious investigative reporting in years.
But left-wingers like myself (who still feel no remorse over having voted for Nader, dammit, because he was the only one who dared to talk about stuff like this) take for granted that such swindles happen all the time within our system and that our system is in fact set up to make them easier. And we can only shake our heads in sadness and frustration while the rest of our fellow citizens -- who are the ones who should be outraged, because it's their beliefs and expectations that have been betrayed, not ours -- either shrug and write it off as something they have no control over or, more upsettingly, angrily denounce a "biased" press for prying into Enron's "private business" and daring to point out the extensive personal and professional links between Enron and the Bush campaign, characterizing such reporting as a "liberal smear campaign"!
It's official: The American public has a bad case of Stockholm syndrome.
-- Keith Ammann
What's all this nonsense about "class warfare" and "class warriors" in relation to the Enron scandal, as if this is somehow novel or exceptional in history? Capitalism is a class system: always has been, always will be -- class difference and class conflict are part of its essential nature, just like booms and busts. Any idiot who opens his eyes can see that. The Enron 29 are not some bad apples who have "discredited" the system. They exemplify the excesses that are inevitable in capitalism. One need only look at history to see this kind of thing happening over and over. The only thing new about the "new economy" is the increased gullibility of so many "smart" people. Wait! Never mind. There's nothing new about that either.
-- James Curry
Andrew Leonard is right. The Enron mess does make capitalism look bad. But he doesn't draw the connection between that mess and the assault on U.S. government regulatory powers that has been going on for the past 25 years. Big government and government regulation have been out of fashion since Jimmy Carter was president. The difference between Democrats like Carter or Clinton and the current Bush is only a matter of degree. Now that the government bashers have done their work, it shouldn't be a great surprise when criminals like the executives at Enron and Arthur Andersen take advantage.
The myth promoted by the "smaller government is better" hustlers promises an enhancement of individual freedom as government regulation shrinks. The reality has shown that the jobs, pensions and health care of working Americans are more and more dependent on corporate decisions motivated by the personal greed of corporate executives. We are exchanging elected leaders for governance by anonymous thieves.
-- Larry Specht
It seems pretty clear now why Republican U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas suddenly chose to retire last year rather than answer to the people this year for his ties to the Enroctopus. His wife, Wendy, one of the tentacles of the Enroctopus, almost certainly tipped Gramm off just in time that the frosting was going to hit the fan and advised that they both ought to get out while the getting was good.
Just as the religious right is the Taliban without beards and burqas, Enron is an international al-Qaida without bombs or box cutters. And like al-Qaida, Enron also has at least one government as its wholly owned subsidiary -- ours.
Now we know that when Mr. Bush said taxes would be raised over his dead body, he really meant that Enron's taxes would be raised over his dead body. Or perhaps he meant that Enron would pay any taxes at all over his dead body.
Plus we now see that deregulation, tort reform, polluting, corporate tax cuts, 401K theft, industrial bailouts, kneecapping the ADA, securities loopholes, crooked lawyers and accounting fraud -- and privatization such as letting imbeciles check airport baggage and allow terrorists on airplanes along with sundry other bad ideas -- all came from Enron. Couple that with the policy agenda of the AmeriTaliban religious right and what do you get? That's right: You get compassionate conservatism.
The Gramms, the Bushes and the "Kenny-boy" Lays, Enron, Andersen, Ashcroft, Pitt, among others, are exactly what Theodore Roosevelt meant when he spoke of "malefactors of great wealth." Privatize Social Security anyone?
-- Thom Prentice
Enron. It embodies everything that the Republican Party (and some Democrats) has done over the last 10 years to corrupt our political and economic system under a facade of "deregulation." There is no way to exaggerate the scale of the fraud perpetrated by the Enron execs and their enablers in the political community, and it's a measure of how dysfunctional our society has become that we are not more repulsed by this behavior. It's disgusting. To pique your sense of revulsion, just compare it to the sacrifices of the FDNY, the NYPD and our armed forces, who give their very lives to protect us and our children for rotten pay, lousy hours and the opportunity to get a flag and 21-gun salute at their funeral.
I'm an attorney who deals with the business community, and I know that this isn't the way the majority of American businesspeople conduct themselves, but I think we are in a definite situational ethics slide linked to our modern obsession with money and markets. In many ways, this is far more insidious than the type of Clintonian personal failings that obsessed the last Congress, because these are the kind of temptations that supposedly "moral," upstanding citizens are more vulnerable to.
If the average guy gets caught doing what Clinton was doing with Monica, his least worry is the law. He's more worried about what his wife will do, what his kids will think and what embarrassment he will suffer in his social circle. But the kinds of financial shenanigans we see in Enron are less vulnerable to those types of extralegal sanctions. The regulations are all that stand in the way in a market that's predicated on the free exercise of capital, because there is no moral tradition inherent in capitalism itself. Capitalism is predicated on getting one up on the other guy, taking advantage of superior knowledge or talent.
Our country is a democratic republic first and a capitalist economy second. We apply our own morality to the exercise of capitalism, and more particularly, to the extent to which we allow its logic to guide our lives over other interests, such as religion and cultural tradition. In our country, the things that have defined how far we let the market rule have taken the form of certain standards of fairness expressed in disclosure rules, codes of conduct for attorneys and accountant and so on.
That's why it's important that these sleazebags get the maximum ride to instill a fear of personal ruin in those who might be contemplating similar escapades. It's also critical that we shore up the institutions these folks have degraded. Otherwise, we're slouching toward Argentina.
-- Bob Meeks
Andrew Leonard's comment on the egregiousness of Enron's fraud is excellent, but, as I'm sure he knows, there will be no changes made. Perhaps someone will be sent to a country-club jail for a year or two, perhaps some cosmetic changes will be hand waved. But nothing substantive will change. I would be willing to bet serious money on that prediction.
The bestselling author Terry Pratchett, who wraps deeply humane philosophy in a multilevel tapestry of erudition and humor, has one of his characters muse that, when faced with arrogant claims of unrestrainable privilege, people too often succumb and bend their knee rather than start looking around for an ax.
To our sad discredit, he's right.
-- Margaret Tarbet
