Lay Enron Lay
Those who were paying attention during the California energy crisis last spring remember reading about Enron chief Kenneth Lay personally lobbying the feds to slam the door on The Golden State for his personal/corporate enrichment. Some may even remember that Lay was behind the $160 million raised for the Bush presidential campaign. The man is looking kinda low-energy these days, as well he might. Enron lost $60 billion in value over the past year; the stock price dropped from $90 to 61¢. Their bonds were just rated as "junk" and a planned take-over by Dynegy was evaporated, dragging the market down with it. Some Wall Streeters are suing Enron for putting out false information.
Hey, ya lie down with dogs and you're likely to get up with fleas. Especially in the oil business -- considering that they are poisoning the world, hardly a moral recommendation -- and more especially in Texas, where ethics sits a rung below deep-thinking and clean air. Maybe I missed it, but I haven't heard a lot from Bush-Lite or Premier Cheney about Enron or Lay. Of course, what can they say, since they probably think that the worst Enron did was get caught.
The Bush Administration is getting something of a free ride — along with Congress — because the country wants to rally patriotically behind The War Effort. People are kinda overlooking a whole lot of mis-machination, like the obscene $15 billion give-away to the airlines. The airlines are dinosaurs when it comes to management; maybe they should have faced some serious pressure and been forced to reorganize as an industry. I say that not only because I live in Outer Buttdimple where we are grateful to get our skimpy prop service to San Francisco.
There's a basic stink about the people running our government today. While the Republicans control the Executive and the House — and their black-robed installers control The Court — the donkey party is fully collusional in throwing money at their investor/contributors in the name of fighting terrorism. Indeed, when someone figures out the bill a coupla years down the road, it will make true conservatives blanch. Beyond the direct squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, mostly in the direction of friends and cohorts flying traditional if anachronistic banners of oil and ordnance, we are creating substantial new debt, which will demand greater interest payments, already a third of the budget.
I would be delighted if we could eradicate terrorism from the globe, but this doesn't seem the most efficient way of going about it. That said, while I'm calling for a sharper public eye on those who would be kingofthehill, I confess to some small hope that our planes and soldiers will be able to seriously disable, dismember, and destroy as many of the psychotics as they can find. While I don't believe in war — most of 'em — I see this as a police action, and considerably more moral than what provoked it.
My fondest hope is that it will buy us some time until a new, more thoughtful regime can be installed, a government that will act with integrity, and do more than good. In Washington, as well as Kabul, albeit by drastically different means.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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