Showing posts with label enron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enron. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Why Bush impeachment doesn't make front page of LA Times, NY Times, or Washington Post

Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush in the House of Representatives.

Click each image to see full front page:

He provided substantial evidence of criminal activity, evidence that included the president's own public statements that were prima facie confessions of criminal guilt, from admitting he ordered wiretaps and torture, admitting privately to ordering the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, to lying about the threat from Iraq and Iran in spite of overwhelming intelligence to the contrary, lying about available intelligence warning of the 9/11 attacks, to his forcing bureaucrats to lie about the cost of his Medicare drug bill and global warming, to the endemic cronyism from Iraq to Enron to Hurricane Katrina.

This did not merit front page coverage of the nation's top newspapers, the Washington Post, New York Times, or Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post had a small blurb on it their Washington news round up.


This all in spite of this being only the third time in American history a president was impeached, and the very first poll on impeaching Bush a few years back showed the same public support for it as there was for impeaching Nixon the day before he resigned and nearly double the peak support for impeaching Bill Clinton.

All of these papers equaly ignored Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.

The newspapers do have one good excuse for not covering this: the Democratic leadership in Congress has said impeachment is "off the table," so Kucinich's resolution will likely go nowhere.

But that in itself is worthy of story. Nine years ago, we impeached a president for lying in a sexual harassment civil suit deposition. That could have prevented the plaintiff from getting a fair trial though the point is moot given that the judge threw out the case and Clinton had an ironclad alibi for his whereabouts at the time Paula Jones claimed the incident occurred.

By contrast, Bush's lies, imcompetence and corruption has cost the lives of thousands of our troops in an unnecessary war in Iraq, arguably thousands in a preventable terrorist attack, the lives of a million Iraqis and loss of much of the thin goodwill we enjoyed in the Middle East. It has also cost us our reputation as a model of respecting human rights and international law. And of course it has and will cost us trillions for his war, most of it going into the pockets of cronies who have a habit of doing poorly or not doing at all the no bid contracts we are given.

Apparently, Kucinich doesn't understand the difference between the seriousness of the offenses of Clinton and Bush.

Clinton's real offense was being competent and not completely subservient to the wishes of the wealthy and powerful (though he came close with NAFTA) compared to his Republican predecessor. Bush's offenses were merely against American taxpayers and voters, who matter only to the extent that they need to be snookered into ignoring government of, by, and for the wealthy, and against the powerless people of Iraq, who do not matter at all.



Saturday, October 08, 2005

MEME: Separation of corporation and state

Somebody else said this on Democraticunderground.com, and it's the best way to frame a progressive attitude toward business.

Like religion, capitalism will flourish best if it cannot BUY special treatment and privileges from the government.


When you have a state religion, laziness and apathy creep into that religion as posers seeking financial gain and political favor start to fill their ranks.
Likewise, with capitalism, when some corporations can rig the rules, the temptation becomes greater and greater to make their profits from gaming the system rather than providing a superior product at a superior price. That's what gives us Halliburtons and Enrons. The first abuses its parasitic relationship with the government to the degree that they can chase off any accountability and whistleblowers. The latter provided essentially no product at all. In the film on Enron, THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, an investor asks the CFO during a conference call what exactly Enron made or did, and the CFO swore at him and hung up.

If a handful of corporations have a "special relationship" with the state, new, smaller, and more innovative companies have less of a chance of elbowing their way into the market, or even supplanting a whole category of product, as is the case with oil.

One way of doing this is to say you can't be an umpire if you played for one of the teams or will in the future.

We have to stop the revolving door between corporate America and the corridors of power.

We should start at the TOP--once you retire as president, vice president, senator, admiral or general, if you accept any money from anyone, your pension should be cut off.

We give these guys a nice chunk of change for the rest of their lives.

If they want to sit on boards,do speaking engagements, or even lobby for a cause or industry, fine. Let them do it out of the goodness of their heart. But they or their spouse should not be compensated for it in any way.

In the case of someone coming from corporate America, it doesn't seem unreasonable to ban the awarding of any new government contracts to that company for the duration of the elected officials term in office.

This is not anti-capitalism, it is anti-corruption and pro fair competition.

We cannot have a democracy as long as our elected officials trade their government access for financial favors.


This is a pro-market message, that, if the DLC was really just moderate, and not whores whistling and lifting their skirts trying to attract Johns, could get behind.

See the discussion of this on




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Tuesday, March 29, 2005

BBC's Greg Palast gives me a message for LA Times editor on Arnold/Enron news blackout

On Mar 19, 2005, at 10:57 PM Professor Smartass wrote:

Greg,

I recently wrote a letter to the LA Times asking why they haven't been more aggressive in covering Arnold's relationship to Enron and the other energy scammers, and attached the project censored coverage of your story. The editor disputed some of the basic facts about Cruz Bustamante even filing a lawsuit, and Arnold having the ability to make it go away.

You can see the LA Times letter and my original letter at http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/

-- Professor Smartass


______________________________________


From: contact@gregpalast.com

Subject: Re: LA Times disputes Arnold/Enron story
Date: March 29, 2005 12:54:51 PM PST

Hi Professor Smartass,
Greg has written a response which he would you to post or sent to this LA Times guy.
Thanks for making us aware of it.
Kindest regards,
LENI

Here's Greg's comment:


The LA Times editor misreads my exposé on your governor's undermining of the legal action against Enron and other power pirates (or, typical of editors, he commented without reading it).

I'm not surprised. This is a highly complex matter involving regulatory financial accounting and the nexus of regulatory and tort law. It is not the expertise one normally finds in a typical newsroom where almost all matter printed comes from simplified press releases and official statements.

While best known for my TV and popular writings, I am, in another life, an expert on electricity finances and law, author of a seminal work in the area, Democracy and Regulation, introduced by California Public Utilities Commissioner Carl Wood, based on my lectures at the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge University, England, and the University of Sao Paolo.

The Times editor says his reporters have reviewed much energy-related "stuff" -- and could not find these stories. Indeed, the Times missed the entire Enron story until they could re-print the discoveries of the Wall Street Journal.

I sympathize with the Times limitations in this area; which is why it may be unfair that my team won a journalism award for this story from California State University and not the Times.

As one newspaper wrote in an embarrassingly glowing profile of my reporting, "Palast's ability to make sense of stacks of dense financial data earned him a reputation for doggedness (he holds an MBA from the University of Chicago)."

It was in the LA Times.

Greg Palast
Author, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." View Palast's reports for BBC TV at www.GregPalast.com









Wednesday, March 23, 2005

final rounds of Arnold/Enron debate with LA Times editor

David.Lauter@latimes.com
RE: Your defense of Arnold/Enron coverage
Date: March 21, 2005 3:14:50 PM PST

Re Bustamante's suit: He sued as an individual, not on behalf of the state, so there's not much that Schwarzenegger could do to settle the case, whether he wants to or not. (There also may not be much to come of the suit since it's not on behalf of the state.) Lockyer has a number of proceedings in which he's been pursuing the energy companies and has actually gotten some large settlements. No one's likely to get much money out of Enron since it's bankrupt.

Re the broader issue: You can only connect the dots, as you put it, if there's actual evidence. We've had a number of reporters scrub through all sorts of energy-related stuff several times, and we've published what we thought was provable.


_____________________________________________

Professor Smartass
Re: Your defense of Arnold/Enron coverage
Date: March 21, 2005 5:12:16 PM PST

Enron was just one of the named defendants in the suit. I talked to Bustamante's office today, and they said the suits are still in play. It sounds like you aren't too familiar with them, so I'm attaching the original complaints.

Enron was just one of the named defendants in the suit. I talked to Bustamante's office today, and they said the suits are still in play. It sounds like you aren't too familiar with them, so I'm attaching the original complaints.

_____________________________________________

David.Lauter@latimes.com
RE: Your defense of Arnold/Enron coverage
Date: March 21, 2005 5:39:04 PM PST

Thanks. I am familiar with the suits.








Monday, March 21, 2005

Arguing with LA Times editor about Arnold/Enron story



March 21, 2005

David Lauter
Deputy Editor/Daily
Los Angeles Times
202 W. 1st St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Dear Mr. Lauter,

Thank you for your quick response.

Since you are a professional journalist, I would expect you would know more about this stuff than I would.


But I was unclear on a couple of things from your response. By saying that it is the attorney general’s prerogative to file lawsuits on behalf of the state, does that mean that there is no suit filed by Cruz Bustamante on behalf of utility customers, as covered by the LA Times on page A21, May 3, 2001? To your credit, you did cover that story, but it was buried on page A21, even though the blackouts were front page news for those of us affected by it. I was giving a college final when a blackout occurred and had to decide between canceling it or having my students huddle under one dim emergency light to finish their essays.

You said you covered this issue prominently, but a search of the archives for Schwarzenegger and Ken Lay or Kenneth Lay turned up a handful of incidental mentions in campaign notebook articles, usually when another candidate or protestor mentioned it, and to their credit, in the columns of Steve Lopez and Patt Morrison.

Further, your Jun 30, 2004 story on page C1 seems to confirm what Greg Palast of the BBC reported the summer before: that Arnold would support the weaker FERC settlement rather than the civil suit filed by Bustamante. The article could have connected the dots to explain why a governor so fixated on slashing our budget wouldn’t be interested in recouping as much as possibly of money stolen from us.

To the Times credit, you have covered Arnold’s push to further deregulate electricity, but again, this was buried in the California section of the paper even though the consequences, further rate hikes and blackouts, would be front page news to most Californians. A scan of recent Arnold front page stories includes his visit to the La Conchita landslide, his proposal for a low budget bridge in San Francisco, and his proposals regarding Indian gaming. Are these stories really more important than our governor trying to help the criminals who screwed us out of billions of dollars and who turned out our lights?

You are right that the meeting with Ken Lay by itself might not mean much, but Arnold got substantial aid from President Bush, not the least of which was advice from Karl Rove, staff loaned from Jeb Bush, and a visit from the President to Gray Davis to say he WOULD NOT intervene to cap electricity prices. At the time, Ken Lay was still the lifetime top donor to George W. Bush (he may still be). It’s not exactly a conspiracy theory to connect dots that big, and if the press was taking it’s watchdog function seriously, Arnold should have at least had to give a good explanation why all those things lined up in his favor without this being racketeering before the election.

You did this kind of work on Arnold’s sexual harassment problems. You didn’t just mention a case as it came up, but did the research to connect the dots. That’s all I’m asking. Connect the dots on the front page of the LA Times far enough before Arnold runs for re-election that information becomes part of the public debate.

Given that television news has become a embarrassment focused on celebrities and murder cases, and the free ride Arnold gets on right wing talk radio, where he is fawned over and unlikely to get a tough question, you have an even greater obligation to give the voters of California the news they need to make an informed decision because they aren’t getting it from any other local media.