Enron and Me
Moore, Stephen
"Enron and Me" Now don't get me wrong, I'm not casting aspersions on the list of Enron luminaries—far from it. This article is motivated by jealousy, not rage. To have II received not so much as a nickel, while...
...And defense-less...
...The one lesson I've learned from my 20-year experience in Washington is that corporate America is perhaps a bigger adversary to small government and the free market than even Tom Daschle...
...Patent rights issued and/or pending...
...That'll probably happen the day the Olympics installs fair and impartial judges at skating events...
...the reporter conjectured...
...And this time with a wonderful new twist: Any one of America's more than 100 nuclear reactors—no matter how well-designed or maintained or run—might be the next target of a terrorists' attack...
...MARCH/APRIL 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 21 published a piece entitled "Friends of Enron Launch Vicious Ad Attack on Daschle...
...But Sept...
...A group called Mediawhoresonline.com The Bose°Acoustic Wave® music system is quite advanced...
...Look," I said, "we sought Enron money...
...Now let's get serious for a moment here...
...The story never ran...
...BY WILLIAM TUCKER Leave it to the greens to look for a way to recycle a nation-al tragedy into ammunition for another round of baseless fear-mongering...
...Indian Point still provides 8 percent of NewYork State's electricity and up to 30 percent of New York City's...
...the reporter asked triumphantly...
...If there's any sane lesson that Congress should take away from the Enron political scandal (and this is assuredly both a corporate and political scandal), it is not that we need campaign finance reform—it is that we need federal spending reform...
...For a FREE Pedestal order by March 31, 2002...
...He was working to connect the dots on a clever and plausible theory—that The Club for Growth, which is running TV ads attacking Tom Daschle for torpedoing the economic stimulus bill, has been paying for those ads with Enron money What a scintillating plot line...
...Oh, my...
...As my Cato Institute colleague Jerry Taylor, one ofWashington's premier regulation analysts, has pointed out, Enron was the furthest thing from a proponent of the free market's invisible hand for energy and electricity policy The company participated in nearly every cockeyed subsidy scheme Congress ever invented...
...Enron was the ultimate Washington gold digger, always lustily seeking some "fair advantage" from a government pro-gram or policy...
...But, alas, so far no one from Rolling Stone has called about setting up a photo shoot...
...This fellow was much more self-certain and accusatory...
...Installment payment plan and free Pedestal offer not tribe combined with any other offer or applied to previous purchases...
...musks system design is also a trademark of Bose Corporation...
...The group claiming responsibility for the ads calls itself The Club for Growth" And here's the kicker: "The well-financed Club for Growth, little known to the public, has numerous ties to Enron and Lay...
...Measuring less than a foot tall, the system has a CD player, an AM/FM tuner, Yet so easy to grasp...
...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • MARCH/APRIL 2002...
...The reporter remained dogged...
...Kenneth Lay have begun running vicious personal television attack ads against Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle...
...built-in speakers, and is available in your choice of Platinum White or Graphite Gray...
...If you're missing from the Enron payload, you're no one in this town...
...the snooping reporter asked incredulously...
...We do...
...Oh how I wish I could have been able cavalierly to reply: "Well of course we got Enron money...
...11 has given anti-nuke campaigners a sense of purpose not felt since that other great icon of anti-nuclear history, the Great Socialist Triumph in 1986 at Chernobyl...
...A few days later, I was much better pre-pared when I was bombarded by the same set of questions from a Rolling Stone magazine "investigative" reporter (strange as that may sound...
...Thus, it wasn't long before environmentalists in the Hudson Valley were beating the drums to close down Indian Point, the nation's oldest commercial nuclear reactor...
...As he pressed his case for 20 minutes, I must confess that a single thought kept dancing through my mind: If I handled this right, I could conceivably wind up "on the cover of the Rolling Stone...
...Even though doing this would almost guarantee Bush's reelection—to say nothing of helping rebalance the budget...
...Didn't everyone...
...The Post reporter was almost as shattered by all of this as I was...
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...With no wires or speakers to hook up, you simply plug it in and press ON or use the remote control...
...The ads are meant to terrify voters into submission over the White House economic and energy plans, plans largely dictated, we now know, by Kenneth Lay...
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...WHO NEEDS ENERGY...
...Does that count...
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...I'm still just a wannabe...
...You're reallyon to something —we do get Enron money...
...These "numerous ties" consisted of Lay's aforementioned talk at a Club for Growth conference...
...But he's a member of The Club for Growth, right...
...With 8100 billion of corporate loot divvied up by Congress every year, the wonder is that there aren't 100 Enrons out there, with tentacles into every law firm, media outlet and congressional office in the District of Columbia...
...The theory that The Club for Growth was being paid by Enron to attack Senator Daschle was always half-baked...
...And perhaps there are...
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...To try to keep the story alive without lying, I gave this blood-hound what I thought was a brilliant non-denial denial...
...Wait, I remembered, Ken Lay spoke at a Club for Growth conference last year...
...The piece's lead is so absolutely perfect that I couldn't have penned it better myself: "In a sudden sneak attack, the friends of Enron and its deposed C.E.O...
...The key to this rich, clear sound is something only Bose has: our patented waveguide speaker technology...
...We do...
...As for me, I will continue to chase down those corporate dollars—probably futilely I'm not a shill for companies like Enron...
...Wait a minute, isn't so-and-so up in NewYork on your board of directors, and doesn't his firm sell Enron securities...
...Sound so rich and full you'll understand why, when the system was first introduced, Stereo Review called it "possibly the best-reproduced sound many people have ever heard...
...Abolish corporate welfare so that Fortune 500 firms don't spend half their energy and public relations budgets farming Washing-ton...
...Surely, The Club for Growth received some Enron funding...
...And so it was with great humility in early March that I had to confess to a Washington Post political reporter (who shall remain nameless) that neither I nor the Club for Growth—the organization I'm supposed to raise money for—has ever tasted from Enron's bottomless glass...
...It was a regular purchaser of seats on the late Clinton Commerce Department Secretary Ron Brown's famous trade missions around the globe...
...Want to get rid of corporate political corruption...
...Water, water, everywhere, and nary a drop to drink...
...Daschle's political team picked up on the story, because the next week "South Dakotans for Daschle" started running TV ads attacking the Club for Growth as a shill for Enron...
...My answers were evasive, deftly tiptoeing the border of falsehood...
...Which is to say never...
...Environmentalists looked at the wreckage of the World Trade Center and saw a message dear to their hearts: Close down nuclear power plants...
...G5170...
...But, hey, without a Contributing editor William Tucker wrote "Horror On the Hudson" in T4SJanuary/February 2002...
...Pick up the Acoustic Wave® music system's remote and you'll be able to control room-filling sound from your favorite chair...
...Quote: Stereo Review, 3/85...
...Indefensible...
...Payment plan available on credit card orders only and subject to change without notice...
...Sorry, no luck...
...Exactly zero, I had to confess...
...To have II received not so much as a nickel, while the rivers flowed into the pockets of politicians, lawyers, influence peddlers, public relations firms and think tanks—it's, well, a bit embarrassing actually...
...Nationwide, nuclear power accounts for 20 percent...
...Republicans, and specifically the Bush administration—which, of course, had a particularly cozy relationship with Enron—could go a long way toward defusing the Enron crisis by calling for abolition of the Commerce Department, the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank and other CEO feeding troughs...
...Everyone in Washington knows that Enron would have received a gazillion dollars in tax write-offs from the House stimulus bill...
...Yes, yes, that's it...
...The only notoriety that I've received from this whole scandal has been from nutty left-wing watchdog groups, whoregrettably—no one pays any attention to...
...No, I was told...
...Advanced as it is on the inside, the system has only a few controls on the outside, making it remark-ably easy to use...
...I said, suddenly exhilarated and exonerated...
...For information on all our products: www.bose.com/g5170 Better sound through research® ©2002 Bose Corporation...
...Aha, andhow much money did Enron pay for that favor...
...Any semi-witted fact checker could have discovered that it was Daschle, not us, who was on the Enron gravy train over the years...
...They were truly Clintonesque...
...Call today, 1-800-726-2073, ext...
...Why in the world would Enron have wanted to fund The Club for Growth or me personally given our anti-big-government and anti-corporate-welfare stands...
...Why oh why couldn't this have appeared in Rolling Stone...
...Of course they'd been saying this for 25 years, even before the non-tragedy at Three Mile Island...
...Enron received cash, loan and insurance transfusions from Uncle Sam via such Washington-to-Fortune-500 slush fund programs as the Export-Import Bank and the Over-seas Private Investment Corp...
Vol. 35 • March 2002 • No. 2
