The Prosecution of
George W. Bush for Murder
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Yesterday's
hero against Evil was The Shadow
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Listen Now
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The Policies, the Politics, the Global Corporate Interests, the Conspiracies, and possibly murder
We began this page focusing on ENRON, but when you follow the smell of money,
the story goes well beyond ENRON. The Global economy runs on oil, and a small
number of interests control the oil. This is the real story of the Bush
Administration and where it is taking us all.
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News of the Day
Click on any headline below for the full
story.
Finally, ENRON ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, joins Andrew Fastow, ex-CFO and his wife, in the perp walk. Fastow's fate still remains to be decided, and he has said nothing publicly to implicate other parties or members of the Bush Administration in any of the hanky-panky and thefts. Skilling's trial may not occur until after the November 2004 elections. Bush and Cheney don't need anymore pre-election political flack from these guys. How slowly the wheels of justice seem to turn under Herr Aschroft. And, the big guy Ken Lay still is out playing golf and enjoying his stolen billions. This is our first update on this scandal in almost 2 years.
SEC Chief, Harvey Pitt resigns. This guy put his foot and head in the wrong holes to many times. But, he did manage to keep people from looking for evidence of more corporate accounting fraud for almost a year. And news of his resignation is almost buried on the last page on election night. Now we will get a new appointee who, Bush hopes, will do a better job of making Americans forget about the corporate thieves who are his power base.
Energy Multi-Nationals encourage Asians to suck up and adapt. As Asia's population continues to expand, and with more pressures to use fossil fuels for transportation, electricity and industry, combined with continued slash and burn rural agriculture, a gigantic brown cloud of smog, 2 miles thick, now permanently envelopes South Asia from India to Indonesia. The toll on humanity will be high. Already, millions die each year from breathing the polluted air.
The line-up of Corporate Crooks (and, this is only a few of them). Will they ever be charged with criminal activity, and if so, will any of them ever be convicted and sent to prison? Our prediction: NO on both counts unless they are small time crooks, with no political connections like the Adelphia "Family."
Cheney and Halliburton are under the gun, only one day after Bush says he's going after the "bad actors." He labeled Cheney one of the "good actors" in his speech. Good choice of words, Dubya. All the corporate corruption is based on acting the part of the good guy while stealing corporate funds. If you get caught, you are a bad actor. Message is: don't get caught. Let's see how Dick continues his acting career.
Tulsa, Oklahoma based Williams Companies reportedly participated with Enron in the California energy crisis scandal. Were you fooled by those benevolent post Enron TV advertisements?
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Bush Energy Policy Goals being met through appointments and executive orders. No need for Congressional approval. Full steam ahead for profits, pollution and environmental destruction.
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Bush Officials Met With Venezuelans Who Ousted Leader. Who ordered the coup?
Steer City, Kansas. Population 37,000
Oil = Corn = Beef = McDonalds et.al. Not just beef and corn, but all food products depend on oil. Where does your food come from? Could Sadam Hussein starve us? It's a sad story.
Andersen shredded and now takes the fall for those they are protecting. Who are these protected people, and what were they doing that was so bad?
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Army Secretary White: "You mean I kept my Enron stock after I left Enron to join the Bush Posse and sold it for a big profit before it crashed? Well, I had no idea !" (not a quote from Mr. White)
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The Ghost of Enron plans to get even with all who harmed it via aggressive litigation. Who are the targets?
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Former Enron Employees, Rev. Jessie Jackson, AFL-CIO Take Court Action to Obtain Severance Pay for Desperate Laid Off Workers
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Senate Panel Harshly Rebukes Ken Lay (and that's putting it mildly)
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Judge to White House : Don't Destroy Enron Records. "But what records?" they say.
Click on any headline above for the full story.
ENRON and TAXES
ENRON: OFFSHORE VENTURES Series:
SPECIAL REPORT
St. Petersburg Times;
St. Petersburg, Fla.; Feb 4, 2002; SYDNEY P. FREEDBERG;
Abstract:
"We're lawyers, not
accountants, and we're not qualified to provide U.S. tax advice," he says.
"But we believe the formation by Enron of Cayman entities and their Cayman
business has been in compliance with U.S. tax advice that they have received
from competent U.S. advisers."
It works like this: A U.S. corporation like Enron sets up a foreign entity in a
tax-haven country like the Cayman Islands. Each entity is created to handle a
specific deal. The entity can be formed as a partnership or a foreign company
that the U.S. corporation partly owns.
[Bruce Putterill]; The Huntlaw Building houses the law firm of Hunter &
Hunter as well as Huntlaw Corporate Services Ltd.; P.O. Box 1350, inside a law
building in George Town, Grand Cayman, receives mail for about 500
Enron-affiliated companies.; With; its cluster of banks, downtown George Town is
seen as the Cayman Islands' financial center.; Locates the Cayman Islands in the
Caribbean.; Photo: PHOTO, Photos by JEWEL LEVY, (4); MAP
| Full Text: |
| Copyright Times Publishing Co. Feb 4, 2002 |
The sleek glass and steel skyscraper with the crooked E in downtown Houston told the world Enron Corp. meant business.
But here in the Cayman Islands, the bankrupt multinational energy company has a decidedly lower profile.
Tucked in among tacky souvenir shops, a clock tower and a cluster of banks is a pastel blue building with white pillars.
It houses about 500 Enron-affiliated companies receiving mail at P.O. Box 1350.
The building also houses the well-connected law firm of Hunter & Hunter, whose senior partner, Bruce Putterill, acknowledges the firm created the Enron companies in part for "tax efficiency" purposes.
The Enron companies did projects in more than 50 countries, but here they have no office space, no full-time secretary, no fax machine to call their own. They don't even have a brass plate. The only public sign of their existence can be found in a Dell computer index in the reception area of Putterill's office.
Click on "E" on the 17-inch screen, scroll up and read the roster:
Enron Biomass Ltd.
Enron Border Holding Ltd.
Enron Intelligence Exchange.
And on and on.
Others, with more exotic names, are tougher to find:
New Horizons Holdings Ltd.
Gazoduc Du Benin Holding Ltd.
Pelican Bidder Cayman Ltd.
"It's not unusual, really," says Putterill, 48, a genial man with a booming voice.
At least not on a tiny island that counts more companies than people.
Like other big corporations and high-stakes traders, Enron created affiliates abroad to minimize its taxes.
But Enron did it on a grand - and dizzyingly complex - scale, with thousands of companies and partnerships offering multilayered anonymity in tax havens where they had no operations.
When Enron officials testify on Capitol Hill, two topics are sure to come up: the company's offshore ventures and the amount of federal taxes it has paid.
According to Citizens for Tax Justice, a labor-backed research group, Enron paid no U.S. income taxes in four of the five years through 2000 and was eligible for close to $400-million in tax refunds.
But experts quoted Sunday by the Washington Post took issue with that study. They say the company apparently did pay federal income taxes in 2000. Enron told the Post that it paid $112-million in taxes that year, and an annual report says the company paid $29-million in 1999 and $30-million in 1998.
As more businesses sharpen their tax-avoidance strategies, they increasingly rely on professional middle men like Putterill - so- called "company formation agents" or "company managers."
These agents fill out registration forms, pay fees to the host foreign government, provide a business address and a post office box, and sometimes arrange proxy officers and directors.
Company-formation agents can be notaries, accountants, secretaries or consultants.
In the Cayman Islands, a no-tax country, law firms like Putterill's and other businesses have joined the company-formation rush in a big way.
Senior lawyers can reap between $400 and $600 an hour for company- formation advice.
Because of attorney-client privilege, Putterill graciously explains he can't share information about what each Enron entity does, or why there is such a web of them.
In general, he says, they were used for plain vanilla projects like power plants and pipelines.
"We're lawyers, not accountants, and we're not qualified to provide U.S. tax advice," he says. "But we believe the formation by Enron of Cayman entities and their Cayman business has been in compliance with U.S. tax advice that they have received from competent U.S. advisers."
The Financial Action Task Force, an anti-money laundering group founded by the world's seven richest industrial nations, worries about the booming company-formation industry.
Through complex legal arrangements, investigators say, middle men not only can facilitate the work of tax cheats or other types of swindlers, but can blur the trail to the source of the dirty money.
Widening loopholes
Gaps in the U.S. tax code have long allowed companies to reduce their taxes to very low levels. Over the past 10 years, though, the loopholes have widened. Now, courts and the IRS essentially give big business free rein to work capitalism's magic, especially through the use of foreign entities.
It works like this: A U.S. corporation like Enron sets up a foreign entity in a tax-haven country like the Cayman Islands. Each entity is created to handle a specific deal. The entity can be formed as a partnership or a foreign company that the U.S. corporation partly owns.
When the deal is completed, it generates a loss for the U.S. corporation and a gain for the foreign entity. The loss then generates a tax break for the U.S. corporation.
If the entity had been a U.S. company, the arrangement wouldn't work because the gain would be taxed by Uncle Sam, says Stanley I. Langbein, an international tax expert at the University of Miami.
But because the entity is foreign, the gain is not taxed, either because the foreign country has no tax or doesn't tax the deal the same way the United States does, Langbein says.
These days, the Internet is full of ads telling customers how to keep their tax money away from Uncle Sam.
In Turks & Caicos Islands, where Enron set up more than 100 entities, one Web site attracts customers with offers of secrecy and the boast that Turks & Caicos are "The Best Little Tax Haven in the Western Hemisphere."
There are also warm business climates in the United States.
Nowhere is it easier to create a company than in Delaware, where Enron registered hundreds of affiliates, including murky partnerships with Star Wars names like Raptor and JEDI.
U.S. corporations go to Delaware not so much because of the taxes, but because of the law, the courts and the convenience.
It offers a same-day company-formation service for under $200.
In the global age, some of those Delaware entities are moving to the Cayman Islands, which appears to monitor companies more carefully than Delaware. "When they file their charter documents, all you'll get is something six lines long," says Cindy Jefferson-Bulgin, the Cayman's deputy registrar general.
Tax shelters abroad drain billions in federal revenue every year, an amount that is steadily growing.
"Until genuine reform is adopted, 'Enrons' and 'Andersens' will continue making end-runs around our tax code, leaving taxpayers without fancy accounting firms or exotic offshore partnerships to foot the bill," U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, said in a statement. He has fought U.S. corporate tax cheating, without success, for three years.
While there's nothing unlawful about companies that avoid taxes, companies that evade them is another matter.
Few places minimize taxes more than the Cayman Islands, where there is zero tax.
There is, however, plenty of indirect tax, notably in the business of tax avoidance. That is a huge moneymaker for the government, which charges $183 to $2,400 a year for a company's registration and annual fees, depending on share capital and type of business.
To check on a company at the Registrar of Companies, it costs $18 per company and $50 per limited partnership. The available information is sketchy. Lawsuits involving companies are expensive to look at, too. It costs $20 just to do a search for a court case, and the only public document you're allowed to see is the original complaint.
With Cayman Islands' growth into one of the world's premiere financial centers, it is now the country of choice for more than 60,000 companies - 20,000 more than the number of people who live here.
And hardly anybody on these islands knows more about company- formation and management than Bruce S.D. Putterill.
Political muscle
Born in the former Rhodesia, Putterill attended law school in London and in 1978 landed a job with Britain's venerable Norton Rose firm. Four years later, he moved to this tiny British crown colony and joined Hunter & Hunter, now the islands' third-largest legal establishment.
Today it counts 25 lawyers among its staff of 60. What it lacks in size, it makes up for in political muscle. The firm's founder and retired partner, Arthur Hunter, was appointed last year to the board of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority, which is responsible for supervising some of the same people he once worked with.
Putterill scoffs at any suggestion of a conflict of interest between the authority and the law firm. Besides, it's no different in the United States, where regulators often come and go from the industries that employ them.
When Putterill came to the Cayman Islands, Hunter & Hunter was 17 years old and known for its work helping banks get started. He says he loved the weather and the dive sites off the turquoise waters.
He gained a reputation as a leading shipping lawyer in Cayman, which was once a hide-out for pirates and now registers more super yachts than any country in the world. But in those days, most of the sharks were in the street, not in the sea.
In the early 1980s, Cayman was an unsophisticated tax haven where the rules seemed to be made of plastic. Bankers blinked at customers who arrived with briefcases stuffed with cash. Foreigners seeking to hide money found a strict code of banking secrecy that made the Swiss look like blabbermouths.
The image began to change in 1984, when the Cayman Islands passed its first anti-money laundering laws.
The territory also passed a cutting-edge law designed to regulate businesses that formed companies.
In 1985, Hunter & Hunter spun off its company-management division, naming it Huntlaw Corporate Services Ltd. Employing a manager and a handful of corporate administrators, it was one of the first licensed operations of its kind on the islands.
Huntlaw grew into a large enterprise, providing registered offices and annual accounts for 1,700 offshore entities.
In the '90s, the money-laundering laws got tighter and Cayman financial service providers became infinitely more sophisticated in their dealings with foreign high rollers.
Cash-filled briefcases gave way to hedge funds and asset financing.
Putterill and his law firm played a key role in Cayman's transformation, litigating against insolvent banks accused of money laundering. Their most famous case: They filed more than 100 lawsuits against borrowers and insurers of Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the biggest fraud in banking history. BCCI turned out to be a front for drug dealers, terrorists and arms traffickers.
There have been blips along the way for Putterill, however. For example, he received publicity in the case of Euro Bank Corp., whose shareholders reportedly included Hustler magazine owner Larry Flynt. Regulators took control of the bank after Cayman police found a trail of hot money. They brought charges against several people.
Trials are ongoing, and Putterill, who was not accused of any wrongdoing, won't comment. But his role as a Euro bank director, and his firm's role as the bank's counsel, raised the question: Did he and other directors do enough to watch the store and keep the bank from running amok?
The Enron account
Hunter & Hunter landed the Enron account about a decade ago.
Putterill says most of the 500 entities were formed "in connection with the ownership of the corporation's international assets," as well as its operations of pipelines, power plants, liquified natural gas facilities and tankers in more than 50 countries. The law firm also provided advice on the financing and sale of assets from Enron joint ventures.
All of the affiliates are "real projects where you can kick the tires," Putterill says.
Most were set up as "exempted" companies, meaning they can't trade on the islands but can use Cayman bank accounts or own land.
None of the top Enron executives owns property here in their own names, however, and Putterill says he doubts any have a Cayman bank account.
Exempted companies do not have to keep a register of shareholders or hold an annual shareholders' meeting. The company's board of directors does have to meet each year, though in Enron's case, as is the case with most large corporations, the meeting can be handled by proxies.
"On occasion, they (Enron executives) came down," Putterill says, declining to elaborate. He adds that Huntlaw never acted as directors or account signatories.
"Multinationals are looking for tax efficiency," Putterill says. "We can provide the service, so they come."
Often, the transactions are complex, leaving behind an impenetrable paper trail amid several tiers of entities.
The Cayman law firm was not required to get involved in Enron financial statements, though Putterill says taxes came up in conversations with Vinson & Elkins, Enron's Houston lawyers, as well as company officials.
"We've had several discussions with Vinson & Elkins and Enron about the U.S. tax position of Enron because we wanted to understand it," he says, declining to elaborate.
Hunter & Hunter, he adds, had nothing to do with any of the controversial partnerships that weighed heavily on Enron's failure.
But several entities related to an Enron deal that is now under intense scrutiny are registered at the offices of another Cayman Islands' law firm.
Enron did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
The fallout
Bruce Putterill is busy these days dealing with the fallout.
The other day, the lawyers were in court to start winding up the affairs of Enron LNG Shipping and Enron Bahamas LNG, both chartered in the Cayman Islands. A judge appointed liquidators.
Reporters call from London and come to see him unannounced. They want to know where Enron's skeletons are buried on these islands.
Putterill won't say whether U.S. authorities have contacted him about Enron. He politely turns away questions about his fees. He really doesn't like public attention, he says. But he may soon get more.
Hearings on Enron are ongoing in Washington. And in the Cayman Islands, Attorney General David Ballantyne has asked for a regulatory review of Enron's Cayman tentacles.
Even though tax evasion is not a crime here, Ballantyne says he wants to know if the corporation's affairs complied with the islands' tough anti-money laundering rules.
"What appears on the surface curious might have a proper explanation," Ballantyne says. "We're not in the business of enforcing U.S. tax law, but as a major financial center, it is our role to cooperate with others so they can better enforce their own tax laws."
- Times researchers Kitty Bennett and Cathy Wos contributed to this story.
Cayman Islands at a glance
Grand Cayman and its sister islands, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, have only 40,000 residents and a land mass about the size of Tampa. But in an era of global trade, the islands have grown into the world's fifth largest financial center behind New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Why? The main reason is they have no taxes. But they do have:
580 banks and trust companies from more than 60 countries, with assets of about $747.6-billion. Only 31 are licensed to do business with Cayman residents.
517 insurance companies with assets of $14.3-billion.
3,041 mutual funds with assets of $215-billion.
64,495 offshore companies registered, though only 3,983 have office space there.
66 licensed company-management firms and company-formation firms.
A high standard of living - $30,120 per capita in 1998.
Source: Cayman Islands Monetary Authority, Times research
Bush Administration Admits Reality of Global Warming, but announces current energy policies will not change.
Burn even more fossil fuels, buy more fuel consuming monster SUVs, so more money can be made for us big cats. If you don't, how can we justify our involvement in Afghanistan so we can build those oil and gas pipelines and suck Russia and the former Soviet Republics dry. And, look on the bright side. There will be milder winters, less pesky rain during the summer season, New York will be as tropical as Miami (or is that Riyhad, Saudi Arabia) and Miami will sink beneath the waves. Don't worry folks, Disney World will still be there at least for 100 years.
Report follows from MSNBC News
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| ‘Health
impacts (of more heat waves) can be ameliorated through such measures as
the increased availability of air conditioning.’ — U.S. CLIMATE ACTION REPORT |
THE REPORT stated that certain gases such as carbon dioxide “are
accumulating in the Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human
activities, causing global mean surface air temperatures and subsurface
ocean temperatures to rise.” The document, called the U.S. Climate Action Report, incorporates elements from the Clinton administration as well as an academic study last year that concluded that manmade industrial emissions, particularly of carbon dioxide from power plants, factories and cars, are significant contributors to climate change. Submitted to the United Nations last Friday as part of international talks on climate change, the report was issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, but no attempt was made to publicize it. HEATED PREDICTIONS The report predicts that over this century the United States will lose coastal wetlands to rising sea levels and experience more heat waves. Water supplies are forecast to shrink due to less snowpack, and some Rocky Mountain meadows will disappear. Other possibilities include: 
Average temperatures in the contiguous United States rising between 5
and 9 degrees Fahrenheit during this century.
Forest regions in the Southeastern United States that see “major
species shifts” or major changes in growth patterns.
Drought conditions and changing snowfall patterns in the West, Pacific
Northwest and Alaska.
Average sea levels rising 19 inches. “With higher sea level, coastal
regions could be subject to increased wind and flood damage, even if
tropical storms do not change in intensity,” the report says. |
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The report emphasizes a strategy of adapting to climate change —
a topic of discussion at U.N.-sponsored talks on climate change but not
a core focus. “Natural ecosystems” such as coastal wetlands “appear to be the most vulnerable to climate change because generally little can be done to help them adapt,” the report says. Humans can more easily adapt to warming, for example by changing how, what and where they farm and even by how they deal with heat waves, the report adds. “Health impacts” of the latter, it says, “can be ameliorated through such measures as the increased availability of air conditioning.” |
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ACTIVISTS REACT Debbie Boger, a Sierra Club spokeswoman on global warming, called it “irresponsible for the Bush administration to issue this report saying that global warming will have serious consequences and then turn around and refuse to find a solution to it.” And Kalee Kreider, global warming campaign director at the National Environmental Trust, called it “a shift from the political rhetoric of denial (about global warming) ... but not a policy shift.” The Natural Resources Defense Council concurred. “It’s significant to see an official publication of the Bush administration recognize how serious the global warming problem is,” said David Donniger, policy director of the council’s climate center. “But I don’t see any indication that the higher levels have absorbed what this means” and turned it into policy. “The government’s mouth speaks,” he said, “and the ears don’t hear.” Donniger said he believes the administration didn’t try to block the report because of recent attention on how industry has been trying to lobby it over energy policy. “While the Bush administration probably would have never produced this voluntarily on its own,” he said, it might have been “reluctant to be seen quashing this report.” “What the report is missing is any commitment from the U.S. to change its path of ever-growing emissions,” Donniger added. “One always hopes they’ll wake up and smell the carbon, but I don’t see any sign of it.” For global-warming skeptics, the Bush administration report was a sellout to what they feel is bad science. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Monday referred to the president as “George W. Al Gore,” a reference to the former vice president and environmental activist. Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the report lacked any scientific basis. “Here are the scientific facts: The key layers of air, from one to five miles high, show no human made global warming trend,” she said in a statement. “Global warming at the surface is largely, if not entirely, natural.” |
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BUSH STRATEGY The administration, for its part, says it does have a solution that works. Bush first started developing a strategy last year, following a National Academy of Sciences study commissioned by the administration. The independent study concluded that humans are contributing significantly to global warming. Bush acknowledged a problem that had to be dealt with and last February laid out a strategy based on incentives and technology to slow the growth of, and possibly even reduce, emissions without mandating reductions. Given the slow nature of climate change as well as remaining uncertainties about the science, he said, drastic actions would only hurt the U.S. economy and the environment. The uncertainties include the reliability of computer models and distinguishing between manmade warming and the climate shifts that Earth has gone through over geological time. The U.S. report echoes the president’s views, arguing that policy must be “economically sustainable.” “Economic development is key to protecting the global environment,” the report says. “In the real world, no one will forgo meeting basic family needs to protect the global commons.” WHAT NEXT? For environmentalists, the next step should be to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Their key targets are factory smokestacks and vehicle tailpipes. Tailpipe emissions could be reduced by requiring that cars get higher mileage, they say. The European Union has bought into that strategy as well. For Kreider, the Bush policy comes down to
having acknowledged the mainstream science about global warming. But,
she says, the president is still a step behind when it comes to
addressing the problem. |
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Warnings
on Arctic drilling reversed to no avail. |
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Environmentalists
term change an act of political intervention. |
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Bush to Congress: Pass the Energy Bill now. My buddies need the money. Senate to Bush: Your plans have
been rejected. Too bad. |
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| Caribou graze inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. |
Ken Lay and George Bush Dance Their Last Tango |
A friend who has lived in Houston for 35 years took me on a tour of the Bayou
City recently. Our first stop was Enron's gleaming twin towers.
In front of the building is the famous upended "E" glowing in the East
Texas sunset like a cattle rustler's branding iron. "We call it the
'Crooked E,'" my friend said with a rueful laugh.
Attorney General John Ashcroft was busy with the war on terrorism, so he looked
the other way as, behind the tinted glass at Enron headquarters, paper shredders
ran at full throttle for two months. They were destroying evidence of Enron's
grand larceny.
The crimes are legion: massive corporate fraud, insider trading, price fixing,
influence peddling, tax evasion, obstruction of justice. Already the signs of a
coordinated cover-up are becoming clear. The first priority is to protect George
W. Bush, whose "good ole boy" ties to Enron's former CEO Ken Lay are
as fresh and malodorous as a steaming cow pie.
Like Ashcroft, Bush is so preoccupied as "commander-in-chief" that he
has no time to answer the overriding question in this debacle: "What did
you know and when did you know it?"
Yet the real story of Enron is the corporation's incestuous relations with the
Bush family and the ultra-right. Track the rise of Enron and you are tracking
the career of George W. Bush from a callow college frat rat to a cunning
corporate-government insider, who always knew what was best for the oil and gas
billionaires.
Like his one-term dad, George W., Richard Cheney, House Majority Leader Tom
DeLay and hundreds of other Republican and Democratic officials fed at Enron's
trough. Enron contributions added up to at least $6.6 million in the years of
Bush's rise to power. So many were on Ken Lay's dole, it is hard to find anyone
with hands clean enough to investigate the company's collapse.
Enron's ties to the ultra-right are so well-known in Texas that a website was
set up with the address, "EnronOwnsThe GOP." It reports that Texas
Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, accepted $227,075 from Enron while Attorney
General John Cornyn -who is "investigating" Enron - received $193,000
from the defunct energy trading giant.
By far the biggest recipient of Enron largesse was George W. Bush, who received
an estimated $2 million in Enron cash, starting with his race for Texas governor
in 1994.
Bush, who calls Lay "Kenny Boy," flew to campaign stops during the
2000 presidential election aboard Enron corporate jets. Enron, of course, was
not the only oil and gas company that rallied for Bush. The nation's oil and gas
monopolies poured $41 million into his election campaign.
When Bush lost the popular vote nationwide and in Florida, Enron-connected
lawyer James A. Baker, secretary of state in the elder Bush's cabinet, was
rushed to Florida to orchestrate the termination of the vote count.
DeLay, another lawmaker on the Enron dole, recruited a fascist-like goon squad
that rushed down to Florida to bully election officials to halt the count.
The U.S. Supreme Court installed Bush in the White House. It was a very American
coup brought to us by Enron and other banks and corporations.
Craig McDonald, executive director of Austin-based Texans for Public Justice,
cited letters Ken Lay wrote to Bush during his tenure as governor. The Texas
Archives released them pursuant to a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
"They show a very close personal relationship between Lay and Bush,"
McDonald said.
"The visibility of the corruption is astounding, the degree to which the
rich and the powerful were controlling policy. Ken Lay knew he had to be a
political broker if he was going to broker electricity. He needed deregulation
of the energy market to gain control of it."
Richard Cheney's notorious Energy Policy Task Force produced a report that
embraced Enron's quest for total gas and electric deregulation. Lay met with
Cheney and other Task Force members six times to dictate the language of the
report.