shall we ” inquire ” WHO made the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
on the shorts & options contracts…...
see any nervous terrorist in washington, dc.

dirty little devels
sincerely
mother of us special forces soldier

Wrote a little song about the trial’s outcome.  Care to hear it?  Goes a little something like this:
        Lay Kenny Lay
        Lay across my big bunk bed
        Hey Kenny Lay
        Let me stroke
        Your fat bald head

        Lay Kenny Lay
        Lay across my big cell bunk
        Hey Kenny Lay
          Come on down and
        Be my punk . . . etc.

(w/ apologies to Bob Dylan)

To #10786 (Frank Penberthy) First of all, it’s LAY, not Ley. Second of all: Birds of a feather…

Dear Robert Scheer,

Thank you for your informative article.  Coincidentally, below is an email forward that I received after I sent another article about Enron and Bush to some family, friends, and acquaintances.  The woman who sent this to me is an activist Republican in Texas.  She gave permission to forward her name freely.  In my reply to her I suggested this sounds like Karl Rove’s work.  I have gotten a couple of emails in the past from that part of the country, one from her, that I knew to be total distortions designed to smear individuals, groups and/or countries.

If there is any truth in this email, then I think you should have included a little something about it in your article, if only to avoid any appearance of lying by omission.

Please don’t shoot the messenger.

Warm regards,

Larry Scott

————forward———-
From: Lanier Whilden
Subject: Fwd: Enron and our corrupted President

Take a look at this one.  It should cause you to think twice. This is interesting!

How Enron Worked the President ... (This is an interesting bit of information that you don’t hear much about.)

A. Enron’s chairman did meet with the president and the vice president in the Oval Office.
B.. Enron gave $420,000 to the president’s party over three years.
C.. It donated $100,000 to the president’s inauguration festivities.
D.. The Enron chairman stayed at the White House 11 times.
E.. The corporation had access to the administration at its highest level and even enlisted the Commerce and State Departments to grease deals for it.
F.. The taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank subsidized Enron for more than $600 million in just one transaction.

Scandalous!! G.. BUT…the president under whom all this happened WASN’T George W. Bush.

SURPRISE . It was Bill Clinton!    Pass this on so the whole Country will know. The Media Won’t!    ARE WE READY FOR MRS. CLINTON ??

I’ve heard from sources inside the DOJ that the prosecuters in the Enron case we’re told to go slow before the 2004 election, to delay the start of a trial until after the election.

I still say “how do we get this into the mainstream media?”

Can’t Scheer submit to NYTimes Op-Ed or Wash Post?

jean Luc - but would you really want Cheney as Pres?

Jean Luc’s comment, “The U.S. is looking more and more like the Latin America of the 80’s all the time.”

That’s because Bush & Co is doing to Americans what the US government has been doing to Latin America and other countries for decades - control the media, provide the wealthy with more wealth, use the military and police services to crush opposition and support corporations, rig elections, create distractions, create unknown enemies, and start wars.  Create fear, preach security, control resources and wealth, and kill a lot of innocent people.

The courts are the last hope for this country, but don’t count on that with the way the Supreme Court is packed, which is also similar to a corrupt Third World country.

The way to make sure Lay and Skilling do lots of prison time is to vote out the Republican majority in Congress, then impeach Bush.

A nutshell for your consideration:

Our problem is cowardice.

From the personal cowardice of Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, Scarborough, Toughguy Tucker Carlson, and most all of the chickenhawk GOPunks in Congress, to the professional cowardice of the Republican tools who run the pervasive right-wing mainstream media, it’s the cowering, bullying, greedy cowards who who break our laws, balls, and faith.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To join the Texas Air National Guard.

C’mon guys…We all know that Bush is going to pardon both of these scum bags. The investor class will get off scott free…again. Who rules? We the people need to wake up really fast to nip this incredible injustice in the bud. I am afraid that with both parties on their knees to the ruling class that We the People are just chasing windmills. Hate to be so depressing about it but we are still bailing out the Savings and Loan industry two decades later. And these guys are just laughing all the way to the bank.

I think you need to read Scheer’s excellent piece again, Frank, if only to learn how to spell Ken L-A-Y’s name. Here is my favorite part of Scheer’s piece:
“Typical was Bush’s role in Enron lobbying of Pennsylvania’s governor to permit Enron to enter his state’s energy market. As Lay wrote in a letter dated Oct. 7, 1997: “I very much appreciated your call to Gov. Tom Ridge a few days ago. I am certain that will have a positive impact on the way he and others in Pennsylvania view our proposal.” After the Enron crash, Bush attempted to distance himself from the “Bush pioneer,” who had sent more than $2 million in Enron funds George W.’s way, as well as supplying him with the Enron company jet on at least eight occasions. “I HAVE NOT MET WITH HIM PERSONALLY,” (My emphasis) Bush said after the scandal broke.

What Bush left out was not only his hundreds of personal encounters with Lay before he assumed the presidency but, more important, Lay’s key role in drafting the Bush administration’s energy policy. Lay met with energy task force chairman Dick Cheney at least six times. It was Lay who submitted a key memo opposing price caps in response to the energy crisis in California that Enron had helped engineer. Lay was also instrumental in the abrupt dismissal of Curtis Hebert Jr. as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman. The neutered FERC later conveniently refused California’s loud pleas for help.”

As a Californian I would not mind seeing Ken Lay and Co., tarred and feathered. I guess it was all okay as long as GOD was on his side?!
The Bush administration were co-conspirator’s in every way. If anyone does not comprehend that FACT, then you need to do some further research and not just espouse some idiotic knee jerk reaction.

I am only a casual follower of the news and there is nothing in Scheer’s piece that is new. Not a thing.

Now you can argue that Enron’s and W’s successes were symbiotic and would not have happened without each other, and you can attribute every bad thing to a conspiracy. I don’t know that there wasn’t a too-cozy relationship (you could take any corporate leader and any home-state politician and connect dots till Kingdom Come) but I do know it is lame as Barbaro to whine “oh the nasty press didn’t cover it.”

They cover just about everything that is knowable. That they don’t cover it the way you like is another issue, so I would suggest dig up facts and put the blame where it lies, on your friends, your neighbors, your family for voting time and again for crooks, thieves, knaves and Nazis. And be thankful there is still a press under W.

If there weren’t a “mainstream media” left wing bloggers wouldn’t know what the hell they were against.

Good to hear you Ozman.

You know, for some of us, these past years, aince 9/11, have been just one “Oh Shit Moment” after another.

It isn’t that Americans don’t recognize that there is a problem; s big one!

The vast majority of us realize that. The problem comes when we all try to agree on what the problem is. We have wankers on TV news who go off on one tirade right after another, most having to do with scaring the crap out of us or stirring up hatred, which is all too easy, once one has managed to scare the crap out of us.

We, Yanks, don’t scare all that easy, you know. Not because we are all that brave and courageous, as a people; some of us are, some of us aren’t. The point is, we don’t play close enough attention to be scared of much. How the hell can one be afraid of snakes if one has never seen one? We Do Not Pay Attention! At least, not generally speaking.

I wonder how many Americans actually knew who Osama bin Laden was before 9/11? If so, how many knew that he had declared war on America, was a freaking gazillionaire and, therefore, capable of quite a lot of mischief?

Relatively few, would be my guess.

Why?

Because we were all absolutely fixated on Bill Clinton’s penis, or we had become sick unto death of Bill Clinton’s penis and had tuned out for a year or so.

Osama and his declarations of war just simply were not sexy enough to hold our frayed attention.

Listen, my friend, it isn’t all that good for ones mental health to know too much truth over here, especially all at once.

But when you look at the poll numbers, you realize that the vast majority of Americans know there is a problem and that that problem is Bush related.

But here is the really terrifying part, for us. There are about 30% of Americans who still believe that Bill Clinton’s penis is the most serious Weapon of Mass Destruction on the planet, outside of the Middle East of course.

These are the same people who believe that Saddam Hussein shoved all of his “nucular” material up his butt like a bag of heroin and that is why we haven’t found anything in Iraq that would warrant the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Some of these same people believe, with all of their black, little hearts of hearts, that Saddam and Osama were tennis partners at the Baghdad country club.

Quite a few of these lovely people do not care if it is all just one huge lie or not, because, (you chhose)

1) It doesn’t matter because I am going to be so damn wealthy I won’t ever again have to fly commercial and no one will really recognize me after my 1 million dollar face transplant.

2) It doesn’t matter as long as we get that Temple re-built over there in Jerusalem and all people of the Jewish persuasion get on back down there, so Jesus will stop pouting, get on back here and fix everything, which will necessarily mean, a whole bunch of Jews being sent to hell, a whole bunch of Muslims dying and the homsoexuals and all members of the ACLU either be subjected to electroshock therapy or shot in the face.

I think that the fundies probably have plans for the EU as well, as that is the Beast, don’t ya know…...or is that the Roman Catholic Church…oh, right, the Roman Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon and the EU is the Beast…See what I mean? We have some full-blown whackjobs of our own over here.

This is what we are dealing with, all the time.

We know, we Know. We are trying to do something about this horrible nightmare.

The world is having another terrible brush with fascism and I would be willing to bet that the above material on Lay and Bush never makes it into the mainstream TV news. If it does, it will be so diluted, people will once again, miss the point. Corporatism=Fascsim. We are so damned screwed!

I can report, that more reality is getting through, these days. But there will always be that 30% or so.

It really is quite maddening.

Bob Scheer’s piece was excellent . . . but perhaps a bit more depressing than he intended it to be. 

Why depressing?  Because the kinds of maggoty relationships between wealthy, well-placed government officials and wealthy, well-placed corporate honchos which he alludes to are not—unfortunately—the proprietary domain of the Republican party.

Clinton’s ties to the Cuban-American lobby in Florida and his sleazy pardoning of Marc Rich made me want to puke six years ago.  Recalling them while reading Mr. Scheer’s article made me want to puke again.

Perhaps, if we would get rid of the so-called ‘two party system’ which is really merely a single party with two branches, both controlled by the same corrupting influences,  we could see a small bit of improvement. Let’s fight for instant run-off voting.
And let’s make it a capital offense to mess with the vote counting as is now regularly done with machine help. 
I would also love to see a long prison sentence handed out to anyone calling ours ‘free enterprise’ system; it is dominated by large corporations with monopolistic tendencies, which are—and are intended to be—obstacles to free enterprise.

The unlawful acts committed by Ley are on Ley’s shoulders alone.  Buch had nothing to do with illegal re-accounting positioning and spin.  Being friends with Ley has nothing to do with the illegal acts that Ley commited.  We all have friends that have turned out to surprise us for better or worse.
 
Mr. Robert Scheers’ attempt to try to insinuate Bush, by being friends with Ley, some how makes him as dirty (illegal) as Ley and therefore as guilty is beneath what Mr. Scheer is capable of reporting as this report is absurdly juvenile in its attempt to reach a solid hook.

If this is the best the left has to offer on Ley/Bush then we don’t stand a chance.

The only people who would salute this article are already Bush haters voting democratic and this is only singing to the choir.  We are gaining nothing with reports like this. Lets clean up our own house people and get real and stop with this weak twisted bull before we totally lose it.

Mr. Scheer, if you and I were friends and you helped me co-sign for a car, and you even helped me get a discount on my insurance through you influance with the company, and then I got drunk and drove the car into a child daycare center and killed 3 kids, would it be real to report that you were somehow connected and therefor somehow responsible?  I think not.  Its time we got real.

Why yes, of course, Bush and Lay are joined at the hip yet Bush lies again when he said that he hardly knew “Kenny Boy”...and of course, Bush will pardon both Lay and Skilling before his term of office expires…It is way past time for IMPEACHMENT of both Bush and Cheney…and throw Rum-Dum in for good measure…Corruption is a way of life for the Republicans in Congress….and also the White House…

Two important facts need to be added to this excellent piece on Bush & Enron:
(1) Enron’s Skilling was instrumental in persuading the California regulators to go along with the deregulation plan that allowed Enron to create the California energy crisis:
http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/041102dunn.pdf:
“For example, former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, then the President of Enron Capital & Trade, told the CPUC on June 14, 1994, that California would save billions in a few short years under a deregulated market.

‘In this industry in California, the potential savings are enormous…More specifically, in California, our view is that California is an industry run amok. If California consumers were paying even the same costs as surrounding states’ consumers are paying, the state would save about $8.9 billion per year…..’

Beyond what some might label insignificant grandstanding, Enron lobbied for very specific market rules that stood to benefit its business at the expense of consumers. Two months after giving that testimony, and again in October 1994, Mr. Skilling appeared before the CPUC to argue for the superiority of an “OpCo” electricity market versus a “PoolCo” market that was modeled on similar markets in other countries, including the United Kingdom.”

(2) Why did the California energy crisis not occur until 6 years later? Because, Enron needed to wait until Bush got into office so that a compliant FERC would allow them to get away with it.
In other words, the whole thing was planned ahead of time with malice aforethought

Buckethead says it’s a forgery.

Sheer is right on the money here.  Bush should be doing time right along with Lay and Schilling.  Lots of time, like life!!

Actually, Bush is more guilty because since he took office, it was he who permitted all the shenannigans that robbed the people of America of their hard earned dollars.

On top of this he has more, much more to answer for.  Such as permitting the price gouging at the gasoling pumps and oil consumers.  As he owed Lay, he owes this criminal cabal as well.

Oh, the letters between lay and Bush are so sweet!

Oh Lord, Will there EVER be an end to this nightmare of Bush? And now I’m hearing that Jeb may be next in line for the throne (that is, is GW ever actually leaves it…)

THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF 9-11 WEBSITES (GOOGLE IT) THAT PROVE THAT THE BUSH/PNAC
ADMINSTRATION PLANNED AND ORCHESTRATED 9-11…HERES A FEW OF THEM
http://911blogger.com/
http://www.reopen911.org/
http://www.geocities.com/killtown/
http://www.standdown.net/
http://www.911truth.org/
http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/911links.html
http://st911.org/
http://www.tvnewslies.org
http://www.prisonplanet.com/911.html

It started with the secret energy meetings that included Ken Lay….and were declared off limits to the public for the first time in history.  The media gave Bushco a free pass then…and never let up.

Cheney is the man behind it all: Cheney’s Secrets:

http://tvnewslies.org/html/cheney_s_secrets.html

Now how about an expose on Dick Cheney from the time he rewrote regulations when Sec. of Defense to allow outsourcing of work much of which was then bid on by KBR which Cheney bought while at Halliburton and his dealings with the enemy Iran?

So how do we get this into the mainstream? The Republicans run with much less, and it’s all over the media. Democrats don’t know how to sell.

Complacency,indifference,ignorance.The American voter refuses to read-like their Fuhrer.I miss your column in the LA Times.

RE: Ken Lay…Reading a good book by Jeff Faux titled Global Class War. According to Faux—with a cite to the National Journal—Enron’s Ken Lay helped persuade Bush #1 and Gerald Ford to show up at Bill Clinton’s signing of NAFTA side agreements in 1993. Bush #1 and Ford weren’t sure about Clinton, so Mack McClarty—Clinton’s COS—called Lay to put pressure on the two former presidents. And the idea to have the two presidents show up? From Henry Kissenger who was advising Clinton on the matter. Rep=Dem, Dem=Rep.

“Why is the mass media ignoring that fact now that Lay has been convicted in arguably the most egregious example of white-collar fraud in U.S. history?”

Time…...will show 9/11 to be a far greater
$White-Collar$ FRAUD than ENRON.

If we need any more evidence that much of the mainstream press is beholden to big money, this is it.  Where is the energy with which they dug into Clinton’s two-bit Whitewater real estate deal?

Along the same lines, as John Snow quietly resigns as Treasury Secretary, it is scarcely noted that Mr. Snow worked for CSX - Carlysle, an indirect beneficiary of the Dubai Ports World fiasco, before joining the administration. That fiasco played out under the aegies of the Treasury Department, of course. Would you be surprised if he goes back to work for them? Starting with Eisenhower, we have been warned about the revolving door between industries and the agencies that supposedly regulate them. This has never been more true than in the Bush administration.

Perhaps Ken Lay will start “singing” before he starts doing time in hopes of getting his time reduced. Either
that or plan on serving a couple of years and get a
pardon in 2009. He has a choice. Chances are he’ll do
the time and await the pardon from George W. It will
make a lot of people furious but what can they do?

Let’s hope that Nancy Pelosi sees this article.  It should change her mind about not pressing for impeachment of Bush should the Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives in November.

I’m fairly certain that by or before our American fuhrer’s term expires,Bush will pardon Lay and Skilling.

I guess Ken Lay now knows that: “If you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas.”

“The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer”!
We’ll see if anything is ever done about the country’s “road side bomb” George W. Bush.

I long for the days when this sort of info would come as a surprise and/or a shocking revelation.  The U.S. is looking more and more like the Latin America of the 80’s all the time.

There is hope, though, when considering the Venezuelians elected Chavez.  The question is, would a Chavez-LIKE candidate ever be ‘allowed’ to run for office in the one-party system of the U.S.?  Unlikely.

Do you think Bush was ribbing his old friend about his age, or is Bush perhaps entirely without any understanding of feelings toward another and was being crass and not even realizing it.

“Wow. You’re old.” Is something a 6 year old would say to someone.

Where are the people who either notice or become annoyed???????

First comment from an Ozzie in South Korea…..

I think a nation cannot resolve it’s ills until it begins to become conscious that something is amiss!

T.

A timely reminder.  Thank you.