Brown Sludge

SmackBack - Amy Ridenour Loves The Crooked “E”

April 12th, 2006

“Why Ask Why?”

A few days ago, Amy Ridenour posted this little blurb on her blog.

It was an interesting little morsel that piqued my interest. It was about the lawyers in the ongoing Enron trials of Jeff Skilling and “Kenny Boy” Lay and it was worded strangely. It almost sounded as if she were a little put out by how it made Skilling and Lay look.

So… I wrote her a polite little e-mail, and asked for clarification. Sure sounded to me like she was defending them.

Basically, she wrote me back a terse little response that she was only pointing out the absurdity of the wording in a certain article, and completely side-stepped my underlying question about whether or not she was sympathetic to their (Skilling and Lay’s) plight, saying only she wasn’t a fan because they lobbyed for the Kyoto Treaty.

Now… I’ve never been an Amy Ridenour fan, I’ll admit that up front.

She’s is closely tied with Big Oil, The Tobacco Industry and Jack Abramoff.

She is Brown Sludge in a powder blue power pantsuit.

She’s one of the people who have helped lead the GOP away from being a party “of the people, by the people, and for the people” and perverted them into being “of the Corporations, by the Lobbyists, and for the Utility Companies.”

While she pushes corporate friendly legislation and deregulation - utility company’s profits skyrocket, and it’s the consumers who get sacrificed on the twin alters of Free Market Extremism, and Global Corporatism.

Any doubt I may have had about the depth and breadth of her commitment to everything that is wrong with Conservatism and the GOP today evaporated instantly when I read this piece on her blog this afternoon.

Her post points to an article by The Heartland Institute which… (wait for it…) ACTUALLY DEFENDS JEFF SKILLING AND KEN LAY AND ENRON. I’m not kidding.

Now… in fairness, all her post really says about the article is that it’s a “worth a read”, but if you believe for a minute that that’s all there is to it, well… I’ve got some Enron stock I’m sure you’ll be interested in.

The article, (which I refuse to link to) makes it’s case in the most cynical, and unashamed language you could ever imagine.

The low-lites :

As Mr. Bean would say, “Brace yourself!”

The Enron picture is broader than a question of fraud because it goes to the heart of the energy trading system developed since the 1990s.

It’s not a question of fraud? Unbelievable.

The “superseding” indictment of Jeffrey Skilling contains several strange interpretations of Enron’s business model and a contorted description of the “fraud” that is purported to have occurred. In order to have a fraud it is necessary not only to have a misrepresentation of financial conditions or prospects but also to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right. Who are the victims?

“Who are the victims?” You’re kidding, right? How about the thousands of rate-payers who were (allegedly) price-gouged and couldn’t pay for groceries or medicine or clothes for their children because of the exorbitant rates they had to pay for energy? How about the thousands of employees that (allegedly) lost their pensions, and their retirement money, and their way of life? Astonishing.

What about the deceptions in the accounting? The reader of the overriding indictment might be surprised to learn there were not only hidden losses, but also hidden profits.

Oh yeah… they were flush when they augured in. Gobs of money. Money out the ying-yang. No idea why they filed bankruptcy.

This situation raises another question. Why would Lay and Skilling risk their huge stakes in Enron by distorting the books with offsetting accounting entries? One plausible explanation is that they did not know the accounting statements were distorted.

Yeah… and another is that they were GREEDY. If you’re too stupid to understand the simple human capacity for GREED. You are far too stupid to be taken serious as an authority on any subject period.

OK, you are thinking, why did Enron go bankrupt? After all, the thefts were just in the tens of millions. The answer in our opinion lies in California. In 1996 the California legislature passed the electricity restructuring plan without a single “no” vote. That alone should have been a danger signal.

As Emeril Lagasse would say… BAM! There it is.

It wasn’t all the (alleged) fraud and theft, the REAL culprit was REGULATION. If only they’d been allowed to charge as much as they wanted and gouge as deeply as they needed to they wouldn’t have had to (allegedly) STEAL IT. Friggin’ PRICE CAPS. If only they could have bled out the rate-payer even more – everything would have been all right.

Un-be-lievable.

Mercifully, they wrap it up :

The Enron story is reminiscent of an earlier political attack on an energy company during the Great Depression of the 1930s. New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was making a political issue out of Samuel Insull, the CEO of Commonwealth Edison in Chicago. The matter helped get FDR elected president in 1932 but forced the ComEd holding company into bankruptcy, even though Insull and his associates were subsequently acquitted of all charges.

We hope the Enron jury will show the same wisdom as the jury in the Samuel Insull case and reject the politically inspired attack on energy risk management. Maybe in time efficient risk management will return to the natural gas and electricity industries. Energy consumers will be the prime beneficiaries.

In response – I post this from one of my earlier pieces on Enron.

From the movie “Smartest Guys in the Room” – a transcript of two employees discussing the anger of California Ratepayers, (alleged) victims of Enron (graphic language) :

Employee #1: “They’re f*****g taking all the money back from you guys? All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?”

Employee #2: “Yeah, grandma Millie, man. (laughing) Yeah, now she wants her f*****g money back for all the power you’ve charged right up, jammed right up her a** for f*****g $250 a megawatt hour.”

This November, the Republican’s stand to lose both houses.

In November 2008, they stand to lose the Whitehouse too, probably to one of the most corrupt and sinister women ever to hold public office.

And when it all burns down, and the GOP finds itself standing in the rubble, bereft and adrift and wondering “What happened?” They need only look as far as the The National Center for Public Policy Research and all of the other conservative think-tanks that have for too long been allowed to pervert the government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” into being “of the Corporations, by the Lobbyists, and for the Utility Companies.”

Maybe then I’ll get my party back.

Entry Filed under: General, Big Oil, The Right Has It Wrong, SmackBack