Enron case shows parties’ differences

The “W” stands for “Weasel.” Attempting to distance himself from Ken Lay, George W. Bus said Ken Lay (chief villain in the Enron scandal) was a supporter of Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas governor’s race. In fact, Lay had been supporting Bush since Bush’s unsuccessful race for Congress in 1978, and is Bush’s single biggest campaign contributor to date.

Corporate managers give to both sides in order to have access to whoever wins, but they give more to the candidate who shares their political philosophy. In 1994, Lay gave three times as much money to Bush as to Richards.

Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, is philosophical about the Enron tragedy. He said: “Companies come and go. Part of the genius of capitalism is that people get to make good decisions or bad decisions. And they get to pay the consequences or to enjoy the fruits of their decisions. That’s the way the system works.”

That’s the way it works, all right. In this case, the people who made the “good decisions” knew the company was going bankrupt. The people who made “bad decisions” didn’t. Mr. Lay was urging his employees to keep their stock even as he was selling his own.

He was permitted by law to do this, while 14,000 Enron workers had their Enron stock “locked in” to their 401(k) accounts, and for a time could not sell it. So they lost their retirement savings while Mr. Lay made a pile of money.

The genius of capitalism is that anyone could convince the “losers” that if they get wiped out, it’s their own fault for not knowing what the “winners” knew.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the Republican philosophy is to perpetuate this fallacy, while the Democratic philosophy is to expose and combat it.

Oak Harbor

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