Friday, May 26, 2006

 

President Capone

Conversations of Enron employees among themselves make it clear how fully criminal the right has become. For example: AMY GOODMAN: In this phone call, an Enron employee talked about how the company had ripped off poor grandmothers in California. Listen carefully. ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: So the rumor is true? They're f---ing taking all the money back from you guys? All that money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California? ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. So she’s the one who couldn't figure out how to f---ing vote on the butterfly ballot, but yeah, now she wants her f---ing money back for all the power you've charged right up her -- jammed right up her a-- for f---ing $250 a megawatt hour. Yeah, you know. You know Grandma Millie. She's the one that Al Gore is fighting for. Here's a classic: AMY GOODMAN: Enron employees also discussed the possibility of Ken Lay becoming Secretary of Energy if George W. Bush won the 2000 election. ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: Tell you what, you heard this here first. When Bush wins, that f---ing Bill Richardson, he's gone, that f---ing Clinton, all these f---ing socialists are gone. ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: Yeah. ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: You know who the biggest single contributor to the Bush campaign is? ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: You. ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: Enron. ... ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: Ken Lay is going to be Secretary of Energy. ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: Get out of here! Can you imagine that? ...That would be awesome, actually. ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: That would be -- how great would that be for all the players in the market? ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: It would be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay be Secretary of Energy. ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: We'd open these markets up. It's out of Orwell. Call someone a "socialist" when what you mean is they aren't a crook like you. Talk about "open markets" like the mob means that a city is "wide open." According to Palast, it wasnt't just Enron, but Duke, San Diego Gas and Electric, Reliant, Dynergy, El Paso, Duke, Entergy, Public Service of New Mexico. So, the Bush Justice Department did its very, very best to keep the real crimes and the whole mob out of the courtroom, because it would have brought it right back, of course, to the Bush administration itself. That's certainly the way it looks. It took five years to convict a few guys for wiping out billions in pensions and investments. And President Capone may very well pardon them as he's stepping down.
Comments:
May I suggest the book, "The Divine Right of Capital" by Marjorie Kelly. It explains a lot of this stuff in a clear way that I'd never heard before.

If we could get rid of the idea that there was some kind of natural law that required us to give investors all of the rights over a company and made them the only ones with real rights in these situations a lot of problems would be avoided.
 
I'll keep an eye out for the book, olvlzl. But "the golden rule" has been around a lot longer than "The Golden Rule."

The one practical thing we can do is raise living standards to the point that no one is crushed, that everyone can resist wrongdoing. When we talk about the importance of "a strong middle class," that's really what we're talking about.
 
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