... for Tuesday, January 1, 2002...
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TODAY'S FEATURE

Enron's Money Trail In Bush's Texas

"Texas Sen. Phil Gramm announced his retirement earlier this year and everybody said nice things, especially about the fact that he was walking away from his Senate seat while still in his prime. Now congressional committees investigating Enron’s collapse are wondering whether his decision to leave the Senate had anything to do with potential conflicts of interest. Gramm’s wife, Wendy, was on Enron’s board of directors while her husband chaired the Senate Banking Committee, whose oversight responsibilities should have caught Enron’s troubles." --Eleanor Clift

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Enron's Money Trail In Bush's Texas

For a healthy taste of the kind of info the best foundation money can buy, check out TPJ's report on the Enron Corp.'s political money trail, at www.tpj.org/Lobby_Watch/enron.html. The report catalogs the major Texas recipients of Enron's largesse (George W. Bush, Gov. Rick Perry, John Cornyn, the state Supreme Court, Carole Keeton Rylander, etc.) and sketches some of the main purposes of all that political generosity. Some telling excerpts:

"The chief mourners of Enron's demise -- apart from the investors and workers that it deceived -- are the legions of lobbyists and politicians whom Enron fed. Enron spent $10.2 million in the last two election cycles (1997 through 2000) influencing Washington politicians. During this period, Enron moved $1,003,273 to Texas PACs and state candidates, as well as spending up to $4.8 million on 89 Texas lobby contracts. ..." Bush's greatest gubernatorial gifts to Enron were deregulating state electric markets in 1999, indulging "grandfathered air polluters," and promoting laws that protect businesses from lawsuits.

The next-largest chunk of Enron money went to Gov. Perry, the report states. Perry appointed former Enron de Mexico President Mario Max Yzaguirre as Public Utility Commission chair in June 2001. Was it sheer coincidence, then, that, according to reports, Enron CEO Ken Lay gave Perry a $25,000 campaign contribution the very next day? Now, in the midst of controversy over Perry's choice to fill the PUC post, two Democrats on the Senate Nominations Committee have urged the governor to reconsider Yzaguirre's appointment. The committee has postponed considering his confirmation because Perry named his choice after this year's legislative session. As things stand, Yzaguirre doesn't appear to be a shoe-in for the job, especially in light of new developments regarding his and Perry's withholding of information about Yzaguirre's past.

Additionally, there are concerns that Yzaguirre's past work with a private utility would present a conflict of interest in his role as head of a state regulatory commission. Said TPJ's Craig McDonald in a statement: "Both the governor and attorney general have benefited greatly from Enron's political contributions. [Cornyn and Perry] both have a conflict of interest with respect to any Enron-Yzaguirre cover-up in the governor's office." He called on either the Travis County district attorney or the Legislature to investigate the matter. --Michael King.

Washington correspondent Ronald Brownstein used to be pretty reliable for thoughtful commentary, but lately it seems he's taken up one of the plusher suites in the Love Hotel the Bush administration is hosting for the mainstream media. How else to explain today's epic poem dedicated to Our Great Leader Bush? Did Brownstein not read his own paper two days ago? Dick Cheney is running the war, day to day, minute by minute. In his wanderings around Washington, has he never met the Nixon administration's John Dean? Of course, and he's just as surely aware of Dean's comments to the effect that Bush is channeling his father through the simple medium of having a phone line to the old man surgically welded to his head. Brownstein's depiction of Bush's wise, restrained and measured response to the terror attacks is merely Talking Point #1 from the script of Karl Rove - The two foreign policy crisis's of this administration have followed identical arcs: both with the China spyplane and the terrorist attacks, Bush and his little band of ideologue flakes came out butch and swinging, before Poppy Bush had time to get to the phone and start dictating instructions. Even so, this war was going nowhere until George W. allowed the Northern Alliance off the leash; and even as he takes credit for their success, he has Colin Powell and Richard Haass in Moscow trying to secure Putin's blessing to turn his proxies the NA out of Kabul. All concerned know what's really on the table, of course: control of the oil reserves of the Caspian Sea region, control the Russians aren't likely to hand over. Just as Brownstein and the rest of the gutless press corps wax most lyrically over Our Great Leader Bush, we are dancing on the ragged edge of World War 3 --Kent Southard

Auld Lang Syne, Heavy Medication... A tiny South Pacific island was hit by a massive tropical storm just hours before it became one of the first places on earth to herald in the New Year. Officials in the Polynesian kingdom of Tonga, which sits just east of the international date line, said tropical Cyclone Waka whipped up hurricane-force winds and produced heavy rain over Niuafo'ou island, which is pretty much all the cosmic sign you should need that 2002 will indeed be a miserable tumultuous hell-bitch and you'd better stock up on the Valium and the scotch because the world is clearly sinking into a black pit of ennui and pathos and we still have three more years of Shrub's scared ferret look and Ashcroft secretly stealing looks at your computer's porn. "Happy New Year!" yelled the king of Tonga, toasting a glass of cheap Moet as gale-force winds blasted him to the ground and he was quickly impaled by a flying telephone pole. "Oh, screw it," he did not add, in unfathomable screaming pain. --Mark Morford

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