A rchive Date
[ 23-05-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
|
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6011-2002Jul15.html
Born-Again Reformers
Politicians Find Their Inner Nader as Corporate Collapses Hit Main Street
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
In countries where communist regimes have crumbled, most of the former apparatchiks quickly vow allegiance to the new democratic government and try to obscure their role in the past oppression. Which is not unlike what's happening now in Washington, where the politicians have suddenly recast themselves as corporate reformers and developed amnesia about their relentless efforts to shore up what is now seen as a discredited system.
The press, with its notoriously short attention span, shouldn't let them get away with it. All these laws allowing sham transactions, insider loans, bogus accounting, stock options with phantom costs didn't get there by accident. The very same officeholders who are now bellowing their outrage are the ones who took the campaign contributions and did the companies' bidding.
They were in a co-dependent relationship, and now they're in denial. Twelve-step program to follow.
It's not just George W., who took insider loans from Harken Energy while he was on the board and was late in filing documents about his stock sale ahead of some bad news - both practices he now wants to ban. It's the posturing class on Capitol Hill.
As The Post noted over the weekend, six of the major collapsing companies - Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing, Adelphia Communications and Qwest - gave $7.7 million in soft money to Republicans and $5.2 million to Democrats over the past decade. Lawmakers also bought stock in these companies, and they and their aides took free trips, gobbled free food and attended major sporting events at the companies' expense.
Newt Gingrich pushed for rolling back regulations and relaxing tort laws as part of his Contract with America. And Bill Clinton didn't do much when his SEC chief, Arthur Levitt, tried to tighten accounting laws and got creamed on the Hill. It's a bloody bipartisan embarrassment.
And it goes well beyond the corporations who broke the law. Who in his right mind can defend allowing big companies to evade taxes by fictionally incorporating themselves in Bermuda, without moving employees or equipment, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Congress?
In the past, such finger-pointing over Washington policy failures had a distinctly inside-the-Beltway flavor. But with the Dow having plunged 700 points last week, the scandals have hit Main Street in a major way, which is why everyone from the president on down is suddenly in touch with his inner Nader.
Sign of the times: Many big papers had long Sunday pieces about the suffering of average investors.
The Boston Globe: "Pat and Larry Roop had never expected luxury or riches in retirement. At most, they'd daydreamed about a log cabin in a peaceful Maine town. But three years into a stock market plunge that now rivals the worst crashes in history, they worry that they'll have to work well into old age to pay the bills."
The New York Times: "As the owners of an Atlanta advertising agency that billed $40 million a year, Jim and Jan Pringle were featured in a cover article in Inc. magazine asking, 'What's the best time to retire?' . . . The Pringles have since lost about 75 percent of their investment. Far from taking any trips to Europe, they have done what they vowed never to do: mortgaged their house and gone back to work."
The Washington Post: "In the late 1990s, newsstand operator Louis Taub, like many Americans, learned to treat the stock tables like the baseball standings, eagerly flipping through the business section to see just how high his stocks could soar. Now Taub, like many others, can barely stand to look."
Forget polls and focus groups. A single day's stories tells you that America is hurting, and anxious, and looking for someone to blame. Bush is still riding high at 76 percent, but the Chicago Tribune says trouble lurks around the corner:
"Hammered anew by plunging stock prices, corporate scandals and a widening federal deficit, the struggling U.S. economy is posing an increasing threat to President Bush's hopes for re-election, many political and economic analysts believe.
"Though the election is more than two years away, some economists said there is as much as a 50-50 chance that the recovery could be so tepid in 2004 that it would put Bush's presidency at risk. Some forecasters even fear that a second, or double-dip, recession could develop between now and then . . .
"The past week's developments - blossoming corporate scandals, questions about Bush's own business practices, a fading stock market, an announcement that the 2002 federal deficit will be larger than expected - illustrate the dangers for the president."
Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times also gives Bush a thumbs-down:
"Last week, President Bush spent more time on the defensive than at any time since Sept. 11 - and possibly since he took office.
"In grueling succession, Bush endured stinging questions about his personal business dealings, received mostly negative reviews for the major speech he delivered on corporate responsibility, confronted signs that even congressional Republicans considered his response inadequate to the firestorm and ended the week with the grim news that the government was heading toward its largest budget deficit since the mid-1990s.
"In all, Bush has probably had a rougher week than anyone in public life this side of beleaguered Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.
"Analysts in both parties say the turbulence is unlikely to immediately affect Bush's astronomical job approval ratings. A CBS News Poll taken early in the week, before all the bad news accumulated, found that 74% of Americans still gave him positive marks for the way he was handling his job.
"But the week may mark a turning point for Bush that opens a period of rougher political conflict. Since Sept. 11, Democrats have been reluctant to sharply criticize him for two main reasons: the wartime atmosphere and his high approval ratings. The lofty ratings fed on themselves by discouraging criticism that might have dented the president's standing."
Leading to this memorable quote:
"‚'The people who don't agree with Bush, many of whom had been reluctant to question him . . . found out this week you can raise legitimate issues, you can criticize the president and you don't wake up the next morning with a horse's head in your bed,' said Democratic consultant Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary for President Clinton."
Newsweek wonders what's happened to the former chairman of Halliburton:
"When President Bush came to Wall Street to jawbone chief executives about corporate responsibility, Dick Cheney, the vice president and a former CEO himself, wasn't with him. When Bush met at the White House with his new Justice Department corporate-crime 'SWAT team,' Cheney was elsewhere - at a national-security meeting, his aides said.
"Two Cabinet CEOs - Paul O'Neill of Treasury and Don Evans of Commerce - headlined televised town-hall meetings after Bush's speech, and were headed to the Sunday TV talk shows to pitch the president's program. Cheney's only comments on the need for tougher oversight of business were made at Republican fundraisers.
"Cheney's aides say it's all business as usual, that the veep normally doesn't play this kind of public role. But his absence from the debate about corporate behavior and CEO misdeeds is striking."
The Dems are clearly on offense, as in the Washington Times lead story:
"Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, said yesterday that the U.S. economy will suffer unless President Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney release more details of their actions as private-sector corporate executives.
"‚'Because of the president's involvement in the Harken Energy case, there is a large cloud hanging over his head,' Mr. Lieberman said on ABC's 'This Week.' 'I am afraid if he doesn't eliminate it soon by giving full disclosure, [the suspicions] will diminish his moral authority - his presidential authority to lead the critical effort to restore confidence in the [stock] market.'"
The former veep candidate took aim at Cheney too:
"Mr. Lieberman also attacked the vice president's role at Halliburton, saying yesterday that 'whereas the president's disclosures, so far, on Harken Energy have been inadequate, the vice president's disclosures regarding Halliburton have been nonexistent.' . . .
"In an interview made public yesterday, the current CEO of Halliburton said Mr. Cheney knew the company was posting cost overruns as revenue when he ran the oil-services company, one of the practices for which Halliburton is under SEC investigation. 'The vice president was aware of who owed us money, and he helped us collect it,' David Lesar told Newsweek magazine."
And, in case you missed it, the Los Angeles Times reports: "Amid accusations that the White House has failed to act aggressively to clean up corporate accounting abuses, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey L. Pitt, on Sunday defended the administration's performance and said he would not resign."
The full WorldCom story is still coming out, as this New York Times piece suggests:
"Two years ago, senior finance executives at WorldCom notified the company's auditors, Arthur Andersen, of improper shifts of expenses that were appearing in the international department, but the transactions remained on the company's books until as recently as last month, according to internal company records.
"The documents, released yesterday by the House Commerce Committee, are the first indication that improper accounting of expenses at WorldCom might have extended further back than the company has acknowledged. Late last month, WorldCom stated that it had misreported $3.8 billion in expenses by improperly shifting them into particular accounts on the company books.
"The documents are also the first evidence that Andersen accountants had reason to question the company's chief financial officer, Scott D. Sullivan, about his treatment of so-called line costs - fees paid to other communications companies for use of their networks - at WorldCom. Andersen has maintained that WorldCom management essentially lied to its auditors."
Andersen has quite a track record, ya gotta admit.
Has there ever, in recorded history, been such an open discussion of war plans as with Iraq? The Wall Street Journal has yet another piece:
"Problems with two strategies the U.S. is considering to oust Saddam Hussein by force are driving some military planners to a new option - a middle ground between a small-scale campaign employing air strikes and local-opposition forces, and an overwhelming invasion of troops.
"Some Bush administration aides - particularly some civilians in the Pentagon and the White House - have argued that the job in Iraq could be accomplished with air strikes backed by several hundred special-operations soldiers, working in conjunction with Iraqi opposition forces and defectors. Senior military officials, meanwhile, have been arguing that ousting Mr. Hussein requires a more conventional 250,000-troop mobilization.
"A middle-ground approach would marry air power with a force of between 50,000 and 75,000 ground troops, said a defense official involved in Iraq planning."
Why don't we just send Saddam a telegram and save the newsprint?
We'd sure love to attend this trial:
"Embattled Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat yesterday threatened to sue a top Israeli newspaper for accusing him of illegally funneling $5 million to his wife and kid in Paris," the New York Post says.
"Under a banner headline on its front page, Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest daily, accused Arafat of siphoning off Saudi aid funds that had been earmarked for assistance to the Palestinian Authority. The paper said Israel has sent the Bush administration a damning report, detailing what it called 'a festival of corruption in the Palestinian Authority.'"
Gore has gotten plenty of negative press lately, as you may have observed, but Chicago Sun-Times columnist Steve Neal says that Kerry, Edwards et al may as well pack it in:
"Al Gore has decided to make another run for the presidency, and his renomination by the Democrats in 2004 is inevitable.
"He could very well be the next president of the United States."
Please resume normal breathing.
"Gore, who took a year and a half leave from national politics, is back by popular demand. He is the clear choice of Democratic voters as their party's '04 nominee against President Bush. With a shaky economy and Bush's approval ratings dropping, Gore should be formidable in the '04 general election. He won the popular vote by more than 700,000 votes in 2000 while losing the Electoral College ballot by a single vote.
"Despite Bush's stern words against corporate greed, he has possible exposure on this issue. There are strong indications that Bush may have enriched himself as the result of insider information. Vice President Dick Cheney is also vulnerable on this issue.
"When the voting public is angry with the power elite, it's usually good for the Democrats. Gore senses that his party has a powerful issue that could win back the presidency. Two other Democrats, Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland, lost the presidency while winning the popular vote. Four years after their respective losses, Jackson and Cleveland captured the White House. History could repeat itself in 2004...
"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the only potential rival who could have seriously contested Gore in the primaries, set the stage for his renomination by removing herself from contention. Clinton is interested in the vice presidential nomination and would be an exciting choice for the Democratic Party."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|