Politically correct Left chasing Enron like a lynch mob
The scene is so familar. Up on the high bench are the accusers, a full row of them, mirthless and merciless in their righteousness.
The accused down on the floor is raw meat. His actions reek with "stupidity," "evasiveness," and outright "derelictions." No judge could use such words before a trial, but the accusers warm to their work, outdoing each other in rage and resentment on behalf of the "people." Prosecutors in the Moscow purge trials of the 1930s were good at this sort of work. The wretch before them is a "disgrace to the system," the sort who "gives capitalism a bad name."
And the accused can only sit there and take it. He dare not show anger, leap to his feet, and tell the inquisitors to go to blazes. "Why do you abuse me like this in public?" he would be naive to ask. "My children may be watching on television. This is America."
Such is the scene created, all unwittingly, by Congress nowadays.
Our legislative branch hasn't had a good "-gate" to strut its ethics over lately. Neither has that paragon of the true, just and beautiful, the news business. What else can explain the prejudgment, harsh and unanimous, they are thundering down on the heads of bankrupt Enron Corp.â¢
See how they "take the Fifth," these trembling moguls apparently caught with their hands in the cookie jar⢠The Left hasn't enjoyed a told-you-so as rich as this in a long time.
But here's the irony. So much overwhelming force is lined up on the politically correct side it begins to howl like a lynch mob. Where is the ACLU when it's a Chief Financial Officer getting strung up before trial?
Somehow this process, public excoriation by an infuriated Congress, may yet make underdogs of the crew that rode Enron to the clouds and to the dust.
The indignation is too early and the evidence not in yet. What if it turns out Enron's tarnished brass didn't do that much that wasn't strictly legal, even if ill-considered and overreaching⢠What if its decision-makers, though perhaps too clever by half, simply took advantage of all the bookkeeping acrobatics the laws of the land allowed⢠Laws made by, er, ahem, Congress.
All right, so the wonder boys set up a suspicious lot of "partnerships" to spread risks. And to keep debt off the parent's balance sheet. Perfectly legal, maybe.
And what if the top guys did sell optioned stock, for diversification and estate-planning⢠Under the right conditions, no problem.
And doesn't any company (or any union) that funnels big bucks to one political party (and the other, too, just to be sure) expect that its lobbyists will at least have "access" to policymakersâ¢
This is not to say the Enron story isn't smelly.
Some things are wrong, always. Shredding documents when investigators want them is a pretty good example. So is publicly telling stockholders and jobholders business is great when it isn't. And buying or selling stock on information known only to insiders. There are penalties for all of those.
But in Enron's case the rush to judgment seems suspiciously fast, fierce and unanimous. Such indignation! Here's a gang tackle that lawmakers, news media, and late-night comedians can all pile onto.
But it wasn't Enron that deregulated the nation's utilities, which had given America the world's most reliable electric, gas, phone and water service. Come to think of it, it was Congress and the state legislatures, noâ¢
Nor was it Enron's "greed" that made it impossible for many industries (like steel) to continue their "defined benefit" pensions and first-dollar health care benefits. It was far-out union contracts and crazy inflation in health care costs. The latter has roots in the lawsuit madness of medical malpractice; take a bow, trial lawyers.
Thousands of companies, not just Enron, switched to "defined contribution" 401(k) retirement plans. These have generally been OK when invested in diversified stocks or mutual funds. It was crazy for thousands of Enron employees to put all their 401(k) holdings in that one company's volatile shares. But was this their decision or the company's⢠And was this fateful error artificially pushed by tax benefits badly designed in Congress?
So the indignation of Enron's accusers, who hold these hearings after all for legislative not prosecutorial purposes, may turn out in close proportion to their own slipshod lawmaking.
And don't Congressmen seem to sit a lot higher at televised hearings than they used to⢠Famous testimonies of the past, John D. Rockefeller's and J.P. Morgan's, played out before lawmakers at floor level, more or less. Likewise when then-Sen. Harry Truman, or Joe McCarthy or Estes Kefauver grilled a witness.
Nowadays our senators and reps elevate themselves as high as the Supreme Court, and typically open a hearing by making everybody hear them first, in full dudgeon. If anything could make those of us out in TV land secretly root for the Enron guys, it's a row of Congressmen spouting ethics.