I noticed that dodo couldn't refute the issues discussed in the Wal-Mart
thread (given that she's a clueless liberal who relies more on her feeelings
than actually thinking out the issues, I wasn't surprised), so now she's
trying to beat the old dead Enron horse by associating it withe the Bush
Administration. Fine with me, as I look forward to the opportunity to remind
her that she's out of her league when she tries to discuss anything that
involves any reasoning processes...

"toto" <scarecrow@wicked.witch> wrote in message
news:8tojgv0tqpr679mjmb5i5sc13a1gt0r04p@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 17:44:28 GMT, "Stan de SD"
> <standesd@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >"toto" <scarecrow@wicked.witch> wrote in message
> >news:03khgv0ub20evolfc80sbdqfgc3d0jjcn1@4ax.com.. .
> >> On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 00:47:27 GMT, "Stan de SD"
> >> <standesd@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Sorry, but the Enron pressuring in India started in the early 1990's,
> >during
> >> >Clinton's FIRST term - ROTFLMAO!!!
> >>
> >> So what?. Bush continued the bailouts of Enron.
> >
> >What bailouts? Have any dollar amounts, or cites? Or is this another
> >toto-ism?
> >
> >
> Bailouts may be the wrong term.

Of course it is, since you don't have any facts to back up your silly claim,
you ignorant *****.

>It's the fact that he is helping
> to keep the crooks out of jail that disturbs me.

Facts? Show me any proof that he is doing so. If anything, the Bush
administration seems to be making more of an effort to clean up this type of
stuff than the Clintons did, given that the Justice Department is at least
investigating accounting practices and filing charges. So, dodo, did you
miss these, or are you merely choosing to ignore them?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2003
WWW.USDOJ.GOV
CRM
(202) 514-2008
TDD (202) 514-1888


JUSTICE DEPARTMENT EXPANDS CHARGES AGAINST FORMER ENRON CFO ANDREW FASTOW,
BROADBAND EXECUTIVES




WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Department of Justice today announced expanded
criminal charges have been filed against former Enron Chief Financial
Officer Andrew Fastow, his wife and seven other Enron officials in
connection with an ongoing criminal investigation into the company's
multibillion-dollar collapse.

Fastow, who was originally indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2002
on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, was named in a
109-count superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury in
Houston, Texas. The new indictment, which also charges former Enron
corporate Treasurer Ben Glisan and former finance executive Dan Boyle,
includes charges of securities fraud, insider trading, falsification of
Enron's accounting records, tax fraud, and self-dealing. The indictment also
seeks forfeiture of self-dealing profits from Fastow and Glisan.

The grand jury also returned a 218-count superseding indictment expanding
charges relating to Enron's failed Internet division, Enron Broadband
Services ("EBS"). Previously, the grand jury indicted two EBS executives,
Kevin Howard and Michael Krautz, for their roles in a transaction that
allegedly enabled Enron to book more than $100 million in fraudulent
revenues. The new indictment, which includes securities fraud, wire fraud
and money laundering charges, alleges that former EBS Chairman and co-Chief
Executive Officer Kenneth Rice, former President and co-CEO Joseph Hirko,
former Chief Operating Officer Kevin Hannon, and former Senior Vice
Presidents Scott Yeager and Rex Shelby, together with Howard and Krautz and
others, orchestrated a long-running scheme to defraud the investing public
and others through a series of false statements and press releases that
portrayed EBS as a resoundingly successful business. In fact, according to
the indictment, EBS's business never got beyond the development stage, never
generated any significant recurring revenue, and was abandoned by Enron in
mid-2001, before Enron itself filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 2, 2001.

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2003/May/03_crm_268.htm

Don't Shred on Me: Justice Department to Charge Andersen


Report says government will charge auditor with obstruction of justice
for shredding Enron-related documents. Plus: Coke takes $1 billion
impairment charge, and Bush unveils plan to crack down on accounting fraud.


Stephen Taub, CFO.com

March 08, 2002

The Justice Department may indict Andersen as early as today for its
role in shredding key documents related to the Enron Corp. investigation,
according to several published reports.

U.S. prosecutors are expected to bring obstruction of justice charges
against Andersen to a grand jury in Texas, according to Bloomberg.

As you recall, management at Andersen acknowledged in January that
documents related to its audits of Enron were destroyed in the energy
trader's Houston office after the SEC began investigating Enron. Soon after,
Enron fired Andersen as the company's auditor.

David Duncan, who headed up Andersen's audits of Enron, has told
congressional investigators that he directed the shredding on orders from
Andersen executives working out of the accountancy's Chicago headquarters.
Andersen management, however, insists it had nothing to do with the
shredding, and that the document destruction actually ended on November 9
after the accounting firm received a subpoena from the SEC.

And how does Enron management feel about the Andersen indictment? Who
knows? "We don't comment on rumors and speculation," Enron spokesman Patrick
Dorton told Bloomberg.

Andersen has been in a fierce struggle to survive since its role in
Enron's collapse became known. In recent weeks about 30 clients have fired
Andersen as their auditor, including 3 of its top 10 clients, according to
Bowman's Accounting Report. And yesterday Delta Air Lines ended a
relationship with Andersen that dates back to 1949.

President Bush Gets Tough on Execs
As we anticipated on Thursday, President Bush later in the day called
for a series of reforms to hold top executives much more accountable for
their corporate actions.

"Reform should begin with accountability, and reform should start at
the top," he said, speaking at the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Ceremony in Washington, D.C. "To properly inform shareholders and the
investing public, we must adopt better standards of disclosure and
accounting practices for all of Corporate America."

For example, Bush said CEOs should relinquish their bonuses if a
financial statement turns out to be "grossly inaccurate, or the result of
serious misconduct."

He also said corporate officers should be required to reveal trades in
their company's stock within two days. "The SEC should be able to punish
corporate leaders who clearly abuse their powers, by banning them from ever
serving again as officers or directors of publicly-held corporations," added
Bush.

The President also called for reforms within the accounting
profession. He stressed the need for an independent regulatory board to hold
accounting firms to the highest ethical standards and called on the
Securities and Exchange Commission to exercise more oversight of accounting
standards. "The SEC should also do more to guard against conflicts of
interest, requiring, for example, that an external auditor not be permitted
to provide internal audits to the same client," added Bush. (For a look at
SEC chairman Harvey Pitt's plan to create a new accounting oversight board,
see "POB Out, PAB In."

In addition, President Bush said auditors should do more than use
minimum standards when evaluating a company. Instead, the President thinks
auditors should compare a company's financial controls with the best
industry practices, and then give those findings to a company's internal
audit committee.



http://www.cfo.com/article/1,5309,68...%7C100,00.html

> Begin restore (note - I took out the x-no-archive so you can't
> complain that it isn't on google)

???

> These facts elude your attention, Stan?
> Did you delete them because you cannot read and answer them?

What "facts" were those, dodo? The alleged "bailouts" by Bush that you
couldn't substantiate? Or the supposed "fact" that he is "helping to keep
the crooks out of jail" that runs completely counter to the fact that he is
pushing the Justice Department for aggressive prosection of such cases, as
listed above?

I also noticed that you reposted some of the below items and snipped my
original responses. How disingenouous of you, dodo. But then again, you will
do anything you can to avoid admitting you are way over your head, right?

> During the 2000 presidential campaign, the Center for Public Integrity
> named Enron as the single largest patron of Bush's entire political
> career.

OK, show us the links with the amounts, as well as the data regarding any
donations made to Clinton and other Dems. Can you do it? Here's some
information for you that may be of interest:

a.. Top current representatives receiving Enron contributions since 1989:
Ken Bentsen (D-Texas), $42,750; Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), $38,000; Joe
Barton (R-Texas), $28,909; Tom DeLay (R-Texas), $28,900; and Martin Frost
(D-Texas), $24,250. (Source: Center for Responsive Politics).

Note that Enron was making donations to TX politicians of all stripes. If
Bush received money, it probably has more do with being from Texas than any
specific policies or favoritism.

> U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and White House economist
> Lawrence Lindsey were paid Enron advisers before Bush appointed them
> to his administration. Bush tapped Enron lobbyist and former Montana
> Governor Marc Racicot to head the national Republican Party in late
> 2000.
>
> Bush named Ken Lay to his Energy Department transition team and
> resisted calls for price controls when Enron and other power companies
> were accused of price gouging to exploit the West Coast power crisis.
>
> As Enron's crisis worsened through the first nine months of the Bush
> presidency, Ken Lay got Bush's help in three principal ways:

Here's another one you snipped, while claiming I didn't answer. Did you
knowingly snip this, or are you merely going senile due to your advanced
age?

> --Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the
> soaring price of electricity in California at a time when Enron was
> artificially driving up the price of electricity by manipulating
> supply. Bush's rear-guard action against price caps bought Enron and
> other energy traders extra time to gouge hundreds of millions of
> dollars from California's consumers.

Bush opposed the feds getting involved in California's energy mess, which
was a good call on his part. That was strictly the mess of Gray-Out Davis
and the eco-NIMBYs.

> --Bush granted Lay broad influence over the administration's energy
> policies, including the choice of key regulators to oversee Enron's
> businesses. The chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
> was suddenly replaced in 2001 after he began to delve into Enron's
> complex derivative-financing schemes.

What a crock of shit, and you know it. The current chairman, Patrick Henry
Wood, III was nominated to the Commission by Bush and confirmed by the
Senate in April 2001.
http://www.ferc.gov/About/Commission/biopic/woodbio.htm The previous
chairman, Curtis Hebert, got the interim job by default because he was the
only GOP member on the FERC board when the Democratic members handed in
their customary resignations in January 2001. Given that it is customary for
presidents to make their own appointments, this was hardly an issue of
anyone being "suddenly replaced". In addition, the record shows that Wood
has investigated this issue at the request of Republican comgressional
members, although investigation of "complex derivative-financing schemes" is
more properly an issue of the SEC and the Justice Department.

As far as Hebert investigating "Enron's complex derivative-financing
schemes", can you produce proof of this, given that he was only FERC
chairman for 3 months, Enron was still ostensibly solvent, and that such
work was not his job? Perhaps you were thinking of Clinton's appointed
chairman, James Hoecker, who ran the FERC from 1997-2001, when he stepped
down? No record of him investigating such "schemes" either...

An interesting side note is that Hebert, a protege of Trent Lott, was more
of a free-market advocate than Wood, and advocated absolutely minimal
federal interference in the energy market (for example, he refused CA
Senator Barbara Boxer's request to retroactively regulate energy rates from
out-of-state-providers), something that Wood certainly has not. Are the Dems
now complaining that Wood is too much of a bureaucrat for them, given that
Hebert came under too much pressure due to his "laissez-faire" outlook?

FERC Votes to Revoke Enron's Energy-Trading Privileges
Wednesday June 25, 3:00 pm ET
By Campion Walsh

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a series of
orders in response to staff findings that there were indications of
widespread gaming and other forms of potential manipulation in Western
energy markets during the region's 2000-2001 price spikes.
In the most drastic penalty, the commission ordered Enron Corp.'s authority
to sell electricity at market-based rates and natural gas under blanket
certificates be revoked as a result of the company's market misbehavior.

"This is the first time the commission has imposed the so-called death
penalty," FERC Chairman Pat Wood III said of the order on bankrupt Enron.

In a move affecting 60 companies supplying power to California, FERC ordered
an administrative law judge at the commission hold formal hearings to
consider evidence the firms engaged in gaming and "anomalous market
behavior." The judge is to consider the evidence with a view to the possible
remedy of the companies turning over unjust profits from such trading
activities.

FERC also clarified which activities constitute prohibited gaming and which
are legitimate arbitrage or would otherwise not be prosecuted.

http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/030625/1500001094_1.html

> --Bush had his National Security Council staff organize an
> administration-wide campaign to pressure the Indian government to
> accommodate Enron, which wanted to sell its generating plant in
> Dabhol, India, for $2.3 billion. Bush administration pressure on India
> over the Dabhol plant continued even after Sept. 11, when India's
> support was needed for the war on terrorism. The administration's
> threats against India on Enron's behalf didn't stop until Nov. 8.

Again, this started under Clinton - in this case, Bush was merely
maintaining the status quo on the previous administration's policies. I
mentioned this in a previous post, but you chose to ignore it as well:

POWER FOR SALE
Clinton 'sweetheart' deal
sped up Enron's collapse
After investing $1 billion in India plant, Lay couldn't get state utility
board to pay

By Paul Sperry
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON - A so-called "sweetheart" deal between Enron Corp. and India -
brokered with the help of Clinton administration officials during
controversial trade junkets in the mid-'90s - ultimately soured and sped the
energy giant's collapse, analysts say.

After investing more than $1 billion to help build a huge power plant near
Bombay, Enron had problems last year getting paid for power generated by the
plant - even after sources say former President Clinton lobbied Indian
officials on Enron's behalf during his April visit to India.

Desperate, Enron chairman Kenneth L. Lay on Sept. 14 fired off a letter to
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee threatening legal action to
recover claims of up to $5 billion related to the Dabhol Power Co.

A month later, on Oct. 15, Lay called Commerce Secretary Don Evans, pleading
for help with the nightmarish project.

The next day, Enron stunned Wall Street by announcing its first loss in more
than four years. In the third quarter, the Houston-based company hemorrhaged
$618 million.

Enron's once-high-flying stock nose-dived, robbing many of its workers of
their retirement nest eggs, and the company filed the biggest bankruptcy in
U.S. history.

The gas-fired Dabhol project, which stopped production and construction in
May, had been a black mark on Enron's books from the start, analysts say.

"No doubt about it, it was always the trouble child," said Carl Kirst, an
analyst with Merrill Lynch Global Securities in Houston.

He says the Indian deal was "one of many factors" that hurt Enron.

"But clearly it was one of the better-known pressure points on the stock,"
Kirst said in an interview with WorldNetDaily.

Costly boondoggle

Wall Street didn't think much of the deal when it was announced in 1995 by
the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and Lay during a trade mission to
India. The more than $3 billion power-plant project was the single-largest
foreign investment ever made in India, which was just opening up its economy
to outsiders.

"In the mid-'90s, not many people were venturing into the
international-development market like this, certainly not in India," Kirst
said. "So there was a good deal of risk built in."

Of the four investors in the project, which is the largest gas-fired plant
in the world, Enron put up the biggest stake -"north of $1 billion," Kirst
said.

Phase 1 of the project yielded an anemic 7-percent return on investment, he
says, contributing roughly under a nickel a year to Enron's earnings per
share.

That was bad enough.

But by the time Phase 2, twice as big as Phase 1, was nearly completed, the
local Indian electricity board reneged on payments, claiming the power bills
were too high. If Phase 2 had come on line, the board would have owed a
projected $1 billion-plus a year starting this year. Enron inked a 20-year
contract with the state board.

"So here at a net investment of well over $1 billion, Enron almost had Phase
2 completed, but they never got anything for it," Kirst said.

And the poor returns from Phase 1 weren't covering the cost of developing
Phase 2, he adds.

In short, Enron had a costly boondoggle on its hands, one that was starting
to punish its financial statement.

"You can't have over $1 billion of investment on your books and continue to
earn only 7 percent, at best, and not open yourself up to write-downs,"
Kirst said.

The best thing Enron could have done is unload the project, he says.

But Lay couldn't find suitors.

"Enron hoped, ideally, that someone would buy them out at their book value -
roughly $1 billion," Kirst said. "That is, shall we say, optimistic at this
point."

There have been rumors of buyout offers of between $600 million and $800
million circulating since September, he says. Possible buyers mentioned in
the past include Reliance, one of India's largest industrial concerns, and
China Light and Power Co.

But nothing has panned out.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise. The huge project was never popular.

Even back in 1993 - when Indian officials first proposed the idea of
converting to gas as a main power source for Maharashtra, one of India's
most industrialized states and home to Bombay, the country's financial
center - economists were skeptical.

The World Bank, for example, concluded such a project was "not economically
viable," warning that the plants would produce power too costly for the
state.

The New York Times, moreover, quoted a senior Indian official who said
anyone who invested in such a project was "bankrupting yourself knowingly,
willingly, deliberately."

So why did Lay press ahead? Political opportunism.

'Sweetheart deal'

On May 19, 1994, Clinton met here with former Indian Prime Minister P.V.
Rao. Rao told Clinton that India was interested in opening its centrally
controlled economy up to American corporate investors.

Clinton, in turn, instructed then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary to lead a
delegation of corporate executives to India on a trade mission.

"The mission marked the first official visit to India by a U.S. cabinet
secretary in many years," Energy's internal trip report states.

Enron executives joined O'Leary on the July 1994 junket, whereupon they
planted the seeds of the ill-fated Dabhol deal.

Then in January 1995, Lay accompanied Brown on the Commerce trade mission
that helped seal the deal.

The Clinton administration got two federal export-finance agencies - the
Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. - to help
underwrite the project by kicking in nearly $400 million in loans.

During the final negotiations, Clinton aide Thomas "Mack" McLarty rode herd
on the project in Washington for Lay, his old energy-industry buddy.

He tracked the progress of Clinton's ambassador to India, Frank Wisner, who
was helping speed the deal along.

Even Clinton pitched in to help his golfing partner, Lay, by sending McLarty
memos and articles on the project.

(The ex-president's lobbying for the Enron deal even continued into the Bush
administration, sources close to the Dabhol project say, when he visited
Indian officials in Mumbai, India, in April. At the time, Enron was fighting
the state electricity board for back payments.)

In June 1996, India gave final OK to Lay's project. Four days before the
approval, Enron gave $100,000 to Clinton's party.

McLarty and Wisner were not forgotten. Lay snatched up McLarty for Enron
when he left the White House. And Wisner got a seat on the board of an Enron
subsidiary when he stepped down as ambassador in 1997.

Lay and McLarty have denied the Democratic Party gifts were tied to the
Indian deal. And Wisner called "foolishness" any suggestion his board seat
was payback for helping Enron close the deal in India.

But in India, local foes of the Dabhol project regarded it as a "sweetheart
deal" from the start, and even charged that Enron bribed Indian officials.
The charge, which Enron has denied, was never proved.

For his part, Lay blames the recession, not any bad deals he made, for his
company's collapse.

Ironically, for all the talk of Lay's cronyism with President Bush, this
administration has been relatively hands-off, at least when it comes to
aiding Enron in its overseas deals.

No Enron executives got seats on last year's sole Bush administration trade
mission, which was to Russia.

And in March, Bush, who held no Enron stock directly in his 1999 financial
disclosure, proposed slashing the next fiscal year's budget of the Ex-Im
Bank by 25 percent. What's more, he proposed cutting the subsidies of the
Overseas Private Investment Corp.

Under the Clinton administration, Enron had benefited famously from both
agencies, which support corporate investments abroad.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=26112


> >> During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Enron was a trading powerhouse.
> >> The firm, which had started as a US natural gas pipeline company,
> >> started trading energies, then launched into new markets, including
> >> metals, paper, water, weather and bandwidth. For a time, it seamed
> >> that everything Enron touched turned to gold. The firm attracted some
> >> of the best talent, first from the energy industry, and then from Wall
> >> Street. In 2001, the Enron empire collapsed. The firm's bankruptcy was
> >> the largest in US history, surpassed seven months later by WorldCom's
> >> bankruptcy.
> >>
> end restore
>
> Bush's relationship with Enron goes bact to the mid-1980s, btw.

Whereupon dodo digs through the archive and finds the unmentionable - that a
guy in the well drilling industry in Texas in the 1980's at one time
actually had a business relationship with an energy producing company in
Texas during the same time frame. Shock of Shocks - proof that there must
have been some CONSPIRACY involved! (ROTLMLAO!!!)

As much as you knee-jerk liberals HATE oil/energy companies, big business,
and Texas, the fact that GW may have done business with Enron at one point
is HARDLY proof of illegal acts and wrongdoing. The fact that Enron hasn't
received much in special favors with Bush and Wood, compared with what they
got out of Clinton, would be enough to let sensible people know that they
are looking for conspiracy in the wrong place...

Dodo, you are truly a kook, but thanks for posting - we all need a laugh now
and then...

"Roger" <rogerfx@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%PoOa.226$Qp.23524581@newssvr14.news.prodigy. com...
> "Stan de SD" <standesd@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:JmiOa.87558$Io.7681942@newsread2.prod.itd.ear thlink.net...
> >
> > "hc23hc" <hc23hc@art.line> wrote in message
> > news:3F094A2A.649C4DF6@art.line...
> > > Roger wrote:
> > > >
> > > > "Stan de SD" <standesd@earthlink.net> wrote
> > > > >
> > > > > No. First of all, it wasn't successful, and secondly, it was an
> > example of
> > > > > the negligence of the SEC under Clinton's watch.
> > > >
> > > > Are you saying that corporations are not responsible for their own
> > actions?
> > > > That they are only responsible if aggressively monitored by the
> > government?
> > > > That if the government doesn't watch every move they make, they turn
> > corupt
> > > > and steal money from their shareholders and "customers?" Sounds like
> you
> > > > agree with me.
> > >
> > >
> > > It's exactly what Stain was saying, but almost certainly not
> > > what he thought he was saying. Unless maybe, after a marathon
> > > weekend of lurid, disoriented trolling of usenet (hopped up on
> > > copious quantities of formaldehyde-spiked canned beer he found
> > > on sale at a nearby K-Mart) Stain was suddenly struck by the
> > > mother of all epiphanies... along lines similar to these :
> >
> > Notice how hc won't jump in until the other idiots show (Roger, toto)
show
> > up, since she's only comfortable discussing issues among her peers...
>
> What in what I said would lead you to believe I'm an idiot?

Do you want all the links, or will pointing you to Google Groups be
sufficient?