Former Tyco Heads Found Guilty!

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Odin


Ken Lay will never be prosocuted because Bush will not risk having his and Cheney's shady deals with Lay ripped into the open for all to see.

You stold my line .
Maybe our next Pres. will not need Lay and will be willing to go after him.

[Joseph]

.

[Joseph]

Sorry.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
nice. some justice. now what about enron?

What about it?

Ken Rice, Lea Fastow, Andrew Fastow, Dan Boyle, and over 15 others have plead guilty or been convicted in re: to the collapse.

Over $10,000,000,000 in various fines and civil awards have been paid by the various financial institutions that Enron used, including a $2.1 billion settlement by Citigroup just this week, $2.2 billion from JP Morgan, and others. Over $500,000,000 has been paid by various directors and officers of the company to settle just some of the number of civil suits brought about by Enron clients and shareholders.

Lay and Skilling are still under indictment, and their trials are upcoming. They'll likely plead, though, since the government has already flipped the person who actually committed the crimes that brought Enron down.

Odin's comment is just ignorant of the actual facts of the case. Just as MrFuns current avatar is possibly the most idiotic political avatar ever to grace this forum - and that's saying a lot.

[Dinner]

It sure would have been nice to get the big cheeses less then half a decade after their crimes were exposed. It sure seems like the law men weren't moving as quickly as they could have. I guess it was because they didn't want to make any mistakes but justice should be swifter then that.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by JohnT

Just as MrFuns current avatar is possibly the most idiotic political avatar ever to grace this forum - and that's saying a lot.

My avatar is only idiotic to those who voted for Bush.

[Dinner]

I like his avatar. It makes a very interesting and true statement about how close Bush and Kenny-boy were. They went way back and Bush never found a "suggestion" on legislation which Bush didn't like just like Kenny always found time to give a huge chech to his pal shrub.

[JohnT]

No it doesn't. There is no credible evidence to suggest that Ken Lay meant any more to Bush than any other big money donor. The fact that Lay backed John Ashcroft in the early 2000 primaries doesn't help your argument either. Nor do the facts that the Enron crimes happened on Clinton's watch, under Clinton's SEC, and started to collapse about a month after Bush took office.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by JohnT
Just as MrFuns current avatar is possibly the most idiotic political avatar ever to grace this forum - and that's saying a lot.

I'm not sure that's possible.

[mrmitchell]

No it doesn't. There is no credible evidence to suggest that Ken Lay meant any more to Bush than any other big money donor. The fact that Lay backed John Ashcroft in the early 2000 primaries doesn't help your argument either. Nor do the facts that the Enron crimes happened on Clinton's watch, under Clinton's SEC, and started to collapse about a month after Bush took office.

All the whole Clinton thing that you're trying to put together says is that whoever's the President in charge could not have sped up or slowed down the unraveling of the company.

But yeah, Ken Lay and Enron were Bush's largest donors in all his gubernatorial campaigns, IIRC, and also very contributable donors in 2000...you paint things nicer than they are.

[JohnT]

Ken Lay contributed no more than he was legally allowed in 2000. And the cite about Lay being Bush's "largest donors in all his gubernatorial campaigns" is patently false:

Indeed, one of the reasons the Enron scandal burst from the business page onto the front page was its political dimension: Lay was said to be a good friend of the new President. In truth, although George W. Bush gave Lay the chummy nickname Kenny Boy, Lay was never especially close to him... *

But Lay made a fatal miscalculation with George W. Bush that permanently strained the relationship. In 1993, when Bush was preparing to run for governor of Texas, he had made the ritual pilgrimage to Houston to get Lay's blessing. Bush asked Lay to serve as the Houston finance chairman of his campaign. Lay, however, rebuffed the candidate, explaining that it wouldn't be appropriate since he was then serving as chairman of the Business Council for Ann Richards, the Democratic governor. Richards was a popular governor and Bush a neophyte politician; nobody gave him much of a chance of winning. Somewhat condescendingly, Lay expressed the hope that even if Bush were defeated, the experience "wouldn't prevent him from running again." Still, both he and his wife wrote checks to Bush for $12,500**. Rebecca Mark and Jeff Skilling also contributed to the Bush campaign.

As election day drew near and the polls showed that Bush might well score an upset, Lay called Bush's finance chairman and said his wife was going to write another check for $12,500. Although Enron and the Lays*** ended up giving more to Bush than to Richards, Lay's lukewarm embrace left its mark. George W. Bush's finance chairman that year was Rich Kinder. Years later, when George W. Bush was running for President against Al Gore, Lay was named one of the Pioneers: people who had raised at least $100,000 for Bush's presidential campaign. The leader of the Harris County Pioneers, however, was once again Kinder.

Cite: The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, copy. 2003, pp.87-88

To clarify: I'm not saying that Lay didn't support Bush nor am I arguing that he didn't raise or donate large amounts of money to his campaign. However all evidence shows that Lay meant no more (and actually somewhat less) to Bush than any other big-money supporter, and never had the sort of relationship that so many people want to ascribe to them.

Secondly, it is a fact that the SEC under Arthur Levitt (a Bill Clinton appointee) grew so lax in its regulatory duties that not only Enron, but Tyco, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Arthur Anderson, and the whole morass of fraudulant accounting practices that was revealed in 2001/2002 occurred in the 1990's. Were it just Enron, it could easily be argued that the nature of the Clinton Administration**** in charge had nothing to do with it. But it wasn't - it was pervasive, and such an argument grows very difficult to refute.

*Skipped portion details Lay's relationship with George H. W. Bush
**each
*** Note that the authors had to switch from talking about Lay, singular, to including all contributions made by Enron employees in order to make this statement.
**** My use of "Clinton" in the earlier post should be thought of as a reference to his administration, not the man himself. My apologies for not making that clearer in my haste to type a reply.

[mrmitchell]

Ken Lay contributed no more than he was legally allowed in 2000. And the cite about Lay being Bush's "largest donors in all his gubernatorial campaigns" is patently false:

"Ken Lay and Enron"

Now to cover my ass if you pull up another book in a couple minutes, it might have been all his gubernatorial campaigns put together, but sure enough I know I read it, and from a respectable place (no Drudge Report, New York Times, Newsweek here.)

[JohnT]

I've read 6 books, over 2,500 pages, on the Enron matter (not to mention the hundreds of newspaper articles) and not a one can point to any especially close relationship between GW Bush and Lay/Enron.

[Dinner]

I love how John tries to cover for shrub.

Face it man because it is a fact. Kenny-boy & Enron (which Kenny-boy ran and used as his personal bank account) were Bush's biggest donors when he was governor of Texas plus they dug deep to give shrub cash in 2000. Bush and him went all the way back to his unsuccessful Congress bid in the 1970's. They were close friends and Kenny showered shrub with cash and shrub showered Kenny-boy with favorable legislation. This was extremely well documented when the Enron mess was front page news.

[JohnT]

Kenny-boy & Enron (which Kenny-boy ran and used as his personal bank account) were Bush's biggest donors when he was governor of Texas* plus they dug deep to give shrub cash in 2000. Bush and him went all the way back to his unsuccessful Congress bid in the 1970's*. They were close friends and Kenny showered shrub with cash and shrub showered Kenny-boy with favorable legislation*. This was extremely well documented when the Enron mess was front page news.

1. You're mixing your Bushs.

2. Cites on the astericked points? I've already provided mine - perhaps you can do so too - and let's see something a little more credible than a slapped-together website, OK?

I'm really interested in the cite about Lay supporting GHW Bush's run for Congress in the 1970's, given that Bush was the Director of the CIA during the Nixon administration, didn't run for Congress at all during that decade, and from 1973-1980 Lay lived and worked in Florida. I'm really interested in that cite.