An Attack on Free Speech

[wkmac]

EZ,

IMO, your above quote on Enron further proves the point. I know, your asking "What The friendried" chicken and I'll just leave it at that.

Enron for one engaged in accounting irregulatories that were documented throughout the 1990's and the price fixing among the many Texas energy companies as well was during this time. Buried amongst your claims may be a dislike of republicans and I can share your dislike but also the democrats also were just as much the night watchman and where were they at?

IMO, one of the principled reasons Enron and the Energy fixing was allowed was because many years ago gov't stepped in and decided that America's domestic policy would focus in the area of energy sources of Oil and in gasoline and diesel for transportation and for home and business, it would be electric generation via coal, some hydro and in latter years a bit of nuclear. One such example would be FDR's REA or Rural Electrification Act where FDR want the country wired for electricity. Noble goal but it gave market advantage to those in position in that day and over the years as this means became more embedded across the public sector, the gov't in many ways subsidized this policy which gave them further economic advantage and thus other market means and ways found it hard if not impossible to enter the market arena.

Oil via gasoline and diesel further embedded itself by becoming a revenue stream for the gov't in the way of Fuel excise taxes. One of the current culprits of alternative fueled vehicles is how to derive the same amount of revenue stream as they have from oil based products. You've got an electric car which charges up at the house, so in the mind of a cnetral gov't policy planner, how does he/she tax you for your highway use taxes? Yeah, kinda tough at this point.

The various energy industries early on positioned themselves with gov't to in other words, kinda corner the market. Once they cornered it, in came the abuse and people started to howl. Gov't already had a vested interest and even an economic one so the first rule of governance, what you have created you can also regulate, they did. Now the businesses fought back so the gov't said, OK, here's the deal, well regulate but will grant you monopoly status and bar entry into the market by others. And for a number of years this was the happy medium we had and my guess it's this "Leave It To Beaver" world in which you'd like to return. Me personally, I'd chose Mayberry but I think most folks would tend to agree with the good life of regulated monopolies. It wasn't just energy either as we saw this with airlines, trucking and many other areas across the board.

Problem was with energy, the 70's introduced a market force that could not be controlled and that was Mideast oil and OPEC. Now we have a paradigm shift so in the 80's the business world saw a much larger and broader market outside the US borders so they started to calmer to gov't about it's regulatory process. Much of this began in the 1980's and although some would credit Reagan on the Repub. side while the democrats blame Reagan, you must also concede that from all of that time the democrats controlled the House and except for a brief 2 years they also controlled the Senate so where was their oversight? If Reagan was to blame in the 1980's as having the power to do this, is it not also fair to blame Clinton for non action as he refused to change it back?

Now here we are in the 21st century and still generating power via a centralized grid created in the late 19th century and we find ourselve held hostage to a gathering of people who hold sway over a product we started using for energy back in the 19th century as well. Why have we maintained this course for so long? Well you wanted a gov't regulated market and they had it good so while the rush to change? Funny how this all looks now in 2008' as we are hostage to a gathering of folks who don't like us to much and as we traverse through out daily lives, we pay ransom to those very people who in turn use that money to attack us and undermind our very lives. Had the gov't stayed completely out of the market from day one as they should have, I think it very likely we would not be where we are today.

Someone running for President keeps talking about "blowback" to which many call it crazy and him a nut. History sure paints a diferent picture when you look at it across the entire spectrum. Sen. Gramm didn't create Enron, we did by demanding gov't do things or allowing them to do things they should have never done in the first place.

It's funny that in the late 1800's we had what we called "Robber Barons" who controlled the railroad which by the way was built via gov't subsizidation. The the early 20th century was passed laws to rid us of the "robber barons" but ironic most of this law was written by robber baron operatives and paid for elected leaders. Then came the mega-corp. and again they grew in a nice controlled gov't environment but we calmered so what have they done? We had allowed them to grow in such a way that they had no more national loyality. As we calmered for more controls, they moved off-shore and used the wide open global markets to not only further enrich themselves but also to turn back at our leaders and tell them they own the game and it's either play ball or else. What did we do? Play ball of course. What heppens when a foreign market becomes threatened by the locals? Who rushes in to put down those locals in order to protect the market? What happens when some upstart local decides he can fly an airplane into a buiding? What happens when a country's leader decides a neighbor hasn't played ball right and invades and it so happens these 2 countries sit on top of a huge rich commodity these globalist need and a certain country near and dear to our hearts via gov't policy has a huge addition too?

Yes friends, it's Blowback, nothing but blowback!

JMHO.

They should bring back the old show "Connections" on TV and do one "From Rockerfeller to 9/11". That'd be interesting!

 

[ezmoney5150]

Buried amongst your claims may be a dislike of republicans and I can share your dislike but also the democrats also were just as much the night watchman and where were they at?

Quite the contrary. I belong to a political action committe and have supported many republicans. Mostly local but Steve LaTourette is one on the federal level. He actually supports the middle class. I don't agree with every vote he has cast but for the most part he's on our side. I agree that dems are just as bad. I look at candidates for where their money comes from. That will tell you how they will vote. Texas Repubs are the worst. They would privatize everything but the government. And thats only because they would be working for minimum wage and they wont stand for that.

 

[brett636]

AV8 makes a good point there EZ although I think we all share your dislike of the 4 examples you did give. No argument at least form me on that.

The problem with the regulations are that the people who regulate are beauracrats. Take for example Enron. When you have the fox guarding the hen house there is bound to be problems.

read this:


Source: http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0201180272jan18.story
The collapse of Enron Corp. has drawn new scrutiny of a powerful Washington couple who between them played prominent roles in deregulating energy trading to the benefit of the company.
The couple, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and his wife, Wendy Gramm, who serves on Enron's board of directors, both know Enron's top executive, Kenneth Lay--and have benefited financially from their relationship with him.
Phil Gramm has collected more than $97,000 in campaign contributions from Enron, according to the advocacy group Public Citizen. Wendy Gramm was paid between $915,000 and $1.8 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends over the past eight years, the group concluded.
"What has all of this bought" Enron, asked Sheila Krumholz, research director for the Center for Responsive Politics. "Has this bought them cover?"
In the early 1990s, Wendy Gramm, then chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, moved to lift governmental oversight of energy contracts that Enron and other companies traded. A short time later, she was appointed to Enron's board of directors.
And in December 2000, Phil Gramm helped clear the way for a bill turning his wife's deregulation decision into law, something Enron had long wanted.
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act, of which Phil Gramm was a sponsor, contained a clause making the exemption law. Though it is now called the "Enron exemption" on Capitol Hill, a Gramm aide said the senator had not prepared that section of the bill.
"We were not involved with that part of it," said Larry Neal. Neither Wendy Gramm nor Phil Gramm could be reached for comment Thursday.
Wendy Gramm's role at Enron has drawn congressional attention in the wake of the Enron collapse. She was among those subpoenaed last week by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, headed by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).
Move to Enron's board
Although her husband is far better known, Wendy Gramm earned a place of power for herself in Washington. In 1988 she was appointed chairwoman of the trading commission by President Ronald Reagan. The commission at the time regulated futures trading in electricity, a business Enron hoped to dominate.
Shortly after President Bill Clinton took office in 1993, and Gramm was set to lose her chairmanship, she pushed through a rule deregulating the trading of energy contracts. Enron had been lobbying for exemption from regulation for months.
Six days later she resigned. Five weeks later she was on the board at Enron.
Wendy Gramm served on the audit committee of the board, meaning she was one of the directors responsible for Enron's financial reporting to investors.
Beginning in the late 1990s, Enron executives hid hundreds of millions of dollars in debt in supposedly unrelated partnerships. The result was to make Enron appear much stronger financially than it actually was.
When word of the partnerships surfaced and Enron acknowledged its debt last year, the company's stock price collapsed and it filed for bankruptcy.
The members of the audit committee were to oversee the partnerships, according to a report by Enron's law firm, Vinson & Elkins.
That means the partnerships were not merely a misstep by a lower-level executive but rather were supposed to be known to Wendy Graham and the top leaders of Enron.
"The audit committee knew of and approved of those partnerships," said Tyson Slocum, research director of Public Citizen's energy program.
Wendy Gramm has known Lay for years.
Both were considered possible candidates for Cabinet posts in the Reagan administration.
"Dr. Gramm's experience in financial and commodities markets will prove extremely valuable to Enron," Lay said in announcing her appointment to the board of directors. Wendy Gramm has a doctorate in economics.
Role in senator's campaign
At the time, Lay and Wendy Gramm said her decision favoring Enron played no role in the company's decision to hire her. Lay said it was "convoluted" to question the propriety of naming her to the board.
While federal regulations prohibited Wendy Gramm from lobbying the trade commission for a time after she left it, no law prohibited her from working for a company she once regulated.
Lay, for his part, involved himself in Phil Gramm's career.
Besides contributing money to the senator, Lay served as the regional chairman of Gramm's unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996.
Wendy Gramm notified Enron in December 1998 that congressional ethics rules might prevent her family from holding stock in Enron, according to Public Citizen. Phil Gramm was preparing legislation that would affect the company, triggering the rules.
Enron then devised a way to compensate Wendy Gramm, while getting around the problems associated with her ownership of stock in the company, according to Public Citizen. "Enron canceled all of her outstanding shares and provided her with an additional service fee for a total of $117,000" over the next four years, the group said.

Can you link this lobbying with Enron's collapse? My initial reaction is that every company lobbies the government for one reason or another, and I highly doubt the deregulation Enron sought had anything to do with them cooking their books.


Back to the original subject, it appears CAIR has been named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism investigation for funneling $12 million to Hamas. In fact, CAIR's own leader has publicly stated he supports Hamas and their actions. It looks like CAIR is in for rough times ahead as their case is going to be tough to prove in front of 12 American jurors. I hope Michael Savage takes them to the cleaners.