"Enron" as metaphor

James A. Landau JJJRLandau at AOL.COM
Fri Feb 15 00:49:03 UTC 2002


In the article on today's MSN on-line news (and probably also in numerous
similar news accounts) about the House passing the Syas-Meehan Bill on
campaign finance reform, there were several citations of using "Enron" as a
metaphor.

1.  [Representative] Ney opened his attack on the Shays-Meehan bill by
arguing that it failed to truly ban "soft money" because unions, corporation
and individuals "could still contribute massive amounts of 'soft money' to
state and local political parties. ... You can drive an Enron limousine---60
million bucks worth---across the country through the loopholes in this bill."

2.  Democrats too deployed the word "Enron" to bolster their contention that
unlimited soft money contributions had a corrupting effect on American
politics.
      "In public life, appearances are as important many times as reality.
One five-letter word ought to crystallize the point for us: Enron," declared
Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
       "None of knows for certain whether that Texas energy company received
any special treatment because of its enormous campaign contributions. ... But
there's no denying these facts: When Enron began to implode, it called
officials at the highest levels of our national government and those calls
did not go unanswered. And when the Bush administration began to draft its
energy policy it rolled out the red carpet for Enron's participation.
       [editorial note---the statements in the immediately preceding
paragraph are doubtful.  "..rolled out the red carpet" has not yet been
either established or refuted, and "those calls did not go unanswered" was
discussed in the next paragraph of the article, which follows:]

       Last October Enron officials and former Clinton Treasury Secretary
Robert Rubin, now a top executive at Citigroup, one of Enron's creditors,
called Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Treasury Undersecretary Peter Fisher
and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan to seek their intervention to
forestall Enron's bankruptcy. O'Neill, Fisher and Greenspan rebuffed their
pleas for help.

[the article concludes by citing Enron's actual monetary contributions:]
       Enron and its executives gave $1,138,990 in soft money; contributions
to the Republicans in the 1999-2000 campaign cycle and $532,565 in soft money
to the Democrats.
       Enron's soft money contributions accounted for about 0.4 percent of
total Republican soft money in the 2000 campaign and about 0.2 percent of
total Democratic soft money.

    - Jim Landau



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