To The Slammer Boys!

The media seemed a bit taken aback that the jury came to a decision in the Enron case so quickly, but they shouldn’t have been.  The American people have had it with scheming rich white men ripping us off, stealing our retirements and lining their pockets with corporate profits and corporate welfare at the expense of workers and taxpayers.  To bad that Congress is in charge of overseeing White House crimes, manipulation, lies and cover-ups.  If the people could vote to impeach and convict, Bush and Cheney would have been gone long ago.

There isn’t really much difference between what Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling did to Enron and what Dick Cheney and George Bush have done to America.  Lay and Skilling covered up the financial problems within their company and used their insider knowledge to manipulate stock prices and loot the company before the rest of us even had an inkling that there were problems.  It was a clear-cut case of two men making themselves rich at the expense of workers, shareholders, customers and taxpayers.  Cheney and Bush have made themselves and their friends rich at the expense of workers and taxpayers as well.  Last I heard, Cheney’s net worth was around $100 million, Halliburton was still getting lucrative no-bid government contracts, the oil companies were enjoying record breaking profits and Big Pharma couldn’t be happier with the new Medicare prescription plan.  Not bad, I hope these responsible citizens and companies are paying their taxes on all that money and not hiding it in offshore accounts.

And let’s not forget that Dick Cheney and Ken Lay were pals, close enough it seems that when Ken Lay presented his recommendations to Cheney regarding energy policy, those recommendations were implemented.  Of course we don’t know if they were Lay’s recommendations or just a coincidence of wording since all of the notes from those secret meetings have never been released.  Ken Lay’s secrets at Enron have been uncovered, but Cheney’s so far have not.  Lay and Cheney are peas in a pod and Dick better hope he never has to face a jury of his peers, he’d likely get the same treatment as Kenny Boy, it just might not take as long for the jury to convict.

Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay have been found guilty of conspiracy and fraud and are now facing the prospect of decades in jail and it certainly couldn’t happen to a nicer pair.  Well, yes it could.  It’s quite possible that George Bush and Dick Cheney are guilty of conspiracy (in covering up the administrations outing of a CIA agent in an effort to discredit a critic of the war) and fraud (in lying about the reasons for that war) as well, but whether 12 jurors will ever hear the evidence against them and get a chance to decide their fate is another story all together.  I just wish I could find those Republicans that were screaming their heads off about the rule of law during the Clinton years!  They were hard to miss during the 90s, but they are an endangered species in the new millennium.  

It’s too bad really, the “rule of law” Republicans could have had so much fun with the Bush administration.  With Clinton, they had to dig around for years in order to find something to be outraged about, whereas Bush simply supplies new nuggets of outrage virtually every day.  Not only does he thumb his nose at the law, he brags about it afterward.  Oh well, the rule of law may be “so last century” in Washington DC, but in Texas, it’s still alive and well, at least for today.