quote:Republicans contend that the Enron collapse is not a political scandal. It is merely, they say, a business scandal.
Actually it's neither. Enron is a values scandal, and specifically a conservative values scandal. Far from being an accident, the Enron affair is the inevitable culmination of 20 years of agitation against government regulations, employee protections and other progressive policies that might have prevented, or at least softened, the blow. Ever since Ronald Reagan took office, conservatives have treated nearly all such regulations as manacles on corporate behavior, rather than as safeguards against corporate misbehavior. While it had help from some Democrats, the GOP in particular conflated its conservative philosophy of government with a conservative moral code, while creating an environment of corporate permissiveness in which an Enron was bound to happen.
Come again, you say? What does Enron have to do with values?
Enron, you see, was big on puffing up its values, and not just its stock values. The company produced posters, paperweights and kindred baubles for its employees that were larded with talk of "values." There was even an acronym for the company'sideals -- RICE, which stood for respect, integrity, communication and excellence. Former employees have been reduced to hawking these wares on eBay, in the hope that the Internet, a person-to-person system of capitalism, might treat them more kindly than the corporate version did.
...But one of the executives from the company that touted "respect" used the name of a private part of anatomy to refer to a skeptical analyst in an open conference call last April. Managers who espoused "integrity" didn't hesitate to shred possibly incriminating documents. Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay neglected his "communication" values when he urged his company's workers to keep buying stock at a time when he and the big shots were dumping it. And "excellence" has eluded the now-bankrupt firm.
--Michael Tomasky is a political columnist for New York magazine.
posted
Some Republicans are hypocrites. Some aren't.
Some Democrats are hypocrites. Some aren't.
TPTB at Enron apparently mostly were (except that guy who's dead now), whatever their political affiliations.
The same arguments could be made for some: churches, hollywood stars, political action committies, corporations, environmental organizations, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
"There is no cause so just that one cannot find a fool following it." -- Larry Niven
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
AND, I think, Tomasky is unfairly trying to paint all conservatives with an Enron brush, which is in and of itself hypocritical since (I'm assuming) Tomasky is a Liberal, and they're supposed to be against all groupings and stereotypes and such.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
You're assuming Tomasky is a liberal. Of course, you did admit that.
And I believe the point is that a party that defines itself by "values" needs to reconsider its position on other issues which gives big business the ability to run rampant over people and screw 'em over.
posted
Isn't Kenneth Lay on his way to South America to hang with the Old Nazis or something? He disappeared, just like all that Enron stock...
Registered: Jan 2001
| IP: Logged
Printer-friendly view of this topic
