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By Cynthia Annett | January 22, 2002
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In his Saturday Column of Jan. 19, Mr. Simons tells us that the Bush
administration was in a "damned if they do and damned if they don't"
position, because any intervention would have been seen as a quid pro
quo for the large contributions Enron made to elected officials over
the years. This statement assumes that this was the first opportunity
these elected officials had to intervene on Enron's behalf. The reality
is that for years, many of our elected officials have intervened on
behalf of Enron by deregulating the energy industry in ways that
allowed Enron to transform itself into an energy giant. What else would
the Enron contributions be buying? They were buying influence. They
were buying deregulation.
A basic question that Mr. Simons does not address is why Enron was
allowed to develop its freewheeling corporate style in the first place.
The dismantling of governmental regulatory mechanisms process that
began with gusto during the Reagan administration, that continued
during the first Bush administration, that was enthusiastically pursued
by the Clinton administration, and that was put into high gear during
the second Bush administration are what allowed companies like Enron to
operate in this new and disastrous fashion.
There was, in fact, another way in which the Bush administration could
have intervened, a way that would not have been seen by the public as a
quid pro quo. The Bush administration could have sought to protect the
workers who lost their life savings when Enron collapsed. But they did
not. And so it is imperative that the administration act now to make
sure that justice is done and that those responsible are prosecuted to
the full extent of the law, instead of simply being bailed out by their
victims.
The central principle upon which our Republic was founded is that power
must be balanced by power in order to achieve a free society. If we
believe in limiting governmental power to protect our citizens, why
should we allow unregulated corporate power to destroy their lives?
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Originally published by the Lawrence Journal-World.
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