Bush-Cheney asked to give back Enron’s ‘dirty money’

On July 26 — the day that Vice President Dick Cheney came to Oregon for a re-election fundraiser — grandmothers, ratepayers and Portland General Electric (PGE) employees joined Congressman Peter DeFazio at a press conference to question the cozy relationship between the Bush Administration and top officials of bankrupt Enron, especially that of indicted chief executive officer Ken Lay.

Texas-based Enron and Lay were, until recently, the largest political patrons of George W. Bush and Cheney — contributing more than $623,000 to Bush campaigns over the past decade.

PGE is owned by Enron, where thousands of employees lost millions of dollars in retirement savings when the company collapsed into bankruptcy amid charges that it inflated profits and camouflaged debts. To date, investigations into Enron have yielded criminal charges against 30 people, including Lay (on charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and 10 other counts), and 11 convictions.

“With the exception of Houston, Texas, there is probably no city in the country that suffered more from Enron’s greed and wrongdoing than Portland, Oregon,” said Tim Nesbitt, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO. “Both workers and consumers were victimized here.”

Some of those victims attended the July 26 press conference at the World Trade Center in Portland, headquarters of PGE, where they called on the Bush-Cheney campaign to return the ill-gotten campaign contributions.

“That money belongs to the people of this state who have been ripped off by Enron’s greedy practices,” said DeFazio, a longtime critic of Enron. “Give the money back!”

“Grandma Nellie” Fox-Edwards of Portland asked why the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — headed by Texan Patrick Henry Wood III, the man Bush appointed on the recommendation of Lay — continues to ignore attempts by the Oregon attorney general to recoup money “stolen by Enron.”

“I am here on behalf of all the grandmas who were mocked by Enron traders in the summer of 2000 as they manipulated power supplies and drove up our energy bills,” said Fox-Edwards, an 80-year-old great-grandmother.

She read from the taped transcripts released earlier this year of conversations among Enron traders as they gloated about price-gouging customers.

“They’re @#*! taking all the money back from you guys?” complains an Enron employee on the tapes. “All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?”

“Yeah, Grandma Millie, man.”

“Yeah, now she wants her @#*! money back for all the power you’ve charged right up, jammed right up her @#*! for @#*! $250 a megawatt hour.”

Alan Kasewater, a PGE employee, told of the millions of dollars in retirement money that were lost by employees after Enron locked them out of their accounts as the stock plummeted.

“I was locked out of my pension account at the same time now indicted Ken Lay was selling millions of dollars of his own stock,” said Kasewater, a member of Electrical Workers Local 125. “This is the same man who enjoys such a close relationship with President Bush that the president calls him ‘Kenny Boy.’ ”

Nesbitt pointed out that both the chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, Marc Racicot, and the head of the Republican National Convention, Ed Gillespie, “carried Enron’s water as big-dollar lobbyists in Washington.”

U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick was also an Enron lobbyist, as was former secretary of state and longtime Bush confidant James Baker.

Late last month, almost three years after Enron’s collapse, FERC finally ordered the company to return $32 million in ill-gotten profits that it made by manipulating the West Coast energy market. “This is almost an insult,” Nesbitt said of the amount. “Consumers on the West Coast lost thousands of times that amount. And to this day, Ken Lay’s friend, Pat Woods [FERC chairman], continues to refuse requests from the Oregon and Washington attorneys general to release the transcripts and documents necessary to recoup the ratepayers’ losses.”

Oregon’s claim against Enron in bankruptcy proceedings exceeds $440 million. But without FERC’s cooperation the state is unlikely to collect anything. Cheney continues to stonewall the public by hiding the names of the people who met with him to set the Bush Administration’s energy policy in 2001, DeFazio said.

President Bush tapped Cheney to chair the energy task force in 2001. Members of the group were supposedly all government officials, but it later was learned that industry executives and lobbyists — including Ken Lay — regularly attended the meetings and offered significant input into the final energy policy.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 requires groups to work in public if any member comes from outside government. But when citizens started asking for access to the task force’s records Cheney refused, saying it was no one’s business. The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch then sued for access under the 1972 law. A district judge agreed and issued an order to do so. Cheney appealed, but the higher court said it couldn’t stop the lower court order. Cheney appealed again — this time to the Supreme Court — which said the appeals court could stop or modify the order if it chose. The sides are now awaiting for the appellate court’s ruling.

“I can get all the documents I want on the 9/11 attack that killed thousands of people, but I can’t see the transcripts for Cheney’s energy commission meetings,” DeFazio said.

He called on the Bush Administration to stop protecting Ken Lay and Enron ... and themselves a little bit, too.”

“What is he afraid of?” Nesbitt asked. “That records will reveal what the American public already believes to be true: that indicted CEO Ken Lay helped Cheney draft an energy policy that favors corporate interests at the expense of the American people?”

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.