July, 2002

Just as any competent and honest judge recuses himself from an issue in which he has a personal interest, one would certainly expect our currently sitting President and Vice President to lay off the rhetoric on corporate abuse. Enron, WorldCom and the avalanche of book cookers tumbling onto our business pages are all about personal greed. You can clothe it in the mysteries of accounting irregularities, but the greedy few have been caught shearing the sheep---not only shearing, but slicing off a lamb chop here and a tenderloin there for their own personal table.

Nearly a million for Bush at Harken, that led directly to an embarrassingly unearned fifteen million at the Texas Rangers. Thirty-eight million for Cheney in one year alone from Halliburton. Keep your head down, Dubya---you look silly on Wall Street trying to project a sense of outrage. Even the market had sense enough to fall as you spoke. Send Dick out to take the heat.

Bill Clinton got pilloried by Whitewater, which was small potatoes by the standards of Halliburton and Harken, yet those of us who suffered through that aren't necessarily willing to put you two in the same wringer. But we want to know. Silence isn't enough. Stonewalling doesn't do it. If there's nothing to worry about, give us a break and tell it like it is (or like it was).

A president is supposed to lead and it's dreadfully hard to stand out there in front of the troops in the blistering sun, talking about duty, when there's a chance the general was AWOL a time or two himself.

So, how about rousting old Dick from whatever secure location he's currently stashed in and demand he come to the front of the class to show and tell. So far, regarding aggressive accounting changes at Halliburton during Dick Cheney's tenure, which are under investigation by the SEC:

* Mr. Cheney is declining to comment

* Halliburton is declining to comment

* Arthur Anderson is declining to comment

Which leaves just about everybody declining to comment, except perhaps some irate stockholders.

Seth Taube, former director of enforcement for the NY office of the SEC, said the SEC would not shy from investigating Mr. Cheney's role. If that's true, why is Mr. Taube a "former" director?

Monkeying around with semantics, along with one legal dodge after another is just what the Enron crew and their like have been doing. While I'm at it, George, that "sometimes corporate accounting is not always black or white" isn't good enough for our chief executive.

I understand and you understand why Dick Cheney and George Bush don't want to stand up in front of the counrty and admit to aiding and abetting questionable business practices. They think it will go away.

It won't go away.

They think America has a short memory for these things.

It's possible they're right on that, and I hope not, but we'll just have to see.

Get out of the Archives and read what Jim's writing today