Having it both ways

Arianna Huffington’s article on Salon.com was an illuminating article into the Enron debacle. Campaign finance reform, which always seems to be a hot button issue in election years, had, since the election of President Bush, seemed to take a back seat in the public’s perception again. As Ms. Huffington pointed out in her article Enron brought it all back into focus. As she stated in her article, “Prodded by revelations that almost half of Congress had cashed Enron checks, campaign finance reformers finally snagged the last two signatures needed to bring the Shays-Meehan ban on soft money to a long-overdue vote.” It seems that when reform is needed the government of the United States of America needs an absolute disaster to shift itself into gears. Make no mistake about it, that’s what Enron is, a political and economic and legal disaster.

Enron donated over $2.4 million to federal campaigns, 72 percent, or a whopping total of $1.728 million, to republican candidates. Isn’t it funny how we have a republican president with strong support from Congress in office right now? Once again big business paid the government to look the other way when big business knew full well that the bottom was going to drop out sooner or later. What these payments actually constitute is insurance payments. When the disaster struck, it was time to cash in on the policy and don’t think for one minute that lobbyists representing Enron aren’t hounding the elected officials who they made the largest contributions to. In my opinion this leads to the possibility of blackmail of government officials by campaign contributors. Whatever else that may have been learned from the Enron debacle, I have learned that the people in power at Enron would do almost anything to get away with their illegal little deals. Also pointed out by Huffington is “the persuasive little memo Enron's political action committee sent to employees in June 2000, soliciting "voluntary" contributions of between $500 and $5,000. In it, company execs made no bones about why they needed the money, saying it would help the company prevail in the numerous legal and regulatory challenges it was facing”. It’s a small stretch of the imagination to get to the next step of blackmail.

I am not saying that this is what happened. In fact I hope it wasn’t even a possibility. Where the problem comes in is that with campaign finance the way it stands now, it isn’t that far from the scenario depicted above.