- Dear George,
-
- When it's all over in a couple months, and you're packing
up your pretzels and Spot and heading back to Texas, what will be your
biggest regret? Not getting out more often and seeing the sights around
Rock Creek Park? Never once visiting the newly-renovated IKEA in
Woodbridge,
Virginia? Or buying your way to the White House with money from a company
that committed the biggest corporate swindle in American history? I got
a feeling you didn't miss much by not spending an entire Saturday afternoon
assembling a Swedish bookcase -- but you should have known that there was
no way you would ever finish your term by hopping into bed with Kenneth
Lay.
-
- It's kind of sad when you think about it. Here you were
-- the most popular president ever! -- the recipient of so much good will
from your fellow Americans after September 11, and then you had to go and
blow it. You just couldn't stay away from your old cowpoke friend from
Texas, Kenneth Lay.
-
- Kenny has always been there for you. You needed a way
to fly around to all the primaries and campaign stops in the 2000 election
-- so Kenny gave you his corporate jet. Did you tell the voters when you
arrived in each city that the bird you flew in on was from a billionaire
who was secretly conspiring to give the bird to all his employees and
investors?
He flew you around America on the Enron company jet, and for that favor
you touched down on tarmac after tarmac to tell your fellow citizens that
you were "going to restore dignity to the White House, the people's
house." You said this standing in front of an Enron jet!
-
- Man, you loved Lay so much, you not only affectionately
referred to him as "Kenny Boy," you interrupted an important
campaign trip in April, 2000, to fly back to Houston for the Astro's
opening
day at the new Enron Field -- just so you could watch Kenny Boy Lay throw
out the first pitch. How sentimental!
-
- I mean, you loved this man so intensely that, when you
were awarded a set of keys the Supreme Court had made for you so you could
live in the White House, you invited Kenny Boy to set up shop -- at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue! He interviewed those who would hold high-level Energy
Department positions in your administration.
-
- You not only let Kenny Boy decide who would head the
regulatory agency that oversaw Enron, you let him hand-pick the new
chairman
of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt -- a former lawyer
for his accountant, Arthur Andersen! Kenny and the boys at Andersen also
worked to make sure that accounting firms would be exempt from numerous
regulations and would not be held liable for any "funny
bookkeeping"
(don't you wish you were this forward-thinking?).
-
- The rest of Kenny Boy's time was spent next door with
his old buddy, Dick Cheney (Enron and Halliburton, as you'll recall, got
the big contracts from your dad to "rebuild" Kuwait after the
Gulf War). Lay and Dick formed an "energy task force" (Operation
Enduring Graft) which put together the county's new "energy
policy."
This policy then went on to shut down every light bulb and juicer in the
state of California. And guess who made out like bandits while
"trading"
the energy California was in desperate need of? Kenny Boy and Enron! No
wonder Big Dick doesn't want to turn over the files about those special
meetings with Lay!
-
- The only thing that surprises me more than all the Enron
henchmen who ended up in your cabinet and administration is how our lazy
media just rolled over and didn't report it. The list of Enron people on
your payroll is impressive. Lawrence Lindsey, your chief economic advisor?
A former advisor at Enron! Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill? Former CEO
of Alcoa, whose lobbying firm, Vinson and Elkins, was the #3 contributor
to the your campaign! Who is Vinson and Elkins? The law firm representing
Enron! Who is Alcoa? The top polluter in Texas. Timothy White, the
Secretary
of the Army? A former vice-chair of Enron Energy! Robert Zoellick, your
Federal Trade Representative? A former advisor at Enron! Karl Rove, your
main man at the White House? He owned a quarter-million dollars of Enron
stock.
-
- Then there's the Enron lawyer you have nominated to be
a federal judge in Texas, the Enron lobbyist who is your chair of the
Republican
Party, the two Enron officials who now work for House Majority Leader Tom
DeLay, and the wife of Texas Senator Phil Gramm who sits on Enron's board.
And there's the aforementioned Mr. Pitt, the former Arthur Andersen
attorney
whose job it is now as SEC head to oversee the stock markets. George, it
never stops!
-
- My fingers are getting tired typing all this up -- and
there's lots more.
-
- Don't get me wrong, George -- I do not think you're an
evil man. You don't need any crap from people like me -- heck, you got
mother-in-law problems! Now, I have a very good relationship with my
mother-in-law,
but then, I never told her to put $8,000 of her money into a company my
administration knew was going belly-up.
-
- You say you didn't know? Your bag man -- Don Evans, the
man who squeezed all that money for you from Enron as your campaign finance
chairman (and is now collecting his reward as your Commerce Secretary)
-- has admitted that he got calls from Enron begging for help last year
because they were going under. Didn't he tell you this?
-
- Then Paul O'Neill, your Treasury Secretary, admitted
that Enron and Kenny Boy called him, too, for some special favors to save
Enron. Didn't he mention this to you? They claim to have called your chief
of staff, Andrew Card, and he said he didn't bother to inform you. What
does your mother-in-law think about these boys her daughter's husband
consorts
with?
-
- I love watching the O'Neill and Evans show. What a couple
of cut-ups! They're, like, all proud of themselves for "not doing
Enron any favors." Actually, I think it's more like they didn't do
your MOTHER-IN-LAW any favors. Enron got LOTS of favors. And why not? Kenny
Boy has been your number one financial backer since you ran for governor.
No other American or Saudi has given you more money than Kenny Boy and
his gang at Enron. O'Neill, Evans, Cheney, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
-- ALL of them gave Lay and Enron special favors from day one. The New
York Times last May was so concerned about how Kenny had the run of the
place (1600 Pennsylvania Ave.), they referred to Lay as the "shadow
advisor to the president."
-
- And what advice! Who was it that wanted you to deregulate
the energy industry further? Kenny Boy! Who was it that convinced you to
explore the sick idea of PRIVATIZING our water supply and then allow
private
corporations to "trade" it in the future? Kenny Boy! Who was
it that wanted Social Security to be tied to the stock market? Yup, Kenny
Boy! (Imagine, if you will, what would have happened to our precious Social
Security funds had they been invested in Enron stocks as you, George,
suggested
be done during your campaign as yuppies everywhere clucked along in
agreement
over that genius idea.)
-
- O'Neill's and Evans's admission that they "did
nothing"
when Enron told them of the company's shell game and impending collapse
is reason enough for you and yours to hit the Beltway and never return
to that sacred trust we call Our American Government. They are proud of
"doing nothing?" By doing nothing, millions of Americans have
been swindled. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs. Thousands more have
lost their savings and their retirement. Yet your cabinet secretaries gloat
over what a "good job" you and they did by "doing
nothing."
-
- Let me ask you this: If someone was setting a house on
fire, and they called you to help them set it on fire, and you said no
you wouldn't help them -- BUT then you also DIDN'T call 911 and inform
the police that someone was going to burn down a house, do you think you
would have committed a crime?
-
- Of course you would have! You had prior knowledge and
then you knowingly and purposefully HID this information from the
authorities
and the people living in the house! You only admitted that you knew a house
was going to be torched when you were confronted by the police. Are you
complicit? Yes! Are you an accessory? Yes! Who would even think of going
around boasting, "Hey, look what a great guy I am -- a friend of mine
told me he was going to commit an act of arson, and then I decided NOT
to tell ANYONE about it!!
-
- WHOO-HOO!!"
-
- Enron and Kenny Boy bought your silence and the silence
of your cabinet members. You yourself didn't have to actually raid the
401(k) accounts of those poor people in Houston (many of whom probably
voted for you every time your name was on a ballot). All you had to do
was remain silent, change the government regulations that let them get
away with it, and install their hand-picked cronies to sit on the
"oversight"
boards which were supposed to be keeping an eye on them.
-
- While doing all this, you told the American people that
these rich friends of yours were not getting any special breaks -- when,
in fact, Enron had already scammed their way out of paying NO taxes in
four out of the last five years. Your economic "stimulus" bill
that you got the House to pass after 9-11 had a section that would give
Enron a gift of $250 million of our tax money. You were pushing this bill
in November and December, long after your administration knew that Enron
was raiding the vault and screwing its workers and investors.
-
- You and your Republican friends are quick to point out
that Enron had their claws into the Democrats as well. Yes, they did, and
thank you for making the case why we not only need an alternative to the
current make-up of the Democratic Party, we need private money removed
from our electoral process ASAP.
-
- But, George, let's be real -- the Democrats only got
a pittance from Enron compared to the millions you and the Republicans
received. Democrats just don't have the killer instinct to do anything
right, and they certainly don't know much about making money the
old-fashioned
way, one off-shore tax shelter at a time. I would expect nothing less from
a Party that couldn't even put their candidate in the White House after
he had already won the election.
-
- The Democrats are like a Yugo -- you know it won't last
long or work well, but it will occasionally get the job done. Fat cats
know they can buy the Democrats at discount prices, and so they do. Anyone
who tries to deflect this scandal away from you, George, or away from the
Republicans, or away from the whole dirty way we elect our leaders, is
someone who is desperately trying to cling to what's left of a very crooked
system that has to go and go now.
-
- The saddest part of this whole affair was the day the
scandal was revealed -- and you denied that you even knew your good friend,
Kenneth Lay. "Ken who?" you said. Oh, he's just some businessman
from Texas. "Heck, he backed my opponent for governor, Ann
Richards!"
was your way of trying to deflect the truth that was hitting you like a
Mack truck. You knew that he, in fact, endorsed YOU and gave you THREE
times the money Ann Richards ever saw from him.
-
- I hardly ever talk to the guy, you said. You were like
Peter outside the walls of Herod after they grabbed J.C. from the Garden
of Gethsemane. Three times he denied he knew Jesus, and three times the
cock crowed. But Peter, unlike you, felt shame and wept, and then ran
away.
-
- What shame do you feel tonight, George, for the lies
you have told? What shame do you feel using the dead of 9-11 as a cover
for your actions, hoping that our sorrow for those lost souls and our fear
of being killed by terrorists would distract us from what your boys and
Kenny Boy were up to during those horrific weeks in September and
October?
-
- It was during those very days, while the rest of us were
in shock and sadness, that the executives at Enron were selling off their
stock and shifting assets to their 900 phony partnerships overseas. Did
they notice the remains of the dead being pulled from the rubble while
they were downloading their millions, or were their eyes glued only to
the bottom third of the TV screen as the stock ticker with the rigged Enron
price crawled across the images of firemen desperate, in tears, to find
their fallen brothers?
-
- The country was behind you when you said you were
fighting
the evildoers who did this. In fact, all the while, the real fight your
friends at Enron were conducting was the fight against the clock, to see
how fast they could transfer all the loot to their personal accounts and
run away. Those were the evildoers, George, and you knew it. And because
you, by design or negligence, allowed this to happen, it is time for you
to resign. The cock has crowed for the last time.
-
- At the very least, your mother-in-law deserves
better.
-
- Yours,
-
- Michael Moore
- American
- Son-in-Law
- Owner of 7th LARGEST COMPANY IN AMERICA! (revised
ranking)
- http://www.michaelmoore.com
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