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December 21, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
War
Good for Bush
John Chuckman
The
First Victim in the
War on Terror
December 20, 2001
Lawrence
McGuire
Killing
Other People's Children
Miriam Rozen
Foundation
Without Representation?
Kenneth
Roth
A
Letter to Rumsfeld on
Military Tribunals
William Blum
Casualties:
Theirs and Ours
December 19, 2001
Marjorie
Cohn
Don't
Pre-Judge John Walker
Sam Bahour
Palestine
and You
December 18, 2001
Shahid
Alam
Clash
of Civilizations?
Carl Estabrook
Who
Opposes This War?
December 17, 2001
Edward
Said
Mahfouz
and the Cruelty
of Memory
December 16, 2001
Amira Howeidy
Dangerous By
Definition?
Bahour
and Dahan
Zinni's
Doomed Mission
December 15, 2001
John Isaacs
Bush's 12
Lumps of Coal
for Christmas
Dana Cook
The
Execution of bin Laden
Yusuf Agha
Tale of the
Tape:
Osama Gump?
December 14, 2001
Don Atapattu
A Conversation with
Norman
Finkelstein
December 13, 2001
Trojanow and Hoskote:
Nonsense
Mantras of Our Times
Dr. A.
Tajudeen
Afghanistan
and Zaire
Michael Williams
Prohibit
Prohibition
December 12, 2001
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens,
Walker
and Osama's Tape
Laura W. Murphy
Ashcroft's
Jihad
Shahid
Alam
Race
and Visibility
December 11, 2001
Joshua Orton
University
of Wisconsin
Won't Aid FBI Interviews
Philip
Farruggio
Cleansing
the Nation's Soul
Robert Fisk
Why I Was
Beaten
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
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Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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CounterPunch
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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December 21,
2001
Enron and the Green Seal
By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The fall of Enron sounds the death knell for one
of the great rackets of the past decade: green seals of approval,
whereby some outfit like the Natural Resources Defense Council
or the Environmental Defense Fund would issue testimonials to
the enviro-conscience and selfless devotion to the public weal
of corporations like Enron.
These green seals of approval were part
of the neoliberal pitch, that fuddy-duddy regulation should yield
to modern, "market-oriented solutions" to environmental
problems, which essentially means bribing corporations in the
hope they'll stop their polluting malpractices. Indeed, NRDC
and EDF were always the prime salesfolk of neoliberal remedies
for environmental problems. In fact, NRDC was socked into the
Enron lobby machine so deep you couldn't see the soles of its
feet. Here's what happened.
In 1997 high-flying Enron found itself
in a pitched battle in Oregon, where it planned to acquire Portland
General Electric, Oregon's largest public utility. Warning that
Enron's motives were of a highly predatory nature, the staff
of the state's Public Utility Commission (PUC) opposed the merger.
They warned that an Enron takeover would mean less ability to
protect the environment, increased insecurity for PGE's workers
and, in all likelihood, soaring prices. Other critics argued
that Enron's actual plan was to cannibalize PGE, in particular
its hydropower, which Enron would sell into California's energy
market.
But at the very moment when such protests
threatened to balk Enron of its prize, into town rode NRDC's
top energy commissar, Ralph Cavanagh, Heinz environmental genius
award pinned to his armor and flaunting ties to the Energy Foundation,
a San Francisco-based outfit providing financial wattage for
many citizen and environmental groups that work on utility and
enviro issues.
Cavanagh lost no time whipping the refractory
Oregon greens into line. In concert with Enron, the NRDC man
put together a memo of understanding, pledging that the company
would lend financial support to some of these groups' pet projects.
But Cavanagh still had some arduous politicking
ahead. An OK for the merger had to come from the PUC, whose staff
was adamantly opposed. So, on Valentine's Day, 1997, Cavanagh
showed up at a hearing in Salem, Oregon, to plead Enron's case.
Addressing the three PUC commissioners,
Cavanagh averred that this was "the first time I've ever
spoken in support of a utility merger." If so, it was the
quickest transition from virginity to seasoned service in the
history of intellectual prostitution. Cavanagh flaunted the delights
of an Enron embrace: "What we've put before you with this
company is, we believe, a robust assortment of public benefits
for the citizens of Oregon which would not emerge, Mr. Chairman,
without the merger."
With a warble in his throat, Cavanagh
moved into rhetorical high gear: "The Oregonian asks the
question, 'Can you trust Enron?' On stewardship issues and public
benefit issues I've dealt with this company for a decade, often
in the most contentious circumstances, and the answer is, yes."
Cavanagh won the day for the Houston-based
energy giant. The PUC approved the merger, and it wasn't long
before the darkest suspicions of Enron's plans were vindicated.
The company raised rates, tried to soak the ratepayers with the
cost of its failed Trojan nuclear reactor and moved to put some
of PGE's most valuable assets on the block. Enron's motive had
indeed been to get access to the hydropower of the Northwest,
the cheapest in the country, and sell it into the California
market, the priciest and-in part because of Cavanagh's campaigning
for deregulation-a ripe energy prize awaiting exploitation.
Then, after two years, the company Cavanagh
had hailed as being "engaged and motivated" put PGE
up on the auction block. Pending sale of PGE, Enron has been
using it as collateral for loans approved by a federal bankruptcy
judge.
Enron is best known as George W. Bush's
prime financial backer in his presidential quest. But it was
a bipartisan purveyor of patronage: to its right, conservative
Texas Senator Phil Gramm; to its left, liberal Texas Democrat
Sheila Jackson-Lee (who had Enron's CEO Ken Lay as her finance
chairman in a Democratic primary fight preluding her first successful
Congressional bid; her Democratic opponent was Craig Washington,
an anti-NAFTA maverick Democrat the Houston establishment didn't
care for).
Today some House Republicans want to
treat the Enron collapse as a criminal matter, while Democrats
have been talking in vaguer terms about cleaning up accounting
rules and plugging holes in the regulatory system. The inability
of Enron's employees to sell company stock from their 401(k)s
while high-ups absconded with millions may doom Bush's promised
onslaught on Social Security. There are many morals in Enron's
collapse, and the role of that green seal of approval should
not be forgotten.
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