The Koch Brothers are Acting Just Like Enron---Before the Bankruptcy

[JackRiddler]

13. Frankly, there is no distinction to be made, but if so, Enron's far the worse.

Everyone! If you haven't, you should watch the excellen tEnron documentary, "The Smartest Guys In the Room."
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/enron-the-smartest-guys-in-the-room/

The examples of both the Kochs and Enron illustrate what happens when neoliberal principles predominate: Money becomes speech. Capital is allowed to commit any fraud and is celebrated and rewarded for it.

Both are examples of actors who acknowledge no moral limits and happily plunder society, even at the cost of destroying it. Understanding that is more important than a comparison of the relative damage done by each. But since you brought it up, let's have a look.

The Kochs have been wreaking their destruction since the days of the Powell memo in 1971, as part of a larger cabal of money-men behind the "conservative" (radical capitalist and Christianist) movements. Nowadays they are on a legislative and political rampage, at the height of their personal influence in part because these movements have peaked. The Kochs are exposed and forced to spend more money than ever to maintain their political campaigns.

Enron's shorter period of political and economic influence probably cannot be matched by any other entity for the sheer destructive innovation:

- lobbied aggressively and won a massive deregulation of markets

- thereupon practically invented the market for energy price fraud, price-gouging and arbitrage

- helped revolutionize accounting and banking fraud in a myriad of ways, setting up hundreds of offshore scam companies with the lead bankster entities like Citigroup as key participants (unindicted, as always)

In short, Enron was pathbreaking: a model.

Furthermore:

- probably the number one contributor to the candidacy of Bush in 2000 (what could match this for destructiveness?)

- provided free air support for the Bush side of the Florida 2000 election heist.

- key participants in the early-2001, still-classified Cheney energy meetings, where the neocon wars including Iraq were prepared

See here:

Eager to Tap Iraq’s Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion
http://pubrecord.org/nation/2430/eager-to-tap-iraqs-vast-oil-reserves-industry-execs-suggested-invasion/

And, as a final act, following the bankruptcy, exposure of the scam, demise of Arthur Anderson and Enron, and indictment of the Enron principals, investors in Enron who were at risk from California's plans to seize back some of the billions that Lay and Co. had ripped off bankrolled the destruction of Gov. Gray Davis and the recall that brought Schwarzenegger to office.

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/13-schwarzenegger-met-with-enrons-key-lay-before-the-california-recall/

Business as usual is the truly destructive force that guides Enron and the Kochs. Their corporate ventures in the energy economy do at least as much damage to the world as the political ventures they finance with the profits.

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