Nation Topics - Business | The Nation

Enron's power project in India demonstrates who benefits from globalization.

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(With apologies to Stephen Foster)

The Enron hearings stretch ahead,
Doo-dah, doo-dah,
Until the final soundbite's said.
Oh, doo-dah day.

Pols will posture night,
Pols will posture day.
They'll show the voters just how tough they are,
Browbeating some CPA.

They'll talk of all the laws they'll make,
Doo-dah, doo-dah.
And meanwhile they're still on the take.
Oh, doo-dah day.

Pols will posture day,
Pols will posture night.
The guy who's shmeered them for a dozen years
Now is the guy they'd indict.

George W. Bush must be feeling an acute sense of déjà vu these days, as the dubious dealings of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, LLP take center stage in the Enron scandal.

What would Jesus do? It's a no-brainer; he would leave the Christian Coalition, take a consulting job with Enron and then use his divine power to make George W. Bush president.

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The Supreme Court has made a decision that is wrongheaded, and wrong.

For weeks, conservative commentators and Bush White House defenders have been huffing that the Enron matter is a corporate scandal, not a political controversy--that it is an affair of business sku

It was a mistake--and a beaut--in Matt Bivens's piece "The Enron Box" where he confused the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers. It is hereby duly acknowledged and regretted. But what really astonished us was the way it unleashed a slick triple play by the Right-Wing Conspirators (a Class C club that plays the Washington-New York corridor). You've heard of Tinker to Evers to Chance? Well, this was Wall Street Journal to The Weekly Standard to Fox News's Brit Hume. The WSJ caught Bivens's blooper; then The Weekly Standard grabbed amd waved it long enough to say "Nyah, nyah" before Brit (Mr. Inside) Hume gobbled up the ball and hinted darkly of cover-up (or something) on Fox News. This dazzling play illustrates how the opposing team will seize on a minor miscue and use it to clear George W. Bush of any involvement in the Enron scandal. OK, we admit the error shows we are sometimes sports-challenged; next time we'll check with a baseball expert like George Will. Lest the real issues be lost out in right field, however, we bring you a comment on Bush and baseball posted by the witty sportswriter Charles Pierce, a commentator on NPRs Only a Game and the author of Sports Guy: In Search of Corkball, Warroad Hockey, Hooters Golf, Tiger Woods, and the Big, Big Game. He posted it on Jim Romenesko's Media News (www.poynter.org):

"As to The Nation's unfortunate collision with the national pastime--the passage ought to read:

'When George Bush co-owned the Texas Rangers with a bunch of businessmen who had all the real money, construction began on The Ballpark At Arlington, after the ownership group finagled the eminent domain laws in order to swindle some property owners out of the market price for some valuable land. The property owners sued and won, but The Ballpark arose anyway, enabling Mr. Bush to cash out his original investment several times over without ever having done any actual work. This helped launch the successful portion of his political career, culminating in his becoming President of the United States, a job from which he took an evening off last spring in order to be the guest of Kenneth Lay for the opening of Enron Field in Houston. Mr. Lay was CEO of Enron and a well-known political supporter of the president who, these days, of course, would not recognize him from a box of turnips.'
"The Nation, I am sure, regrets the error."

Indeed we do.