CRAIGforCONGRESS

Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of Representatives

  
 

 

 

Congressional Issues 2010
GOVERNMENT REGULATION
Enron!



Congress should:
  • not use the Enron scandal as an excuse to clamp down on the Free Market with more government regulation.
  • not use the Enron scandal as an excuse to deny freedom to Americans to plan their own retirements.

Enron employees took the advice of Enron executives and invested all their retirement funds in Enron stock, not knowing that Enron executives had "cooked" the books and covered up imminent collapse.

If we abolished the government monopoly on education, we would have competitive schools raising the standard of competence in each new generation of Americans. Not only would students learn how to read and write, they would learn the rudiments of the adult world, such as never invest your entire retirement portfolio in one single stock. Enron employees were victims of the government -- an education monopoly which leaves most graduates unable to read an investment prospectus, and unable to think competently for themselves.

Abolishing the government education monopoly would also leave parents free to send their children to schools which taught respect for "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," which would dramatically reduce the number of businessmen ripping people off and cooking books. America's Founding Fathers warned in the strongest terms against strengthening the government while weakening the influence of religion and morality, which is exactly what the federal government has been doing for the last 60 years.

Enron's spectacular rise to profit is largely a creation of the government. Enron dealt in provision of electricity, a government monopoly without the usual competition and public accountability found in deregulated industries. Enron worked not only with U.S. governments, but with the governments of India and other Asian nations. U.S. involvement in Afghanistan may have been in part a plan to bail out Enron's failures in Asia, as Enron had many strings to pull in U.S. government.


The Government is more Corrupt than Enron

Foundation for Economic Education

Enron and Social Security

Doesn't the Enron scandal show the dangers of privatizing Social Security? No.

A recent poll indicates that a majority of Americans believe they could do a better job of balancing the government budget than the government does. The government does not seem to be bound by the ordinary budgetary considerations that ordinary families have to live by.
"Lawmakers realize the importance of honesty in accounting, so they have established clear accounting guidelines for others to follow. However, they, themselves, go by a much more relaxed standard. If a businessman were to go by the standards lawmakers apply to themselves, he would wind up in jail." So writes Ken Connor in HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE - Congress Is Beating Enron at Its Own Game.


Consider this op-ed from the Los Angeles Times in June of last year:

     Here's what California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said at a press conference about Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay: "I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey.'"
     Here's why Lockyer should be removed from his office of public trust: First, because as the chief law enforcement officer of the largest state in the nation, he not only has admitted that rape is a regular feature of the state's prison system, but also that he considers rape a part of the punishment he can inflict on others.
     Second, because he has publicly stated that he would like to personally arrange the rape of a Texas businessman who has not even been charged with any illegal behavior.
     Lockyer's remarks reveal him to be an authoritarian thug, someone wholly unsuited to holding an office of public trust.
     But his remarks do have one positive merit: They tell us what criminal penalties really entail.
     Contrary to some depictions of prisons as country clubs, they are violent and terrible places.
Tom G. Palmer, 'Hi, My Name Isn't Justice, Honey,' and Shame on Lockyer, L.A. Times, Wednesday, June 6, 2001

Businessmen have only persuasion as a weapon. Government has the power of the sword. Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt." Government power-holders become less and less accountable, less hesitant to use their power, even against those who have done no wrong or those who have not yet been convicted by a jury of their peers of wrongdoing.

This is why monetary power in the hands of Enron executives is less harmful that political power in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians.


next: Campaign Finance, Corruption and the Oath of Office