Enron Republicans

Fascinating…. proof that the the Enron scandal was not just caused by greed corporate leaders, but was literally caused by the Republican party:

If it wasn’t for the fact that the Republican Congress was bought off by Enron, most of this wouldn’t have happened. If they’d have passed [former SEC chair Arthur] Levitt’s reforms, separating accounting from consulting, they’d have never gotten away with it; if they’d have passed [Commodity Futures Trading Commission head] Brooksley Born’s proposal to disclose all these derivatives, then people would have known about this. If they’d done Sen. Boxer’s thing to limit the holdings in one company people could have in a 401K, then people wouldn’t have gotten burned like this.
Why aren’t Democrats standing up and saying Republicans caused it? Will the Washington Post write some mealy-mouthed story saying, “Well, you shouldn’t really say that!” Of course, but who cares? Will cocktail parties decry the return of partisanship in Washington? Of course they will, but what difference does it make? None! You’ll get your message out. But Democrats in Washington are completely mortified that somebody’s gonna say something bad about them at a dinner party in Cleveland Park on a Saturday night. You tell them there’s an Op-Ed piece coming out, with somebody saying they’re being divisive, and they’ll fall apart. But that’s what Republicans do. Look at the way they talk about ‘Clinton caused Sept. 11.’ They don’t have any facts — we have facts to prove otherwise — but they just do it anyway.

James Carville, interviewed by Salon magazine.

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