According to the Houston Chronicle, the $500,000 contract was revealed in a new ruling by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who noted an "apparent lack of work for the money," a phrase which translates into "bribe" or "kickback" in English.
(By the way, the FEC website is fun for kids of all ages. You can type in "Lay, Kenneth" on this page and see all the hard and soft money ($358,910!) contributions he made to a huge laundry list of the new right wing, including George W. Bush, Charles Hagel, and even the $25,000 he personally gave to the Ashcroft Victory Committee.)
In another recent article on Enron, we learn that Jeff Skilling, the CEO who helped sell $110 million in fictitious broadband revenues (the Blockbuster deal code-named "Braveheart") to investors, "has not surfaced as a target for charges over the deal."
So we watch Ralph Reed, Ken Lay, and Jeff Skilling wander, overcompensated and unpunished, into the sunset.
Meanwhile, who bore the brunt of the Enron indictments? The only one who noticed that the emperor was naked — Arthur Andersen:
[Arthur] Andersen partner Carl Bass, a member of an internal review team demoted for disagreeing with Enron on interpretation of accounting rules, testified that he discouraged Enron's attempt to sell its share of the Blockbuster deal to CIBC because it was not "a real business with cash flows."
But it was Arthur Andersen, the firm, that was indicted in the resulting scandal. Not Enron profiteers Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, Ralph Reed, or, for that matter, "boy" Karl Rove and the "genius" of his Bush 2000 campaign. They used real, albeit stolen, money from fake businesses to engineer a highly questionable election.
As the USA moves ever closer toward a cynical corporate Christian theocracy, it's not an idle question: Who would Jesus indict?
UPDATE: And, an hour later, we get our answer! Thirty minutes ago, the Wall Street Journal (subscription req'd) reported the following:
Arrest warrants brought in Houston charge Kevin Howard and Michael Krautz with securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and making false statements to FBI agents. Both are executives with Enron Broadband Services.
The two men, who still work for Enron, surrendered Wednesday morning to FBI agents and were scheduled to make initial court appearances later in the day.
The charges stem from an attempt by Enron, in partnership with the Blockbuster Inc. video outlet chain, to set up an Internet video-on-demand business using broadband technology. Like many other Enron transactions, this one carried a fanciful code name: “Braveheart.”
If your reaction to the names Kevin Howard and Michael Krautz was "Who?" — your reaction is totally correct. Whatever their involvement, they are scapegoats.
