Republicans are all about cheating you out of your money. Most of us are now familiar with Enron's reputation for such (story
here), but Enron serves as a metaphor for what the GOP is all about. Don't believe me? Well what would you say if I told you three recent GOP chairmen are all former lobbyists for Enron? Ed Gillespie was an Enron lobbyist (link
here) who lobbied against the regulation of Western electricity markets following the California power crisis. Marc Racicot and Haley Barbour were evidently even representing Enron on Cheney's secret energy task force. (link
here)
It's difficult to tell everything that actually happened on the energy task force but some things are evident. Enron had been publicly pushing for at least three things Cheney recommended: open access to electric-utility transmission lines, more deregulation initiatives and support for Enron's arcane financial instruments. (link
here)
But the results of Cheney's energy task force aren't the most damning evidence of collusion to defraud. More telling is the influence Kenneth Lay was allowed to have over the choosing of his friend Patrick Wood for the chairmanship of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over Curtis Herbert, Jr., who had refused to accept all of Lay's detailed plans for deregulation. (here or here)
During the California energy crisis, with the support of Bush and Vice President Cheney, Wood resisted for months calls to cap wholesale energy prices to give consumers in the Golden State some relief. The utilities demanded and received another rate hike. Lay had been allowed by the Bush administration to handpick his own regulator, a personal friend who was favorable to deregulation. Can you say "fox in charge of the henhouse"?
OK the ties between Enron's despicable practices and the RNC and the Bush administration are a matter of record. But the worst part of it is that Bush and the republicans have tactics similar to those used by Enron but the truth isn't being recognized. Bush says he lowered taxes for most Americans. But the truth is that most Americans now pay more in taxes and get less in services than before Bush came to power (link here).
Not only that but in an era where CEO pay has soared to 300 times what most workers make (link here), during the last three years under George Bush the typical worker has actually seen his take home pay shrink. (link here)
George Bush is a song and dance man who tells you he has your best interest at heart. But he and the GOP are friends and cohorts of the Kenneth Lays of the world and have similar scruples. They like to urinate on the little man and tell him it is raining.