Chris Cox, Bush's nominee for head of the SEC, is no winner. The Orange County (CA) congressman has worked for years to impede reform of corporate governance and investment practices. And he has ties to large corporate interests that will prevent him from enacting any true reform. And, he also has a shady past with links to a Ponzi scheme that defrauded elderly investors of millions.
Orange County Weekly has a good summation of his record (excerpted below), but there is a lot of other information out there.
Now, we need to stand up and call him for what he is. I don't care if he gets confirmed. I just want him exposed for what he is. Even if Frist can muster 55 votes for Cox, we will win with the voters if we prove that we are on their side. We need to be giving the voters a reason to vote for us in 2006, and these Main Street economic issues are a great starting point.
From Orange County Weekly:
http://www.ocweekly.com/printme.php?eid=32778
Cox's Shady Background:
Before he was elected to Congress in 1988, he was a corporate lawyer for the failed Irvine securities firm First Pension Corp. First Pension's flashy founder, William E. Cooper, lavished the Cox campaign and Orange County Republican Party with hefty contributions.
First Pension collapsed in 1994 after stealing $136 million from 8,500 investors, many of whom were senior citizens who lost their life savings. As previously reported in the Weekly (R. Scott Moxley's "Chris Cross," Aug. 9, 1996), an investor suit accused Cox of knowing of the securities fraud and helping to conceal it. A judge later dismissed Cox from the case, saying there wasn't enough evidence to link him to the scheme.
Cox on Corporate Governance:
To understand how something like the Enron/Arthur Andersen debacle could happen, go back to 1993. That's when Cox, as part of conservative Republicans' so-called Contract With America, spearheaded efforts to torpedo protections for corporate investors and shield companies--like Enron--and their accountants--like Arthur Andersen--from investor lawsuits.
Claiming "a band of amoral plaintiff lawyers" was responsible for lawsuits that put investors and corporations alike into a "legal torture chamber," Cox pushed for securities-fraud reform in Congress. Nine hearings were held between 1993 and early 1995 before Cox unveiled his Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader had a different name for the legislation: The Swindlers & Crooks Protection Act. The accounting and high-tech industries--Cox's biggest campaign contributors--pushed for the "reforms" because companies were being sued by investors when artificially inflated stock values crashed. Representative John Dingell (D-Michigan) characterized the bill as a raid on the small investor and predicted that Congress would regret it.
Independent legal analyses and securities lawyers agree the reform act significantly raised the bar at several points in the litigation process, making it much harder for plaintiffs to bring lawsuits. First, they would have to prove there was a "strong inference" that the defendant acted with the required state of mind for fraud. Securities lawyers refer to this requirement as "scienter"--a mental state embracing intent to deceive, manipulate or defraud.
The act also forbade plaintiffs from seeking documents and other information from companies that might prove their cases while a judge weighed motions to dismiss the cases; forbade forecasts of a company's health--like the ones that paint rosy futures so people will buy their stock--from being used against them; and allowed the court to appoint the lawyers who would represent plaintiffs, as opposed to the case going to the first lawyer to file.
And some research from Cox's 2004 opponent:
http://www.johngraham.us/coxandfraud.html