Duty to Warn

AUSTIN, Texas -- Here's another to add to our growing list of needed corporate reforms. When some poor company -- caught in endless coils of red tape, strangled by mean government bureaucrats, its last gasp of entrepreneurial energy driven out by nasty investigators -- is finally forced to pay for some slightly overzealous bit of capitalist behavior, what is that poor company to do? Write the fine off on its taxes, of course.

Yes, incredible as it sounds, when corporations are fined for breaking the law, they can deduct the fine from their tax bill. This puts the rest of us taxpayers in the unhappy position of subsidizing corporate misbehavior.

This revolting situation is now being "looked at" by the Senate finance committee Chair Max Baucus. Kudos to The Wall Street Journal for bringing this one to the public's attention. Is this a perfect example of how corrupted our political system has become by corporate special interests, or what? This policy should not be tossed aside lightly. It needs to be thrown aside with great force.

There's something pathetic -- and dangerous -- about the crush of liberal commentators now pinning their hopes on Colin Powell.

Yes, the secretary of state is a "moderate" -- compared to the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. But that's not saying much. And history tells us, even if the press won't, that Powell does not have a record as a man of conscience.

Media coverage is portraying Powell as a steady impediment to a huge assault on Iraq. But closer scrutiny would lead us to different conclusions.

Instead of undermining prospects for a military conflagration, Powell's outsized prestige is a very useful asset for the war planners. The retired general "is seen by many of Washington's friends and allies abroad as essential to the credibility of Bush's foreign policy," the French news agency AFP noted as September began.

Avid participation in deplorable actions has been integral to Powell's career. A few examples:

AUSTIN, Texas -- Nothing like a lot of distracting saber-rattling to get you to take your eyes off the shell with the pea under it. Kind of like the prospect of being hanged in the morning, impending war does tend to concentrate the mind wonderfully. But the remaining balance, if any, in your 401(k) is an attention-grabber as well, so while the administration tries to make up its mind whether it agrees with itself on the best way to handle Saddam Hussein, I recommend a swift glance back at the corporate reform agenda.

President Bush went around the country this summer essentially saying, "Done that, it's all over," on corporate reform. His adoption of Sen. Paul Sarbanes' Accounting Reform and Investment Protection Act, which he staunchly opposed until two weeks before it passed by a unanimous vote, is his most unusual claim to parenthood since he announced in mid-debate he was the father of the Texas patients' bill of rights. In that case, he had first vetoed the bill of rights and then refused to sign it after it passed by a veto-proof majority.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Excuse me: I don't want to be tacky or anything, but hasn't it occurred to anyone in Washington that sending Vice President Dick Cheney out to champion an invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is a "murderous dictator" is somewhere between bad taste and flaming hypocrisy?

When Dick Cheney was CEO of the oilfield supply firm Halliburton, the company did $23.8 million in business with Saddam Hussein, the evildoer "prepared to share his weapons of mass destruction with terrorists."

So if Saddam is "the world's worst leader," how come Cheney sold him the equipment to get his dilapidated oil fields up and running so he to could afford to build weapons of mass destruction?

Labor Day may be a fitting tribute to America's workers. But what about the other 364 days of the year? Despite all the talk about the importance and dignity of working people, they get little power or glory in the everyday world of news media.

What if the situation were reversed?

Once a year, big investors and corporate owners could be honored on Business Day. To celebrate the holiday, politicians might march arm in arm through downtown Manhattan with the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Donald Trump. Executives could have the day off while media outlets said some nice things about them.

During the rest of the year, in this inverted scenario, journalists would focus on the real lives of the nation's workforce. Instead of making heroes out of billionaire investors -- and instead of reporting on Wall Street as the ultimate center of people's economic lives -- the news media would provide extensive coverage of the workplace.

AUSTIN -- A new wrinkle in the annals of corporate scandal -- Salomon Smith Barney, the stock brokerage/investment banking firm, allocated almost a million shares of hot IPO (initial public offerings) shares in 21 different companies to Bernard Ebbers, CEO of WorldCom, and that is just the tip of the Everest, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. Salomon also gave IPO shares to about two dozen other top telecom executives.

According to the Journal, "the linking of investment-banking business to IPO allocations has been a controversial, yet pervasive, practice on Wall Street." The New York Times, not one to leap to a conclusion, reported, "At issue is whether Salomon handed out such allocations to ensure that companies like WorldCom continued to give the firm investment banking business." Surely not! No connection whatever. Motivated only by charity, these brokers.

Come on, get real. If this were a third-world country with CEO's getting IPO's in exchange for investment banking business, no one would have any trouble identifying it as a kickback.

AUSTIN -- "It's the little things, the itty-bitty things. It's the little things that really tick me off." --- song by Robert Earl Keene.

Gosh, silly us, getting in a swivet over war and peace. The president is on vacation! He's giving interviews to Runner's World, not "Meet the Press." He and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld didn't even talk about Iraq during their meeting at Crawford. It was all the media's fault. We were "churning," we were in "a frenzy." Heck, Bush himself has never even mentioned war with Iraq, much less going it alone.

We don't have to worry, so party hearty, and try not to make a big deal out of the fact that the Bush's lawyers are now claiming he can launch an attack on Iraq without Congressional approval because the permission given by Congress to his father in 1991 to wage war in the Persian Gulf is still in effect.

Since that's all cleared up, here are a few little nuggets you might like to chew on:

Some people are suspicious that President Bush will go for a "wag the dog" strategy -- boosting Republican prospects with a military assault on Iraq shortly before Election Day. But a modified approach now seems to be underway. Let's call it "wag the puppy."

After a number of GOP luminaries blasted his administration's war scenarios, Bush claimed to appreciate "a healthy debate." The president offered assurances that he would consult with Congress rather than take sudden action. But his handlers were simply adapting to circumstances that probably make it impractical for the Pentagon to kill a lot of Iraqis prior to Nov. 5.

Before initiating vast new carnage abroad, the White House wants its propaganda siege to take hold at home. Countless hours of airtime and huge vats of ink are needed to do the trick. Like safecrackers trying first one combination and then another, the Bush team will continue to twirl the media dials till their war-making rationales click.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Here we are playing hawks and doves again on the matter on Iraq -- war or no war? -- with particularly peppy exchanges from our more excitable brethren on the right concerning "appeasement" and lack of patriotism on the part of anyone who isn't ready to nuke Baghdad now. Bubba and Joe Bob have a question: "Why don't we git Oh-sama Bin first?"

I bring this up because it seems to me what the right wing is fond of describing as "the media elites" are so absorbed in their own tong warfare, they quite forget the American people have a great deal of uncommon good sense. Does life in Washington, D.C., actually resemble an endless round of "Crossfire," or does it just seem that way from the boonies?

At last count, we were already involved in military actions in seven countries, counting Colombia, which is either a different set of terrorists or a civil war. Seems like that's a lot on our plate now. Under the new Bush doctrine of "unilaterally determined pre-emptive self-defense," we get to go around attacking anyone we want without provocation. Not so much as a "Remember the Maine!" or a Tonkin Gulf resolution.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Vinson & Elkins, the attorneys for Enron, are now touting their expertise on "offshore special purpose entities" on firm's website. They are "well versed," says their advertisement, in "off-balance sheet treatment."

In New York, they call that chutzpah; in Texas we call it brass body parts.

"We have nothing to lie low about," Harry Reasoner, a V-E partner, told the Austin American Statesman. Enron was once V-E's largest client. In 2001, V-E billed Enron $36 million, more than 7 percent of the firm's revenue, according to the Houston Chronicle.

A lot of ex-Enroners down in Houston were tossed out on their ears without a nickel -- savings gone, trust gone, faith gone, dreams gone. I've been watching money and Texas long enough to know there's no point in raising questions about sensitivity or taste. But how about a lick of common sense here, people?