More on the Enron/Andersen stupidity

Time Magazine, in the article Who’s Accountable?, reveals that the shredding of documents by Enron auditors Arthur Andersen was done under instructions delivered in a memo from one of the company’s lawyers. Expect criminal charges to come in the not-too-distant future from the Dept. of Justice task force but because of Enron’s extensive political contributions, the entire Houston U.S. Attorneys office as well as Attorney General/Emporer-wannabe John Ashcroft had to recuse themselves from the investigation.

Another blaring example of the need for campaign finance reform, too. Look at the huge numbers of congresscritters who got donations from Enron and the number of Bush administration officials who were shareholders. Although corporations certainly have an interest in a large percentage of the business before governments, one has to think that a democracy is about the people and, legal fictions aside, corporations are not people. The people who comprise a corporation’s stakeholders should surely be allowed to donate to politicians with whom they agree but not the corporations themselves. By the way, the same ought to hold true for labor unions although in that case I might make an exception that allows unions to collect and aggregate donations from members. Still, the likelihood of reform is about the same as my odds of winning the next three Lottos.