VICTORY: Senator Gramm Dropped from CPAC Schedule
Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival, Inc. said today that, "Sparing themselves a major embarrassment, organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) have dropped Senator From Enron Phil Gramm from the schedule. Gramm was scheduled to get a 'Defender of the Constitution' award when he had failed to lift a finger for Army soldier Michael New, one of his own constituents, who had been court-martialed by Bill Clinton for refusing to serve the United Nations." Here's what the schedule now looks like:
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Ronald Reagan Banquet Ticket Required
Master of Ceremonies: Hon. Edwin Meese
Remarks: Governor Bill Owens (CO)
Remarks: Hon. Mitch Daniels
Director, White House Office of Management & Budget
Presentation of the Heston Award for Courage Under Fire
Presenter: Wayne LaPierre
Presentation of the Ronald Reagan Award
Presenter: David Keene |
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Gramm and his wife, Wendy, have been called "Mr. and Mrs. Enron" because of their close ties to the company. Wendy Gramm has not yet been identified by name as a target in a criminal investigation. But naming targets happens rarely and sometimes because the prosecutors want to pressure the "target" into becoming a witness against others.
The US Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into Enron's collapse. Reports say that, The inquiry centers on "whether investors and employees were misled about the company's financial strength…"
The charge, in common language, is cooking the books while dumping stock. Wendy Gramm sold over 10,000 shares and made over $270,000.
Enron, now bankrupt, paid no income taxes in four of the past five years, using almost 900 subsidiaries in tax-haven countries. Wendy Gramm sat on the Enron board and audit committee. Here is what is being alleged on the public record ."She served on the company's audit committee and helpfully turned a blind eye to the shady private partnerships Enron set up off the books to hide debt and mislead investors," charges Robert Borosage in The Nation. Tyson Slocum, author of a Public Citizen report on Enron's ties to the Gramms, said recent disclosures about the Enron board's actions mean that she "is clearly in trouble. It has just been discovered that the audit committee not only knew about these ... sham limited partnerships, but they also approved of them."
The January 19 New York Times had a story, Enron's Board May Have Had Role in Dealings, by Reed Abelson. It said, in part:
"There is increasing evidence that Enron's board, composed of many prominent and financially sophisticated people, was actively involved in crucial decisions that may have led to the company's downfall… the directors appear to have played a significant role in overseeing the partnerships at the center of Enron's collapse.
"The board - which includes Wendy L. Gramm, a former government regulator and the wife of Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas…even went so far as to suspend Enron's code of ethics to approve the creation of the partnerships between Enron and its chief financial officer, according to the report of a preliminary investigation conducted at Enron's request by the law firm of Vinson & Elkins. ..
"The partnerships kept significant debt off Enron's books and masked much of what was really going on at the company. Criminal and civil investigations begun since the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month are focusing intensely on Enron's transactions with these partnerships.
"While outsiders have had few glimpses of what actually happened between Enron executives and its directors, the report's disclosures leave little doubt that the board was intimately involved in approving them. Questions have already been raised about the independence of the board, and many corporate governance experts say the directors appear to share substantial responsibility for what happened at Enron.
"'The factual evidence we have at this point is that the board was fully informed,'" said Patrick McGurn, an executive with Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises large investors on corporate governance issues. None of the directors have said publicly that the board was misled by the company, he added…"
One media report describes one of the civil suits as follows:
"Amalgamated Bank has sued 29 current and former Enron executives and board members, including Chairman Ken Lay and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm's wife, Wendy Gramm, an Enron board member. She is also the former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency that oversees commodity and options trading to protect markets from fraud and manipulation.
"The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Houston, alleges that the named executives and board members engaged in a three-year pattern of fraud and deception that caused Enron share prices to fall from a high of about $90 a year ago to less than a dollar. The suit claims that during that time, the defendants sold $1.1 billion in stock, all the while hiding the company's true financial condition.
"An Enron director, Ms Wendy L. Gramm, the wife of US Senator Mr Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican who sits on the Senate Banking and Finance Committees, sold 10,256 shares for $US276,912, according to the suit. Ms Gramm is a former chairwoman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission."
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