"Lay Stayed @ Clinton WH 11 Times" E-mail Hoax Making The Rounds - Again!

[stopbush]

Honestly, can't the RW wack jobs come up with something better than an
e-mail loaded with long-debunked BS purporting to show that
bush is no worse than Clinton?

It's like clockwork with these assholes.

On edit: here's the gist of the e-mail with the snopes debunking:

Claim: Democrats and the Clinton administration have
received more campaign contributions from Enron and
have been more accommodating of Enron's lobbying
efforts than Republicans and the Bush administration.
Status: False.

Example:


SCANDAL IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Texas, an energy company, big money, Bush in the White
House. This has all the makings of a Republican
scandal.

Certainly there is a political dimension here. Enron's
chairman did meet with the president and the vice
president in the Oval Office.

Enron gave $420,000 to the president's party over
three years. It donated $100,000 to the president's
inauguration festivities.

The Enron chairman stayed at the White House 11 times.
The corporation had access to the administration at
its highest levels and even enlisted the Commerce and
State Departments to grease deals for it.

The taxpayer-supported Export-import Bank subsidized
Enron for more than $600 million in just one
transaction.

BUT . . . the president under whom all this happened
wasn't George W. Bush.

It was William Jefferson Clinton.



Origins: The debacle that is Enron will take years
to unravel, and the end result will be that no one
person or group or political party will be held to
"blame" for the whole affair. Enron has been spreading
around so much money and influence through its
lobbying efforts for so many years — among both
Republicans and Democrats, in federal as well as in
state governments — that neither party can take the
moral high ground here. As The San Francisco Chronicle
reported:

Enron's tentacles ran so deep into Washington's
political establishment that 71 sitting senators and
nearly half of the current House of Representatives
received Enron money during the last decade, including
some who are now investigating the company's
bankruptcy.
And The Hartford Courant noted:
The company also was generous with state and local
candidates from both major political parties. Its
tentacles were wrapped around high-profile figures in
several administrations.
The attempt made in the piece of netlore quoted above
to deflect blame from the current administration and
dump it onto the Clinton White House is nothing short
of silly. To wit:
The Enron chairman stayed at the White House 11 times.
As Brendan Nyhan revealed in an article at Salon.com,
Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was never an overnight visitor
at the White House during the Clinton adminstration.
But, according to Nyhan, "Lay did, however, stay at
the White House when George H.W. Bush was president."
The corporation had access to the administration at
its highest levels
Given the General Accounting Office's current
investigation into connections between Enron and Vice
President Dick Cheney's planning of Bush
administration energy policy, "the corporation's
access to the administration at its highest levels"
apparently continued even after the Republicans gained
the White House. And according to USA Today:
Enron spent nearly three times as much money lobbying
the Bush administration in the first half of 2001 as
it initially reported.
The collapsed energy-trading company spent at least
$2.46 million on efforts to influence energy and
budget decisions and support its international
ventures, according to an amended lobbying report
Enron filed with the House and Senate on March 1.

As for those supposedly shocking figures bandied
about, such as:
Enron gave $420,000 to the president's
party over three years. It donated $100,000 to the
president's inauguration festivities.
Those numbers, even if accurate, don't come close to
matching what has been reported about Enron's
contributions to George W. Bush and the Republican
party, such as this item from The Hartford Courant:
Since 1989, the Houston-based energy broker and its
employees have made more than $5.7 million in
contributions to federal candidates and political
parties, nearly three-quarters of it to Republicans.
Enron was George W. Bush's biggest contributor in the
2000 presidential campaign.
Nor do they match what The New York Times uncovered:
Enron, Arthur Andersen and Vinson & Elkins, a Houston
law firm, are among the most generous contributors to
Mr. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. Enron has given
more than $700,000 to Mr. Bush since 1993; no company
has given him more. In addition, Enron's chairman,
Kenneth L. Lay, was one of the "pioneers," raising
more than $100,000 for Mr. Bush's e-mail campaign, and
he and his wife gave a total of $10,000 to Mr. Bush's
Florida recount fund. Enron and Mr. Lay also
contributed a total of $200,000 to Mr. Bush's
inaugural festivities.
If we're looking to pass out soap, we don't need to be
discriminating — there are plenty of dirty hands to go
around here.
Last updated: 18 March 2002

The URL for this page is
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/enron.htm

[BR_Parkway]

1. Of course he did - how else could they have plotted to make Dear Leader

look so bad?

[LynnTheDem]

2. Next they'll try showing how bush isn't as bad as Hitler was.

bush (so far) has a far lower body count. He sure beats Hussein though.

And gee, rightwingnuts (and bush himself) called Hussein "worse than Hitler"...

[Ganja Ninja]

3. When you're absolutely, positively running on empty ...

You can always try to coast a few more miles on some Clenis hatred.

[meegbear]

4. Reply to the emailer with the snopes info ...

then add:

"Your turn. President George W. Bush is allowing U.S. ports to be run and controlled by a country that has supported terrorists and helped with the 9/11 attacks. Debunk that."

[WePurrsevere]

5. Ah yes, once again RepubliCON Clenis envy rears it's head. Freud would

LOVE these folks.