The response to the SOTU by Gephardt struck the right tone, just aggressive enough on defense (but not bloodthirsty) and sticking up for the litle guy at home. But the guy still doesn't have a Presidency in his future, even though (or maybe because) I agree with him on most of the issues. We're both pro-Labor, both pro-Environment, and both strike a balance somewhere between the Hawks (Lieberman) and the Doves (Wellstone) of the Democratic Party.
I could never figure out why I didn't feel comfortable with Gephardt. Then it was pointed out to me (by the lovely and talented Emilia): He's got no eyebrows! We Americans may be able to tolerate philandering (Clinton), semi-literate (Bush), inattentive (Reagan) Tories (Bush Sr) in the White House. But, dammit, the Prez has got to have eyebrows, but not too thick.

'Real Security': Justice Abroad, Jobs at Home (washingtonpost.com)
Our values call for tax cuts that promote growth and prosperity for all Americans. Our values call for protecting Social Security, and not gambling it away on the stock market. Our values call for helping patients and older Americans -- not just big HMOs and pharmaceutical companies -- ensuring that seniors don't have to choose between food and medicine. Our values call for helping workers who have lost their 401(k) plans and protecting pensions from corporate mismanagement and abuse. Our values call for helping the unemployed -- not just large corporations and the most fortunate.
These same values guide us as we work toward a long-term plan for our nation. We want to roll up our sleeves and work with our president to end America's dependence on foreign oil while preserving our environment -- so we don't see gas prices jump every year.

Salon.com details how Enron insiders made millions from the limited partnerships that were losing billions for the company they were supposed to be representing:

Salon.com Technology | How to be an Enron millionaire
Working with Fastow, Mordaunt and Enron treasurer Ben Glisan had invested around $6,000 apiece in LJM, one of the limited partnerships Enron had established to hide its debt. Within a few weeks, they each made approximately $1 million from those investments. Enron later revealed that Fastow himself, the financial wizard behind the partnerships scheme, earned as much as $30 million from his role in managing the partnerships.

Mickey Kaus pointed me to this tidbit from Fox News (We report, you Deride):
FOXNews.com

When compared to Bush, 42 percent think Gore, if he had been elected, would be doing a better job or the same job handling the war on terrorism as Bush is doing and 46 percent think he would be doing worse than Bush. The numbers are more favorable to Gore on handling the economy — 53 think Gore would be doing a better or the same job as Bush and 34 think he would be doing worse.

If the 2004 presidential election were held today, do you think you would be more likely to vote (to re-elect President Bush) or (for the Democratic candidate)?
Re-elect Bush: 49%
Vote for Democrat: 21%
Depends on Democrat: 14%
Undecided: 16%

At the absolute height of his popularity (approval rating at 83% in this same poll), even Fox couldn't get half the people to say that they'd definitely vote for Bush. That's very bad news for him. The popularity of the war may not be helping his reelection at all by the time 2004 comes around (shades of Poppy, once again).

Check out these poll results from the NY Times(requires registration), listed with a bunch of previous poll results. Doesn't look like Bush's good PR on the war front is carrying over to domestic issues. The Republicans get high marks on defense and foreign policy, but savaged on most domestic issues. As the next elections are still 10 months away, expect this to become even more important.
The New York Times/CBS News Poll

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy?
Approve: 56%
Disapprove: 33%
The disapproval rating is actually 5 points higher than it was back in March.

Regardless of how you usually vote, do you think the Republican party or the Democratic party is more likely to improve education?
Republican: 39%
Democratic: 42%

Regardless of how you usually vote, do you think the Republican party or the Democratic party is more likely to make the right decisions about Social Security?
Republican: 31%
Democratic: 48%

Regardless of how you usually vote, do you think the Republican party or the Democratic party is more likely to make sure the tax system is fair?
Republican 36%
Democratic 49%

Regardless of how you usually vote, do you think the Republican party or the Democratic party is more likely to improve the health care system?
Republican 28%
Democratic 51%

Regardless of how you usually vote, do you think the Republican party or the Democratic party is more likely to protect the environment?
Republican 23%
Democratic 57%
(that 23% represents the hard base of the Republican Party, the same people who voted for Poppy in '92)

Do you think the recent tax cuts are fair to all Americans or unfair because they mostly benefit the rich?
Fair: 36%
Unfair: 56%

Do you think using a significant portion of the budget surplus to cut taxes was the best thing to do or would it have been better to spend the money on programs like Social Security and Medicare?
Tax Cut: 27%
Social Security: 65%
(this could be devastating, the Tax Cut was Bush's one real claim to fame. If people turn against that, he'll suffer)

Do you think risking a budget deficit now in order to cut taxes over the next few years is a good way to manage the federal budget or would it be better to postpone cutting taxes and not risk a budget deficit?
Risk Deficit: 28%
Postpone Tax Cut: 61%

Would you be more likely to vote for a Congressional candidate who thought it was more important to cut taxes, or for a Congressional candidate who thought it was more important to balance the budget?
Cut Taxes: 18%
Balance Budget: 73%
(even part of the Republican base is ready to abandon them over Tax Cuts)

From what you know so far, do you think the executives of the Enron corporation had closer ties to members of the Republican party or closer ties to members of the Democratic party?
Republican: 45%
Democratic: 10%

When it comes to their dealings with Enron executives prior to Enron's bankruptcy, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the entire truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?
Entire Truth: 17%
Hiding: 58%
Lying: 9%
Don't Know: 16%

If the 2002 election for United States House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate in your district?
Republican: 37%
Democratic: 39%
Depends: 10%
Don't Know: 12%

As the war on terrorism simmers down and as memories of Spt 11th begin to take a back seat to worries about the future, look for Bush's poll numbers on domestic issues to drop even further.

Interesting complication for those favoring posting the Ten Commandments in schools: which Ten Commandments?

GreenvilleOnline.com - News
The big difference is between Nos. 2 and 10. Jews and Orthodox and Protestant Christians forbid making graven images in No. 2, and forbid coveting in No. 10.

But Catholics and Lutherans make no mention of graven images, and divide the coveting: No. 9 bans coveting a neighbor's wife, No. 10, his goods........

.........."I don't have any preference of one version over another," he said. "I've never tried to micromanage this, but just to say it should be the Ten Commandments as Moses brought them down from the mountain."

Actually, that would represent a third alternative -- entire passages from Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5, where the Ten Commandments are given at some length. Nowhere in either book is the abbreviated form we've come to picture on Sunday school walls

This has always been my biggest question about prayer in schools. Whose prayer?
I really don't think that a bunch of Southern Baptists are gonna be just fine with a Muslim leading their kids in prayer, or a Hindu teaching them about Vishnu. Hell, I know Baptists who consider Catholicism to be a cult. One Wiccan teaching Freshman English would be enough to convince most parents that school prayer wasn't such a hot idea.

Lots of people like the idea of prayer in schools. It's one of those unthinking feel-good "solutions" that won't do a damn bit of good but won't hurt much either (kinda like Bush Sr's Constitutional Amendment to keep people from burning flags; if flag burning is the biggest problem in your life, you need to shut up and start enjoying your magically blessed life). I generally don't have a problem with most of these useless feel-good ideas (the V-chip, et al), but we need to draw the line when they start violating the Constitution or causing all sorts of unnecessary friction. Prayer in schools (and, to a lesser extent, posting the Ten Commandments) does both.
There aren't many things we're likely to do which would more strongly "establish" a religion than a teacher leading kids in prayer. That prayer would make the religion it represents the de facto established religion. Anyone who remembers school (or has a teenager as I do), knows how much pressure there is to conform among kids. One who didn't believe in the same God as other kids, or in any God at all, would suffer a lot from being labelled as different or an unbeliever. There's enough BS involved with being a kid, we don't need to invent more.

If you want your kids to pray, pray with them at home and in church. If you want them to stay out of trouble, spend so much time with them that they couldn't get into trouble without you knowing. If you want them to grow up to be responsible adults, make them work hard for the things they have and teach them to treat others with respect. If we all did these things, we wouldn't need school prayer to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. If we don't do these things, then all the prayer in the world won't help.

Jonathan Alter has a real good article on the greater meaning of the Enron collapse, and how it points to greater rot within our system:

Which Boot Will Drop Next?
Enron may be bankrupt, but the underlying disease lives on, in the fig-leaf accountability proposals of the new SEC chief; the refusal of the White House to embrace real campaign-finance reform; the lame protestations that this is all some tragic aberration.
If only it were so. Does anyone seriously believe that those off-shore shelters and off-books partnerships are somehow unique to Enron? Might not Arthur Andersen have offered a few of its other clients the same tips for scamming the IRS, the SEC and the average investor just trying to make sense of quarterly earnings reports written in corporate Sanskrit? Maybe accountants at the other Big Five firms aren’t dumb enough to hold shredding parties, but Andersen’s basic recipes for cooking the books seem to be, in the argot of the trade, “generally accepted.......

.......”Why did Vice President Cheney refuse to see elected representatives of the people—like the state attorneys general—but open the door to corporate America in the secret formulation of the Bush energy plan? Why did 11 senators, including Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, crudely strong-arm Levitt on behalf of the accounting firms? Why did Enron (with the help of Ed Gillespie, a key Bush operative and company lobbyist) get to help write Tom DeLay’s stimulus bill?

David Ignatius practically breaks his arm patting America on the back over Enron:

All-American Flameout (washingtonpost.com)
Seen from abroad, what's striking about the Enron scandal isn't simply the duplicity of the company's executives and auditors but the speed of its collapse. Enron went from Master of the Universe to bankruptcy in a few weeks. That sort of instant demise simply doesn't happen most places -- especially not to politically powerful people like Ken Lay.

What he misses, of course, is that all these bad things have happened to the company named Enron, not to the people who caused the problems. The company is bankrupt, and its shareholders (who'd been lied to for years) are out billions of dollars. The people who lied and cheated are almost all incredibly wealthy and will remain so. Yes, Ken Lay resigned, but he's still worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The executives who got rich while driving Enron into the ground almost all bailed out with millions in profits. They even gave themselves more millions in bonuses before filing bankruptcy. The people stuck with stock when it went into the toilet are the victims, not the perpetrators; but they're the ones facing bankruptcy.

The collapse of Enron points out the need for government oversight of corporations. We should be striving to catch crooks as soon as they start to cheat, not patting ourselves on the back when they're forced to bail out as millionaires after getting caught.

Time has an article about how the Bush White House can't shake Enron as an issue:

TIME.com: Enron Spoils the Party
Over the last year, the Bush team had quietly performed a host of political sacraments for the Texas company before it began to go bust, and vice versa: there was the $1.76 million in contributions that Enron executives sent to the G.O.P. during the 2000 campaign; there was the energy policy Vice President Dick Cheney drafted in 2001 after meetings with Enron officials, portions of which seem to have sprung directly from Enron's wish list; there were ex-Enron chiefs and consultants salted around the Bush Administration, from the Army Secretary Thomas White to the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. And last summer Bush chose Pat Wood--a man strongly backed by Lay--to be his top energy-price regulator.

The Bull Moose comes up with the State of the Union that he'd like to give, but which we'll never hear from the current resident of the White House (or anyone else likely to occupy it in our lifetime).

The Project for Conservative Reform
Finally, the Moose offers you no new benefits, no new entitlements, no new loopholes. Our fiscal house is no longer in order and we must husband our resources for the war. Although the Moose has nothing for you, he will ask much of your children. America's youth must see it as their rite of passage into citizenship to give a year of their life in service to their country.

You are blessed to live in a land of liberty. As our brave service people go into harm's way to protect your rights, safety and freedom, consider your debt by serving in a civilian or military capacity. Let us replace the Enron ethic of amoral materialism with one of vigorous patriotic service to country.

A story a while back in The New Republic details how instrumental Ed Gillespie, who was paid $525,000 as a lobbyist for Enron (below), was in the Republican Revolution of 1994 and in George W Bush's presidential campaign. As a lobbyist, his influence has grown even more. Look for his name to come up when people start using terms like "influence peddling" and "revolving door".

TNR Online | The Insider by Ryan Lizza (print)
When Gillespie left Capitol Hill, he didn't simply become a lobbyist; he began moving seamlessly between the worlds of campaigning, governing, and lobbying........

.......After the convention, Gillespie's importance to the campaign only grew. September 2000 is remembered among Bushies as "Black September," the month of "rats, moles, and bad polls." In response, Hughes invited him to move down to Austin to help sharpen Bush's message and step up the attacks on Gore...he was at the center of the successful plan to transform Gore's misstatements during the debates into a national story about Gore's credibility.........

......Back in washington, the White House considered Gillespie for a number of jobs, including director of congressional affairs. But Gillespie declined, agreeing only to serve as spokesman for the Presidential Inaugural Committee and then as a transition adviser to Bush buddy Don Evans at Commerce--a department that, in 1995, Gillespie had helped Armey try to eliminate. There he helped install Jim Dyke, a Quinn Gillespie lobbyist, as Evans's spokesman.

When Gillespie left Commerce to return to his lobbying firm in mid-February, he took with him a Rolodex full of administration contacts. Indeed, while many lobbyists advised the campaign or served on transition teams, no one on K Street has served side by side with as many Bushies as Gillespie has over the past year.

Amory and Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute have a great article about energy security in the latest American Prospect. They go into a lot of detail how a combination of better energy efficiency and widely distributed energy generation (mostly through renewable resources, like wind and solar) will be far more efficient, more secure, cheaper, and cleaner than our current emphasis on remote generation of electricity using fossil fuels and fossil fuel based transport. Read it.

TAP: Vol 13, Iss. 3. Energy Forever. Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins.
Fortunately, there are faster, cheaper, and surer alternatives. We can achieve energy security by using less energy far more efficiently to do the same tasks--and then by supplying what is still needed from sources that are inherently invulnerable because they're dispersed, diverse, and increasingly renewable. These options reduce the need to transport energy by vulnerable long-distance pipelines and transmission lines, and usually cost much less than expanding those links.

In the case of tasks now reliant on oil, the change would be relatively easy. Energy efficiency is the rapid-deployment resource, and huge amounts of it are available. Just a 2.7-mpg gain in the fuel economy of this country's light-vehicle fleet could displace Persian Gulf imports entirely, and this is no pipe dream. The National Academy of Sciences reported last year that the fuel economy of conventional cars and light trucks could be raised vastly more than that without compromising safety, performance, or affordability.........

......On-site and neighborhood micropower generated in or near customers' premises can solve both problems, offering diverse, decentralized, and thus nearly invulnerable supplies of electricity. Because microgeneration is also more flexible and quickly built than large power plants--and because it benefits from the valuable financial and engineering advantages of electric sources that are the right size for the job--it is favored in the market as well.

Frank Rich in the NY Times (requires free registration) takes aim at all the false appeals to patriotism floating around. We're being told that it's unpatriotic to question corporate breaks, but politicians are apparently not willing to touch their pet projects or sacrifice anything they've promised their owners (ahem, contributors).


Patriotism on the Cheap
There has been a lot of talk about patriotism and sacrifice since Sept. 11, but talk is cheap. Real airline security is expensive, and you get what you pay for. Congress, exercising its favorite form of bipartisanship, that which serves its corporate donors, did hand the airlines a $15 billion bailout in September but it allotted nothing like that sum to putting teeth into the airline security bill passed with such fanfare in November........

.......We all applaud our selfless men and women in uniform, whether at ground zero or in battle, but we are not inclined to make even a fractionally commensurate sacrifice of our own. We have no interest in reducing our dependence on the oil from the country that nurtured most of the hijackers, Saudi Arabia, or revisiting an upper-brackets-skewed $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut to find the serious money needed to fight future hijackers and bioterrorists effectively.......

.........if Donald Rumsfeld is good at his job, that's his talent, not a magic spell that automatically rubs off on John Ashcroft and Norman Mineta. If George W. Bush has been a strong practitioner of war, that doesn't elevate his pettier domestic policies, whether an Enron-friendly energy plan or an inequitable economic "stimulus," to the holy grail or brand his critics as evildoers.

Enron has been taking advantage of a big, fat tax dodge that other companies have also been using. They set up offshore subsidiaries to shelter their profits from American taxes. Unfortunately, this is completely legal and will remain so for a long time, because Congress and the Bush administration aren't going to change a thing. Corporations are throwing around way too much money for the tax laws to be changed to keep them from cheating.

Corporate Tax Avoidance by Enron: CTJ Analysis
Enron paid no corporate income taxes in four of the last five years-- although the company was profitable in each of those years.
Over the five-year period from 1996 to 2000, Enron received a net tax rebate of $381 million. This includes a $278 million tax rebate in 2000 alone.
Over the same period, the company’s profit before federal income taxes totaled $1.785 million. In none of these years was the company’s pretax profit less than $87 million.