Unable to shake the accusations that they're in the pocket of big corporations who steal money from working people's retirement plans, conservatives are attempting a new approach: liberals do it do. It's a time-tested strategy: cloud the issues, make everybody seem to be the same, and no harm will be done to you.
In the National Review Online, Joel Mowbray calls ULLICO, a financial-services company run which primarily invests money from union pensions, "Big Labor's Enron." If labor unions are corporate criminals as well, then we can all forget about all the money the President's friend Ken Lay stole from thousands of retirement accounts (the last figure was $247 million; why isn't he in jail yet?).
However, even though it did not stop Mowbray from writing the article, the biggest problem with ULLICO was that it was heavily invested in Global Crossing (which Mowbray calls "the telecom favored by wealthy Democrats such as Terry McAuliffe" -- what does that mean? Is Terry McAuliffe complicit in what happened there, Mowbray?). ULLICO did not anything that wrong except get burned by the criminals at Global Crossing.
Mowbray wants a Congressional investigation, except he does not think one will happen because "Sen. Ted Kennedy, chairman of the Senate committee that would be tasked with looking into ULLICO wrongdoing, received $1,000 from ULLICO in 2000. ULLICO's political action committee has handed out $31,500 this year, 94 percent to Democrats."
I'm sorry to point this out, though, but $31,500 does not make one a big spender in Washington. And the $1,000 that Ted Kennedy received two years ago? I'd hazzard a guess that Kennedy has room service bills from two weekends ago which are higher than that. ULLICO is not the issue that's depressing America's confidence in the financial markets and their bank accounts -- Enron is and the administration's timid response to Enron is. (Timid may be too generous, since there has been a complete lack of response to the current economic crisis from this White House.)
Mowbray should stop trying to confuse the issue and join millions of others who want the real corporate crooks behind bars.