Cord Byrd: “since the revelation last month of yet another corporate accounting scandal--this time involving the second largest…”

“since the revelation last month of yet another corporate accounting scandal--this time involving the second largest telecommunications provider, WorldCom--the Bush administration seems to have lost its patience with corporate America. In fact, from the rhetoric we have heard from the administration in recent weeks, I expected to hear the President tell corporate America this week that his top advisors had been in the White House basement planning, not just a corporate fraud task force, but a new Department of Corporate Security. The President said last month at the G8 summit in Canada, ``The revelations that WorldCom has misaccounted [$3.8] billion is outrageous.'' In his June 29 weekly radio address, the President warned corporate America that ``no violation of the public's trust will be tolerated. The Federal Government will be vigilant in prosecuting wrongdoers to ensure that investors and workers maintain the highest confidence in American business.'' The President apparently is so miffed with these corporate ``wrongdoers'' that he has elevated them in his rhetoric to a bad-guy level that is almost, but not quite as bad, as al-Qaeda's ``evildoers.'' Almost the same level; perhaps not quite.”