Political Quotes

“later today President Bush is scheduled to give a major speech, it is billed, on corporate responsibility. His advisers have told us he is going to get tough on corporate wrongdoers. He is even calling for jail time for those who defraud shareholders and who violate Federal law. In addition, the President's advisers let slip recently he is reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt who had a well-deserved reputation for battling corporate greed. All of this must mean that the President is very serious about ending this season of executive greed and corporate misgovernance in America. But to use the bully pulpit like Teddy Roosevelt did, you have got to have credibility on the issues at hand. For many of us, the President's credibility on corporate issues has been a problem since his vast, but inexplicable, success as a businessman was revealed a number of years ago. As recently as yesterday, the President and the White House have sought to offer new explanations for why he did not report in a timely manner his 1990 sale of $850,000 worth of stock in a Texas-based energy company just weeks before its value plummeted. It sounds a lot like Enron. It sounds a lot like WorldCom. It sounds a lot like Adelphia. It sounds a lot like these corporate scams that we have all been so critical of. Previously, the President said he thought regulators lost the documents. He pointed at the regulators.…”