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Pretzel Logic
The good news is that 7,000 room nights have been booked at seven different Center City hotels. The bad news is that they will be filled with lawyers.
“This is a desirable group to have in town, and, frankly, it couldn’t have come at a better time,” states Allan H. Gordon, chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, about the American Bar Association convention that is coming to town this week.
I have to agree with Gordon on one thing.
All these shysters in one place couldn’t come at a better time. Thousands of people nationwide have lost their life savings. Huge shredding trucks have been lumbering down Houston streets, hired by the Enron Corp. to cover up its dirty little trails. And in Washington, George Bush and Dick Cheney play Sgt. Schultz; knowing nothing, hearing nothing and seeing nothing about one of their biggest campaign contributor’s shenanigans.
Maybe just a few of the thousands of lawyers coming to Philadelphia this week are sick enough about this mess to actually do something.
Forget for a moment the shredding and the cover-up and the periods of long denial. And forget that the pressure is so high now that Bush went out of his way to mention tighter corporate scrutiny in his State of the Union speech.
This whole Enron saga is really about people. People who got screwed. And people who are doing something about it.
People like Rebekah Rushing.
Rushing worked for Enron for seven and a half years, until, like so many others, she was Lay-ed off when the company’s books finally overcooked.
But the Enron bankruptcy was not the end of the story for Rushing, a 35-year-old wife and mother who served the company in a number of administrative positions.
She helped create the Humble, Texas-based Enron Ex-Employee Relief Fund Account (EERFA).
“We started the fund on Dec. 12, I along with two other ex-Enron employees,” says Rushing. “We wanted to do something to make a difference. This was a second family. I was fortunate to get a job. But not everybody was so fortunate, so I wanted to give money back to help others.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, Rushing says she’d raised about $10,000 more than the last time I talked to her, a week ago, when there was about $70,000 in the kitty. She says that she is about to make the first of two $40,000 disbursements, in grants of up to $2,000 to ex-employees laid off between Nov. 15 and Dec. 31 as a result of the company’s financial disaster.
Rushing says recipients will use the money to help make mortgage payments and pay utility and other bills that have been piling up.
A good chunk of the money the EERFA has raised, says Rushing, has come from politicians who are giving away campaign contributions they received from Enron.
Last week I wrote that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Casey Jr. kicked in the $1,500 he received in 2000 for his auditor general’s race. I also wrote that his opponent, Ed Rendell, was chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) while the DNC took in $310,000 in soft-money contributions from Enron.
How much good will, I ask Rushing, could the Democratic Party engender in heavily Republican Houston if it were to donate what it got from Enron?
“That would definitely make a good impression,” says Rushing, who, doing a little quick math in her head, adds that such a contribution would directly help at least 155 people, probably more because most are taking less than the maximum so others can receive help. The goodwill ripple effect would be far greater.
EERFA recipients and their friends and family “are very, very appreciative,” says Rushing. “Several people are in the final stages of landing a job, and this money helps them bridge the gap. People would definitely remember” the DNC if it were to make such a contribution.
Will it?
Probably not, but who knows for sure? Press folk at the DNC headquarters in Washington did not return repeated calls.
Rebekah Rushing isn’t much concerned with the politics of the situation. She just wants her former co-workers to be as fortunate as she is.
“I am glad to help make a difference,” she says, adding that her new employers, Avalon Energy, have been tremendously generous in allowing her to spend so much time on the fund.
“I am blessed to have a job, and I am blessed to have bosses who understand what I am doing.” And blessed, she says, to have a family that understands as well.
“My son wrote me a note the other day,” says Rushing. “It said, ‘Dear Mom, Gone to bed. See you in the morning. Sleep good. I am very proud of you. Love, J.J.’ For a teenager to take time out of his busy day to do that meant a lot to me.”
It would mean a lot to Rushing — and all the other Enron ex-employees — if the American Bar Association, with all its clout and money, stood up and demanded that Congress make it more difficult for business executives to get away with what former Enron chairman and CEO Ken Lay and crew got away with.
What would Rushing say to the lawyers?
“It’s just like I tell my son,” she says. “For every action there is a consequence. You do good, and there is a consequence. You do bad, and there is a consequence.”
Already, the stock market is reeling from new revelations about other companies who have barbecued the books. The consequence of further inaction, all you legal eagles?
Economic devastation.
