I recognize the Wall Street Journal’s John R. Emshwiller has already cashed in on the Enron saga. But even that reason for wanting to move on to something else cannot explain this tepid ($) article on the prosecutorial misconduct that has tarred the Enron case and is now the subject of a pending motion to dismiss the criminal charges against former Enron key executives Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Richard Causey.
Although Mr. Emshwiller notes some of the allegations regarding prosecutorial misconduct in the pending Lay-Skilling-Causey motion, he inexplicably ignores compelling evidence of misconduct that has already occurred in other Enron-related cases, including the fact that such misconduct has already contributed greatly to the unjust conviction of at least four men. Meanwhile, Mr. Emshwiller’s article even suggests that the Enron Task Force is on the side of the greater public interest in requesting public disclosure of the confidential sources of information relating to prosecutorial misconduct that has provided under seal to the judge in the case, but then fails to explain how such confidential sources could be protected from Task Force retribution if they were publicly revealed and fails to report that it’s been the Task Force that has continually attempted to suppress evidence that would be helpful to the defendants in the only Enron-related criminal cases that have actually gone to trial.
My goodness, has the presumption of guilt toward any Enron-related defendant reached the point where even the nation’s leading business newspaper has simply dispensed with even reasonably detailed or at least balanced reporting on the case?

On the heels of announcing the sale of almost a billion dollars worth of power plants in New York City and the Bush Administration announcing an energy conservation campaign centered around a mascot called the “Energy Hog,” Houston-based Reliant Energy Inc. announced Monday that it would be raising its electricity prices for Houston-area customers by almost 15% as soon as possible and could implement an additional increase of about 10% in January. Those price increases will make Reliant’s price for electricity among the highest in the nation.
Under Texas’ deregulation law, Reliant is required to offer a semiregulated price through 2006 that is tied to natural-gas prices. Reliant’s current electricity rate is based on a price of $7.50 per million BTUs for natural gas, so it is increasing its electricity rates based on a benchmark price of $11.38 per unit for natural gas. Reliant’s two-step increase will result in a price of more than 16 cents a kilowatt-hour from the current 12.88 cents.

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A fair bit of chatter was generated in the locker rooms of many golf clubs over the past weekend by this Wall Street Journal ($) article on Friday that detailed the rather embarrassing use of corporate aircraft as airborne limousines to fly CEOs and other executives to golf dates or to vacation homes where they have golf-club memberships. In the article, Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, calls it “disgusting” for a company to guarantee its CEO numerous hours of free personal flight time in order for the exec to make his tee times:

“A corporate aircraft isn’t supposed to be a shuttle to a vacation home. We pay CEOs enough. They can afford to pay to fly to their vacation homes.”

Is nothing sacred anymore? The hard-earned right to jet off to a golf game has been a savored executive perk for years. In this post-Enron era of demonizing business executives, is not there anyone who will stand up and defend the beleaguered executives in retaining this hallowed perk?
You bet there is. Just call Professor Bainbridge.
I’m betting that the Professor gets some major consulting work out of his work in this area. ;^)