BROADSIDES

July 25, 2002

BREAKING NEWS: Bill Clinton is a liar! I know, I know....I couldn't believe it either, but it's true. Wow — my head is spinning! Give me a moment to compose myself....[deep breath]....OK.....

In today's Clinton Fan Club Newsletter (formerly known as the New York Times), the most classless president in American history claims that Republicans in Congress thwarted his saintly efforts to change corporate auditing laws to prevent accounting firms from simultaneously serving as a client's auditor and business consultant. While inspecting construction of the monument to his 8-year-long frat party, Clinton told reporters, "Arthur Levitt, my Securities and Exchange commissioner, tried to stop the Enron accounting issues — using the same accounting company being consultant and accountant — and the Republicans stopped it . . . Harvey Pitt was the leader trying to stop us from ending those kind of abuses. This is a matter of record."

When it comes to Bill Clinton, there are only two things that are "a matter of record" — his DNA and the contempt citation he received for lying to the face of a federal judge. So it comes as no surprise that Clinton's "matter of record" assertion that Republicans alone thwarted his efforts to ensure the integrity of corporate accounting is crapola (that's Italian for "false"). As Clinton pollster and strategist Dick Morris wrote in the New York Post last January, plenty of Republican and Democratic officeholders get plenty of cash from accounting firms, but "very few have passionately fought their cause in Washington as diligently as Chris Dodd," the Democratic senator from Connecticut.

Morris maintains that it was because of "Dodd's tireless efforts that Arthur Andersen was able to act as both 'independent auditor' and management consultant to Enron for $100 million a year . . . In 1995, it was Dodd who rammed through legislation, overriding President Clinton's veto, to protect firms like Andersen from lawsuits in cases just like Enron. The Dodd bill limited liability for lawyers and accountants for 'aiding and abetting' corporate fraud by their clients, making them liable only for their 'proportionate' share of the blame, rather than for the entire fraud. So, if an accounting firm kept secret the true picture of a corporation's finances, it would only be liable for part of the total fraud on the investors." (An aside: Clinton would have us believe that his veto was rooted in his desire to protect investors from shady accounting practices; in truth, Clinton vetoed the bill because the trial lawyers lobby, which opposes all efforts to limit liability of any kind, told him to do so.)

"But Dodd's services to Andersen," Morris continues, "didn't stop there. Every analysis so far of the Enron scandal lays much of the blame on the conflict of interest that Andersen faced in auditing and consulting for Enron at the same time . . . when the SEC tried to bar this practice, so ridden with conflict of interest, it was Chris Dodd, along with Rep. Billy Tauzin (now R-La., though a Democrat until August 1995), who according to the Associated Press 'brokered a deal' to stop the SEC action. As a result of Dodd's intervention, the SEC agreed not to issue a ban on the practice of auditing and consulting for the same client."

Once again, Bill Clinton lied. And the New York Times seems okay with it.

The unquestioning, almost worshipful tone of this New York Times report makes me wonder if editor Howell Raines is Bill Clinton's new intern. Hey, Howell — ya got a little sumpin' on the front of your dress!

B. Sides @ 7:37 AM