Now, lemme tell y’all ’bout gaming

Citizen Perot: Bites wasn’t sure what to be more frustrated with last week: the “everybody does it” explanations Ross Perot gave legislators for why his Perot Systems Corporation offered seminars on how to manipulate California energy markets, or the slow-pitch media coverage of this shameful performance.

In typically deferential style, the throngs of mainstream journalists who packed the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Manipulation of the Wholesale Energy Market hearing dutifully noted that the former presidential candidate denied wrongdoing and had his usual folksy charm. And the main conflict in most stories was Perot’s meaningless sparring with Senator Steve Peace over whether Texans are bad people.

Most stories either downplayed or outright ignored what Chairman Joe Dunn referred to—repeatedly, resolutely, even if presented in the most solicitous tones and with a warm smile—as the “inconsistencies” between what Perot said and what dozens of company documents showed. Or his promise to bring Perot back to address those lies, er, uh, I mean “inconsistencies.”

Released at the hearing, the letters, e-mails and other documents present a damning portrait of a company that was paid millions of dollars in public money to design and implement California’s energy-trading computer programs, then turned around and marketed their “unique” knowledge of loopholes in the system to the energy companies that gouged us all last year.

Sales pitches referred to these Perot employees-for-hire as “very clever and their minds are devious enough to readily search for and find gaming opportunities.”

Perot tried to seem helpful, but he was anything but. He dodged every question about the clear meaning of the offers his people made to help companies including Enron “game the market,” telling the committee to go directly to the employees, “because these people use interesting words to express themselves in the technology business.”

Yeah, words from sales pitches like “easy money” and “many holes in the system exist that could be used to deliver ‘unexpected’ profits.” But the Perot partner who made the most damning statements, George Backus, didn’t show up at the hearings, where implicated employees tried to paint him as the overzealous fall guy. Why wasn’t Backus there? Because Perot wouldn’t pay his airfare, as he did for former employees who testified.

Ultimately, it was clear that Perot’s people unethically used their contract with California to try to help generators screw us over. Whether or not they had any insider information to share—as Perot contends they didn’t—they marketed the perception that they did.

Yet the most telling and widely overlooked aspect of Perot’s testimony was his point that all corporations game their respective markets, using complex computer programs to maximize profits, regardless of such concepts as fairness and public interest. He even correctly pointed out that economists have recently garnered the biggest accolades for their work on “game theory.”

“There’s nothing sinister about any of this,” Perot said, but that’s where he’s wrong. Just because the rules of the game are now rigged to transfer wealth from the people to Wall Street, that doesn’t make it right, or unworthy of public outrage.

Baloney in, baloney out: Perot wasn’t the only corporate giant last week who tried to smooth over the excesses of capitalism. After CEO-in-Chief George Bush gave his “do what I say, not what I did” speech on Wall Street, even Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon joined the blue-blooded businessman parade.

“I was reading an essay the other day which read, in part, ‘If apologists for corporate corruption are to be taken at their word, dishonesty is the best policy … Baloney,’ ” Simon wrote to the media.

The 1976 essay was from his dad, former U.S. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon. Ironically, father and son would be named two days later as having taken advantage of tax shelters described by the IRS as illegal.

Billy Boy went on to fawn over both Bush and dear old dad for their illogical claims that, as Simon Senior put it, “honesty is not only the best business policy, but the only one compatible with a free market,” as if deregulated markets actually reward honesty instead of gaming.

To which Bites says: Baloney.