Tag Archives: George W. Bush

The low-class Washington, D.C., chattering classes

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The chattering classes are lower-class than the masses.

We have seen this before. In 2002 and 2003, millions of ‘ordinary’ Americans figured something was wrong about wantonly invading Iraq. That perception was not shared, however, by established media authorities including George F. Will, Charles Krauthammer, the entire Republican noise machine, the three original major television networks and Fox, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the major cable outlets. The upshot was a bloody and unconstitutional invasion of a sovereign nation that basically amounted to the betrayal of the less educated by the (nominally) educated.

Now we are seeing it again. The newest representation is our more elevated media mouths’ reaction to Donald Trump.

Typically inadequate commentary about Trump’s rise or support can be found here and here, among many other places.

The ground rule of pundits like these: always blame the many rather than the few. So much for participatory democracy. So much for each-one-teach-one. For Democrats, so much for winning in November 2016.
In commentary pieces like these, however well-meant they may be, a good guideline is to look at what is missing. Thus, in these particular pieces linked and in many others, there is no account of the staggering dearth of valid information in what passes for ‘political reporting’ in our big media outlets. Nothing about the paucity of genuine information in our politics coverage. (Far too typical. Did we learn about segregation and desegregation from the big media outlets? — not until the latter was dramatized by protests that lighted racial justice up on the big board. More recently, did we hear about insurance companies’ stiffing their own customers? — not until John Grisham and Michael Moore and, on a lesser scale, I, voiced the issue. For that matter, when was the last time Wolf Blitzer used the word ‘redlining’?) Nothing about the infotainment dished out by what Chris Matthews actually called (with a straight face) “Washington insiders.” Nothing about the brutal assaults on public education that leave many students unknowing about checks and balances. Nothing about the internal corruption in the Democratic Party that shut out an excellent candidate, Vice President Joseph Biden, away from voters who would have liked more choices. The behind-the-scenes money-and-connections apparatus, you will recall, did its collective best to lock up the party nomination for the deeply flawed Clintons. One result was that 17(?) 27(?) 127(?) GOPers were salivating at the chance to run against Hillary Clinton. And one result of that was Donald Trump–the cue ball banging into the rack, with the arithmetic of the field always in his favor.
Some of these guys in media commentary have even found ways to be unfair to Donald Trump–not a feat any ordinary person could pull off. Trump has at moments engaged in more accurate political commentary than the analysts covering him–one example being when he called out Ted Cruz for megaphoning that Ben Carson was liable to drop out of the race, just before the Iowa caucuses. The result was that Cruz came out on top in Iowa, beating Trump by a few points, with Carson well down toward the bottom. (Incidentally, the loss may have helped Trump in the long run. If he had ‘won’ Iowa and gone on to win the next couple of races, the rest of the field and the party establishment would have homed in on him that much sooner.)
More importantly–to do Donald Trump justice, it is Trump who has repeatedly criticized George W. Bush’s wanton and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq. Only Trump has had the temerity to point out that for George W. Bush to take credit for our ‘safety’ when 9/11 occurred on his watch is a dubious claim. (Imagine what would have happened to the principal of Columbine High School, had he gone around boasting, à la Bush/Pataki/Giuliani, about his actions in the immediate wake of the tragic events there). One predictable outcome is that all the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) signatories are now up in arms against Trump. PNAC was co-founded by Dick Cheney and Jeb Bush, and all the apologists for the Iraq War, all the movers and shakers who think the problem is that we just didn’t spill enough blood, are now joined with the remains of the GOP establishment to take an imaginary moral high ground against Trump.

PNAC

WOULD THAT HILLARY CLINTON AND THE SO-CALLED MAINSTREAM DEMOCRATS HAD MADE THE SAME CLEAR STATEMENTS, in recent years. Hillary Clinton never does, for obvious reasons; she voted for the Bush war. But too many Dems who see themselves as either connected or cerebral have spent the last seven years on the sidelines. Worse yet, too many of them dug in with passive-aggressive tactics against President Obama– undoubtedly partly out of the pettiest and most parochial envy/jealousy/competitiveness, partly out of spite because they underestimated him, and partly out of residual bigotry that afflicts some leftish writers as well as some rightwingers. So you have GOPers blaming President Obama, rather than GWBush, for every disaster in the Middle East. And the Blue Dog ‘centrist’ types and the sideline sitters seldom or never step up to the plate to defend one of the best presidents we have had. (Hillary Clinton now claims to be his defender, having adopted the line from people with my view that Obama should get more credit. Meanwhile, her emails show her as SecState chiefly intent on gauging Obama’s and Biden’s popularity. Read some of them.)

Priorities

I might add that the same left-ish media sources are not exactly eager to pay their own writers and lower-level staff; look at Arianna Huffington, Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for examples. Too many producers take advantage of the passion of populist writers by paying, if at all, on the Walmart model–calling them Kossacks, or bloggers, etc., rather than employees, even contract employees. The treatment of PT/contingent workers has affected our republic of letters. This again is something you do not hear discussed by Hillary Clinton-type candidates–not for decades. Not until her people pick it up via social media from someone like me, or until some event makes it safe and popular.
The Democrats underestimate Trump at their peril in 2016. And downplaying Trump’s supporters as dumb will not help. Quite the contrary.
If some of the guys/gentlemen who have profited most from their media positions could be a little more concerned about fellow human beings and a little less concerned about vague notions of status, they might pull off some actual analysis once in a while. In the meantime, their accuracy will inevitably be hobbled by their vulgarity. It is quintessentially vulgar to proceed on an assumption that some individuals are worth more than others, purely on the basis of position or status or anything else extraneous to merit. The assumption also leads to a very simple but very obtuse logical slide–the view that if So-and-so is not important, then misrepresenting him is also not important.

Elections 2014, and New York District 21 Is Looking Weird

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Elections 2014, and New York District 21 Is Looking Weird

Candidates Stefanik, Woolf, and former candidate Funiciello

Okay, this is just strange. A former GWBush official is running for Congress in an upstate New York district, and polls show the race as close. Admittedly, the official in question–Elise Stefanik–was only a minor official under Bush, and New York’s 21st District does not number among those suffering worst from the invasion of Iraq. Stefanik was still in prep school at the Albany Academy for Girls when George W. Bush got the White House after the non-vote count of 2001. She was barely out of college–a Harvard grad–when she went to the Bush White House, where she worked for the Domestic Policy Council under Karl Zinsmeister and for Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten.

But the struggle continues. More recent items on the plummy resume include this kudo from her alma mater, “Elise Stefanik (SAC 2006) has joined the Foreign Policy Initiative as director of communications and external affairs.”

FPI: The new PNAC

The Foreign Policy Initiative, for those of you keeping tabs at home, is the newest avatar of the former Project for the New American Century (PNAC), long since designated as a cyberspace ghost town but in its heyday the think tank that brought us the Iraq invasion with its consequent ills. Founders and directors include Bill Kristol and the other head cases who worked feverishly, for years, to make terrorism the new communism; committed to revisiting their palmy days in the Cold War, they went the old military-industrial complex one better, by working ceaselessly to make a cold war hot. This is the leading edge young, up-and-coming GOPers want to associate themselves with?

To coin a phrase, have these people no shame?

Other items on the resume include work for 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, where Stefanik was titled Director of New Media and Deputy Policy Director. Stefanik also founded an entity called “American Maggie,” now defunct.

But be it noted that the valid criticism here is not of small-time efforts or even of failed efforts. The criticism is of awful efforts.

The late great poet Adrienne Rich was right: amnesia in the public discourse is a continuing problem.

 

One in a series of short posts on especially soul-destroying 2014 races.

More on Romney finance and GWBush connections

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Ties with Team Bush part 2

Continuing previous posts

This seems like as good a time as any to follow up on previous post on Mitt Romney’s non-released tax information and Romney’s quiet, long-time, scantly reported but extensive ties to the George W. Bush team. For one thing, Bush recently announced that he will be visiting the Caymans just before the election.

 

Bush to address tanned investors

Amidst the hubbub on the front lines and the day-to-day movements of polls, Romney has succeeded in remaining closeted about his finances. It’s one thing he has been consistent about. It is safe to say that Romney has achieved the distinction of being by far the most secretive of any major-party candidate running seriously, if that’s the word, for high office. Richard Lardner reported back in February that Romney did not release names of his bundlers even after President Obama did so. As we know, the pattern extends to Romney’s tax returns–with the exception of partial returns for two recent years–and of course to the para-political organizations including ‘super PACs’ supporting Romney and the GOP even while capital stays on the sidelines when it comes to investing in business. (So much for GOP talk about ‘small business’.) Thus one of the wealthiest men in America, a long-time politician with extensive financial and political connections to the wealthiest members of the GOP in the finance and communication sectors across the country, can run for the White House without ever being called to account on his own financial track record.

 

Imagine what they'd say if this pic had Obama in it

Up top, let me say that this situation would be destructive even if Romney had established his track record in something other than his peculiar line of finance. The lack of transparency and accountability would be destructive even if Romney had been engaged in manufacturing, like his father, instead of in short-term paper losses to enlarge long-term gains, largely at other people’s expense. But it does not help that Romney’s track record includes so much gain for him, pain for others.

 

Romney to Detroit

Today’s history lesson

Remember one of Romney’s successful turnarounds in the 1990s, his temp work returning from Bain Capital to Bain & Co.? That turnaround came partly at the expense of the then-Bank of New England and partly at the expense of American taxpayers.

Bank of New England had already gone bankrupt following its dealings with Bain & Co., where Romney  worked before forming Bain Capital with several colleagues (including T. Coleman Andrews III of a close Bush-connected family). Bain & Co. had lapsed on covenants with Bank of New England. But notwithstanding that the company had contributed to the bank’s failing, Romney’s work at Bain & Co. included getting Bain’s debt to Bank of New England reduced from $38 million to $28 million.

 

FDIC

Bank of New England, in Chapter 7, had already been seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC). The failure of the bank and its sister banks is the sixth largest bank failure in U.S. history, thus far. From Investopedia:

“At the time, the BNE was the 33rd largest bank in the U.S., and including its sister banks, it had assets totaling $21.8 billion and deposits totaling $19 billion. As with most bank failures, a bad loan portfolio triggered BNE’s downfall.”

The bank’s bad portolio included Bain. Thus what Romney’s negotiating means, in plain English, is that Romney succeeded in getting Bain’s bill to the American taxpayer reduced by $10 million. Romney’s negotiating tactic was as simple as it was unsavory. Bain & Co. at the time was in dire financial straits–explaining why Romney was brought back on board. Romney turned the minuses into pluses, using them as leverage against the FDIC: He threatened to use Bain’s remaining funds for bonuses to (end-stage) Bain executives.

Back to 2012

As written earlier, there are undoubtedly several reasons why Romney doesn’t want to release his tax returns–or any financial records, except the partial recent tax returns from two presidential-campaign years.  One is that open records would clarify the close ties between the Bush and Romney teams over the years. Even a quick look at Romney’s business career shows that Romney’s interests have been tied closely to Bush’s. Previous posts dealt with entities including CaterAir–the Marriott spin-off that pretty gave Dubya his business career–and World Corp, South African Airways, and InteliData, where business relationships between the Bush people and the Romney-Bain people proliferated. Predictably given its Marriott ties, CaterAir has retained ties with Bain Capital over the years. See for examples corporate bios for Bain alumni from an SEC filing. One is an alumna of CaterAir, Graham a co-founder of Bain. This filing dates from the 2005 merger of InteliData and Corillian Corporation. InteliData, with Bain alum John Backus on board, became Coriallian; Corillian bought CheckFree, now FISERV.

 

Two candidates

To reiterate, in narrow political terms it does not benefit the Romney campaign to be tied too closely to the Bush years. It is beside the point that some recent polls have suggested that Romney is more of a drag on Bush than the other way around; during the past four years leading up to election 2012, the smart money would have seen it the other way around. Clearly the Romney campaign did. Team Romney has been working with GWBush alumni quietly, behind the scenes (as in the machinations in Virginia). By and large, the Bush and Cheney clans have not co-appeared out on the campaign trail with Romney and Ryan. Nor have the disgraced neo-cons left over from the Bush administration, who have nowhere else to go–and have flocked to Romney.

More on that later.

The fiscal and political Bush-Romney relationships have been thick on the ground in northern Virginia, and the D.C. suburbs in Virginia are the major political and financial hub for state and national GOP. Small wonder rival Republican candidates for the White House in 2012 could not even get on the ballot in the Birthplace of Presidents. Except for the well-organized Ron Paul, no one had the skills to compensate for Romney’s lock on what is politely called the establishment in Virginia, i.e. the nexus of corporate, NGO and political links between candidates and their financial support in Virginian suburbs of Washington, D.C. Owen Wister must be rolling over in his grave.

Not that northern Virginia is the only spot. Let’s start with a loose thumbnail of some other Bain investors over the years. The list includes Reynolds DeWitt & Co.

Thus Romney-Bush ties also take us to Dallas, Texas, home of a financial company with the Dickensian name Crimstone Partners (not to be confused with a fantasy character aptly named Crimstone). Here is the company self-described, from one of numerous publicly released statements:

“About CrimStone Partners

CrimStone Partners is a special purpose private equity partnership designed to find, acquire and build companies.”

[sound familiar?]

“The fund’s investors consist of more than 35 highly distinguished business leaders, senior investment bankers and private equity professionals from firms such as Morgan Stanley, LazArd, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Bain Capital, AEA Investors, Allied Capital, Seven Rosen Funds, Blum Capital and CIBC.”

CrimStone has substantial ties to Ohio–where the good Sen. Sherrod Brown is enduring an avalanche of attack ads, and where GOP efforts to limit accessibility to voting were successful in 2004.

“CrimStone’s largest investor is Reynolds, DeWitt & Co., an investment firm in Cincinnati, Ohio, whose current holdings include basic manufacturing businesses, national franchise holding companies, real estate developments and a professional sports franchise.”

CrimStone has a claim to fame aside from the colorful name: Its main investor is the firm that backed George W. Bush throughout his business career, bailing him out at critical junctures, and made him a millionaire. Reynolds, DeWitt & Co., as noted, has ongoing business ties with Bain Capital (where, Romney emphasizes, he no longer works). Both Mercer Reynolds and William DeWitt support Romney for president in 2012. No surprise there; they supported him in 2008 against Sen. John McCain, too.

 

Anti-Romney ad in 2007

DeWitt, founder and co-chair along with Reynolds of Reynolds, DeWitt & Co., has continued to donate in the 2012 election cycle–$86,950 in this election cycle so far, according to figures provided by the Center for Responsive Politics. Reynolds, like DeWitt a pillar of Ohio’s GOP establishment, is on the roster of Romney for President. Each donated almost half a million dollars to GOP candidates and committees from 1990 through 2006, according to CRP.

It is no surprise that longtime local businessmen and state GOP honchos would be GOP donors as well.  But donations are only a small part of the story. Straight-out donations pale particularly in comparison to what Reynolds and DeWitt did for George W. Bush, in both business and politics.

The story is long, chock-a-block detailed, and has been written about elsewhere. Condensed, it reads as the story of a political-financial relay team, members effectively poised at each juncture of George W. Bush’s career to hand him the life-saving water bottle or more significant resource, primarily financial backing and political apparatus. A few quick examples of many:

  • In the mid-1980s, Bush’s oil exploration company was bailed out by Reynolds and DeWitt.
  • Also during the 1980s, DeWitt and Reynolds were among the Ohio investors brought in to back Bush’s purchase of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
  • GWBush received $42K year in consulting fees from Harken Energy, backed by Reynolds and DeWitt.
  • The relatively unknown Harken Energy also received a surprising opportunity to drill in Bahrain.
  • DeWitt was Bush’s partner in the Texas Rangers venture.
  • Reynolds was national finance chairman for the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign.
  • Reynolds co-chaired Bush-Cheney’s presidential inaugural committee.

 

Oil rig, Ship of state, the bloody son

For the record, Reynolds became GWBush’s ambassador to Switzerland and Lichtenstein, 2001-2003. A reward of ceremonial appointments, however, is dwarfed by the favorable tax policy bestowed by the Bush administration on long-time Bush cronies and their companies. 

As with Romney and his Olympics stint, Bush was able to base a claim of business experience on his Texas Rangers. As with Romney and Bain’s dealings with Bank of New England, Bush was able to get significant taxpayer help–Texas taxpayers and the City of Austin provided the stadium where Bush’s baseball team played. And as with Romney and some failed former Bain companies, Bush exited some companies carrying away gain for self while leaving the losses for others. It’s been called “vulture capitalism” for a reason. We could call them vulture political scions.

More on Mitt Romney’s tax returns, more ties with the Bushes

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More reasons for Mitt Romney to release tax returns, or maybe another reason why he hasn’t released his tax returns

Ties with Team Bush, part 1

 

Bush endorsing Romney

To be clear, the foremost reason why a candidate for the White House should release financial records is principle. The public has a right to know of any encumbrances and influences borne by someone running for the presidency, and for a presidential candidate, especially a major candidate, to dismiss or to downplay this principle is unworthy.

Descending swiftly to less exalted planes of argument, it should be apparent by now that there are also political reasons for presumptive-GOP nominee Mitt Romney to release his income tax returns. He seems to be concealing something, and even aside from the principle enunciated above it’s making him look bad. Admittedly the widespread buzz about Romney’s secretiveness may be playing into the hands of the Romney campaign. Possibly the campaign has made a tactical decision to refuse to release the IRS returns right up to the point when it about-faces and releases them, showing once and for all that there’s nothing there.

 

Romney, spoofed

In the meantime, however, that possibility has done nothing to deter speculation about Romney’s paper trail or financial track record. Time and space preclude an exhaustive list of speculations voiced so far about what Romney might be hiding, but here are a few:

  • Did Romney pay no income tax at all some years, despite his wealth? Raised in January, this possibility has also been discussed in Bloomberg News and in the Washington Post, among other outlets.
  • Are Romney’s effective tax rates just embarrassingly low, compared to the taxes much poorer people pay in the United States? Think Progress discussed this one early, followed by other outlets including money.cnn.com and The Daily Beast.
  • Would his IRS returns reveal more about Romney’s embarrassing offshore accounts and assets? The newest issue of Vanity Fair has more on this.
  • Then there is the overlapping issue of tax havens and tax shelters, wherever they may be. Has Romney been even more closely associated with them than the public has yet been made aware?
  • Are there more discrepancies in Romney’s own bookkeeping, as between his IRS filings and his company’s SEC filings, or between his records and his public statements?

 

Here is another question.

A plethora of SEC filings and other sources indicate that Romney and his cronies in the business community, including Marriott, helped GWBush and the Bush team over the years. As has been noted elsewhere, in this eloquent piece by Joe Conason for example, the Bush administration and Team Bush are not looking good in electoral politics in 2012. It is politically understandable that Romney wouldn’t want to be linked with the Bush image. But  even a quick overview of George W. Bush’s track record in business corroborates  Ralph Nader’s comment in 2000 that George Bush was “a group of corporations running as a man,” and prominent among those corporations was Marriott–closely tied to Romney, Romney’s family, and Romney’s companies. Marriott ties not only gave Mitt Romney his first name (after the Willard in Marriott) but also gave Dubya his business career.

 

An early Carlyle Group acquisition

The Marriott clan’s ties to the Romney team, past and present, are too extensive and too well reported to need belaboring here. Romney-Marriott closeness is a political and financial given. That Marriott enterprises also provided George W. Bush the platform for his business career has not been widely reported–none of the major media outlets touched it, or thoroughly vetted Bush’s business career, in 2000–although I sketched part of the story in 2004. One minor entity was an unsuccessful airline food company named Caterair International Corporation, a spin-off from Marriott Corporation, which founded the airline-food industry in the thirties. As written previously, CaterAir  was started in 1989 by a private investors group including Bush supporters Daniel J. Altobello and Frederic V. Malek, who then brought Bush on. George W. Bush became a director at CaterAir officially in 1990, the company got an additional boost from the Carlyle Group, where George H. W. Bush came on board after leaving the White House in 1992, and Bush left in 1994 to run for Governor of Texas.

 

Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards

Romney-Bush family ties in Virginia

 

Coleman Andrews, second from left

The Marriott company or cluster of interests, however, is not the only Romney-Bush link. If we really want to know more about ties between Romney interests and Bush interests over the years, we can cut out the Marriott middleman and go straight to, among others, T. Coleman Andrews III, co-founding partner of Bain Capital and brother of Scott Andrews, who co-founded the investment firm Winston Partners with George W. Bush’s youngest brother, Marvin Bush. The family ties in politics and finance run deep. The Andrews’ late grandfather, Thomas Coleman Andrews, a founder of the John Birch Society, resigned from his position as IRS commissioner under Eisenhower. Scott Andrews served as an executive in two air transport companies, Presidential Airways and World Corp–where Coleman Andrews was chair. Both went bankrupt; Coleman Andrews left WorldCorp in 1998. A brother-in-law of Jack Kemp, he also became CEO of South African Airways.

Side note: Called in by Nelson Mandela as a consultant for South African Airways, Coleman Andrews reportedly spent hundreds of millions on consultants including Bain Capital. Andrews himself left SAA in 2001 with a golden parachute reported at $14 million. There is no indication at this time that the Romney campaign plans to include a stop in South Africa for one of its international fundraisers.

Space precludes an extensive history of WorldCorp here. Suffice it to say that Bain Capital and Bain alumni, or directors and officers, were all over the company and its bankruptcy, as shown here and here and here among numerous documents. WorldCorp and Bain were all over the problems at South African Airways, as noted. They were thick on the ground in the bankruptcy of World Airways–owned by WorldCorp and headed by Coleman Andrews–which also purchased consulting from Bain Capital. They were also extensively connected with a series of mergers and buy-outs through which a lesser known company called US Order became part of ever larger financial services firms. For example, see this SEC filing dating from the 2005 merger of InteliData and Corillian Corporation. InteliData, with Bain alum John Backus on board, became Coriallian; Corillian bought CheckFree, now FISERV.

“ Patrick F. Graham, age 65, has served as a director of InteliData since 1996 and was a director of US Order, Inc. from 1993 until US Order and Colonial Data Technologies Corp. merged to form InteliData in November 1996. Since October 2001, he has been the Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Projects for The Gillette Company, a consumer products marketer of personal care and personal use products. From July 1999 until October 2001, he was the Director of the Global Strategy Practice of A.T. Kearney, Inc., a management consulting firm. From 1997 until June 1999, he served as Chief Executive Officer of WorldCorp, Inc. On February 12, 1999, WorldCorp, Inc. filed a voluntary petition and a proposed plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the district of Delaware. He was previously a director of Bain & Company, Inc., a management consulting firm Mr. Graham co-founded in 1973. In addition to his primary responsibilities with Bain clients, he served as Bain’s Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer. Prior to founding Bain, Mr. Graham was a group Vice President with the Boston Consulting Group. Mr. Graham is also a director of Stericycle, Inc., a provider of medical waste services and OSHA compliance services.”

A co-founder of Bain, Graham served on the board of InteliData with an alumna of CaterAir and as stated another alumnus of Bain Capital as well as of US Order. The ties extend farther. This SEC filing from World Air Holdings, the holding company of World Airways and WorldCorp, lists as directors John Backus, A. Scott Andrews and Daniel J. Altobello. Again, sponsors of Bush family interests and of George W. Bush, respectively, in the realms of finance and of politics have been working hand in corporate glove for years with Romney cronies and partners. This is no far-fetched, diffuse, stretched set of associations; it’s partners and relatives with longstanding political and financial ties, serving in the same boardrooms–boardrooms, be it noted, that were key in some spectacular bankruptcies and other failures at a considerable human cost. Furthermore, the ties extend to some political views that are considered weird by any reasonable criterion.

It’s that simple.

Romney’s reluctance to release his detailed IRS records is not mystifying. It will be a little mystifying if he gets away with not doing so.

Today’s history lesson: CaterAir, George W. Bush (and Marriott)

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Today’s history lesson: CaterAir, George W. Bush (and Marriott)

In July 2003, the founder of the Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein, chatted with company investors and made several tape-recorded comments about a former director at one Carlyle subsidiary. The subsidiary was an ill-fated airline-food company named CaterAir International Corporation, a spin-off from Marriott, and the director was George W. Bush:

“But when we were putting the board together, somebody came to me and said, look there is a guy who would like to be on the board.  He’s kind of down on his luck a bit.  Needs a job.  Needs a board position.  Needs some board positions. Could you put him on the board?  Pay him a salary and he’ll be a good board member and be a loyal vote for the management and so forth.”

“I said well we’re not usually in that business.  But okay, let me meet the guy. I met the guy.  I said I don’t think he adds that much value.  We’ll put him on the board because–you know–we’ll do a favor for this guy; he’s done a favor for us. We put him on the board and spent three years.  Came to all the meetings.  Told a lot of jokes.  Not that many clean ones.  And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years–you know, I’m not sure this is really for you.  Maybe you should do something else.  Because I don’t think you’re adding that much value to the board.  You don’t know that much about the company.”

“And I said, thanks–didn’t think I’d ever see him again.  His name is George W. Bush.  He became President of the United States.  So you know if you said to me, name 25 million people who would maybe be President of the United States, he wouldn’t have been in that category.  So you never know.  Anyway, I haven’t been invited to the White House for many things.”

Audio of Rubenstein’s becoming candor can be found at Pacifica among other sites.

CaterAir was founded in 1989, spun off partly from Marriott Corporation by a private investors group including prominent Bush supporters Daniel J. Altobello and Frederic V. Malek.  Auspices were poor. Airline-food jokes aside, Marriott, which had founded the airline catering industry, reportedly let its airline catering division go because of thin profits and uncertainties in the airline industry. However, it also provided a place for the future candidate for Texas governor and the White House.

George W. Bush

The Carlyle Group, where George H. W. Bush joined the board after leaving the White House, gave George W. Bush the directorship at CaterAir in 1990.  Bush left in 1994 to run for Governor of Texas.  Here is a partial chronology of CaterAir’s bumpy career:

  • February 1990:  CaterAir restructures its longterm debt, withdrawing an earlier SEC filing for $110 million and going for $40 million more.  Eastern Airlines, which went bankrupt, was one earlier CaterAir client.
  • May 1990:  Merrill Lynch, a large brokerage firm with its own ties to the Bush clan, shops $250 million in refinancing for CaterAir, characterized in the business press as a high-risk, high-yield junk bond.
  • August 1990:  CaterAir completes its refinancing with a bridge loan.  Following the collapse of the junk bond market, two senior Merrill Lynch executives who led the company’s foray into junk bonds resign.  Bridge loans like the one to CaterAir are expected to become fewer.
  • December 1990:  CaterAir awards a contract to a California company to develop “a robotics system for its in-flight catering operations” including wrapping food.
  • March 1991:  Carlyle Group persuades Saudi Arabia’s Prince al-Walid bin Talal to spend a half-billion purchasing part of America’s largest banking company, Citicorp, earning a commission.  David Rubenstein says of Carlyle’s CaterAir purchase, “Despite the fact that the airline business is in trouble, the company is worth an enormous amount more than what we paid for it.”  Malek is quoted by NYTimes as saying, “I thought George W. Bush could make a contribution to CaterAir.”
  • December 1991:  CaterAir freezes or rolls back wages on most of its 20,000 employees, in spite of winning 66 new contracts in 1991.  Contracts with 48 air carriers in 28 cities include Virgin Atlantic at Boston’s Logan, All Nippon at JFK in New York, and Aerolineas Argentinas at Miami’s airport.
  • June 1992:  CaterAir among other companies campaigns against a bill in the California state senate to tax airline food, saying the tax will hurt their ability to employ workers.
  • August 1992:  CaterAir says it is not restructuring its debt in spite of flat sales.  Its joint ventures include Russia’s Aeroflot, the former national airline of the Soviet Union, operating a kitchen that caters to all flights through Moscow.
  • August 1992:  a former Marriott official pleads guilty to embezzling $1.4 million over 14 years, using fraudulent invoices from several vendors including CaterAir.
  • October 1992:  Carlyle buys part of General Dynamics Corporation, part of a two-year process becoming one of the nation’s largest military contractors.  Carlyle also completes purchase of a Washington, DC, radio station and two stations in Virginia; is said looking to buy more stations after FCC expansion of allowable number of stations in a market to 18 for one owner, up from 12.
  • December 1992:  an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association describes an outbreak of illness suffered by passengers including several Minnesota Vikings back in 1989.  Federal and state epidemiologists trace the problem to Marriott food handlers who did not wash their hands.  Shigellosis, from bacteria found in human feces, confirmed or probable in about 240 cases of passenger illness.  This division became CaterAir.
  • December 1992:  CaterAir’s St. Croix facility is closed down by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for five days, until it cleans up its kitchen and complies with FDA sanitation regulations.  The St. Croix is given a poor 57% rating and classified “Not Approved.”  Problems identified include “rodent pellets on a tray of salad plates” and elsewhere; “live flies throughout the kitchen”; “cockroaches on the kitchen floor and tray assembling room”; “old food and grease encrusted on the stove and food storage shelves”; etc.
  • January 1993:  George H. W. Bush leaves office.
  • April 1993:  CaterAir is now the nation’s largest airline caterer.
  • May 1993:  George W. Bush resigns from CaterAir.  The FDA’s magazine, FDA Consumer, publishes an article about its five-day closing down of the St. Croix catering operation back in December, titled “Caterer Cleans Up, Flies Right.”
  • July 1993:  company sells an Orlando, FL, property for $3.4 million.
  • August 1993:  CaterAir files with the SEC to sell another $230 million in notes.
  • November 1993:  company announces it will relocate its corporate headquarters to Bethesda, MD, from Potomac, MD.  Bush resigns from board of Harken Energy.
  • April 1994: a federal court rules against CaterAir in company’s appeal of an NLRB decision.
  • June 1994:  at a Chief Executive Roundtable, CaterAir International’s Altobello discusses his company’s “passport for success” program, said to recognize employees who provide exceptional service.
  • September 1994:  Governor Ann Richards’ reelection campaign runs an ad criticizing GWBush’s business experience, saying that companies where Bush served lost a combined $371.6 million.  The campaign publishes a handout titled The Bottom Line:  The Business Career of George W. Bush.  While the companies lost $371 million, the campaign says, Bush made $1.3 million.  CaterAir lost $285.1 million during Bush’s stint on board; Bush received $75,000.  The Bush campaign responds within hours, complaining about Richards’ “personal attacks.”
  • September 1994:  Daniel Altobello says Bush cannot be held responsible for losses at the company.
  • October 1994:  business experts, unnamed, defend Bush on grounds that his company role was limited to attending quarterly meetings.
  • August 1995:  Carlyle’s purchase of CaterAir is described as a “disaster.”
  • February 2001:  George W. Bush, now President, signals willingness to get involved in airline mechanics union negotiations with Northwest Airlines.  A former president of Northwest is Frederic Malek, who put Bush on CaterAir’s board; Malek is still a major Northwest shareholder.
  • Et cetera.

Be it noted that senior and longtime GOPer Malek’s ties with Republican presidential campaigns continue to the present.

Malek on television

Be it also noted that the counter-arguments, if you call them that, rolled out to obscure George W. Bush’s business record in the 1994 election–in Texas–strongly resemble those being used in the 2012 election by Mitt Romney. He’s No Longer With the Company, He Had Nothing to Do With Those Decisions, He Didn’t Do All That Much To Begin With etc.

Moving forward–

Is this another reason why Romney hasn’t released his tax returns? –That they would disclose yet more of Romney’s ties to the Bush team and to GWBush’s business and political career, now in some ill favor?

Romney with Bush

Then there is the larger problem, larger, that is, than one man’s political career. We report, you decide:  who is mainly responsible for the airlines’ troubles?  Minimum-wage-paid ill-trained lower-level employees?  Or overpaid and under-performing ‘managers’ who spent decades lobbying for every conceivable tax break, government giveaway, and executive privilege, while resisting every improvement in security, safety, and even cleanliness–and simultaneously using the existence of government agencies as a way to claim that their food, for example, is safe?

As in the article linked, one of the company’s first claims about food-borne illness is that the FDA helps it prevent same.

Funny and sad, leading up to Super Tuesday

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2012 Super Tuesday–

Former GOP front-runner Herman Cain

With the 2012 primary calendar moving inexorably toward ‘Super Tuesday,’ this is as good a time as any to indulge a quick review of past fatuities this election cycle.

Michele Bachmann

It’s anything for a joke with some people.

The following is a short list, nowhere near exhaustive, reflecting fleeting moments in time over the months leading to where we are today in the GOP primary season, 2012.

What these funny historical statements all have in common is that they issued from highly qualified or at least well-regarded media outlets and, however intrinsically ridiculous, were taken seriously at the time by equally established and respectable audiences.

Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin

From the Christian Science Monitor:

“When all is said and done, the race for the 2012 GOP nomination may boil down to just three serious contenders: former Governor Romney of Massachusetts, former Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota, and Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.”

Presidentialelectionnews.com:

“Following the withdrawal of former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, the field narrows a bit while at the same time expanding to accommodate Texas Governor Rick Perry.

The new top tier roughly consists of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry.”

 

The Daily Beast:

“The Republican nomination race has suddenly metamorphosed from a snooze fest into a three-way smack down with a fascinating cast of characters. Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, two aggressive, charismatic religious conservatives, will spend the next few months vying for values voters and the role of chief alternative to Mitt Romney.”

The Alaska Dispatch newspaper:

“Imagine former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, comfortably campaigning in next-door New Hampshire, keeping the home fires warm as he heads toward an anticipated win in the first primary early in 2012. Then the pugnacious governor of Texas, Rick Perry, jumps in and threatens to take it all away.

Could Governor Perry actually succeed?”

The New York Times:

“With a strong finish in the caucuses, Mr. Perry could re-emerge as a top-tier candidate — perhaps the best-equipped to compete with Mitt Romney, the presumed frontrunner, on a state-by-state basis.”

The New York Post:

“Like a Hurri-Cain, Herman Cain’s presidential campaign has been gathering strength and rocking his opponents–while causing political pros to scrap some of their early forecasts for the GOP field.

Fueled by strong debate performances and his trademark quips, Cain has jumped to the top tier in several independent national polls, including pulling up to a dead heat with Mitt Romney in the latest CBS poll, tied at 17 percent, with Rick Perry trailing at 12 percent.”

 

The Washington Post:

“1. Cain is already top-tier: Cain has surged to 27 percent in a hypothetical national primary ballot test — up from just 5 percent in an August NBC-WSJ poll. His current standing puts him on par with Romney (23 percent) and makes clear that the two men comprise the top tier in the race as of today. That Cain’s rise has been fueled almost entirely by the struggles of Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Cain went up 22 points between August and October, Perry dropped by 22 points over that same period) is a dynamic that suggests Cain is now the conservatives’ choice in the contest.”

It may be added that none of these opinions were formed in a vacuum. Not even the goofiest ones were idiosyncratic. The above are not one man’s opinion—each expresses the view or hypothesis held at some point by numerous persons, all experienced in their field.

 

There’s more than one way to go with this. An old saying has it that the worst insult you can level at someone is to accuse him of having no sense of humor. (Can’t say that about the experts quoted above.) I don’t think so. It looks to me as though many people are far more insulted by any criticism, even implied through disagreement, of their judgment of people. This insecurity is often most vehement, vented with most rage, among people who really are not good judges of character, who have shown zero ability to size up a man by his character.

The favorable treatment given by seniors at the Washington Post to GWBush and Dick Cheney as candidates, back in the 2000 election cycle, may be the premier example. Cheney was widely characterized as having ‘gravitas.’ Bush was linked to down-home folksiness rather than to his Wall Street policies. The characterizations masked a breathtaking obtuseness about what Bush and Cheney actually had in mind for the country—assaulting the Middle East abroad and the middle class at home. (Admittedly, the WP had a motive for obtuseness: Bush’s education policy—standardized testing–benefited the Post Co.’s Kaplan Learning sector by billions, a windfall the Post newspaper did not report.)

But the same blinders have been on during the past year, with regard to candidates or potential candidates from Michele Bachmann to Donald Trump. The same people who took George W. Bush seriously as a candidate for the White House were eager to treat Rick Perry the same way, and with the same breathtaking presumption that Texans or Southerners would go for Perry whole hog. They made the same error with regard to Sarah Palin and Women in 2008, and Michele Bachmann and Women in 2011. Regardless of how ridiculous the candidacy, or the potential candidacy, may be, some pundit is always ready to take it seriously—if the person is a Republican. Nor, of course, are the analysts ever held to account for their past mistakes. Who’s keeping score? On television, no one.

The biggest problem may be the way the horse race is so separated, often, from any reasoned discussion of the (disastrous) policies supported by the candidates.

But reporting on policy with the same focus and attention as personalities would destroy the media pretense that the two major parties are somehow equivalent.

There is a continuing dynamic in the GOP contest, 2012, and here it is: It is an ongoing tension between Republican voters who don’t know much about their candidates, and the possibility that they might actually learn about them. The bottom line is that many or most GOP voters in 2012 do not want to know their candidates well. It’s not just that they want to be surprised by a white knight; it’s that they don’t want any information that would shake their willingness to vote along previous party lines or to vote against the president.

So you start with that firm, solid, bedrock fundamental of Tea Partyers and other prospective GOP voters 1) not knowing, AND 2) not wanting to know. This dual fundamental alone goes a long way to explain the brief prominence in the Republican field of Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain. In fact, it is virtually the only thing that does explain the aforementioned prominence.

The same fundamental goes a long way to explain the ongoing longing for some other prominent Republican to enter the race—Sarah Palin, Haley Barbour, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, etc. However unrealistic the demand, and however ineligible a prominent GOPer might be—Palin was a disaster on the ticket in 2008, Daniels was GWBush’s budget director, Christie conducted federal prosecutions timed with political advantage, Bush is still a Bush—there is always some cadre of analysts and unnamed insiders ready to take him/her seriously. As long as they don’t know much about the candidate, s/he is in like flint.

 

Gingrich

It will be mildly interesting to see how this tension plays out over ‘Super Tuesday’ on March 6. At this moment, prognosticators are largely engaged in a cynical guessing game with regard to Newt Gingrich. Will Gingrich’s race-baiting, aided by Romney’s Mormonism and Santorum’s Catholicism, be enough to put Gingrich over the top in the Georgia and Tennessee primaries? Will any of the known anecdotes be enough to shake loose voters from their chosen candidates? Or conversely will any surface gracelessly enough to undermine the attacker rather than the target? This new version of Southern strategy would of course be more viable if Gingrich had succeeded in getting on the ballot in Virginia—where polls showed him leading. (As a result of Virginia’s ballot requirements, only Romney and Ron Paul are on the ballot in the Commonwealth.) More chances for Gingrich on March 13, in Alabama and Mississippi, and another in Louisiana on March 24.

Maybe. They don’t put it as bluntly as I just did, but that’s the game plan.

Meanwhile, more respectably, Ron Paul’s forces are working the caucus states including Idaho, North Dakota, Kansas and Wyoming. As of now little attention looks to be directed any of those places. Iowa is usually the only caucus location that gets big media play. The other primaries and caucuses mainly come down to a question of who will win the most delegates, and an increasingly glum and shriveled media force is increasingly ceding most of them to Romney.

Iraq escalation benefits only Jeb Bush

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Iraq escalation benefits only Jeb Bush

Senator McCain presents as someone who figures it’s his turn, per
generally the way GOP presidential nominations work—the next man in
line steps up, wins the nomination usually without too much difficulty,
and then wins or loses the general election. The occasional exception
like Barry Goldwater is characterized for a generation in party lore as
someone who tore the party apart and then went on to lose the
presidential election in a landslide. McCain is showing his loyalty in
spades to the Bush team, to the Oval Office. But only some obliviousness
to history would predict that his loyalty will be repaid with unstinting
support by Team Bush.

McCain

There can be no happy Iraq outcome for McCain. If things get worse–the overwhelming probability–then even he will be forced to bail on
the policy at some point, and the question will always be why he did not
do so earlier, saving more lives; why he did not put his independent
power base to better use. He will be associated with, and he is
aggressively associating himself with, catastrophe. If things were by
some miracle to get better, the Iraq War is still Bush’s war. Meanwhile,
Governor Jeb Bush sits comfortably by in Florida, in relative political
safety in spite of Mark Foley, the sugar growers, his family’s several
run-ins with the law, the ecological disaster in the Everglades, and the
ongoing election fraud in Florida. Jeb Bush is not tied to Iraq policy;
he has no son in Iraq; he is not storming the country in support of
Bush’s escalation.

Jeb Bush

White House Iraq policy at this point, in other words, may be guided by
desire to help Jeb win next time. This is the only perspective from
which the escalation makes even bad sense.

Of course, a plausible alternative explanation is that it makes no sense
at all—that it is merely Bush’s vain effort to prolong the war, which
is what he cares about most, while his cronies with both hands in the
cookie jar frantically extract their utmost.

Two versions of Dubya’s Yale grades

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Two versions of Dubya’s Yale grades

George W. Bush’s grades at Yale seem to be far lower than the ones published by the university, according to records of his grades stored at his former residence house.

Yale has an august tradition of housing students in separate residential colleges, not dorms but smaller and more cohesive versions of the college experience. Bush’s residence hall wasDavenport, where his daughter Barbara also lived as a Yale student, graduating in 2004.

So integral to the institution were and are these residential halls that for many years, important records including student grade and discipline records were stored at the individual colleges. This practice continued well up into the twentieth century past the sixties. Then it was decided that it would be good to have them in a more official place, so academic records came to be stored in the registrar’s office. However, the old records continued to be stored in the basements of the twelve residential colleges.

Also, the records stored in the residential halls were not just grades. George W. Bush’s records, for example, contained reports of his undergraduate shenanigans, including his police records.

According to an informed source, the “official school records at the registrar’s office were much kinder” than these other records. The key observations come from recent Yale alumni. One Yale student, offspring of an award winning educator, who graduated in 2002 with a strong undergraduate record, found out while at Yale that Bush had lived in the same residence and was not charmed by this discovery. A number of students were aware that the residences traditionally kept old grade records. This student was among those who went down to the basement, checked the older records physically and looked at them. Students discussed among themselves the disparities between some grades published for Bush and those stored in the residence hall basement. According to anecdote, some of the housed grade records had also been physically altered, with grades whited out or obscured and other grades substituted.

One key question among others would be when the records were altered. Student hearsay has it that the altering took place during the presidential term of the senior Bush, but that may be conjecture generated by stories still floating around the institution from 1998 and beyond about visits from former First Lady Barbara Bush to campus. In the words of one mother of a recent Yale alum, there was “this sense of control” about the visits. “The university was very uncomfortable,” evidently from a sense of influence if not pressure for reasons not publicly clarified. Ties between the first family and the university donor base are deep and longstanding.

The White House has not answered questions, telephoned and emailed in September 2006 and earlier, on this topic.

As most parents know, discipline issues are not entirely separate from grade issues. One observer says, “we just honestly don’t think he [Bush] went to history class.” Bush has said he did attend, but the grade records indicate otherwise. “We don’t think he was ever there.” The cached version of the official presidential biography, from the White House web site, says that Bush graduated from Yale with a BA in history.

Yale students’ proximity to records — under the same roof — was what gave them the information. According to the current webmaster for Davenport Hall,

“Davenport was renovated two years ago, so any files that were stored in the basement were surely moved. I’m not sure anyone would know if they still exist, but the people to ask would be the master and the dean.”

Questions emailed to the pertinent officials have not been answered. Davenport Hall has now been extensively renovated, including its basement. Questions to the architecture firm about archives in the basement have not been addressed.

Davenport Hall, Pierson Hall, Yale

Issues here include the comparative lack of vetting Bush received as a candidate for the White House. While other contenders were being put through the meat grinder, the Bush campaign in Texas and in DC adeptly presented its candidate as a homey Jimmy Stewart type–modest in demeanor, so that his modest accomplishments were a given, to be taken for granted. Thus the secrecy, drift and dishonesty in Bush’s background were largely given a pass.

One large question is why Bush or anyone connected to him would try altering grades. One answer is Vietnam. John Kerry’s clumsy witticism about being stuck in Iraq is a flashback to Vietnam, when any student who flunked out was genuinely liable to be shipped out if his name was not George W. Bush.

Difficult as the Ivy League was to get into, it was notoriously gentle about flunking out a student once admitted, including legacy students like George Walker Bush who would anticipate getting the gentleman’s C in any case.

At this stage, some question remains as to whether Bush attained even that. For family members to go so far as to pressure the institution to keep Bush inside the hedges to keep him stateside, if they did so, he must have been failing. Unfortunately, there is no inherent unlikelihood in this narrative, given the way Bush was leapfrogged over more than a hundred other applicants for the Texas Air National Guard.

George W. Bush in Texas Air National Guard uniform

The deeper issue is character rather than grades. Assuming that these anecdotes are correct, and there is no reason to assume otherwise, they have frattitude written all over them. Any teacher knows that it is one thing to help your fellow students by filing professors’ old tests and passing around copies from previous years; it is quite another to help by passing around answers to a test or copies of a test that students are not supposed to have seen. Studying from old tests rather than going to class may not be the ideal way to learn, but it is minimally legitimate–cramming rather than reading, something most of us have done at some point. The other is cheating. By the same token, it is one thing to oppose all grades, the grading system, on the basis of reasoned argument that grades do not well reinforce learning. It is another to game the existing grading system by dishonesty. Whatever one thinks of grade point averages, class standing, or the grading system in general, there is no argument in favor of altering selected grades ex post facto.

From another perspective, the years that George Walker Bush and Joe Lieberman attended Yale were also years that the Ivies including Yale did not admit women. If the elite institutions had more than doubled their talent pool by admitting women and historically excluded groups, presumably some of these bums would not have gotten in.

 

Tucker Carlson says it aloud: The Republican elite has contempt for the evangelicals

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Tucker Carlson says it aloud. The Republican elite has contempt for the evangelicals.

Tucker Carlson

The Sunday morning talk shows today, October 8, 2006, included some refreshingly frank or realistic discourse, for a rarity.

Probably most attention tomorrow will be devoted to Bob Woodward narrating how Vice President Cheney used the bullshit word and hung up on him. Possibly some attention will go to the congressional tin ear from Illinois, GOP Congressman Ray LaHood, talking about the Foley scandal: “The real disservice was done to the speaker.”

 

Mark Foley

But for my money, the real jaw dropper this morning was Tucker Carlson finally saying publicly what millions of us have known for years: “The Republican elite has contempt for the evangelicals.”



Carlson opening up on air

The commentary centered around the Mark Foley scandal and attendant ironies–that a member of Congress who for years ostentatiously paraded his concern for children and for youth has solicited, also for years, the sexual attentions of teenagers, and not just any teenagers, but teenaged pages specifically under the protection of Congress. Furthermore, all signs indicate that the entire top GOP leadership of Congress, even while campaigning aggressively in some bogus morality posture, either covered up for Foley or at best deliberately avoided knowing enough of his activities to do anything about them.

 

To call this hypocrisy is just an insult to hypocrites.

 

As I have said before, this is not hypocrisy. It is deliberate imposture. It is analogous to the current White House policy of pouring gasoline on the flames in geopolitics, under the guise of fighting terrorism, when as it well knows, its policies ignite terrorism, from which it profits. In the ratios of the Miller Analogy Test, Mark Foley is to protecting children what George W. Bush is to protecting Americans. If they really wanted less terrorism, they would eliminate cluster bombs and land mines.

 

But of all the commentators on all three major television networks, none to my knowledge has made the basic connection, until today. Carlson made the basic, direct statement that for years has needed making. “Everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals,” he continued under questioning. When asked, “How do you know?” in response to his initial claim about the GOP, he gave the unequivocal answer: “Because I see them.” As Carlson said, he works with them, meaning members of the power elite or the opinion makers. He has moved among them for years. “They live on my street.”

Following up the statements that “The Republican elite has contempt for the evangelicals,” and “Everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals,” he continued, “and everybody knows that. The evangelicals are beginning to figure it out.”

 

What came home for this viewer is that on a more modest scale I have seen the same thing. Certainly not all Republican women, or all women who sometimes vote Republican, feel the same way on social issues. And some of the most rock-ribbed longtime Republican women voters, at least those of my acquaintance, who also tend to be economically well off or affluent, are exactly the individuals most dismissive of the party line on social issues. They let the men talk, but if a woman or girl they care about or to whom they are related wants an abortion, they are highly unlikely to let the men stand in the way. Or even to let the men know, if that’s the way to play it.

As for the public pronouncements of their party, and the most prominent of their professional religious spokesmen, they roll their eyes. I have seen them do it. You do not get more eye-rolling about the Reverend Mr. Pat Robertson or about the unreverend Ralph Reed anywhere than in the nearest lunch of Republican women at the local country club, and the only people who seem not to know it are the people whose faithful votes keep the corporate hogs in office. So the GOP agenda accomplishes its real objectives such as keeping plaintiffs out of court, letting insurance companies off the hook on large claims, raiding or undermining pension funds, bailing out the top management of mismanaged industries, and preventing any progressive taxation whatever for billionaires.

Meanwhile, the rare genuine voter of rightwing conscience who gets into office, like GOP Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, could not be more sidelined if he were a high schooler trying to play in the NFL. I have said it before. The only real purpose regarding abortion for this administration is to splinter what would otherwise have been moral opposition to its policies, domestic and foreign.

Ron Paul

There could have been a clue to the nature of the faith typically espoused by the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. One clue could have been Cheney, come to think of it. But the broad clue could have been the policies of this White House and of the top crust of this administration. Look at current policies and practices and try to find the gospels in there anywhere. Try to find the New Testament in a takeover attempt on a historic scale, in careers of relentless self advancement and relentless exploitation of others, lying, bullying, bragging, whining, bribery and corruption. A little reading, the merest reminder or thought of comparative religion, would have gotten the idea across.

Instead, ironically, it took a Mark Foley to clarify the disconnect.

If this had happened on stage or in film, in the words of Shakespeare, it would be condemned as most improbable fiction.

 

Note: The post above was re-posted after being deleted by the system.

Update on Mark Foley, hobnobbing with Grover Norquist at the 2012 Republican convention, here.

Foley, Norquist at convention

Securacom (Stratesec) finally won one

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An emailer informs me–mistakenly, as it turns out–that Judge Samuel Alito has already done a judicial favor for the Bush family.

That item turns out to be a misreading of a case in the California Supreme Court. Nonetheless, it raises an intriguing detail, and is a useful reminder about yet another of the many lawsuits that our security-and-surveillance industry has gotten itself entangled in, over the years.

Today’s history lesson–

Back in the day, there was an extremely ill-managed security company, now defunct, named Stratesec. As some readers may recall, the company boasted in its SEC filings of fulfilling every big security need from fences to guards to armored vehicles to electronic badging and access control. The company succeeded in attracting a string of investors and backers, and from 1993 to 2000, its board of directors included Marvin P. Bush, youngest brother of George W. Bush.

Stratesec

The company touted longstanding relationships to a few major security clients, and listed several of the biggest, some of whom paid millions for security, on its public filings. The list of big names for several years–prominently displayed with illustrations on the IPO brochure–included the World Trade Center, Dulles and Reagan National Airports, and United Airlines.

Stratesec started out as a company called Securacom. The original company was the well-regarded engineering firm Burns & Roe Securacom (no relation to author), which did some of the security detailing for the World Trade Center. However, in 1992–soon after the first Gulf War–Burns & Roe became Securacom. Its management changed hands accompanying an infusion of capital from the ruling family of Kuwait, the Al Sabahs, two of whom joined its board. Marvin Bush also joined the board at this time, connecting family and Al Sabah interests among other Bush family rewards after the U.S. kicked Iraq out of Kuwait.

Al Sabah corruption probe, Kuwait

The head of the company was Wirt D. (Dexter) Walker, III, and a former colleague in the company suggested in an interview that Walker is a distant relative of the Bush family. Any blood relationship to the Bush Walkers would have to be remote; the first Wirt D. Walker, two generations ago, was based in Chicago; the second in McLean, Va., in the DIA. However, there is no doubt that the company, Kuwait’s Al Sabahs, and Bush financial interests were closely linked for years. Management and control at Wirt Walker’s other companies, a small airplane company named Commander Aircraft (also bankrupt) and a private investment firm named KuwAm (short for Kuwait-American Corporation, also bankrupt), were inextricably linked to management and control at Securacom. Virtually none of the Bush-Al Sabah financial connections were reported in the U.S. during, before or after the 2000 election.

All three companies were headquartered at the Watergate, in office space leased by the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments.

Stratesec is bankrupt and no longer exists. Commander Aircraft later became Aviation General, also bankrupt. The Watergate has been sold to new owners. The Watergate building also housed one of the numerous branches of Riggs Bank, which has been effectively dismantled by SEC action. The head of the SEC during this operation was longtime Bush supporter William O. Donaldson, a classmate of Jonathan Bush, uncle to George W. and a Riggs executive.

Well-connected Riggs was widely considered to be an Agency bank (CIA) and was the bank used by about 95% of foreign embassies in Washington. Saudi accounts at Riggs were linked by investigators to some of the 9/11 hijackers.

Mishal al Sabah, a younger member of Kuwait’s ruling al Sabah family, was a son of one Emir and son-in-law (then ex-son-in-law) of the Emir who recently died. Mishal al Sabah served as officer and director in all three of Wirt Walker’s companies off and on for years and even lived with Walker when he first came to the U.S. He is now abroad and unlikely to return to the U.S., according to private sources, since he faces arrest on contempt charges stemming from a federal civil lawsuit in which he and Walker are defendants.

Bush with Kuwaiti Amir

Walker is being sued in several cases in federal courts in D.C. and Georgia. By all accounts a colorful character,Walker is no stranger to lawsuits. Earlier he tried to force a company already named Securacomm to give up its name, similar to that of Securacom. He ended up losing the case (Securacomm v. Securacom) but not before engaging in some hardball tactics endorsed by the firm’s directors including Marvin Bush.

(Incidentally, Marvin Bush has also been a party in another legal dispute over naming matters. Neither Bush nor the White House has responded to questions. Walker did speak with me more than once.)

One of the few good days for Walker and Securacom in court occurred before the California high court, a day after Sept. 11, 2001. The ruling did not result in ultimate victory for the company. The favorable outcome but did figure in Walker’s next SEC filings.

Note date of Securacom’s rare court win. Things must have looked good for even the worst-of-the-worst security companies, for 48 or more hour after the tragic events of the previous day.

“Information Systems and Networks Corporation, Cross-complainant and Appellant v. Securacom Inc., Cross-defendant and Respondent

S099607

SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA

2001 Cal. LEXIS 6179

September 12, 2001, Decided

NOTICE:    [*1]   DECISION WITHOUT PUBLISHED OPINION

PRIOR HISTORY:   Appeal from First Appellate District. Division One. No. A091315.

OPINION: Petition for review DENIED.

Update, Sep 2012:

This post was deleted by the system with many others, here reconstructed from re-posts and Word docs.

Previous errors corrected. Mr. Justice Alito is among the justices who denied cert to Securacom’s opponent in the above-mentioned case.