Corporate piety and the Bush boomerang
Matt Miller
dfw.com
...Bush's muscular new piety on corporate ethics means the press has the hook that it needs to re-examine his cozy Texas business history. And that means we may finally get beyond fawning accounts of Bush's first-president-with-an-MBA-management style to reminders that, among other remarkable facts, (1) Bush is the first president to have been investigated by the SEC for insider trading, and (2) Bush seems to have received an unusual $12 million gift while governor of Texas that accounts for his fortune.
...A good place to start is Joe Conason's under appreciated February 2000 piece in Harper's magazine. In 10,000 words, Conason tells a true Texas version of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Among the disturbing highlights:
1. The "investigation" of Bush's fortuitous dumping of Harken Energy stock in 1990 was conducted by a Securities and Exchange Commission headed by a pal of Bush's father whom Dad appointed to his job. The SEC's general counsel then was the Texas attorney who had handled the sale of the Texas Rangers for W. and his partners in 1989. In the Third World, given such circumstances, we'd say the fix was in (kinda like the Supreme Court's intervention in Florida). Anyone for an independent look this time?
2. When the Rangers were sold in 1998, while Bush was governor, his partners, Conason reports, "fattened his payout six times over by awarding him additional shares in the team at the time of the sale that brought his 1.8 percent share up to 12 percent." This boosted Bush's return on a borrowed $600,000 investment from around $2.5 million to $15 million. What swell partners! Anyone think it's time to better understand what that was all about? |
