This is your hero.
Bush ran a series of companies. He, personally, always made money. They all went bankrupt. He never seems to have had any regrets and could always find more money to lose.
Then he organized the purchase of the Texas Rangers baseball team. His group got the city of Arlington to pass a special tax to build a stadium for the team. When the group sold the team -- with the stadium included -- Bush's $600,000 investment turned into $13,000,0000. The increase in value came entirely from the taxpayer financed stadium.
In short, Bush had used government to collect money from ordinary taxpayers and pass it through a stadium project as a way to give it to him and his friends. That's how he got rich.
Dick Cheney spent most of his life working for the government. As Secretary of Defense he initiated the privatization of the military. He gave the contracts, without bids and with guaranteed profits, to Halliburton. They were worth billions. When Cheney briefly left government, Halliburton hired him as their CEO. In turn, they gave him a seven-figure salary, stock and options. A lot of stock and options. Now he's worth around $45,000,000.
Cheney was not a good CEO. His decisions brought Halliburton to the verge of bankruptcy. He sold his stock while he was in a position to know that but before the information became public.
When Bush and Cheney were outside government, that's what government was -- a instrument to take money from taxpayers, then give it to companies, who then gave a generous share to Bush and Cheney.
Why should they think of government differently now that they are the government? To them, that's what government if for and that's what they're doing with it. They left their companies bankrupt or nearly so. And life kept on going just fine, better than ever. Someone else took the loss, someone else picked up the pieces. So it will be with the country. No worry. |
