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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Pueblo who wrote (176903)	9/2/2001 8:23:38 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Battle Royale Coming over Bush Lies About Budget. The truth is we're in worse shape than Bush admits, thanks to his tax advance (half to the rich and not a cut nor a refund it turns out) along with the energy gougings and the tech market fall, and the truth is also that his backloaded tax cuts are far-far bigger and more draining to the government that he will ever admit. They may in fact bankrupt the government, could wipe out Social Security and raise interest rates, and they are heavily weighted to the very rich. In short, we can't afford them and the very rich don't need them. Bush says congress is over-spending, and maybe they can cut somewhere, but where? And has Bush offerd to eliminate his tax breaks to Big Oil? At present we can't afford any of the expensive and expansive Bush "small government" priorities except maybe education, which is the one are dems agree with him on (except vouchers). So where will the money come from? Answer: deficit spending and Social Security. In other words, tax-payer pockets. Because truly if it is our money it is also our debt. And it's definitely our social security. Kerry said it right. ``Unless the president of the United States steps up and puts on the table the notion that they have made a miscalculation -- and they are currently misleading the American people -- we're going to have a great deal of difficulty avoiding a train wreck,'' Sen. John Kerry (news - bio - voting record), a Massachusetts Democrat, said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' Congress is scheduled to reconvene on Tuesday against the backdrop of a slowing economy and disputed projections for the federal budget. The latest figures from the Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites) show the slumping economy and the president's $1.3 trillion tax cut quickly eating up the non-Social Security surplus and forcing the government to dip into federal payroll tax receipts. The White House and many congressional Republicans say they can fund all Bush's priorities without breaking bipartisan vows not to touch Social Security -- provided Congress avoids what they see as "unneeded spending". White House Budget Director Mitchell Daniels, also appearing on ``Meet the Press,'' stood his ground. ``The government's finances are in remarkably strong shape. It's the economy that's not, and that's the president's first concern,'' Daniels said. (Now it's his first cocnern? Where has he been the last nine months?) But Kerry and fellow Democrats asked how Bush could fund proposed increases in education and military spending. ``Where is that going to come from?'' Sen. Byron Dorgan (news - bio - voting record), a North Dakota Democrat who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, asked on the CNN talk show ``Late Edition.'' ``It doesn't exist in the current budget full of fuzzy math.'' Dorgan and Kerry called for a budget summit and suggested adopting a legislative ``trigger'' that could suspend the tax cuts if deficit reduction targets were not met. Republicans responded that rescinding the tax cut would be bad for the slumping economy." ( As if the tax cut has helped this economy at all. It hasn't. And was more than offset by higher energy gougings. So we go deeper into debt to give the rich more money. Nice idea.) The next battle will be on the energy bill full of tax breaks adn giveaways to Big Energy at the expense of our environment. Bushites have cleverly brought in (paid off?)the most notoriously corrupt labor union, The Teamsters to help and it's going to be close. Give us Campaign finance reform and all this dirty politics wouldn't be happening. They'd do what's right for the country not just their contributors. Bush-Cheney have taken in more than $100,000,000 plus many many favors from the energy cartel. Their energy bill is payback.

To: Don Pueblo who wrote (176903)	9/2/2001 9:57:34 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

THE BUSH FAMILY - HARKEN ENERGY FRAUD In his online column, "Behind the Scenes of the Beltway," (http://www.almartinraw.com), Al Martin has written that "you have to look at the entire Bush Family in this context -- as if the entire family ran a corporation called 'Frauds-R-Us.' Each member of the family, George Sr. , George Jr., Neil, Jeb, Prescott, Wally, etc., have their own specialty of fraud." "George Jr.'s specialty was insurance and security fraud. Jeb's specialty was oil and gas fraud. Neil's specialty was real estate fraud. Prescott's specialty was banking fraud. Wally's specialty was securities fraud. And George Bush Sr.'s specialty? All of the above." In this context, the infamous Harken Energy Fraud takes on new meaning as a multi-generational family of fraudsters, using high-level insider contacts, are able to manipulate stock prices for their own profiteering. "Harken was one of those deals that was a combination fraud as well as a manipulation," says Al Martin. "There's different types of fraud when you get into securities. When George Jr. was put in charge of Harken Energy by his father [George Herbert Walker Bush], he essentially took it down the tubes. You have to realize that every business that George Jr. has ever had has failed. That's the man's business record." Enquiring minds want to know -- was it deliberate? "It was a deliberate act by the old man, knowing that his son would take it down the tubes because the son's incompetent," Al Martin replies. "George Bush, Sr. and James Baker and Senator Tower would heavily short Harken stock. I have a list of everybody because I was one of them but to a much smaller extent. Harken stock was trading at 7-3/4 or 8, when George Jr, was put in charge of it. A year later, the stock was trading at 1-1/8 bid, 3/8 offer. They pumped the stock back up through a lot of bogus press releases and by using essentially worthless leases in Bahrain and essentially worthless South American oil leases and through sympathetic geologists making them appear to be really worth something and making it appear that Harken's about to make a strike when in fact it's all made up. It's all fictitious. And through carefully crafted broker releases and broker statements and press releases, you can pump the stock back up. This has happened sixteen times to my knowledge. Harken would get pumped back up from the dead, from say a buck, buck and a half, back to seven, seven and a half, then it would get dumped again. Originally George Jr. had control of the company. He stayed on the board."