All in the family Bush style!
Easy Come, Easy Come
The Good Life in a Parallel Universe
Opinion
By Stephen P. Pizzo
JULY 17: Polls show a hunger among Americans to believe their President. The recent spate of news stories questioning President Bush's behavior as a private businessman has only lowered his trustworthiness index a few points. People want to believe him. Bush's boyish ways and down-home Texas manner are reassuring at a time when Americans thirst for reassurance.
As for the war against terrorism, the public's trust has so far proven justified. But now we have another war, a domestic war against corporate malfeasance. And the stakes in this war are no less than they are in the war against terrorism. The wave of corporate crime that has swept US financial markets in recent months has cost America more national treasure than any foreign attack or threat of an attack.
In the prosecution of this war, Americans have good reason to distrust their Commander in Chief.
Not because he is dishonest, because I don't believe he is - at least when you understand his frames of reference. Bush comes from a tradition where dealing fast and loose in the boardroom, and greasing the palms of friends and friends of friends, is the norm.
It's kind of a parallel dimension where men like Ken Lay and Jeffery Skilling crisscross our dimension like harvest machines working a field of ripe corn.
When confronted with the damage they do, these folks appear genuinely puzzled - and they really are. They are psychologically incapable of feeling or understanding our outrage at behavior they consider completely normal.
It is from this dimension that George W. Bush comes to the task at hand. And this is why financial markets continue to lack confidence in his stewardship of this crisis. Those in the know understand that George W. Bush has spent his entire adult life surrounded by the very kinds of financial shenanigans he must now condemn. You might say it was all in the family.
In 1991, newly minted President George H. Bush bristled at a flurry of news accounts that questioned the business ethics of three of his boys.
"The media ought to be ashamed of itself for what they're doing," Bush whined. "They [his boys] have a right to make a living, and their relationships are appropriate," added a White House spokeswoman.
As the three Bush sons piloted their harvesting machines through our dimension, let's review what they reaped:
Neil Bush:
1985-1988: Neil served as a director of Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan in Denver, Colorado. During that time, the thrift made over $200 million in loans to two of Neil's business partners. In return, one of those partners kicked back $100,000 to Neil in the form an unsecured loan - that he later forgave.
By the time Silverado failed - costing taxpayers nearly $1 billion - Neil's two business partners had also forgiven their own loans to Silverado, defaulting on $132 million.
During House Banking Committee hearings on Silverado, Neil Bush was asked to explain why his partners, who could not repay their own bank loans, would forgive their $100,000 loan to him.
Neil looked genuinely confused by the question. "But, Congressman, it, it happens all the time," Neil responded.
Which was the absolute truth - at least in his dimension. An expert in business ethics, hired by federal regulators, concluded that Neil should not be prosecuted because he suffered from an "ethical disability." Instead he was ordered to pay a $50,000 fine. A banking-industry lobbyist who at the time was lobbying the Bush administration for bank deregulation reportedly paid the estimated $250,000 in legal bills .
With the Silverado field now stubble, Neil moved his harvester to federal land. He started a new oil company, Apex Energy. This time, the money came from the Small Business Administration (SBA) in the form of a $2.35 million loan - arranged by an old Bush family friend.
After the loan was funded, it was reported that the company that arranged the loan for Neil was insolvent and the SBA gave a deadline for Apex to liquidate and repay the loan in full.
Unfamiliar with this concept, Neil just walked away from Apex and its debts. Apex's only known asset at the time, an oil and gas lease in Oklahoma, had been purchased from Neil for $150,000 just before he bailed out.
Brother Jeb
In 1985, shortly after the Reagan/Bush team deregulated the savings and loan industry, Jeb Bush and a partner got $4.56 million from Broward Savings and Loan in Sunrise, Florida. The money was used to purchase an office building.
In 1988, when federal regulators declared Broward Savings insolvent, they found the loan secured by the Jeb and his partner in default. Normal operating procedures in such cases should have left Jeb only two options: repay the loan, or let the feds foreclose on their office building.
But regulators came up with a third option in this case. Regulators reduced the amount owed by Bush and his partner - from $4.5 million to $500,000. The pair paid that amount and were allowed to keep their office building. Taxpayers picked up the tab for the unpaid $4 million.
Jeb's explanation: "My partner and I were victims of circumstances."
In 1986, Jeb teamed up with the then-chairman of the Dade County Republican party, Camilo Padreda. On the books, Jeb's job was to be "leasing agent" for Padreda who had built a small real estate empire with HUD loans. In 1989 Padreda pleaded guilty to charges that he defrauded HUD of millions of dollars during the 1980s.
A year earlier, in 1985, Jeb teamed up with another questionable character - Cuban-American Miguel Recarey. At the time Recarey headed giant Florida HMO, IMC. The company was nearly totally dependent on its $30 million-a-month flow of Medicare funds.
Recarey hired Jeb, supposedly to serve as IMC's real estate agent. Though Jeb would never close a single real-estate deal, he was paid $75,000. The only service Jeb provided IMC was to lobby HHS in IMC's behalf.
HHS records show that Jeb phoned top Health and Human Services officials in Washington in 1985 to lobby for a special exemption from HHS rules for IMC. The highly unusual waiver was critical to Recarey's scam. Without it, the company would have been limited to a Medicare patient load of 50 percent.
It's long story, but the bottom line is that Recarey was looting Medicare and IMC. Investigators put the losses at nearly $1 billion. Stories in the Miami press also reported rumors that IMC was being used to secretly treat wounded Contras, and there is in fact a reference to IMC in Oliver North's desk diary.
Recarey was replaced by John Ward. Ward had been law partner to Reagan-Bush campaign manager John Sears. And Sears had also been a lobbyist for IMC.
Recarey was later tried and convicted, but remains a free man today living as fugitive in Spain.
Recarey's last act before fleeing the country was an attempt to wire $30,000 into the bank account of Washington consultant and lobbyist Nick Panuzio -- whose partner was then managing George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign.
Jeb's explanation for IMC - "news reports have been unfair."
Molly Ivins may have put it best when she wrote that Texas businessmen were not crooks, "they just have an over-developed sense of the extenuating circumstance."
Currently, it's the business misadventures of Neil and Jeb's big bro George that are again in the news. I hope this has helped you understand these folks better. Maybe now you can better comprehend George W. Bush's genuine outrage when faced with any questions about his Harken and Texas Ranger business deals. After all, all he did was take a bankrupt oil company and convert it into a $15 million fortune.
If your name is Bush, that kind of thing happens all the time - in their dimension
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